Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 5.31

Certain people who are thought to have believed correctly nevertheless transgress the order of the advancement of the just and remain ignorant of the modes of meditation that lead to incorruptibility, for they harbor heretical sensibilities within themselves. Indeed, heretics despise God's creation and refuse to receive the salvation of their own flesh; they also despise God's promise and transcend the whole sense of God, so that as soon as they die they claim they will transcend the heavens and the Demiurge and go to the mother, or to the one they fabricate as the father. Since they reject the entire resurrection and, as far as it lies in their power, remove it from the midst, what wonder is it that they do not know the order of the resurrection nor understand it? For if things were as they say, the Lord himself, in whom they claim to believe, would not have accomplished the resurrection on the third day; instead, having breathed his last on the cross, he would have gone up immediately, leaving his body to the earth.

But as it is, he remained for three days where the dead were, just as the prophet says of him: "The Lord is mindful of his holy ones, who have slept in the earth of burial, and he descended to them, to draw them out and save them" (Psalms 16:10). The Lord himself also says: "As Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth" (Jonah 1:17). The Apostle likewise says: "He ascended—what does this mean except that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth?" And David, prophesying concerning him, said: "You have delivered my soul from the lowest hell." Rising again on the third day, and when Mary, who saw him first, adored him, he said to her: "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to the disciples and say to them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father" (John 20:17).

If therefore the Lord observed the law of the dead so that he might become the firstborn from the dead, and having remained until the third day among the dead of the earth, he afterwards rose in the flesh in order to show the disciples the marks of the nails, and thus ascended to the Father, how are they not confounded who say that the lower world is this world, which belongs to us, while their inner man, leaving this body behind, ascends to a super-celestial place? For when the Lord departed into the midst of the shadow of death, where the souls of the dead were, he afterwards rose bodily, and after the resurrection he was taken up. It is therefore manifest that the souls of his disciples also, for whose sake the Lord accomplished these things, will go to an invisible place appointed for them by God, and there they will remain until the resurrection, awaiting the resurrection; afterwards, receiving their bodies and rising perfectly—that is, bodily, just as the Lord rose—they will come into the sight of God. For no disciple is above his master; but everyone who is perfected will be like his master. How, then, did our master not immediately fly away, but waited for the appointed time of his resurrection defined by the Father, which was also manifested through Jonah, and rising after three days was taken up? So also we ought to wait for the appointed time of our resurrection defined by God, preannounced by the prophets, and thus rising be taken up, as many as the Lord will have deemed worthy.