Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But if birth is an evil, then these blasphemers are saying that the Lord, who partook of birth, existed in an evil, and that the virgin who bore him existed in an evil. Alas for their evils! They blaspheme the will of God and the mystery of creation, slandering birth itself. It is on this account that Cassian holds to docetism, on this account also Marcion, and indeed Valentinus too, regarding the body as merely "psychic" — because, they say, man has been made like the beasts when he comes to mating; but when a man is so aroused that he truly wishes to mount another's bed, then he in truth becomes a beast: "they were become as lustful stallions, each neighing after his neighbor's wife." And if the serpent, having taken up from the irrational animals their practice of intercourse, talked Adam into agreeing to union with Eve, this having happened by chance, as though the first-formed had not used this nature to begin with, as some would have it — then creation is again blasphemed, as having made men weaker than the nature of irrational animals, whose ways the first-formed of God are said to have followed.
But if it was nature itself that led them, as it leads even the irrational animals, toward the begetting of children, and they were only moved sooner than was fitting, being still young and led astray by deceit, then the judgment of God upon those who did not wait for his will is indeed just, but birth itself, through which the world holds together, through which the essences exist, through which the natures exist, through which angels exist, through which powers exist, through which souls exist, through which the commandments exist, through which the law exists, through which the gospel exists, through which the knowledge of God exists — birth is holy. "Every mortal body is but grass, and every human splendor like a wildflower's bloom; the grass shrivels, its blossom drops away, yet the utterance of the Lord remains forever" — the utterance that anoints the soul and unites it to the spirit. And how, without the body, could the dispensation according to the church among us ever have reached its end? Since he himself, the head of the church, though he came in flesh, came formless and without shape, teaching us to look toward the formless and bodiless nature of the divine cause. For "a tree of life," says the prophet, "comes to be in good desire," teaching us that the desires proper to one living in the Lord are seemly and pure.
Now they already wish the union of husband with wife in marriage, called "knowledge," to be the sin that is spoken of; for they say that this is what was signified by the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, teaching, through the meaning of "he knew," a transgression of the commandment. But if this is so, then the knowledge of truth is likewise an eating of the tree of life. It is therefore possible to partake of that tree also through temperate marriage; and it has already been said by us that marriage can be used both well and badly, and this very thing is the tree of knowledge — provided we do not transgress in marriage. What then? Did not the Savior heal the body of its sufferings, just as he healed the soul? He would not, if the flesh were hostile to the soul, have fortified against it its enemy by furnishing it with health. But this I say, brothers, that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," nor does corruption inherit incorruption; for sin, being corruption, cannot have fellowship with incorruption, which is righteousness. "Are you so foolish?" he says. "Having begun in the spirit, are you now completing yourselves in the flesh?"
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