erty, and what is necessary for it? To rec- ognise this indeed is within the competence of every soul; it has, I mean, a practical knowledge of itself, without which knowledge of itself no soul could possibly have exercised its own functions. '5 I suppose, too, that it is especially suitable that man, the only rational animal, should have been furnished with such a soul as would make him the rational animal, itself being pre-eminently rational. Now, how can that soul which makes man a rational animal be itself rational if it be itself ignorant of its rationality, being ignorant of its own very self? So far, however, is it from being ignorant, that it knows its own Author, its own Master, and its own condition. Before it learns anything about God, it names the name of God. Before it acquires any knowl- edge of His judgment, it professes to com- mend itself to God. There is nothing one oftener hears of than that there is no hope after death; and yet what imprecations or dep- recations does not the soul use according as the man dies after a well or ill spent life! These reflections are more fully pursued in a short treatise which we have written, " On the Testimony of the Sotil." "^ Besides, if the soul was ignorant of itself from the beginning, there is nothing it could '" have learnt of Christ except its own quality.'^ It was not its own form that it learnt of Christ, but its salvation. For this cause did the Son of God descend and take on Him a soul, not that the soul might discover itself in Christ, but Christ in itself. For its salvation is endangered, not by its being ignorant of itself, but of the word of God. " The life," says He, "was mani- fested,"'' not the soul. And again, "I am come to save the soul." He did not say, "to explain"^ it. We could not know, of course, "" that the soul, although an invisible essence, is born and dies, unless it were ex- hibited corporeally. We certainly were igno- rant that it was to rise again with the flesh. This is the truth which it will be found was manifested by Christ. But even this He did not manifest in Himself in a different way than in some Lazarus, whose flesh was no more composed of soul " than his soul was of flesh. ^3 What further knowledge, therefore, have we received of the structure^ of the soul which we were ignorant of before? What in- visible part was there belonging to it which wanted to be made visible by the flesh?
•5 Se ministrare.
''>See especially chap. iv. supra.
'7 Debuerat.
'^ Nisi qualis esset.
=o Ostendere; see Luke ix. S6.
=' Nimirum.
2= Animalis.
=3 Carnalis. 24 Disposlttone.
CHAP. XIV.]
ON THE FLESH C)l" CHRIST CHAP. XIII. CHRIST S HUMAN NATURE. THE FLESH AND THE SOUL BOTH FULLY AND UN- CONFUSEDLV CONTAINED IN IT.
The soul became flesh that the soul might become visible.' Well, then, did the flesh likewise become soul that the flesh might be manifested? * If the soul is flesh, it is no longer soul, but flesh. If the flesh is soul, it is no longer flesh, but soul. Where, then, there is flesh, and where there is soul, it has become both one and the other. ^ Now, if they are neither in particular, although they become both one and the other, it is, to say the least, very absurd, that we should under- stand the soul when we name the flesh, and Avhen we indicate the soul, explain ourselves as meaning the flesh. All things will be in danger of being taken in a sense different from their own proper sense, and, whilst taken in that different sense, of losing their proper one, if they are called by a name which differs from their natural designation. Fidelity in names secures the safe appreciation of prop- erties. When these properties undergo a change, they are considered to possess such qualities as their names indicate. Baked clay, for instance, receives the name of brick." It retains not the name which designated its former state, ^ because it has no longer a share in that state. Therefore, also, the soul of Christ having become flesh, '^ cannot be anything else than that which it has become; nor can it be any longer that which it once was, having become indeed ' something else. And since we have just had recourse to an illustration, we will put it to further use. Our pitcher, then, which was formed of the clay, is one body, and has one name indicative, of course, of that one body; nor can the pitcher l)e also called clay, because what it once was, it is no longer. Now that which is no longer (what it was) is also not an inseparable prop- erty.^ And the soul is not an inseparable property. Since, therefore, it has become flesh, the soul is a uniform solid body; it is also a wholly incomplex being, » and an in- divisible substance. But in Christ we find the soul and the flesh expressed in simple un- figurative'° terms; that is to say, the soul is called soul, and the flesh, flesh; nowhere is the soul termed flesh, or the flesh, soul; and yet they ought to have been thus (confusedly) * Ostenderetur: or, " that it might prove itself soul."
2 Or, " that it might show itself flesh."
3 Alterutrum: " no matter which."
* Testae: a pitcher, perhaps. S Generis.
<5Tertullian quotes his opponent's opinion here. 7 Silicet: in reference to the alU-geU doctrine.
* Non adha;ret.
named if such had been their condition. TJie. fad, /lojva'er, is that even by Christ Himself each substance has been separately mentioned by itself, conformably of course, to the dis- tinction which exists between the properties of both, the soul by itself, and the flesh by itself." ""Mysoul," says He, " is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;''" and "the bread that I will give is wv fles/i, (which I will give) for the life "^ of the' world." '^ Now, if the soul had been flesh, there would have only been in Christ the soul composed of flesh, or else the flesh composed of soul.'* Since, however. He keeps the species distinct, the flesh and the soul. He shows them to be two. If two, then they are no longer one; if not one, then the soul is not composed of flesh, nor the flesh of soul. For the soul-flesh, or the flesh-soul, is but one; unless indeed He even had some other soul apart from that which was flesh, and bare about another flesh besides that which was soul. But since He had but one flesh and one soul, — that "soul which was sorrowful, even unto death," and thatjlesh wJiich was the " bread given for the life of the world,"- -the number is unim- paired '5 of two substances distinct in kind, thus excludng the unique species of the flesh- comprised soul.
CHAP. XIV. CHRIST TOOK NOT ON HIM AN AN- GELIC NATURE, BUT THE HUMAN. IT WAS MEN, NOT ANGELS, WHOM HE CAME TO SAVE, But Christ, they say, bare '* (the nature of) an angel. For what reason? The same which induced Him to become man? Christ, then, was actuated by the motive which led Him to take human nature. Man's salvation was the motive, the restoration of that which had perished. Man had perished; his re- covery had become necessary. No such cause, however, existed for Christ's taking on Him the nature of angels. For although there is assigned to angels also perdition in "the fire prepared for the devil and his angels," '^ yet a restoration is never promised to them. No charge about the salvation of angels did Christ ever receive from the Father; and that which the Father neither promised nor commanded, Christ could not have undertaken. For what object, therefore, did He bear the angelic nature, if it were not (that He might have it) as a powerful helper '® wherewithal to execute the salvation of man?
■'Matt. xxvi. 38. TertuUian's quotation is put interrogativeljr, '= " The salvation " (salute) is Tertulliaa's word.
u Above, beginning of chap. x.
■5 Salvus.
'6 Gestavit.
'» Satellitem.
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
[chap. XV.
The Son of God, in sooth, was not competent alone to deliver man, whom a solitary and single serpent had overthrown! There is, then, no longer but one God, but one Saviour, if there be two to contrive salvation, and one of them in need of the other. But was it His object indeed to deliver man by an angel? Why, then, come down to do that which He was about to expedite with an angel's help? If by an angel's aid, why come Himself also? If He meant to do all by Himself, why have an angel too? He has been, it is true, called "the Angel of great counsel," that is, a messenger, by a term expressive of official function, not of nature. For He had to an- nounce to the world the mighty purpose of the Father, even that which ordained the res- toration of man. But He is not on this ac- count to be regarded as an angel, as a Gabriel or a Michael. For the Lord of the vineyard sends even His Son to the labourers to require fruit, as well as His servants. Yet the Son will not therefore be counted as one of the servants because He undertook the office of a servant. I may, then, more easily say, if such an expression is to be hazarded,' that the Son is actually an angel, that is, a mes- senger, from the Father, than that there is an angel in the Son. Forasmuch, however, as it has been declared concerning the Son Him- self, Thou hast made Him a little lower than the angels " ^ how will it appear that He put on the nature of angels if He was made lower than the angels, having become man, with flesh and soul as the Son of man? As "the Spirit 3 of God," however, and " the Power of the Highest," " can He be regarded as lower than the angels, — He who is verily God, and the Son of God? Well, but as bearing human nature, He is so far made inferior to the angels; but as bearing angelic nature. He to the same degree loses that inferiority. This opinion will be very suitable for Ebion,^ who holds Jesus to be a mere man, and nothing more than a descendant of David, and not also the Son of God; although He is, to be sure,^ in one respect more glorious than the prophets, inasmuch as he declares that there was an angel in Him, just as there was in Zechariah. Only it was never said by Christ, " And the angel, which spake within me, said unto me." 7 Neither, indeed, was ever used by Christ that familiar phrase of all the proph- ets, "Thus saith the Lord." For He was > Si forte. 2Ps. viii. 5.
3 For this designation of the divine nature in Christ, see our Jinti-Marcinn, p. 247, note 7, Edin.
5 Hebioni. * Plane.
Himself the Lord, who openly spake by His own authority, prefacing His words with the formula, "Verily, verily, / say unto you." What need is there of further argument? Hear what Isaiah says in emphatic words, " It was no angel, nor deputy, but the Lord Him- self who saved them." ^ chap. xv. — the valentinian figment of Christ's flesh being of a spiritual na- ture, EXAMINED AND REFUTED OUT OF SCRIPTURE.
Valentinus, indeed, on the strength of his heretical system, might consistently devise a spiritual flesh for Christ. Any one who re- fused to believe that that flesh was human might pretend it to be anything he liked, for- asmuch as (and this remark is applicable to all heretics), if it was not human, and was not born of man, I do not see of what substance Christ Himself spoke when He called Himself man and the Son of man, saying: " But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth; "» and "The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath-day." '° For it is of Him that Isaiah writes: " A man of suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weak- ness; " " and Jeremiah: " He is a man, and who hath known Him?"'^ and Daniel: " Upon the clouds (He came) as the Son of man." '3 The Apostle Paul likewise says: "The man Christ Jesus is the one Mediator between God and man."'* Also Peter, in the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of Him as verily human (when he says), " Jesus Christ was a man approved of God among you." '5 These passages alone ought to suffice as a prescriptive '* testimony in proof that Christ had human flesh derived from man, and not spiritual, and that His flesh was not composed of soul,'' nor of stellar substance, and that it was not an imaginary flesh; (and no doubt they would be sufficient) if heretics could only divest themselves of all their contentious warmth and artifice. For, as I have read in some writer of Valentinus' wretched faction,'* they refuse at the outset to believe that a human and earthly substance was created '' for Christ, lest the Lord should be regarded as inferior to the angels, who are not formed of earthly flesh; whence, too, it would be SJsa. Ixiii. 9.
9 John viii. 40. 'o Matt. xii. 8. " Isa. liii. 3, Sept. '= Jar. xvii. 9, Sept. »6 Vice pra;scriptionis. ■7 Animalis. '8 Factiuncula. '9 Informatam.
;iiAl'. XVI.]
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
necessary that, if His flesh were like ours, it should be similarly born, not of the Spirit, nor of God, but of the will of man. Why, moreover, should it be born, not of corrupti- ble [seed], but of incorruptible? Why, again, since His flesh has both risen and returned to heaven, is not ours, being like His, also taken up at once? Or else, why does not His flesh, since it is like ours, return in like man- ner to the ground, and suffer dissolution? Such objections even the heathen used con- stantly to bandy about.' Was the Son of God reduced to such a depth of degradation? Again, if He rose again as a precedent for our hope, how is it that nothing like it has been thought desirable (to happen) to ourselves?^ Such views are not improper for heathens; and they are fit and natural for the heretics too. For, indeed, what difference is there between them, except it be that the heathen, in not believing, do believe; while the here- tics, in believing, do not believe? Then, again, they read: "Thou madest Him a little less than angels; " ^ and they deny the lov/er nature of that Christ who declares Himself to be, "not a man, but a worm;"* who also had " no form nor comeliness, but His form was ignoble, despised m.ore than all men, a man in suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness." s Here they discover a human being mingled with a divine one, and so they deny the manhood. They be- lieve that He died, and maintain that a being which has died was born of an incorruptible substance;* as if, forsooth, corruptibility'' were something else than death! But our flesh, too, ought immediately to have risen again. Wait a while. Christ has not yet subdued His enemies, so as to be able to tri- umph over them in company with His friends.
CHAP. XVI. — Christ's flesh in nature, the SAME AS OURS, ONLY SINLESS. THE DIFFER- ENCE BETWEEN CARNEM PECCATI AND PEC- CATUM CARNIS: IT IS THE LATTER WHICH CHRIST ABOLISHED. THE FLESH OF THE FIRST ADAM, NO LESS THAN THAT OF THE SECOND ADAM, NOT RECEIVED FROM HUMAN SEED, ALTHOUGH AS ENTIRELY HUMAN AS OUR OWN, WHICH IS DERIVED FROM IT.
The famous Alexander,^ too, instigated by ' Volutabant: see Lactantius, iv. 22.
» De nobis probatura est: or, perhaps, "has been proved to have happened in our own case."
3 Ps. viii. 6, Sept.
4Ps. xxii. 6.
5lsa. liii. 3, Sept.
' Ex incorruptela.
7Corruptela.
* Although Tertullian dignifies him with an ille^ we have no particulars of this man. [It may be that this is an epithet, rather than a name, given to some enemy of truth like Alexander the "Coppersmith (2 Tim. iv. 14) or like that (i Tim. i. 20), blas- phemer, whose character suits the case.]
his love of disputation in the true fashion of heretical temper, has made himself conspicu- ous against us; he will have us say that Christ put on flesh of an earthly origin,' in order that He might in His own person abolish sin- ful flesh.'" Now, even if we did assert this as our opinion, we should be able to defend it in such a way as completely to avoid the extrava- gant folly which he ascribes to us in making us suppose that the very flesh of Christ was in Himself abolished as being sinful; because we mention our belief (in public)," that it is sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven; and we further declare that it will come again from thence in all the pomp " of the Father's glory: it is therefore just as im- possible for us to say that it is abolished, as it is for us to maintain that it is sinful, and so made void, since in it there has been no fault. We maintain, moreover, that what has been abolished in Christ is not carnem peccati^ " sinful flesh," but peccatum carnis, " sin in the flesh," — not the material thing, but its condition; '3 not the substance, but its flaw;'-* and (this we aver) on the authority of the apostle, who says, " He abolished sin in the flesh." '5 Now in another sentence he says that Christ was " in the likeness of sinful flesh," '^ not, however, as if He had taken on Him " the likeness of the flesh," in the sense of a semblance of body instead of its reality; but he means us to understand likeness to the flesh which sinned, '' because the flesh of Christ, which committed no sin itself, resem- bled that which had sinned, — resembled it in its nature, but not in the corruption it re- ceived from Adam; whence we also affirm that there was in Christ the same flesh as that whose nature in man is sinful. In the flesh, therefore, we say that sin has been abolished, because in Christ that same flesh is main- tained without sin, which in man was not maintained without sin. Now, it would not contribute to the purpose of Christ's abolish- ing sin in the flesh, if He did not abolish it in that flesh in which was the nature of sin, nor (would it conduce) to His glory. For 9 Census.
10 So Bp. Kaye renders " carnem peccati." [See his valuable " We take the nte miner itntis to refer " to the Creed."
'^Suggestu.
•3 Naturam.
'4Culpam.
'5 " Tertullian, referring to St. Paul, says of Christ: ' Evacuavit peccatum in carne;' alluding, as I suppose, to Romans viii. 3. But the corresponding Greek in the printed editions is icaTeicpii'e TTji/ a/otapTi'ai' kv Trj (rapKt (' He condemned sin in the flesh'). Had Tertullian a different reading in his Greek Mss., or did he con- found Romans viii. 3 with Romans vi. 6, iVa Karapyr^fffj to /Toi/ia. T7)s afiap7t'as (' that the body of sin might be destroyed')? Jerome translates the Greek Karapyio} by ' evacuo,' c. xvi. See Adv. Mar. cio7tem, ver. 14. Dr. Neander has pointed out two passages in which Tertullian has 'damnavit or datnnaverit delinquentiam in came,' See de Res. Carnis, 46; de Pudicitia, 17," — Bp, Kaye.
'* Also in Rom. viii. 3.
J? Peccatricis carnis.
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST [chap. XVII.
surely it would have been no strange thing if He had removed the stain of sin in some better flesh, and one which should possess a different, even a sinless, nature! Then, you say, if He took our flesh, Christ's was a sinful one. Do not, however, fetter with mystery a sense which is quite intelligible. For in putting on our flesh, He made it His own; in making it His own, He made it sinless. A word of caution, however, must be addressed to all who refuse to believe that our flesh was in Christ on the ground that it came not of the seed of a human father,' let them re- member that Adam himself received this flesh of ours without the seed of a human father. As earth was converted into this flesh of ours without the seed of a human father, so also was it quite possible for the Son of God to take to Himself^ the substance of the self- same flesh, without a human father's agency. ^ CHAP. XVII. THE SIMILARITY OF CIRCUMSTAN- CES BETWEEN THE FIRST AND THE SECOND ADAM, AS TO THE DERIVATION OF THEIR FLESH. AN ANALOGY ALSO PLEASANTLY TRACED BETWEEN EVE AND THE VIRGIN MARY.
But, leaving Alexander with his syllogisms, which he so perversely applies in his discus- sions, as well as with the hymns of Valentinus, which, with consummate assurance, he inter- polates as the production of some respecta- ble* author, let us confine our inquiry to a single point — Whether Christ received flesh from the virgin? — that we may thus arrive at a certain proof that His flesh was human, if He derived its substance from His mother's womb, although we are at once furnished with clear evidences of the human character of His flesh, from its name and description as that of a man, and from the nature of its constitution, and from the system of its sensations, and from its suffering of death. Now, it will first by necessary to show what previous reason there was for the Son of God's being born of a virgin. He who was going to consecrate a new order of birth, must Himself be born after a novel fashion, concerning which Isa- iah foretold how that the Lord Himself would give the sign. What, then, is the sign? " Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son." s Accordingly, a virgin did conceive and bear " Emmanuel, God with us." * This is the new nativity; a man is born in God.
»Viri.
'Transire in: " to pass into."
3 Sine coagulo.
4ldonei.
And in this man God was born, taking the flesh of an ancient race, without the help, how- ever, of the ancient seed, in order that He might reform it with a new seed, that is, in a spiritual manner, and cleanse it by the re- moval of all its ancient stains. But the whole of this new birth was prefigured, as was the case in all other instances, in ancient type, the Lord being born as man by a dispensation in which a virgin was the medium. The earth was still in a virgin state, reduced as yet by no human labour, with no seed as yet cast into its furrows, when, as we are told, God made man out of it into a living soul.' As, then, the first Adam is thus introduced to us, it is a just inference that the second Adam likewise, as the apostle has told us, was formed by God into a quickening spirit out of the ground, — in other words, out of a flesh which was unstained as yet by any human gen- eration. But that I may lose no opportunity of supporting my argument from the name of Adam, why is Christ called Adam by the apostle, unless it be that, as man. He was of that earthly origin? And even reason here maintains the same conclusion, because it was by just the contrary ^ operation that God recov- ered His own image and likeness, of which He had been robbed by the devil. For it was while Eve was yet a virgin, that the ensnaring word had crept into her ear which was to build the edifice of death. Into a virgin's soul, in like manner, must be introduced that Word of God which was to raise the fabric of life; so that what had been reduced to ruin by this sex, might by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve had believed the ser- pent, so Mary believed the angel.' The de- linquency which the one occasioned by believ- ing, the other by believing effaced. But (it will be said) Eve did not at the devil's word conceive in her womb. Well, she at all events conceived; for the devil's word aftenvards became as seed to her that she should con- ceive as an outcast, and bring forth in sorrow. Indeed she gave birth to a fratricidal devil; whilst Mary, on the contrary, bare one who was one day to secure salvation to Israel, His own brother after the flesh, and the murderer of Himself. God therefore sent down into the virgin's womb His Word, as the good Brother, who should blot out the memory of the evil brother. Hence it was necessary that Christ should come forth for the salvation of man, in that condition of flesh into which man had entered ever since his condemnation.
8 >EmuIa.
9 Literally, Gabriel.'
CHAP. XIX.]
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIS'I'.
CHAP. XVIII. — THE MVSTKRY OF THE ASSUMP- TION OF OUR PERFECT HUMAN NATURE BY THE SECOND PERSON OF THE BLESSED TRINITY. HE IS HERE CALLED, AS OFTEN ELSEWHERE, THE SPIRIT.
No^y, that we may give a simpler answer, it was not fit that the Son of God should be born of a human father's seed, lest, if He were wholly the Son of a man, He should fail to be also the Son of God, and have nothing- more than " a Solomon" or " a Jonas," ' — as Ebion = thought we ought to believe concerning Him. In order, therefore, that He who was al- ready the Son of God — of God the Father's seed, that is to say, the Spirit — might also be the Son of man, He only wanted to assume flesh, of the flesh of man" without the seed of a man; * for the seed of a man was unnecessary s for One who had the seed of God. As, then, before His birth of the virgin. He was able to have God for His Father witTiout a human mother, so likewise, after He was born of the Virgin, He was able to have a woman for His mother without a human father. He is thus man with God, in short, since Fie is man's flesh with God's Spirit^— ^es/i (I say) without seed from man, Sprit with seed from God. For as much, then, as the dispensation of God's j)urpose' concerning His Son required that He should be born * of a virgin, why should He not have received of the virgin the body which He bore from the virgin? Because, (forsooth) it is something else which He took from God, for "the Word," say they, "was made flesh."' Now this very statement plainly shows what it was that was made flesh; nor can it possibly be that '° anything else than the Word was made flesh. Now, whether it was of the flesh that the Word was made flesh, or whether it was so made of the (divine) seed itself, the Scripture must tell us. As, how- ever, the Scripture is silent about everything except what it was that was made (flesh), and says nothing of that from which it was so made, it must be held to suggest that from something else, and not from itself, was the Word made flesh. And if not from itself, but from something else, from what can we more suitably suppose that the Word became flesh than from that flesh in which it submitted to the dispensation? " And (we have a proof of