Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 5.18

Since Celsus has gone on at greater length to mock the resurrection of the body as proclaimed in the churches—though understood more clearly by the more intelligent—we need not repeat his exact words, which we have already addressed once; come, let us also take up this problem. In the apology written for those outside the faith, and for those who are still infants—tossed about and carried along by every wind of doctrine in the cunning of men, aimed at the method of deceit (Eph 4:14)—we will set forth and demonstrate a few points, as far as we are able, for those who encounter us. Neither we nor the divine scriptures say that bodies, having undergone no change for the better, will live again after rising from the earth, those who died long ago; rather, Celsus slanders us by claiming these things. For we also hear many scriptures speaking worthily of God concerning the resurrection, and it is enough for the present to cite the statement of Paul from his first letter to the Corinthians, where he says: “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body” (1 Cor 15:35–38). Observe, then, the manner in which he says in these things that not the body that will be is sown, but from the sown and bare grain thrown upon the earth, he declares that God gives to each of the seeds its own body, as if a resurrection were taking place—a stalk rising from the cast seed, as in a garden bed, or on a larger tree, in an olive pit or one of the fruits.