Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Now let us answer more simply. It would not have suited the Son of God to be born from human seed, lest, being wholly a son of man, he would also fail to be the Son of God, possessing no more than Solomon or than Jonah — which is what Ebion would have us believe. So then, the Son of God already existed, from the seed of God the Father, that is, from the Spirit; [2] and in order for him to be also the Son of Man, flesh alone had to be taken from man's flesh, and that without a man's seed — for the seed of a man was superfluous in one who already possessed the seed of God. Thus, just as before his birth of the virgin he could have God as Father without a human mother, so too, once born of the virgin, he could equally have a human mother without a human father. [3] Thus, in short, man was joined with God: flesh of man together with the Spirit of God — flesh without seed, from man; Spirit with seed, from God. So then, if there was a rational design behind the Son of God's being brought forth from a virgin, why should he not have taken his body from the virgin — the very body he brought forth from her — merely because there was something else which he received from God? "Because," they say, "the Word was made flesh." [4] That very phrase attests and declares what the flesh was made from, and yet there is no danger in supposing that "made flesh" and "the Word" are somehow two separate things, provided that if the Word was made flesh out of flesh, it remains the Word made flesh — or, if it was made out of itself alone, let Scripture say so. Since Scripture says only that it was made, and not out of what it was made, it thereby implies it was made out of something else, not out of itself. [5] And if not out of itself but out of something else, then draw from this the conclusion that it is far more credible the Word was made flesh out of nothing other than the flesh in which it was made — especially since the Lord himself pronounced, as a formal, defining statement, "That which is born of flesh is flesh, because it is born of flesh." But if he was speaking only of man there, and not of himself as well, then go ahead and deny Christ was a man, and defend the claim that the statement does not apply to him either. "But," they press, "he adds, 'and what is born from the Spirit is itself spirit, since God himself is spirit,' and 'born of God' — [6] and this, surely, applies all the more to him, if it applies even to believers in him." If, then, this too applies to him, why should the former statement not apply to him as well? For you cannot split it, applying this one to him and that one only to the rest of mankind, when you do not deny that Christ possessed both substances, flesh and spirit alike. [7] Moreover, if he had flesh as much as spirit, then when he pronounces on the condition of the two substances he carried within himself, he cannot be understood to have defined the one, the spirit, as his own, and yet not the other, the flesh, as his own as well. And so, since he is himself born of the Spirit of God (and the Spirit is God) — born of God — he is likewise born of the flesh of man, a man generated in the flesh.