Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book XXII/Chapter 27

Chapter 27.—Of the Apparently Conflicting Opinions of Plato and Porphyry, Which Would Have Conducted Them Both to the Truth If They Could Have Yielded to One Another.

Statements were made by Plato and Porphyry singly, which if they could have seen their way to hold in common, they might possibly have became Christians.&#160; Plato said that souls could not exist eternally without bodies; for it was on this account, he said, that the souls even of wise men must some time or other return to their bodies.&#160; Porphyry, again, said that the purified soul, when it has returned to the Father, shall never return to the ills of this world.&#160; Consequently, if Plato had communicated to Porphyry that which he saw to be true, that souls, though perfectly purified, and belonging to the wise and righteous, must return to human bodies; and if Porphyry, again, had imparted to Plato the truth which he saw, that holy soul, shall never return to the miseries of a corruptible body, so that they should not have each held only his own opinion, but should both have held both truths, I think they would have seen that it follows that the souls return to their bodies, and also that these bodies shall be such as to afford them a blessed and immortal life.&#160; For, according to Plato, even holy souls shall return to the body; according to Porphyry, holy souls shall not return to the ills of this world.&#160; Let Porphyry then say with Plato, they shall return to the body; let Plato say with Porphyry, they shall not return to their old misery:&#160; and they will agree that they return to bodies in which they shall suffer no more.&#160; And this is nothing else than what God has promised,—that He will give eternal felicity to souls joined to their own bodies.&#160; For this, I presume, both of them would readily concede, that if the souls of the saints are to be reunited to bodies, it shall be to their own bodies, in which they have endured the miseries of this life, and in which, to escape these miseries, they served God with piety and fidelity.