Athenagoras, On the Resurrection of the Dead 1

A falsehood attaches itself to every doctrine and word of the truth that exists in the things that are. This falsehood does not spring from some underlying natural principle or from the cause inherent in each thing itself; rather, it is promoted by those who have sown the seed of the truth's corruption in a disorderly manner. We discover this first from the ancients who devoted themselves to these inquiries and from the disagreements that arose among them, both with their predecessors and their contemporaries, and not least from the turmoil surrounding the matters currently in dispute. For people of this sort have left nothing true uncalumniated: not the substance of God, not the knowledge, not the activity, not the things that follow these in orderly sequence, and not the word that outlines piety for us. Some utterly and completely deny the truth about these matters; some distort it to fit their own opinion; some even pretend to be at a loss concerning the obvious. Therefore, I think those who labor over these things must employ a twofold discourse: words in defense of the truth, and words about the truth. The words in defense of the truth address those who disbelieve or doubt; the words about the truth address those who are fair-minded and receive the truth with goodwill. Consequently, anyone who wishes to examine these matters must consider the particular need at hand and measure their words by it, rearranging the order of treatment to suit the occasion, and not neglect the suitable and pressing need of each case because of the opinion that the same principle must always be kept. For just as, with respect to proof and natural sequence, words in defense of the truth always take precedence over words about the truth, so, with respect to what is more necessary, the words in defense of the truth are reversed in priority over the words about the truth. For neither can a farmer properly sow seeds in the earth without first clearing away the wild growth and preparing the ground for what is to be sown, nor can a doctor administer any healthy medicine to a body needing treatment without first purging the existing evil or staunching the flowing one; nor can the person who wants to teach the truth, by speaking about the truth, persuade anyone who labors under a false opinion that occupies the listeners' minds and opposes the words spoken. Therefore, looking to what is more necessary, we also propose that sometimes the words in defense of the truth take precedence over the words about the truth; and it seems not unhelpful to do the same thing now in the case of the words about the resurrection, considering what is required. Indeed, among these people we find some who utterly disbelieve, some who doubt, and some who, even though they have accepted the initial hypotheses, are at a loss just like those who doubt. The most irrational thing of all is that they suffer these things without having any basis for their disbelief from the facts, and without finding any reasonable cause to say why they disbelieve or doubt.