Tertullian — On the Resurrection of the Flesh VII

But perhaps the dignity of the flesh may seem to be diminished, because it has not been actually manipulated by the hand of God, as the clay was at first . Now, when God handled the clay for the express purpose of the growth of flesh out of it afterwards, it was for the flesh that He took all the trouble. But I want you, moreover, to know at what time and in what manner the flesh flourished into beauty out of its clay.

For it cannot be, as some will have it, that those "coats of skins" 49 which Adam and Eve put on when they were stripped of paradise, were really themselves the forming of the flesh out of clay, 50 because long before that Adam had already recognised the flesh which was in the woman as the propagation of his own substance ("This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh " 51 ), and the very taking of the woman out of the man was supplemented with flesh; but it ought, I should suppose, to have been made good with clay, if Adam was still clay. The clay, therefore, was obliterated and absorbed into flesh. When did this happen ? At the time that man became a living soul by the inbreathing of God-by the breath indeed which was capable of hardening clay into another substance, as into some earthenware, so now into flesh.

In the same way the potter, too, has it in his power, by tempering the blast of his fire, to modify his clayey material into a stiffer one, and to mould one form after another more beautiful than the original substance, and now possessing both a kind and name of its own. For although the Scripture says, "Shall the clay say to the potter? " 52 that is, Shall man contend with God? although the apostle speaks of "earthen vessels" 53 he refers to man, who was originally clay. And the vessel is the flesh, because this was made of clay by the breath of the divine afflatus ; and it was afterwards clothed with "the coats of skins," that is, with the cutaneous covering which was placed over it. So truly is this the fact, that if you withdraw the skin, you lay bare the flesh.

Thus, that which becomes a spoil when stripped off, was a vestment as long as it remained laid over. Hence the apostle, when he call circumcision "a putting off (or spoliation) of the flesh," 54 affirmed the skin to be a coat or tunic. Now this being the case, you have both the clay made glorious by the hand of God, and the flesh more glorious still by His breathing upon it, by virtue of which the flesh not only laid aside its clayey rudiments, but also took on itself the ornaments of the soul.