Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] I turn now to others, equally clever in their own eyes, who assert that Christ's flesh is "animal" -- soul-flesh -- on the ground that the soul was made flesh: so that flesh, in turn, is soul, and just as the flesh is "animal," so the soul is fleshly. Here too, then, I ask for reasons. If Christ took a soul into himself in order to save the soul, because it would not have been saved except through him while it was in him, I do not see why he needed to make that flesh "animal" by putting on flesh at all -- as if he could not otherwise have saved the soul unless it had been made flesh. [2] For since he grants salvation to our souls not only when they are not fleshly but even when they are separated from the flesh, how much more could he have brought the soul he himself took on to salvation without making it fleshly either. Likewise, since they assume that Christ came forward for the sake of liberating not the flesh but our soul alone, in the first place, how absurd it is that, meaning to liberate the soul alone, he should have made it into the very kind of body he did not mean to liberate. [3] Next, if he had undertaken to liberate our souls by means of the one he himself bore, then the one he bore ought also to have been ours in form -- that is, of our shape, whatever shape our soul secretly has, though certainly not a fleshly one. Otherwise, he did not liberate our soul if the one he had was fleshly, for ours is not fleshly. [4] Further, if he did not liberate ours, because he liberated a fleshly one, that is nothing to us, since he did not liberate ours. But then again, one that was not ours -- being, as it were, fleshly -- did not need liberating in the first place: for it was in no danger if it was not ours, that is, not fleshly. Yet it is agreed that the one he had was liberated. Therefore it was not fleshly, and it was ours, if it was the one that was liberated, since it was in danger. So now, if the soul in Christ was not fleshly, neither can the flesh have been "animal."