Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
The same flesh that lived and died will rise — the bodily resurrection is the whole point of the Christian hope, and to spiritualise it is to abandon Christianity
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | On the Resurrection of the Flesh (Mature (one of Tertullian's longest and most carefully argued treatises)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
The eschatological time — the resurrection at the end of the age — as the temporal terminus of the Christian hope; the temporal continuity that the same body retains through life, death, and resurrection.
Space
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
The created spatial world in which the embodied creature lives and to which the resurrected body returns (transformed but not de-spatialised).
Matter
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
The central dimension: matter is good, the body is real, the resurrection of the same flesh is the heart of the doctrine.
Observer
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
The embodied human person — body and soul together — as the unit that lives, dies, and is to be raised.
Energy
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
The divine energy that creates, sustains, and finally restores the embodied creature.
Information
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
The personal identity preserved through death and resurrection — the same person, the same particularities, the same recognisable embodied life.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Tertullian's strong corporealism — the view that even the soul is a kind of subtle body — was an idiosyncratic position that the subsequent Catholic tradition rejected; Augustine's more Platonic dualism became standard. The literalism of the resurrection-of-the-flesh doctrine has been contested by liberal and modernist theologians from the nineteenth century onward (Bultmann demythologising the resurrection, Rahner's "anonymous Christians"); contemporary defenders (Wright's Resurrection of the Son of God, 2003) return to substantially Tertullian's position. The work's influence on the Latin Christian theology of the body — sacraments, sexual ethics, dignity of the human person — has been continuous.