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27 - Power, Authority, the Living, and the Dead

from Part VI - Contested Bodies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2023

By
Robin M. Jensen
Edited by
Bruce W. Longenecker  and
David E. Wilhite
Bruce W. Longenecker
Affiliation:
Baylor University, Texas
David E. Wilhite
Affiliation:
Baylor University, Texas
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Summary

In his treatise On the Soul, Tertullian remarks on certain long-established beliefs that a part of the soul survived the body after death. He explains that the practice of keeping a portion of the deceased body intact rather than cremating it with the rest of the corpse is intended to maintain a place for the soul’s continued habitation:

But not a particle of the soul can possibly remain in the body, which is itself destined to disappear when time annihilates the body’s entire sphere of action. And yet, because some still hold the belief in a partial survival of the soul, they will not permit burning of the dead body, in order to spare that small residue of the soul.1

Tertullian cites a passage in Plato’s Republic in which the warrior Er was slain in battle and his body was found intact after ten days, brought home, and revived just as it was laid on the funeral pyre.2 He cites this myth as an example of the belief that an unburied body might retain its link with the soul, which in turn could prevent the body’s decay. This conviction, that some portion of the soul remains linked with the body so long as even a bit of the body is preserved, may be why members of the Pythagorean sect or other religious groups refused to cremate. Elsewhere, Tertullian clearly contrasts the Christian view of death with the Pythagorean belief in reincarnation, the Platonic denial that the soul retains any link with the body, and the Epicurean assertion of the complete annihilation of both body and soul at death.3 In On the Soul, Tertullian contends that unlike others, Christians do not believe that any part of the soul remains with the corpse after death and maintain that death entirely separates the body from the immortal and indivisible soul.4 Thus, Christians practice inhumation simply out of pious respect for the body and not in order to preserve bodily remains.

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The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity , pp. 633 - 658
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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