Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But some pupils of that Pontic heretic, forced to be wiser than their master, grant Christ the reality of flesh, yet without prejudice to their continued refusal of his birth: "Let him have had flesh," they say, "provided it was altogether unborn." So we have arrived, as the saying goes, from the frying pan into the fire -- from Marcion to Apelles, who, after slipping in the flesh from Marcion's school into a woman, and then being overturned in spirit by the virgin Philumene, took up from her the preaching of a solid body for Christ, but one without birth. [2] To that angel of Philumene's the apostle will answer in the very same words with which he had already, back then, foretold him, saying: "Even if an angel from heaven should preach a gospel to you other than the one we preached, let him be accursed." But the further points they argue beyond this, we will now resist. [3] They confess that Christ truly had a body. From what material, if not from that quality in which it was seen? Whence a body, if flesh is not a body? Whence flesh, if not born? Because to be born it would have to become that which is born. "From the stars," they say, "and from the substances of the upper world he borrowed his flesh" -- and, of course, they propose that a body without birth is nothing to marvel at, since even among us angels have been able to appear in the flesh without any labor of a womb. [4] We acknowledge, indeed, that it is so recorded; but even so, what sort of thing is it for the faith of one rule to borrow, for its own arguments, from the very scripture it attacks belonging to the faith it opposes? What has he to do with Moses, who rejects the God of Moses? If it is a different God, let his affairs be different too. But let all the heretics use the scriptures of the God whose world they also use -- this too will stand as evidence against them at the judgment, that they build their blasphemies out of his own examples -- it is easy for the truth to prevail against them even without laying down any special rule of its own. [5] So then, those who propose the flesh of Christ on the model of the angels, saying it was flesh but unborn, let them compare, if you please, the reasons both of Christ and of the angels for which they came forth in the flesh. No angel ever descended in order to be crucified, in order to undergo death, in order to be raised from death. If that was never the reason for the angels taking on bodies, then you have your reason why they received flesh without being born: they had not come to die, and so they had no need to be born either. [6] But Christ, sent to die, necessarily also had to be born, so that he could die. For nothing is accustomed to die except what is born: birth and mortality are mutual debts owed to one another; the manner of dying is the reason for being born. [7] If Christ died because of that which dies, and that which dies is also that which is born, then it follows -- indeed it comes first -- that he was born, likewise, because of that which is born, since for that very reason he had to die, because being born he dies. It would not fit that he not be born, for one to whom it was fitting to die. And yet at that other time too, among those very angels, the Lord himself appeared to Abraham without birth -- with flesh, to be sure -- for the same difference in the reason. [8] But you do not accept this, since you do not accept that this was the Christ who was already then, in the guise of flesh, learning how to address, to free, and to judge the human race -- flesh not yet born, because not yet destined to die, until its birth and its mortality should first be announced. [9] So then, let them prove that those angels conceived flesh from the stars: [10] if they cannot prove it -- since it is nowhere written -- then Christ's flesh will not come from there either, the source to which they fit the example of the angels. It is agreed that the angels bore no flesh of their own, being by nature of a spiritual substance -- even if of some sort of body, still of their own kind -- but that they were transformable for a time into human flesh, able to appear and consort with men. [11] So then, since it is not recorded where they took their flesh from, it is left to our understanding not to doubt that this is a property peculiar to angelic power: to take a body for itself from no material at all. "How much more," you say, "from some material" -- that is certain to you; but nothing about this is certain to us, because scripture does not present it. [12] Besides, those who are able to make themselves what by nature they are not -- why should they not be able to make it out of nothing at all? If they become what they are not, why should they not become it out of that which is not? And what is not, when it comes to be, comes to be out of nothing. That is why it is neither asked nor shown what afterward became of their bodies: what came from nothing became nothing again. Those capable of turning themselves into flesh could equally well turn nothingness into flesh: transforming one's own nature is a bigger feat than fashioning matter out of nothing. [13] But even if it were necessary that the angels took flesh from some material, it is certainly more credible that it was from earthly material than from any kind of heavenly substance, since it turned out to be of so earthly a quality that it was fed on earthly food. Granted, then; let heavenly flesh too, in the same way, now be fed on earthly food, on the principle that earthly flesh was once fed on heavenly food when it was not yet earthly -- for we read that manna was food for the people: "Man ate," it says, "the bread of angels" -- yet the condition of the Lord's flesh, once and for all set apart, is not thereby breached, on account of a different arrangement for a different case. [14] Since he was truly going to be man all the way to death, he had to put on that flesh to which death also belongs; and further, the flesh to which death belongs is preceded by birth.