On the Flesh of Christ.

 V.

 Chapter II.—Marcion, Who Would Blot Out the Record of Christ’s Nativity, is Rebuked for So Startling a Heresy.

 Chapter III.—Christ’s Nativity Both Possible and Becoming. The Heretical Opinion of Christ’s Apparent Flesh Deceptive and Dishonourable to God, Even o

 Chapter IV.—God’s Honour in the Incarnation of His Son Vindicated.  Marcion’s Disparagement of Human Flesh Inconsistent as Well as Impious. Christ Has

 Chapter V.—Christ Truly Lived and Died in Human Flesh. Incidents of His Human Life on Earth, and Refutation of Marcion’s Docetic Parody of the Same.

 Chapter VI.—The Doctrine of Apelles Refuted, that Christ’s Body Was of Sidereal Substance, Not Born. Nativity and Mortality are Correlative Circumstan

 Chapter VII.—Explanation of the Lord’s Question About His Mother and His Brethren. Answer to the Cavils of Apelles and Marcion, Who Support Their Deni

 Chapter VIII.—Apelles and His Followers, Displeased with Our Earthly Bodies, Attributed to Christ a Body of a Purer Sort. How Christ Was Heavenly Even

 Chapter IX.—Christ’s Flesh Perfectly Natural, Like Our Own. None of the Supernatural Features Which the Heretics Ascribed to It Discoverable, on a Car

 Chapter X.—Another Class of Heretics Refuted. They Alleged that Christ’s Flesh Was of a Finer Texture, Animalis, Composed of Soul.

 Chapter XI.—The Opposite Extravagance Exposed.  That is Christ with a Soul Composed of Flesh—Corporeal, Though Invisible. Christ’s Soul, Like Ours, Di

 Chapter XII.—The True Functions of the Soul. Christ Assumed It in His Perfect Human Nature, Not to Reveal and Explain It, But to Save It. Its Resurrec

 Chapter XIII.—Christ’s Human Nature.  The Flesh and the Soul Both Fully and Unconfusedly Contained in It.

 Chapter XIV.—Christ Took Not on Him an Angelic Nature, But the Human. It Was Men, Not Angels, Whom He Came to Save.

 Chapter XV.—The Valentinian Figment of Christ’s Flesh Being of a Spiritual Nature, Examined and Refuted Out of Scripture.

 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 Whi

 Chapter XVII.—The Similarity of Circumstances Between the First and the Second Adam, as to the Derivation of Their Flesh. An Analogy Also Pleasantly T

 Chapter XVIII.—The Mystery of the Assumption of Our Perfect Human Nature by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He is Here Called, as Often Else

 Chapter 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

 Chapter 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

 Chapter XXI.—The Word of God Did Not Become Flesh Except in the Virgin’s Womb and of Her Substance. Through His Mother He is Descended from Her Great

 Chapter 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 Incorpora

 Chapter XXIII.—Simeon’s “Sign that Should Be Contradicted,” Applied to the Heretical Gainsaying of the True Birth of Christ. One of the Heretics’ Para

 Chapter XXIV.—Divine Strictures on Various Heretics Descried in Various Passages of Prophetical Scripture. Those Who Assail the True Doctrine of the O

 Chapter XXV.—Conclusion. This Treatise Forms a Preface to the Other Work, “On the Resurrection of the Flesh,” Proving the Reality of the Flesh Which W

V.

On the Flesh of Christ.1    In his work On the Resurrection of the Flesh (chap. ii.), Tertullian refers to this tract, and calls it “De Carne Domini adversus quatuor hæreses”: the four heresies being those of Marcion, Apelles, Basilides, and Valentinus. Pamelius, indeed, designates the tract by this fuller title instead of the usual one, “De Carne Christi.” [This tract contains references to works written while our author was Montanistic, but it contains no positive Montanism. It should not be dated earlier than a.d. 207.]

This was written by our author in confutation of certain heretics who denied the reality of Christ’s flesh, or at least its identity with human flesh—fearing that, if they admitted the reality of Christ’s flesh, they must also admit his resurrection in the flesh; and, consequently, the resurrection of the human body after death.

Chapter I.—The General Purport of This Work. The Heretics, Marcion, Apelles, and Valentinus, Wishing to Impugn the Doctrine of the Resurrection, Deprive Christ of All Capacity for Such a Change by Denying His Flesh.

They who are so anxious to shake that belief in the resurrection which was firmly settled2    Moratam. before the appearance of our modern Sadducees,3    The allusion is to Matt. xxii. 23; comp. De Præscr. Hæret. 33 (Fr. Junius). as even to deny that the expectation thereof has any relation whatever to the flesh, have great cause for besetting the flesh of Christ also with doubtful questions, as if it either had no existence at all, or possessed a nature altogether different from human flesh. For they cannot but be apprehensive that, if it be once determined that Christ’s flesh was human, a presumption would immediately arise in opposition to them, that that flesh must by all means rise again, which has already risen in Christ. Therefore we shall have to guard our belief in the resurrection4    Tertullian’s phrase is “carnis vota”—the future prospects of the flesh. from the same armoury, whence they get their weapons of destruction. Let us examine our Lord’s bodily substance, for about His spiritual nature all are agreed.5    Certum est. It is His flesh that is in question. Its verity and quality are the points in dispute. Did it ever exist? whence was it derived? and of what kind was it? If we succeed in demonstrating it, we shall lay down a law for our own resurrection. Marcion, in order that he might deny the flesh of Christ, denied also His nativity, or else he denied His flesh in order that he might deny His nativity; because, of course, he was afraid that His nativity and His flesh bore mutual testimony to each other’s reality, since there is no nativity without flesh, and no flesh without nativity. As if indeed, under the prompting of that licence which is ever the same in all heresy, he too might not very well have either denied the nativity, although admitting the flesh,—like Apelles, who was first a disciple of his, and afterwards an apostate,—or, while admitting both the flesh and the nativity, have interpreted them in a different sense, as did Valentinus, who resembled Apelles both in his discipleship and desertion of Marcion. At all events, he who represented the flesh of Christ to be imaginary was equally able to pass off His nativity as a phantom; so that the virgin’s conception, and pregnancy, and child-bearing, and then the whole course6    Ordo. of her infant too, would have to be regarded as putative.7    Τῷ δοκεῖν haberentur. This term gave name to the Docetic errors.These facts pertaining to the nativity of Christ would escape the notice of the same eyes and the same senses as failed to grasp the full idea8    Opinio. of His flesh.

[CAPUT I.]

Qui fidem resurrectionis, ante istos Sadducaeorum propinquos sine controversia moratam , student inquietare, ut eam spem negent etiam ad carnem pertinere, merito Christi quoque carnem quaestionibus distrahunt, tanquam aut nullam omnino, aut quoquo modo aliam praeter humanam; ne si humanam 0754B constiterit fuisse, praejudicatum sit adversus illos eam resurgere omni modo, quae in Christo resurrexit. Igitur unde illi destruunt carnis vota, inde nobis erunt praestruenda. Examinemus corporalem substantiam Domini: de spiritali enim certum est. Carnis quaeritur veritas, et qualitas ejus retractatur , an fuerit, et unde, et cujusmodi fuerit. Renuntiatio ejus, dabit legem nostrae resurrectioni. Marcion, ut carnem Christi negaret, negavit etiam nativitatem; aut ut nativitatem negaret, negavit et carnem: scilicet, ne invicem sibi testimonium redderent et responderent nativitas et caro; quia nec nativitas sine carne, nec caro sine nativitate. Quasi non eadem licentia haeretica et ipse potuisset, aut, admissa carne, nativitatem negare, ut 0754C Apelles discipulus, et postea desertor ipsius; aut et carnem et nativitatem confessus. aliter illas interpretari, ut condiscipulus et condesertor ejus Valentinus. Sed et qui carnem Christi putativam introduxit, aeque potuit nativitatem quoque phantasma confingere, ut et conceptus, et praegnatus , et partus virginis, et ipsius exinde infantis ordo, τὸ δοκεῖν haberentur : eosdem oculos, eosdem sensus fefellissent, quos carnis opinio elusit.