substance, whatever may have been the force by which the body became visible. What is written cannot but have been.
7 In exitu conversionis.
8 Gen. xviii.
9 Gen. xix. ■oGen. xxxii.
" See below in chap. vi. and in the A nti-MarcioH, iii. 9. '2 Corpore.
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
[chap. IV.
CHAP. IV. — GOD S HONOUR IN THE INCARNATION OF HIS SON VINDICATED. MARCION'S DISPAR- AGEMENT OF HUMAN FLESH INCONSISTENT AS WELL AS IMPIOUS. CHRIST HAS CLEANSED THE FLESH. THE FOOLISHNESS OF GOD IS MOST WISE.
Since, therefore, you do not reject the as- sumption of a body ' as impossible or as haz- ardous to the character of God, it remains for you to repudiate and censure it as un- worthy of Him. Come now, beginning from the nativity itself, declaim'' against the un- cleanness of the generative elements within the womb, the filthy concretion of fluid and blood, of the growth of the flesh for nine months long out of that very mire. Describe the womb as it enlarges ' from day to day, — heavy, troublesome, restless even in sleep, changeful in its feelings of dislike and desire. Inveigh now likewise against the shame itself of a woman in travail,'' which, however, ought rather to be honoured in consideration of that peril, or to be held sacred ^ in respect of (the mystery of) nature. Of course you are hor- rified also at the infant, which is shed into life with the embarrassments which accompany it from the womb;^ you likewise, of course, loathe it even iifter it is washed, when it is dressed out in its swaddling-clothes, graced with repeated anointing,' smiled on with nurse's fawns. This reverend course of na- ture,^ you, O Marcion, (are pleased to) spit upon; and yet, in what way were you born? You detest a human being at his birth; then after what fashion do you love anybody?
Yourself, of course, you liad no love of, when you departed from the Church and the faith of Christ. But never mind,' if you are not on good terms with yourself, or even if you were born in a way different from other people. Christ, at any rate, has loved even that man who was condensed in his mother's womb amidst all its uncleannesses, even that man who was brought into life out of the said womb, even that man who was nursed amidst the nurse's simpers.'" For his sake He came down (from heaven), for his sake He preached, for his sake " Heluimbled Himself even unto ' Corporationem.
* Compare similar passages in the Anii-Marcion, iii. i and iv.
3 Insolescenteiii.
4 Enitcntis.
5 ReliiLTiosum.
•^Cum suis impedimentis profusum.
'*Hanc venerationem natura;. Compare Tertullian's phrase, " Ilia sanctissima et revercnda opera natura;," in the A >iti-Mar- cion, iii. ii.
o Videris.- '" Per ludibria nutritum. Compare the phrase just before, "smiled on with nurse's fawns" — "blanditiis deridetur." Och- ler, however, compares the phrase with 'rerluUian's expression ('] puerperii spurcos.anxios, liitlicros exitiis") in the Aitti-Mar- cion, iv. ai.
death — the death of the cross." " He loved, of course, the being whom He redeemed at so great a cost. If Christ is the Creator's 8o7i, it was with justice that He loved His own (creature); if He comes from another god, His love was excessive, since He redeemed a being who belonged to another. Well, then, loving man He loved his nativity also, and his flesh as well. Nothing can be loved apart from that through which whatever exists has its existence. Either take away nativity, and then show us _>w//- man; or else withdraw the flesh, and then present to our view the being whom God has redeemed — since it is these very conditions " which constitute the man whom God has redeemed. And are yoti for turning these conditions into occasions of blushing to the very creature whom He has redeemed, (censuring them), too, us unworthy of Him who certainly would not have re- deemed them had He not loved them? Our birth He reforms from death by a second birth from heaven; '3 our flesh He restores from every harassing malady; when leprous, He cleanses it of the stain; when blind, He re- kindles its light; when palsied. He renews its strength; when possessed with devils. He ex- orcises it; when dead, He reanimates it, — then shall 7ve blush to own it? If, to be sure, "' He had chosen to be born of a mere animal, and were to preach the kingdom of heaven invested with the body of a beast either wild or tame, your censure (I imagine) would have instantly met Him with this demurrer: " This is disgraceful for God, and this is unworthy of the Son of God, and simply foolish." For no other reason than because one thus judges. It is of course foolish, if we are to judge God by our own conceptions. But, Marcion, con- sider well this Scripture, if indeed you have not erased it: "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise." '^ Now what are those foolish things? Are they the conversion of men to the worship of the true God, the rejection of error, the whole training in righteousness, chastity, mercy, patience, and innocence? These things cer- tainly are not "foolish." Inquire again, then, of what things he spoke, and when you imagine that you have discovered what they are will you find anything to be so " foolish " as believing in a God that has been born, and that of a virgin, and of a fleshly natiTc too, w!,o wallowed in all the before-mentioned humilia- tions of nature? But some one may say.
"Phil. ii. 8.
'4 Revera. [I cannot let the words which follow, stand in the te.\t; they are siiflitiently rendered.]
CHAP, v.]
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
" These are not the foolish things; they must 1)6 other things which God has chosen to con- found the wisdom of the world." And yet, acording to the world's wisdom, it is more easy to believe that Jupiter became a bull or a swan, if we listen to Marcion, than that Christ really became a man.
CHAP. V. — CHRIST TRULY LIVED AND DIED IN HUMAN FLESH. INCIDENTS OF HIS HUMAN LIFE ON EARTH, AND REFUTATION OF MAR- CION's DOCETIC parody OF THE SAME.
There are, to be sure, other things also quite as foolish (as the birth of Christ), which have reference to the humiliations and sufferings of God. Or else, let them call a crucified God "wisdom." But Marcion will apply the knife ' to this doctrine also, and even with greater reason. For which is more unworthy of God, which is more likely to raise a blush of shame, that God should be born, or that He should die? that He should bear the flesh, or the cross? be circumcised, or be crucified? be cradled, or be coffined? == be laid in a manger, or in a tomb? Talk of '^wisdom / " You will show more of that if you refuse to believe this also. But, after all, you will not be " wise " unless you become a " fool " to the world, by believing " the foolish things of God." Have you, then, cut away 3 all suf- ferings from Christ, on the ground that, as a mere phantom, He was incapable of expe- liencing them? We have said above that He might possibly have undergone the unreal mockeries^ of an imaginary birth and in- fancy. But answer me at once, yo\i that murder truth: Was not God really crucified? And, having been really crucified, did He not really die? And, having indeed really died, did He not really rise again? Falsely did Pauls " determine to know nothing amongst us but Jesus and Him crucified;"* falsely has he impressed upon us that He was buried; falsely inculcated that He rose again. False, therefore, is our faith also. And all that we hope for from Christ will be a phantom. O thou most infamous of men, who acquittest of all guilt 7 the murderers of God! For nothing did Christ suffer from them, if He really suffered nothing at all. Spare the whole world's one only hope, thou who art destroying the indispensable dishonour of our faith. ^ Whatsoever is unworthy of God, is ■ Aufer, Marcion. Literally, " Destroy this also, O Marcion." 2 Educari an sepeliri. SRecidisti. ♦ Vacua ludtbria.
5 Paul was of great authority in Marcion's school. 1 Excusas.
8 The humiliation which God endured, so indispensable a part of the Christian faith.
of gain to me. I am safe, if I am not ashamed of my Lord. " Whosoever," says He, " shall be ashamed of me, of him will I also be ashamed."' Other matters for shame find I none which can prove me to be shameless in a good sense, and foolish in a happy one, by my own contempt of shame. The Son of Godwas crutnfied; J am not asliamed because men must needs be ashamed of it. And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be be- lieved, because it is absurd."" And He was buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible. But how will all this be true in Him, if He was not Himself true — if He really had not in Himself that which might be crucified, might die, might be buried, and might rise again? / tneafi this flesh suf- fused with blood, built up with bones, inter- woven with nerves, entwined with veins, a flesh which knew how to be born, and how to die, hu- man without doubt, as born of a human being. It will therefore be mortal in Christ, because Christ is man and the Son of man. Else why is Christ man and the Son of man, if he has nothing of man, and nothing from man? Unless it be either that man is anything else than flesh, or man's flesh comes from any other source than man, or Mary is anything else than a human being, or Marcion's man is as Marcion's god."" Otherwise Christ could not be described as being man without flesh, nor the Son of man without any human parent; just. as^'.He is not God without the Spirit of God; nor the Son of God without having God for His father. Thus the nature " of the two substances displayed Him as man and God — in one respect born, in the other unborn, in one respect fleshly, in the other spiritual; in one sense weak in the other exceeding strong; in one sense dying, in the other living. This property of the two states — the divine and the human — is distinctly asserted '^ with equal truth of both natures alike, with the same belief both in respect of the Spirit '■♦ and of the flesh. The powers of the Spirit,'* proved Him to be God, His sufferings attested the flesh of man.^ If His powers were not without the Spirit '■• in like manner, were not His sufferings without the flesh. If His flesh with its sufferings was fictitious, for the same reason was the Spirit false with all its powers. Wherefore halve '= Christ with a lie? He was wholly the truth. Believe me, He chose 9 Matt. X. 33, Mark. viii. 38, and Luke ix. 26.
"> Ineptum.
" That is, imaginary and unreal.
'2 Census: " the origin."
'3 Dispuncta est.
'•4 This term is almost a technical designation of the divine nai-' ure of Chnst in TertuUian. (See our translation of the A nth Marcion, p. 247, note 7, Edin.)
'5 Dimidias.
2D ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
[chap. VI.
rather to be born, than in any part to pretend — and that indeed to His own detriment^ — that He was bearing about a flesh hardened with- out bones, solid without muscles, bloody with- out blood, clothed without the tunic ojf skin,^ hungry without appetite, eating without teeth, speaking without a tongue, so that His word was a phantom to the ears through an im- aginary voice. A phantom, too, it was of course after the resurrection, when, showing His hands and His feet for the disciples to examine, He said, " Behold and see that it is I myself, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have; " " without doubt, hands, and feet, and bones are not what a spirit pos- sesses, but only the flesh. How do you inter- pret this statement, Marcion, you who tell us that Jesus comes only from the most excellent God, who is both simple and good? See how He rather cheats, and deceives, and juggles the eyes of all, and the senses of all, as well as their access to and contact with Him! You ought rather to have brought Christ down, not from heaven, but from some troop of mountebanks, not as God besides man, but simply as a man, a magician; not as the High Priest of our salvation, but as the con- jurer in a show; not as the raiser of the dead, but as the misleader^ of the living, — except that, if He were a magician. He must have had a nativity!
CHAP. VI. — THE DOCTRINE OT APELLES REFUTED, THAT Christ's body was of sidereal sub- stance, NOT BORN. NATIVITY AND MOR- TALITY are CORRELATIVE CIRCUMSTANCES, AND IN Christ's case his death proves his BIRTH.
But certain disciples ■• of the heretic of Pon- tus, compelled to be wiser than their teacher, concede to Christ real flesh, without effect, however, on^ their denial of His nativity. He might have had, they say, a flesh which was not at all born. So we have found our way "out of a frying-pan," as the proverb runs, "into the fire,"* — from Marcion to Apelles. This man having first fallen from the principles of Marcion into (intercourse with) a woman, in the flesh, and afterwards shipwrecked himself, in the spirit, on the vir- gin Philumene,' proceeded from that ttme^ to ' See his AdT. Valentin, chap. 25. - Luke xxiv. 39.
3 Avocatorem.
4 He has Appelles mainly in view.
5 Sine praejudicio tamen. " Without prejudice to their detiial, etc."
6 The Roman version of the proverb is " out o( the lime-kiln into the coal-furnace."
7 See Tertullian, de Prascr. IJeeret. c. xx.x.
* Ab eo: or, " from that event of the carnal contact." A s^ood reading, found in most of the old books, is ab ea, that is, Pnilu- mene.
preach that the body of Christ was of solid flesh, but without having been born. To this angel, indeed, of Philumene, the apostle will reply in tones like those in which he even then predicted him, saying, "Although an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed."' To the arguments, however, which have been indi- cated just above, we have now to show our resistance. They allow that Christ really had a body. Whence was the material of it, if not from the same sort of thing as '° that in which He appeared? Whence came His body, if His body were not flesh? Whence came His flesh, if it were not born? Inas- much as that which is born must undergo this nativity in order to become flesh. He bor- rowed, they say. His flesh from the stars, and from the substances of the higher world. And they assert it for a certain principle, that a body without nativity is nothing to be aston- ished at, because it has been submitted to angels to appear even amongst ourselves in the flesh without the intervention of the womb. We admit, of course, that such facts have been related. But then, how comes it to pass that a faith which holds to a different rule borrows materials for its own arguments from the faith which it impugns? What has it to do with Moses, who has rejected the God of Moses? Since the God is a different one, everything belonging to him must be different also. But let the heretics always use the Scriptures of that God whose world they also enjoy. The fact will certainly recoil on them as a witness to judge them, that they maintain their own blasphemies from examples derived from J2im." But it is an easy task for the truth to prevail without raising any such demurrer against them. When, therefore, they set forth the flesh of Christ after the pattern of the angels, declaring it to be not born, and yet flesh for all that, I should wish them to compare the causes, both in Christ's case and that of the angels, wherefore they came in the flesh. Never did any angel descend for the purpose of being crucified, of tasting death, and of rising again from the dead. Now, since there never was such a reason for angels becoming embodied, you have the cause why they assumed flesh without undergoing birth.
They had not come to die, therefore they also (came not) to be born. Christ, however, having been sent to die, had necessarily to be also born, that He might be capable of death; for nothing is in the habit of dying but that 10 Ex ea qualitate in qua. " Ipsius; the Creator.
CIIAT, VII.]
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
which is born. Between nativity and mor- tality there is a mutual contrast. The law ' which makes us die is the cause of our being born. Now, since Christ died owing to the condition which undergoes death, but that undergoes death which is also born, the con- sequence was — nay, it was an antecedent neces- sity— that He must have been born also,' by reason of the condition which undergoes birth; because He had to die in obedience to that very condition which, because it begins with birth, ends in death. ' It was not fitting for Him not to be born under the pretence •* that it was fitting for Him to die. But the Lord Himself at that very time appeared to Abra- ham amongst those angels without being born, and yet in the flesh without doubt, in virtue of the before-mentioned diversity of cause. You, however, cannot admit this, since you do not receive that Christ, who was even then re- hearsing 5 how to converse with, and liberate, and judge the human race, in the habit of a flesh which as yet was not born, because it did not yet mean to die until both its nativity and mortality were previously (by prophecy) announced. Let them, then, prove to us that those angels derived their flesh from the stars. If they do not prove it because it is not written, neither will the flesh of Christ get its origin therefrom, for which they borrowed the precedent of the angels. It is plain that the angels bore a flesh which was not naturally their own; their nature being of a spiritual substance, although in some sense peculiar to themselves, corporeal; and yet they could be transfigured into human shape, and for the time be able to appear and have inter- course with men. Since, therefore, it has not been told us whence they obtained their flesh, it remains for us not to doubt in our minds that a property of angelic power is this, to assume to themselves bodily shape out of no material substance. How much more, you say, is it (within their competence to take a body) out of some material substance? That is true enough. But there is no evidence of this, because Scripture says nothing. Then, again, * how should they who are able to form themselves into that which by nature they are not, be unable to do this out of no material substance? If they become that which they are not, why cannot they so become out of that which is not? But that which has not ex- istence when it comes into existence, is fnade out of nothing. This is why it is unnecessary ' Forma. 2 Aeque.
? Quod, quia nascitur, moritur. 4 Pro.
^Ediscebat. Compare a fine passage of TertuUian on this sub- ject in our Anti-Marcion, note 10, p. 112, Edin. ^Ceterum.
either to inquire or to demonstrate what has subsequently become of their' bodies. What came out of nothing, came to nothing. They, who were able to convert themselves into flesh have it in their power to convert nothing itself into flesh. It is a greater thing to change a nature than to make matter. But even if it were necessary to suppose that angels derived their flesh from some material substance, it is surely more credible that it was from some earthly matter than from any kind of celestial substances, since it was composed of so pal- pably terrene a quality that it fed on earthly aliments. Suppose that even now a celestial flesh ^ had fed on earthly aliments, although it was not itself earthly, in the same way that earthly flesh actually fed on celestial aliments, although it had nothing of the celestial nature (for we read of manna having been food for the people: *' Man," says the Psalmist, "did eat angels' bread,"') yet this does not once infringe the separate condition of the Lord's flesh, because of His different destination. For One who was to be truly a man, even unto death, it was necessary that He should be clothed with that flesh to which death belongs. Now that flesh to which death belongs is pre- ceded by birth.
CHAP. VII. — EXPLANATION OF THE LORD's QUESTION ABOUT HIS MOTHER AND HIS BRETHREN. ANSWER TO THE CAVILS OF APELLES AND MARCION, WHO SUPPORT THEIR DENIAL OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY BY IT.
But whenever a dispute arises about the nativity, all who reject it as creating a pre- sumption in favour of the reality of Christ's flesh, wilfully deny that God Himself was born, on the ground that He asked, " Who is my mother, and who are my brethren? " " Let, therefore, Apelles hear what was our answer to Marcion in that little work, in which we challenged his own (favourite) gospel to the proof, even that the material circumstances of that remark (of the Lord's) should be con- sidered." First of all, nobody would have told Him that His mother and brethren were standing outside, if he were not certain both that He had a mother and brethren, and that they were the very persons whom he was then announcing, — who had either been known to him before, or were then and there discovered by him; although heretics '"^ have removed this passage from the gospel, because those who were admiring His doctrine said that His 7 The angels'.
ssidera. Drawn, as they thought, from the stars.
9Ps. Ixxviii. 24.
'o Matt. xii. 48; Luke viii. 20, 21. '• See our Anti-Marcion., iv. 19. »2 Literally, " heresies."
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
[chap. VII.