Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Now go ahead, as is your habit, and summon up this comparison with Isaiah's Christ, arguing that it matches ours in nothing. For first, you say, Isaiah's Christ is to be called Emmanuel, and then to seize the power belonging to Damascus, together with what Samaria had plundered, confronting the Assyrian king. But this one who has come was neither published under any such name nor performed any warlike deed. [2] But I will remind you to take note of the connection of the two passages as well. For an interpretation of Emmanuel is added: 'God with us' — so that you look not only at the sound of the name but at its sense. The sound, Emmanuel, being Hebrew, belongs to that particular nation; but its sense, 'God with us,' translated, belongs to everyone. Ask, then, whether that phrase, 'God with us' — which is Emmanuel — has been in operation in Christ from the moment he shone forth. [3] I doubt you would dare deny it, given that you yourself admit, 'God is called to be with us' — which is exactly what Emmanuel means. Or if you are foolish enough to say that, because among your people it is said 'God with us' and not 'Emmanuel,' therefore you refuse to admit that the one has come whose proper name is to be called Emmanuel — as though this were not the very same as 'God with us' — you will find that the Hebrew Christians, indeed even the Marcionites, say 'Emmanuel' when they mean to say 'God with us'; just as every nation, in whatever tongue it says 'God with us,' has in effect pronounced 'Emmanuel,' stripping away the sound while keeping the sense. [4] But if Emmanuel means 'God accompanies us,' and it is Christ who accompanies us as God — present in us as well (since all of you baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves in Christ) — then Christ belongs just as rightly to what the name signifies, 'God accompanies us,' as to how it is pronounced, 'Emmanuel.' And so it stands proven that the one already announced under the name Emmanuel has indeed come, since what Emmanuel signifies has come — that is, God with us.
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