Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Why should I linger over what is already so obvious, when I have to move on to matters these people work hard to make obscure? On every side they are hedged in by the distinction of Father and Son, which we lay out — while keeping the two joined — on the model of sun and ray, spring and stream, through an undivided number of two and yet three; and still they try to twist it back to their own opinion, distinguishing the two, Father and Son, within a single person, by claiming that the Son is flesh, that is, the man, that is, Jesus, while the Father is spirit, that is, God, that is, Christ. And these people, who insist that Father and Son are one and the same, are actually beginning to split them apart rather than unite them. For if Jesus is one thing and Christ another, then the Son will be one thing and the Father another, since the Son bears the name Jesus while the Father carries the name Christ. This sort of "monarchy" they perhaps borrowed from Valentinus, who also makes Jesus and Christ two. But this maneuver of theirs has already been demolished by what we argued earlier, since it is God's own Word, or God's own Spirit, together with the Power of the Most High, that gets the title Father in their scheme — yet a thing is never identical with that of which it is called, but comes from it and belongs to it. And there is another angle from which they will be refuted on this very chapter. "Look," they say, "the angel proclaimed: 'Therefore that which is born shall be called holy, the Son of God' — so it was flesh that was born, therefore flesh is what will be the Son of God." No — it was said of the Spirit of God. Certainly the virgin conceived by the Holy Spirit, and what she conceived is what she bore. So what was to be born was what had been conceived and was to be delivered, namely the Spirit — whose name shall also be called Emmanuel, which is translated "God with us." But flesh is not God, such that it could be said of flesh, "That which is holy shall be called Son of God"; rather it is he who was born in that flesh who is God, of whom the psalm also says, "For God was born a man in her, and built her by the will of the Father." Which God was born in her? The Word, and the Spirit who was born together with the Word by the Father's will. So then, the Word in the flesh — though even here we must ask how the Word became flesh: whether by being transfigured into flesh, or by putting flesh on. In fact, by putting it on. For the rest, God must be believed unchangeable and unformable, since he is eternal. Yet transfiguration amounts to the ruin of whatever existed before: whatever is transfigured into something else stops being what it was and begins to be what it was not. God, though, can neither cease existing nor turn into anything else. But the Word is God, and "what the Lord has spoken remains forever" — that is, by persevering in its own form. And if the Word cannot admit of being reconfigured, it follows that it must be understood to have "become flesh" in the sense that it came to be within flesh, and was made manifest, and was seen, and was touched, through the flesh — since everything else demands to be taken the same way. For supposing the Word turned into flesh through a transfiguration and change of substance, then Jesus will now be a single substance made out of two, flesh and spirit — a sort of blend, like electrum made from gold and silver — and it will begin to be neither gold, that is spirit, nor silver, that is flesh, since the one is changed by the other and a third thing results. In that case Jesus will not be God at all, since the Word will have ceased to be, having become flesh; nor will he be human flesh, since the flesh is no longer flesh in its own right, because it was the Word. So out of the two, neither remains: something else entirely, a third thing, quite different from either. But in fact we find him set out directly as both God and man, this very psalm suggesting it: "For God was born a man in her, and built her by the will of the Father" — plainly, through and through, Son of God and Son of Man, God and man beyond doubt, each remaining, according to its own substance, distinct in its own property, since the Word is nothing other than God, and the flesh is nothing other than man. So too the apostle teaches concerning both his substances: "Who was made," he says, "of the seed of David" — here he is man, Son of Man — "who was proclaimed Son of God according to the Spirit" — here he is God, and the Word of God is Son: we see a double condition, not fused but conjoined, God and man in one person, Jesus. Of Christ, however, I say more later. And the property of each substance is so intact that the Spirit carried out its own business in him — that is, powers and works and signs — while the flesh performed its own sufferings: hungering under the devil's testing, thirsting by the Samaritan woman, weeping for Lazarus, distressed to the point of death, and finally, dying too. But if he were some third thing blended out of both, like electrum, the evidence for each substance would not stand out so distinctly; rather the spirit would have performed fleshly acts and the flesh spiritual ones, by cross-transfer, or else neither fleshly nor spiritual acts at all but those of some third form arising from the mixture. Indeed, either the Word would have died, or the flesh would not have died, if the Word had been converted into flesh; either the flesh would have been immortal, or the Word mortal. But because both substances, each in its own condition, were acting distinctly, therefore each encountered its own operations and its own outcomes. Learn, then, along with Nicodemus, that what is born of flesh is flesh, and what is of the Spirit is spirit. Flesh does not become spirit, nor spirit flesh: the two can plainly coexist in one being. Out of these Jesus was constituted — from the flesh, man; from the Spirit, God — whom the angel then, from the side of him that was of Spirit, pronounced Son of God, while reserving for the flesh the title Son of Man. So too the apostle, calling him "mediator of God and men," confirmed both substances. Lastly, you who interpret "Son of God" as flesh — produce for me who the Son of Man is. Will he be spirit, perhaps? But you want the Spirit to be identified with the Father himself, on the grounds that God is spirit — as if the Spirit did not also belong to God, just as the Word is God, and yet is God's Word.