Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Against those who claim he was fathered by Joseph.
But then again, those who hold that he was plainly nothing more than a man, fathered by Joseph, remain enslaved to the age-old disobedience and subject to death, since they have not yet accepted, through the Son, the liberty coming from the Word of God the Father, as he himself declares: "If the Son sets you free, you will truly be free." And being unaware of him who is Emmanuel, born of the Virgin, they go without his gift, namely everlasting life; and refusing the Word of incorruption, they stay bound in perishable flesh, owing a debt to death, having never taken hold of the remedy that gives life. To such people the Word speaks, proclaiming his own gracious gift: "I have said, You are gods, and all of you children of the Most High; yet you will perish as mortals do." He undoubtedly addresses this to those who refuse the gift of adoption but instead scorn the untainted begetting of the Word of God made flesh, cheating man of the upward path leading to the Lord, and proving thankless toward the Word of God who took on flesh on their behalf. For it was to this end that the Word of God took on manhood, and the one who is Son of God became Son of Man, so that man, joined to the Word of God and taking hold of adoption, might be made a son of God. For we could gain incorruption and deathlessness in no other way than by being brought into union with incorruption and deathlessness themselves. Yet how could we have entered union with incorruption and deathlessness, unless these had first become what we ourselves are, so that the perishable might be swallowed up in incorruption, and the mortal in deathlessness, granting us the status of adopted sons...
Therefore who shall declare his generation? For he is man, and who shall know him? But he knows him to whom the Father who is in heaven has revealed it, so that he may understand that he who was born not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man—this Son of Man—is the Christ, God's own Son, sprung of the living God. For since not one of the sons of Adam is called God, nor rightly styled Lord, above all the men who then existed, but he alone is God, and Lord, and eternal King, and Only-begotten, and the Word made flesh—proclaimed by all the prophets, and the Apostles, and by the Spirit himself—this is plain to see for all who have touched even a little upon the truth. But the Scriptures would not testify these things of him if he had been, like all others, a man only. But because he possessed, beyond all others, that glorious begetting owed to the Father Most High, and likewise underwent the birth belonging to the Virgin, the divine Scriptures testify of him in both respects: both that as man he was without comeliness, and subject to suffering, and sitting upon a colt of an ass, and given vinegar and gall to drink, and despised among the people, and went down even unto death; and that as the holy Lord, and Wonderful, Counsellor, Comely in beauty, and mighty God, coming upon the clouds as Judge of all—all these things the Scriptures prophesied concerning him.
For as he was man, that he might be tempted, so too was he the Word, in order that he might attain glory—the Word staying at rest so that the man could be tried, dishonored, crucified, and made to die, while the man was swallowed up in that which overcomes, endures, rises anew, and is carried up. This one, then, the Son of God, our Lord, is the Word belonging to the Father, and is also the Son of Man; for since from Mary, who traced her descent from men and was herself a human being, he had, on the human side, an origin—he counts as the Son of Man. For this cause the Lord himself furnished us a sign, reaching to the depth beneath and up to the height on high, something man had never asked for, since no one anticipated that a virgin might conceive while yet remaining a virgin, and bear a son, and that this offspring would be God among us, and would go down to the lowest parts of the earth in search of the sheep that were lost, which was after all his own handiwork, and would rise to the height, presenting and entrusting to the Father the man who had been recovered, making in his own person the first portion of mankind's rising again; so that just as the head was raised up out of death, in the same way the remainder of the body belonging to every man found still in life, once the season of his sentence—incurred through disobedience—has run its course, would likewise rise, knit together through joints and ligaments, and made strong by the growth that comes from God, each part holding its own suitable place within the frame. For many are the dwellings kept by the Father, seeing that the body too has many members.