Chapter XV.--The Valentinian Figment of Christ's Flesh Being of a Spiritual Nature, 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 refused to believe that that flesh was human might pretend it to be anything he liked, forasmuch 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;" [7149] and "The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath-day." [7150] For it is of Him that Isaiah writes: "A man of suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness;" [7151] and Jeremiah: "He is a man, and who hath known Him?" [7152] and Daniel: "Upon the clouds (He came) as the Son of man." [7153] The Apostle Paul likewise says: "The man Christ Jesus is the one Mediator between God and man." [7154] 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." [7155] These passages alone ought to suffice as a prescriptive [7156] testimony in proof that Christ had human flesh derived from man, and not spiritual, and that His flesh was not composed of soul, [7157] 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, [7158] they refuse at the outset to believe that a human and earthly substance was created [7159] 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 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 corruptible [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 manner to the ground, and suffer dissolution? Such objections even the heathen used constantly to bandy about. [7160] 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? [7161] 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 heretics, in believing, do not believe? Then, again, they read: "Thou madest Him a little less than angels;" [7162] and they deny the lower nature of that Christ who declares Himself to be, "not a man, but a worm;" [7163] who also had "no form nor comeliness, but His form was ignoble, despised more than all men, a man in suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness." [7164] Here they discover a human being mingled with a divine one and so they deny the manhood. They believe that He died, and maintain that a being which has died was born of an incorruptible substance; [7165] as if, forsooth, corruptibility [7166] 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 triumph over them in company with His friends.
[7149] John viii. 40.
[7150] Matt. xii. 8.
[7151] Isa. liii. 3, Sept.
[7152] Jer. xvii. 9, Sept.
[7153] Dan. vii. 13.
[7154] 1 Tim. ii. 5.
[7155] Acts ii. 22.
[7156] Vice præscriptionis.
[7157] Animalis.
[7158] Factiuncula.
[7159] Informatam.
[7160] Volutabant: see Lactantius, iv. 22.
[7161] De nobis probatum est: or, perhaps, "has been proved to have happened in our own case."
[7162] Ps. viii. 6, Sept.
[7163] Ps. xxii. 6.
[7164] Isa. liii. 3, Sept.
[7165] Ex incorruptela.
[7166] Corruptela.
Chapter XVI.--Christ's Flesh in Nature, the Same as Ours, Only Sinless. The Difference Between Carnem Peccati and Peccatum 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, [7167] too, instigated by his love of disputation in the true fashion of heretical temper, has made himself conspicuous against us; he will have us say that Christ put on flesh of an earthly origin, [7168] in order that He might in His own person abolish sinful flesh. [7169] 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 extravagant 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), [7170] 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 [7171] of the Father's glory: it is therefore just as impossible 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; [7172] not the substance, but its flaw; [7173] and (this we aver) on the authority of the apostle, who says, "He abolished sin in the flesh." [7174] Now in another sentence he says that Christ was "in the likeness of sinful flesh," [7175] 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, [7176] because the flesh of Christ, which committed no sin itself, resembled that which had sinned,--resembled it in its nature, but not in the corruption it received 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 maintained without sin, which in man was not maintained without sin. Now, it would not contribute to the purpose of Christ's abolishing 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 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, [7177] let them remember 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 [7178] the substance of the selfsame flesh, without a human father's agency. [7179]
[7167] 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 (1 Tim. i. 20), blasphemer, whose character suits the case.]
[7168] Census.
[7169] So Bp. Kaye renders "carnem peccati." [See his valuable note, p. 253.]
[7170] We take the meminerimus to refer "to the Creed."
[7171] Suggestu.
[7172] Naturam.
[7173] Culpam.
[7174] "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 katekrine ten hamartian en te sarki (He condemned sin in the flesh'). Had Tertullian a different reading in his Greek mss., or did he confound Romans viii. 3 with Romans vi. 6, hina katargethe to soma tes hamartias (that the body of sin might be destroyed')? Jerome translates the Greek katargeo by evacuo,' c. xvi. See Adv. Marcionem, ver. 14. Dr. Neander has pointed out two passages in which Tertullian has damnavit or damnaverit delinquentiam in carne.' See de Res. Carnis. 46; de Pudicitiâ. 17."--Bp. Kaye.
[7175] Also in Rom. viii. 3.
[7176] Peccatricis carnis.
[7177] Viri.
[7178] Transire in: "to pass into."
[7179] Sine coagulo.
Chapter XVII.--The Similarity of Circumstances 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 discussions, as well as with the hymns of Valentinus, which, with consummate assurance, he interpolates as the production of some respectable [7180] 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 be 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 Isaiah foretold how that the Lord Himself would give the sign. What, then, is the sign? "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son." [7181] Accordingly, a virgin did conceive and bear "Emmanuel, God with us." [7182] This is the new nativity; a man is born in God. And in this man God was born, taking the flesh of an ancient race, without the help, however, 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. [7183] 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 generation. 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 [7184] operation that God recovered 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 serpent, so Mary believed the angel. [7185] The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, 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 afterwards became as seed to her that she should conceive 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.