Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But we recognize the fulfillment of Simeon's prophetic word, spoken over the Lord while still a newborn infant: "Look, this little one is appointed for the downfall and the uprising of a great many within Israel, a mark set up to be argued against." For the sign of Christ's birth, according to Isaiah, is this: "So then the Lord in his own person will grant you a token: a maiden, still untouched, shall carry a child within her and bring forth a son." [2] We recognize, then, the contradictable sign in the conceiving and bearing of the virgin Mary — about which these Academics of ours say, "She bore, and did not bear; a virgin, and no virgin." As if — even granting that this is how it ought to be put — it would not suit us far better to say it: she bore, because it was of her own flesh; she did not bear, because it was not of a man's seed; and virgin as regards the man, no virgin as regards the birth — [3] not, however, as though she who bore did not bear simply because it was not of her own flesh, nor as though the virgin who is no virgin was so because she was not a mother from her own womb. Among us, though, nothing is left doubtful, nothing bent into a two-faced excuse: light is light, darkness is darkness, yes is yes and no is no — anything beyond that is from the evil one. She who bore, bore; and if she conceived as a virgin, she was married in the very act of bearing: [4] for she was married by the very law of the opened body, in which it made no difference whether it was by the force of a male admitted or emitted — the same act unsealed that sex. This, indeed, is that same womb because of which scripture states regarding others: "Whatever male first parts the womb is to be reckoned consecrated to the Lord." Who is truly holy but that holy Son of God? Who, in the proper sense, opened a womb, but he who threw open one that was shut? [5] In all others, marriage is what opens the womb. So hers was opened all the more, because it had been shut all the more. In every sense she is to be called no-virgin rather than virgin, becoming a mother by a kind of leap before becoming a bride. And what more is there to argue about this? On this very reasoning the apostle proclaimed God's Son as fashioned, not from a maiden, but from a female — recognizing the nuptial event of an opened womb. [6] We do read in Ezekiel of that heifer which bore and did not bear; but take care lest the Holy Spirit, foreseeing even then, marked this saying against the day you would dispute over Mary's womb. In any case he would not have spoken so equivocally against his own plain sense elsewhere, where Isaiah states, "She will carry a child and bring one forth."