2 De Hebionis opinione.
3 Hominis. 4Viri.
5 Vacabat.
° As we have often observed, the term S/iriius is used by Ter- tuUian to express the Divine Nature in Christ. Anti-Marcion, 7 Dispositio rationis.
8 Proferendum.
'o Nee periclitatus quasi.
" Literally, " in which it became j^«A."
the same conclusion in the fact) that the Lord Himself sententiously and distinctly pro- nounced, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh," " even because it is born of the flesh. But if He here spoke of a human being simply, and not of Himself, (as you maintain) then you must deny absolutely that Christ is man, and must maintain that human nature was not suitable to Him. And then He adds, " That which is born of the Spirit is spirit," '' because God is a Spirit, and He was born of God. Now this description is certainly even more applicable to Him than it is to those who be- lieve in Him. But if this passage indeed ap- ply to Him, then why does not the preceding one also? For you cannot divide their rela- tion, and adapt this to Him, and the previous clause to all other men, especially as you do not deny that Christ possesses the two sub- stances, both of the flesh and of the Spirit. Besides, as He was in possession both of flesh and of Spirit, He cannot possibly, when speak- ing of the condition of the two substances which He Himself bears, be supposed to have determined that the Spirit indeed was His own, but that the flesh was not His own. Forasmuch, therefore, as He is of the Spirit He is God the Spirit, and is born of God; just as He is also born of the flesh of man, being generated in the flesh as man.'* CHAP. XIX. CHRIST, AS TO HIS DIVINE NATURE, AS THE WORD OF GOD, BECAME FLESH, NOT BY CARNAL CONCEPTION, NOR BY THE WILL OF THE FLESH AND OF MAN, BUT BY THE WILL OF GOD. Christ's divine nature, of ITS OWN ACCORD, DESCENDED INTO THE VIR- GIN'S WOMB.
What, then, is the meaning of this passage, " Born '5 not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God? " '* I shall make more use of this passage after I have confuted those who have tampered with it. They maintain that it was written thus (in the plural) '^ " Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God," as if designating those who were before mentioned as " believ- ing in His name," in order to point out the existence of that mysterious seed of the elect and spiritual which they appropriate to them- selves.'^ But how can this be, when all who '4 [A very perspicuous statement of the Incarnation is set forth in this chapter.]
'5 Tertullian reads this in the singular number, " natus est."
'7 We need not say that the mass of critical authority is against Tertullian, and with his opponents, in their reading of this pas- sage.
'» He refers to the Valentinians. See our translation of this tract against them, chap, xxv., etc., p. 515, supra.
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
believe in the name of the Lord are, by rea- son of the common principle of the human race, born of blood, and of the will of the flesh, and of man, as indeed is Valentinus him- self? The expression is in the singular num- ber, as referring to the Lord, " He was born of God." And very properly, because Christ is the Word of God, and with the Word the Spirit of God, and by the Spirit the Power of God, and whatsoever else appertains to God. As flesh, however. He is not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of man, because it was by the will of God that the Word was made flesh. To the flesh, indeed, and not to the Word, accrues the denial of the nativity which is natural to us all as men,' because it was as flesh that He had thus to be born, and not as the Word. Now, whilst the passage actually denies that He was born of the will of the flseh, how is it that it did not also deny (that He was born) of the substance of the flesh? For it did not disavow the substance of the flesh when it denied His being "born of blood," but only the matter of the seed, which, as all know, is the warm blood as con- verted by ebullition "^ into the coaguliivi of the woman's blood. In the cheese, it is from the coagulation that the milky substance acquires that consistency,^ which is condensed by in- fusing the rennet.* We thus understand that what is denied is the Lord's birth after sexual intercourse (as is suggested by the phrase, " the will of man and of the flesh "), not His nativity from a woman's womb. Why, too, is it insisted on with such an accumulation of em- phasis that He was not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor (of the will) of man, if it were not that His flesh was such that no man could have any doubt on the point of its being born from sexual intercourse? Again, al- though denying His birth from such cohabi- tation, the passage did not deny that He was born of real flesh; it rather affirmed this, by the very fact that it did not deny His birth in the flesh in the same way that it denied His birth from sexual intercourse. Pray, tell me, why the Spirit of God^ descended into a woman's womb at all, if He did not do so for the purpose of partaking of flesh from the womb. For He could have become spiritual flesh* without such a process, — much more simply, indeed, without the womb than in it. He had no reason for enclosing Himself with- in one, if He was to bear forth nothing from it. Not without reason, however, did He descend into a womb. Therefore He received (flesh) therefrom; else, if He received noth- ing therefrom. His descent into it would have been without a reason, especially if He meant to become flesh of that sort which was not de- rived from a womb, that is to say, a spiritual one.'
CHAP. XX. CHRIST BORN OF A VIRGIN, OF HER SUBSTANCE. THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTS OF HIS REAL AND EXACT BIRTH OF A HUMAN MOTHER, AS SUGGESTED BY CERTAIN PAS- SAGES OF SCRIPTURE.
But to what shifts you resort, in your at- tempt to rob the syllable ex {of) * of its proper force as a preposition, and to substi- tute another for it in a sense not found throughout the Holy Scriptures! You say that He was born through'^ a virgin, not qf^" a virgin, and /« a womb, not of a womb, be- cause the angel in the dream said to Joseph, "That which is born in her" (not of her) " is of the Holy Ghost." " But the fact is, if he had meant "of her," he must have said " in her;" for that which was of her, was also in her. The angel's expression, therefore, " in her," has precisely the same meaning as the phrase " of her." It is, however, a fortu- nate circumstance that Matthew also, when tracing down the Lord's descent from Abra- ham to Mary, says, " Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Christ."'* But Paul, too, silences these critics '^ when he says, "God sent forth His Son, made of a woman." '" Does he mean through a woman, or in a woman? Nay more, for the sake of greater emphasis, he uses the word " made " rather than bor7i, although the use of the latter expression would have been simpler. But by saying ''''made,'" he not only confirmed the statement, "The Word was made flesh," 's but he also asserted the reality of the flesh which was made of a virgin We shall have also the support of the Psalms on this point, — not the "Psalms" indeed of Valentinus the apostate, and heretic, and Platonist, but the Psalms of David, the most illustrious saint and well-known prophet. He sings to us of Christ, and through his voice Christ indeed also sang concerning Himself. Hear, then, Christ the Lord speaking to God the Father: " Thou art He that didst draw '* me out of my • Formalis nostrae nativitatis.
* Despumatione.
3 Vis.
4 Medicando. [This is based on Job x. lo, a favourite passage with the Fathers in expounding the generative process.]
5 i. e. The Son of God.
'Which is all th.-it the heretics assign to Him.
7 Such as Valentinus ascribed to Him. See above, c. n'. p. 511..
'3 Grammaticis. 16 Avulsisti.
out of.
CHAP. XXI.]
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
mother's womb."' Here is the first point. "Thou art my hope from my mother's breasts; upon Thee have I been cast from the womb."^ Here is another point. "Thou art my God from my mother's belly." ^ Here is a third point. Now let us carefully attend to the sense of these passages. " Thou didst draw me," He says, "out of the womb." Now^ what is it which is drawn, if it be not that which adheres, that which is firm- ly fastened to anything from which it is drawn in order to be sundered? If He clave not to the womb, how could He have been drawn from it? If He who clave thereto was drawn from it, how could He have adhered to it, if it were not that, all the while He was in the womb, He was tied to it, as to His origin," by the umbilical cord, which communicated growth to Kim from the matrix? Even when one strange matter amalgamates with another, it becom.es so entirely incorporated s with that with which it amalgamates, that when it is drawn off from it, it carries with it some part of the body from which it is torn, as if in consequence of the severance of the union and growth which the constituent pieces had communicated to each other. But what were His " mother's breasts " which He mentions? No doubt they were those which He sucked.
Midwives, and doctors, and naturalists, can tell us, from the nature of women's breasts, whether they usually flow at any other time than when the womb is affected with pregnancy, when the veins convey therefrom the blood of the lower parts * to the majnilla, and in the act of transference convert the secretion into the nutritious^ substance of milk. Whence it comes to pass that during the period of lactation the monthly issues are suspended. But if the Word was made flesh of Himself without any communication with a womb, no mother's womb operating upon Him with its usual function and support, how could the lacteal fountain have been conveyed (from the womb) to the breasts, since (the womb) can only effect the change by actual possession of the proper subsfatue? But it could not pos- sibly have had blood for transformation into milk, unless it possessed the causes of blood also, that is to say, the severance (by birth)* of its own flesh fro7)i the mother's womb. Now it is easy to see what was the novelty of Christ's being born of a virgin. It was simply this, that (He was born) of a virgin in the 1 Ps. xxii. g.
3Ver. lo.
4i. e. of His flesh.
5 Concamatus et convisceratus: "united in flesb and internal structure."
' S«ntinam illam infemi sanguinis. 7 Lactiorem. * Avulsionera.
real manner which we have indicated, in order that our regeneration might have virginal purity, — spiritually cleansed from all pollu- tions through Christ, who was Himself a vir- gin, even in the flesh, in that He was born of a virgin's flesh.
CHAP. XXI. — THE WORD OF GOD DID NOT BE- COME FLESH EXCEPT IN THE VIRGIN'S WOMB AND OF HER SUBSTANCE. THROUGH HIS MOTHER HE IS DESCENDED FROM HER GREAT ANCESTOR DAVID. HE IS DESCRIBED BOTH IN THE OLD AND IN THE NEW TESTAMENT AS "THE FRUIT OF DAVID'S LOINS."
Whereas, then, they contend that the novelty (of Christ's birth) consisted in this, that as the Word of God became flesh without the seed of a human father, so there should be no flesh of the virgin mother (assisting in the trans- action), why should not the novelty rather be confined to this, that His flesh, although not born of seed, should yet have proceeded from flesh? I should like to go more closely into this discussion. " Behold," says he, " a vir- gin shall conceive in the womb."^ Cotueive what? I ask. The Word of God, of course, and not the seed of man, and in order, cer- tainly, to bring forth a son. " For," says he, " she shall bring forth a son."'" There- fore, as the act of conception was her own," so also what she brought forth was her own, also, although the cause of conception " was not. If, on the other hand, the Word became flesh of Himself, then He both conceived and brought forth Himself, and the prophecy is stultified. For in that case a virgin did noi conceive, and did tiot bring forth; since what- ever she brought forth from the conception of the Word, is not her own flesh. But is this the only statement of prophecy which will be frustrated? '^ Will not the angel's announce- ment also be subverted, that the virgin should " conceive in her womb and bring forth a son?" ^ And will not in fact every scripture which declares that Christ had a mother? For how could she have been His mother, unless He had been in her womb? But then He received nothing from her womb which could make her a mother in whose womb He had been. '5 Such a name as this'* a strange flesh ought not to assume. No flesh can speak of a mother's womb but that which is itself the offspring of that womb; nor can any be the offspring of the said womb if it owe its 10 See the same passages. " Ipsius.
'2 Quod concepit: or, " what she conceived." '3 Evacuabitur. '5 An objection. '6 The rejoindar.
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
[chap. XXII.
birth solely to itself. Therefore even Elisa- beth must be silent although she is carrying in her womb the prophetic babe, which was already conscious of his Lord, and is, more- over, filled with the Holy Ghost.' For with- out reason does she say, " and whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" " If it was not as her son, but only as a stranger that Mary carried Jesus in her v.'omb, how is it she says, " Blessed is the fruit of thy womb? ^ What is this fruit of the womb, which received not its germ from the womb, which had not its root in the womb, which belongs not to her whose is the womb, and which is no doubt the real fruit of the womb — even Christ? Now, since He is the blossom of the stem which sprouts from the root of Jesse; since, moreover, the root of Jesse is the family of David, and the stem of the root is Mary descended from David, and the blossom of the stem is Mary's son, who is called Jesus Christ, will not He also be the fruit? For the blossom is the fruit, because through the blossom and from the blossom every product advances from its rudimental condition* to perfect fruit. What then? T/iey deny to the fruit its blossom, and to the blossom its stem, and to the stem its root; so that the root fails to secure ^ for itself, by means of the stem, that special product which comes from the stem, even the blossom and the fruit; for every step indeed in a genealogy is traced from the latest up to the first, so that it is now a well-known fact that the flesh of Christ is inseparable,* not merely from Mary, but also from David through Mary, and from Jesse through David. " This fruit," therefore, "of David's loins," that is to say, of his posterity in the flesh, God swears to him that " He will raise up to sit upon his throne." ^ If " of David's loins," how much rather is He of Mary's loins, by virtue of whom He is in " the loins of David? " CHAP. XXII. HOLY SCRIPTURE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, EVEN IN ITS VERY FIRST VERSE, TESTIFIES TO CHRIST'S TRUE FLESH. IN VIRTUE OF WHICH HE IS INCORPORATED IN THE HUMAN STOCK OF DAVID, AND ABRAHAM, AND ADAM.
They may, then, obliterate the testimony of the devils which proclaimed Jesus the son of David; but whatever unworthiness there be in this testimony, that of the apostles they will never be able to efface. There is, first of all, * Eruditur.
sQiiominus vindicet.
6.\dhacrere.
" Ps. cxxxii. II; also Acts ii. 30.
Matthew, that most faithful chronicier * of the Gospel, because the companion of the Lord; for no other reason in the world than to show us clearly the fleshly original ' of Christ, he thus begins /u's Gospel: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." '° With a nature issu- ing from such fountal sources, and an order gradually descending to the birth of Christ, what else have we here described than the very flesh of Abraham and of David conveying itself down, step after step, to the very vir- gin, and at last introducing Christ, — nay, producing Christ Himself of the virgin? Then, again, there is Paul, who was at once both a disciple, and a master, and a witness of the selfsame Gospel; as an apostle of the same Christ, also, he affirms that Christ " was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh," " — which, therefore, was His own likewise. Christ's flesh, then, is of David's seed. Since He is of the seed of David in consequence of Mary's flesh, He is therefore of Mary's flesh because of the seed of David. In what way so ever you torture the statement, He is either of the flesh of Mary because of the seed of David, or He is of the seed of David because of the flesh of Mary. The whole discussion is terminated by the same apostle, when he declares Christ to be "the seed of Abraham." And if of Abraham, how much more, to be sure, of David, as a more recent progenitor! For, unfolding the promised bless- ing upon all nations in the person" of Abra- ham, "And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed," he adds, "He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one. And to thy seed, which is Christ." '^ When we read and believe these things, what sort of flesh ought we, and can we, acknowledge in Christ? Surely none other than Abraham's, since Christ is " the seed of Abraham;" none other than Jesse's, since Christ is the blossom of "the stem of Jesse;" none other than David's, since Christ is " the fruit of David's loins;" none other than Mary's, since Christ came from Mary's womb; and, higher still, none other than Adam's, since Christ is "the second Adam." The consequence, therefore, is that they must either maintain, that those (ancestors) had a spiritual flesh, that so there might be derived to Christ the same condi- tion of substance, or else allow that the flesh of Christ was not a spiritual one, since it is not traced from the origin'* of a spiritual stock.
8 Commentator.
9 Originis carnalis: i. e. " origin of the flesh of."
'2 In nomine: or, " for the sake of."
'■♦Censetur.
CHAP. XXIV.]
ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST.
CHAP. XXIII. — Simeon's " sign that should BE CONTRADICTED," APPLIED TO THE HER- ETICVL GAINSAYING OF THE TRUE BIRTH OF CHRIST. ONE OF THE HERETICS* PARADOXES TURNED IN SUPPORT OF CATHOLIC TRUTH.
We acknowledge, however, that the pro- phetic declaration of Simeon is fulfilled, which he spoke over the recently-born Saviour: ' " Behold, this child is set for the fall and ris- ing again of many in Israel, and for a sign that shall be spoken against."^ The sign (here meant) is that of the birth of Christ, ac- cording to Isaiah: " Therefore the Lord Him- self shall give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son."^ We dis- cover, then, what the sign is which is to be spoken against — the conception and the par- turition of the Virgin Mary, concerning which these sophists* say: "She a virgin and yet not a virgin bare, and yet did not bear;" just as if such language, if indeed it must be uttered, would not be more suitable even for our- selves to use! For " she bare," because she produced offspring of her own flesh and " yet she did not bear," since she produced Him not from a husband's seed; she was " a vir- gin," so far as (abstinence) from a husband went, and " yet not a virgin," as regards her bearing a child. There is?iot, however, that parity of reasoning which the heretics affect: in other words it does not follow that for the reason "shedid not bear, "s she who was "not a virgin" was "yet a virgin," even because she became a mother without any fruit of her own womb. But with us there is no equivo- cation, nothing twisted into a double sense.* Light is light; and darkness, darkness; yea is yea; and nay, nay; " whatsoever is more than these Cometh of evil."^ She who bare (really) bare; and although she was a virgin when she conceived, she was a wife ^ when she brought forth her son. Now, as a wife, she was under the very law of "opening the womb,"' wherein it was quite immaterial whether the birth of the male was by virtue of a husband's co-operation or not;'° it was the same sex " that opened her womb. Indeed, hers is the womb on account of which it is written of others also: " Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord."" For who is really holy but the Son 1 Literally, " Lord."
4 Academici isti: " this school of theirs."
5 i. e. " Because she produced not her son from her husband's seed."
* Defensionem.
8 Nupsit.
9 Nupsit ipsa patefacti corporis lege. 10 De vi masculi admissi an emissi.
of God? Who properly opened the womb but He who opened a closed one? '^ But it is mar- riage which opens the womb in all cases. The virgin's ^vomb, therefore, was especially '* opened, because it was especially closed. Indeed 's she ought rather to be called not a virgin than a virgin, becoming a mother at a leap, as it were, before she was a wife. And what must be said more on this point? Since it was in this sense that the apostle declared that the Son of God was born not of a virgin, but "of a woman," he in that statement recognised the condition of the "opened womb " which ensues in marriage.'* We read in Ezekiel of " a heifer '' which brought forth, and still did not bring forth. ' ' Now,see whether it was not in view of your own future conten- tions about the womb of Mary, that even then the Holy Ghost set His mark upon you in this passage; otherwise'^ He would not, contrary to His usual simplicity of style (in this prophet), have uttered a sentence of such doubtful import, especially when Isaiah says, " She shall conceive and bear a son." ''