Methodius of Olympus, Discourse on the Resurrection Part 1

God did not create evil, nor is the sum of things in any way responsible for evil. Rather, everything that possesses self-determination came into being through Him for the purpose of keeping and observing the law that He Himself justly ordained; failing to keep it is what is called evil. The greatest harm is disobeying God — transgressing the boundaries of righteousness that belong to self-determination. Because humanity was corrupted and defiled by rejecting God’s command and stained with the spots of error, “he received toil” according to Scripture (Genesis 3:17-19), so that he would always be inclined toward injustice and driven toward it. God the Almighty saw that man had become an immortal evil through the devil’s plotting — just as the devil himself was a deceiver — and for this reason He made the skin garments, wrapping him, as it were, in a kind of necrosis, so that through the dissolution of the body all the evil born in him might be destroyed. It has already been stated and demonstrated that the skin garments are not the bodies themselves. Nevertheless, let us say it again, for it cannot be said only once: the first-formed man confessed that he had bones and flesh even before the garments were made. When the woman was brought to him and he saw her, he exclaimed, “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken from her man” (Genesis 2:23). “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). I will not tolerate those who deceitfully and violently force Scripture, so that the resurrection may not be seen as a resurrection of the flesh. They hypothesize “intelligible bones and flesh,” shifting allegories in various directions, and treat these inventions as if they were written, even though Christ Himself confirms Scripture. When the Pharisees questioned Him about divorce, He answered, “Have you not read that He who created from the beginning made them male and female? And He said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother’” (Matthew 19:4–5). How can “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28) be understood as referring only to souls? Or “The Lord God took dust from the earth and formed the man” (Genesis 2:7)? This is said primarily of the body, for the soul did not acquire its substance from dust and heavier elements. Therefore it is most truly established that before the skin garments, man was fully embodied. The earlier statements were made so that he might fall; the statements about the garments come after the fall. Let us examine the matter again, having sufficiently demonstrated that the skin garments are not the bodies, but the mortality fashioned from the irrationality of animals — this is what remains. Beyond question, those outside the boundaries of paradise are settled there for this very reason. It was not because God, unwilling for him to eat from the tree of life and live, expelled him; God was able to let him live forever, eating again from the tree of life. Rather, it was so that evil might not become immortal. Why else would God have sent Christ from heaven to earth, if He had wanted man to die without ever tasting life? If the opponent claims God did this out of regret, his argument is weak, introducing a God who repents. But God is neither ignorant of the future nor evil; He is supremely good and foreknowing. So He did not expel man because man would not be saved to eternal life by eating from the tree of life, but so that sin might die first through death, and then, after sin has been destroyed, man might rise and eat of life. Let no reckless person dare to say these things were spoken differently. The one who defines flesh as incapable of immortality is truly guilty of foolishness, diseased with blasphemy. Why, after the creation of the skin garments, was Adam expelled and prevented from eating from the tree of life and living, if it were impossible for man to live forever with a body? For if he had been able not to die by tasting of life, the prevention would have been pointless. Scripture says, “And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife skin garments and clothed them. And God said, ‘Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and eat and live forever.’ And the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of pleasure to work the earth from which he was taken, and He expelled Adam” (Genesis 3:21–24). The body was able to live forever and become immortal, if it had not been prevented from tasting life. But it was prevented, so that sin might die together with the body, and the body might rise again with sin destroyed, so that man might eat of life. Therefore God declared him mortal, wrapping him in death, so that man might not be an immortal evil — as I said — or an ever-living one, with sin reigning in him, as if sin had sprouted in an immortal body and had immortal nourishment. This is what the skin garments intended: that through the dissolution of the body and its separation, all sin might be destroyed from below, so that not even the smallest part of a root might remain, from which new shoots of sins might arise again.