Chapter X.  Argument.—That Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Truly Man, as Opposed to the Fancies of Heretics, Who Deny that He Took Upon Him True Flesh.

But of this I remind you, that Christ was not to be expected in the Gospel in any other wise than as He was promised before by the Creator, in the Scriptures of the Old Testament; especially as the things that were predicted of Him were fulfilled, and those things that were fulfilled had been predicted. As with reason I might truly and constantly say to that fanciful—I know not what—of those heretics who reject the authority of the Old Testament, as to a Christ feigned and coloured up from old wives’ fables: “Who art thou? Whence art thou? By whom art thou sent? Wherefore hast thou now chosen to come? Why such as thou art? Or how hast thou been able to come? Or wherefore hast thou not gone to thine own, except that thou hast proved that thou hast none of thine own, by coming to those of another?  What hast thou to do with the Creator’s world? What hast thou to do with the Creator’s man? What hast thou to do with the image of a body from which thou takest away the hope of resurrection? Why comest thou to another man’s servant, and desirest thou to solicit another man’s son? Why dost thou strive to take me away from the Lord? Why dost thou compel me to blaspheme, and to be impious to my Father? Or what shall I gain from thee in the resurrection, if I do not receive myself when I lose my body? If thou wishest to save, thou shouldest have made a man to whom to give salvation. If thou desirest to snatch from sin, thou shouldest have granted to me previously that I should not fall into sin. But what approbation of law dost thou carry about with thee? What testimony of the prophetic word hast thou? Or what substantial good can I promise myself from thee, when I see that thou hast come in a phantasm and not in a bodily substance? What, then, hast thou to do with the form of a body, if thou hatest a body? Nay, thou wilt be refuted as to the hatred of bearing about the substance of a body, since thou hast been willing even to take up its form. For thou oughtest to have hated the imitation of a body, if thou hatedst the reality; because, if thou art something else, thou oughtest to have come as something else, lest thou shouldest be called the Son of the Creator if thou hadst even the likeness of flesh and body. Assuredly, if thou hatedst being born because thou hatedst ‘the Creator’s marriage-union,’ thou oughtest to refuse even the likeness of a man who is born by the ‘marriage of the Creator.’”

Neither, therefore, do we acknowledge that that is a Christ of the heretics who was—as it is said—in appearance and not in reality; for of those things which he did, he could have done nothing real, if he himself was a phantasm, and not reality. Nor him who wore nothing of our body in himself, seeing “he received nothing from Mary;” neither did he come to us, since he appeared “as a vision, not in our substance.” Nor do we acknowledge that to be Christ who chose an ethereal or starry flesh, as some heretics have pretended. Nor can we perceive any salvation of ours in him, if in him we do not even recognise the substance of our body; nor, in short, any other who may have worn any other kind of fabulous body of heretical device. For all such fables as these are confuted as well by the nativity as by the death itself of our Lord. For John says: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us;”69    John i. 14. [Of fables and figments, see cap. viii. p. 617.] so that, reasonably, our body should be in Him, because indeed the Word took on Him our flesh. And for this reason blood flowed forth from His hands and feet, and from His very side, so that He might be proved to be a sharer in our body by dying according to the laws of our dissolution. And that He was raised again in the same bodily substance in which He died, is proved by the wounds of that very body, and thus He showed the laws of our resurrection in His flesh, in that He restored the same body in His resurrection which He had from us. For a law of resurrection is established, in that Christ is raised up in the substance of the body as an example for the rest; because, when it is written that “flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God,”70    1 Cor. xvi. 50. [Vol. iii. p. 521, this series.] it is not the substance of the flesh that is condemned, which was built up by the divine hands that it should not perish, but only the guilt of the flesh is rightly rebuked, which by the voluntary daring of man rebelled against the claims of divine law. Because in baptism and in the dissolution of death the flesh is raised up and returns to salvation, by being recalled to the condition of innocency when the mortality of guilt is put away.

CAPUT X. Jesum Christum Dei Filium esse, et vere hominem: contra haereticos phantasiastas, qui veram carnem illum suscepisse negabant.

0901D

0902A Sed illud admoneo, non alterum in Evangelio Christum expectandum fuisse, quam hunc a Creatore Veteris Testamenti litteris ante promissum; maxime cum et quae de ipso praedicta sunt impleta sint, et quae impleta sunt ante praedicta sint. Ut merito haereticorum istorum Testamenti Veteris auctoritatem respuentium, nescio cui commentitio et ex fabulis anilibus ficto Christo atque fucato possim vere et constanter dicere: Quis es? unde es? a quo missus es? quare nunc venire voluisti? quare talis? vel qua venire potuisti? vel quare non ad tuos abisti? nisi quod probasti tuos non habere, dum ad alienos venis? Quid tibi cum mundo creatoris? quid tibi cum homine conditoris? quid tibi cum figmento corporis, cui eripis spem resurrectionis? quid ad alienum venis 0902B famulum, alienum sollicitare desideras filium? quid me a Domino eripere conaris? quid me in Patrem blasphemare atque impium esse compellis? aut quid sum a te in resurrectione consecuturus, qui me ipsum non recipio dum corpus amitto? Si salvare vis, fecisses hominem cui salutem dares. Si a delicto eripere cupis, ante mihi ne derelinquerem contulisses. Quod autem tecum suffragium circumfers legis? Quod habes testimonium propheticae vocis? aut quid mihi possum de te solidum repromittere, cum te videam in phantasmate et non in soliditate venisse? Quid ergo tibi cum figura corporis, si corpus odisti? immo revinceris corporis quod odisti circumferre substantiam, cujus suscipere voluisti etiam figuram. Odisse enim debueras corporis imitationem, si oderas 0902C veritatem. Quoniam si alter es, aliter venire debueras: ne dicereris filius creatoris, si vel imaginem habuisses carnis et corporis. Certe si oderas nativitatem, quia creatoris oderas nuptiarum conjunctionem, recusare debueras etiam imitationem hominis, qui per nuptias nascitur creatoris. Neque igitur eum haereticorum agnoscimus Christum, qui in imagine (ut dicitur) fuit et non in veritate: nihil enim verum eorum quae gessit fecerit, si ipse phantasma et non veritas fuit: neque eum, qui nihil in se nostri corporis gessit, dum ex Maria nihil accepit, ne non nobis venerit; dum non in nostra substantia visus apparuit. Neque illum, qui aetheream sive sideream, ut alii voluerunt haeretici, voluit carnem; ne ullam in illo nostro intelligamus salutem, si non etiam nostri 0902D corporis cognoscamus soliditatem: nec ullum omnino alterum qui quodvis aliud ex figmento haereticorum gesserit corpus fabularum. Omnes enim istos et nativitas Domini et mors ipsa confutat. Nam et (Joan. I, 0903A 14) Verbum, inquit Joannes, caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis. Ut merito corpus nostrum in illo fuerit quoniam quidem nostram carnem Sermo suscepit. Et sanguis idcirco de manibus ac pedibus, atque ipso latere demanavit, ut nostri consors corporis probaretur, dum occasus nostri legibus moritur. Qui dum in eadem substantia corporis in qua moritur, ressuscitatus ipsius corporis vulneribus comprobatur, etiam resurrectionis nostrae leges in sua carne monstravit, qui corpus, quod ex nobis habuit, in sua resurrectione restituit. Lex enim resurrectionis ponitur, dum Christus ad exemplum caeterorum in substantia corporis suscitatur. Quoniam, cum (I Cor. XVI, 50) caro et sanguis non obtinere regnum Dei scribitur, non carnis substantia damnata est, quae divinis manibus, ne periret, 0903B exstructa est; sed sola carnis culpa merito reprehensa est, quae voluntaria hominis temeritate contra legis divinae jura grassata est. Quia in Baptismate et in mortis dissolutione, sublata caro ad salutem revertitur: dum ad statum innocentiae, deposita criminis mortalitate, revocatur.