Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 7

The flesh's authority seems weaker because the divine hand didn't handle it directly, as it did the clay. Yet when God worked the clay so that flesh would later come from it, he was already conducting the flesh's business. I still want you to learn when and how the flesh flowered from that clay. Some claim the skin tunics Adam and Eve put on after being expelled from Paradise represent the flesh's reformation from clay, but that's false. Adam had already recognized flesh in the woman formed from his substance long before that, declaring, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh" (Gen 2:23). That recognition of the male in the female, filled out with flesh, had to be supplemented by clay, I think, if Adam was still clay at that point. So the clay was obliterated and consumed into flesh. When? When man became a living soul by God's breath—a vapor suited to bake the clay into a different quality, as a potter fires clay into earthenware. Just as a potter reforms fire-tempered clay into stronger material, shaping one form into another more fitting than the first, now of its own kind and name. Scripture asks, "Will the clay say to the potter?"—meaning, will man challenge God? (Isa 64:8). And the Apostle calls us "earthen vessels" (2 Cor 4:7). Yet clay is also man, because it was clay first; and earthenware is flesh, because it comes from clay through the divine vapor breathed into it, which the skin tunics—meaning skins—later covered. To the point that if you strip off the skin, you lay the flesh bare. What becomes spoil when removed was a garment when put on. That's why the Apostle, calling circumcision a stripping of the flesh, confirmed the skin is a tunic. Given all this, you have clay made glorious by God's hand, and flesh made more glorious by God's breath—by which both laid aside the rudiments of clay and took on the soul's ornaments. You aren't more careful than God. You set Scythian and Indian gems, the glowing pearls of the Red Sea, not in lead, copper, iron, or even silver, but in the most select and painstakingly worked gold. You anoint vessels with the costliest wines and ointments. You match the dignity of perfectly forged swords to their sheaths. Yet God entrusted the shadow of his soul, the breeze of his spirit, the work of his mouth, to the vilest vessel—and by placing it so unworthily, condemned it, as it were. But he placed, or rather inserted and blended, the soul into flesh with such intimate concretion that it's uncertain whether flesh carries soul or soul carries flesh; whether soul appears to flesh or flesh to soul. Still, we must believe the soul is borne along and dominates, since it stands nearer to God. This too redounds to the flesh's glory: it lies closest to God, contains him, and shares in his dominion. For what use of nature, what fruit of the world, what taste of the elements does the soul not enjoy through the flesh? Through which the soul is served by every instrument of sense—sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch; through which the soul is sprinkled with divine power, accomplishing nothing without speech, even if silently permitted. Speech itself comes from the flesh's organ; arts through the flesh; studies, talents, through the flesh; works, business, duties, through the flesh. The soul's entire life is the flesh, so that not to live is nothing other than turning away from the flesh. Dying, too, belongs to the flesh, whose life it also is. If all things are subject to the soul through the flesh, they must also be subject to the flesh, through which you use them. So the flesh, though appointed minister and servant of the soul, is found to be partner and co-heir. If this holds for temporal things, why not for eternal ones?