On the Flesh of Christ

Indeed the birth is announced by Gabriel: what has he to do with an angel of the Creator? And the conception in a virgin's womb is introduced: what has he to do with Isaiah the prophet of the Creator? He who was bringing Christ down from the heavens all at once hates delays. "Away," he says, "with those troublesome, squalid swaddling-clothes, and the hard manger. Let the angelic host see to it, honoring their Lord in the night watches. Let the shepherds rather keep their flocks. And let not the Magi be wearied from afar; I grant them their gold. Let Herod be better disposed too, lest Jeremiah boast. But let not the infant be circumcised, lest he suffer pain; nor let him be brought to the temple, lest he burden his parents with the expense of the offering; nor let him be placed in the hands of Simeon, lest he sadden the old man who was thereafter to die.

Let that aged woman also be silent, lest she bewitch the child." By these counsels, I suppose, Marcion dared to destroy so many original documents of Christ, that his flesh might not be proved. By what authority, I ask you? If you are a prophet, foretell something; if an apostle, preach openly; if one of apostolic rank, think with the apostles; if you are only a Christian, believe what has been handed down; if you are none of these things, I would rightly say to you: die. For you are already dead—you who are not a Christian, by not believing what has been handed down and makes Christians. And you are the more dead, the more you are not a Christian: you who, having once been one, have fallen away, by rescinding what you formerly believed; as you yourself confess in a certain letter, and your own followers do not deny, and ours affirm.

Therefore, by rescinding what you believed, you have already, by ceasing to believe, rescinded it: yet it was not right to rescind it merely because you ceased to believe. And in rescinding what you believed, you prove that before you rescinded it, what you believed was otherwise. Otherwise it was thus handed down: moreover, what had been handed down was true, as handed down by those whose office it was to hand it down; therefore in rescinding what had been handed down, you rescinded what was true, and had no right to do so. But we have already elsewhere made fuller use of prescriptions of this kind against all heresies. After these, we now treat additionally, out of abundance, desiring the reason why you did not think Christ was born.

It is necessary that, inasmuch as you think this was permitted by your own judgment, you must have regarded birth as either impossible for God, or unfitting for him. But nothing is impossible for God, except what he does not will. Whether then he willed to be born (for if he willed it, he both could and was born) let us consider. I hasten to a brief argument. For if God had been unwilling to be born for whatever reason, he would not have presented himself to be seen as a man either. For who, seeing a man, would not deny that he was born? Thus what he had been unwilling to be, he would have been unwilling to appear to be at all. The very appearance of anything displeasing is also rejected. Because it makes no difference whether a thing exists or does not exist, if, when it does not exist, it is presumed to exist. There is indeed this difference, that he does not suffer falsely what truly is not.

"But it was enough for him," you say, "to have his own conscience. Let men see to it, if they thought him born, because they saw a man." How much more worthily, then, and how much more consistently, would he have borne the human estimation, being truly born, than he would have incurred that same estimation even without being born, to the injury of his own conscience!—which you reckon as confidence, that, not being born, he endured being thought born contrary to his own conscience. Explain what was so important that Christ, knowing what he was, should present himself as what he was not. You cannot say: If he had been born, and had truly put on a man, he would have ceased to be God, losing what he was while assuming what he was not. For there is no peril to God's own state.

But therefore, you say, I deny that God was truly converted into man, so as both to be born and to be embodied in flesh; because he who is without end must also be inconvertible: for to be converted into something else is the end of what was before; conversion therefore does not befit him to whom an end does not befit. Indeed the nature of convertible things is subject to this law, that they do not remain in that which is converted in them; and thus by not remaining they perish, losing by conversion what they were. But nothing is equal to God: his nature is apart from the condition of all things. If therefore those things which are apart from God, from which he is apart, when converted lose what they were; where will be the difference of divinity from all other things, unless that it obtains the contrary, that is, that God can both be converted into all things and yet continue as he is?

Otherwise he will be equal to those things which, when converted, lose what they were; from all of which God is in all respects unequal, if not also in the outcome of conversion. You have read at some time, and believed, that the angels of the Creator were converted into human form, and bore such reality of body that Abraham washed their feet, and Lot was snatched from the Sodomites by their very hands; and that the angel who wrestled with a man desired, with the full weight of his body, to be released by him by whom he was held. What therefore was permitted to angels, who are inferior to God—that, being converted into human bodily form, they nonetheless remained angels—this you take away from God who is more powerful, as though Christ, truly clothed in humanity, could not have persevered as God? Or were those angels too phantasms of flesh in appearance? But you will not dare to say this.

For if the angels of the Creator stand in the same relation to you as Christ does, then Christ will belong to that God whose angels are such as Christ is. If you had not deliberately either rejected or corrupted the Scriptures that resist your opinion, the Gospel of John would have confounded you in this matter, proclaiming that the Spirit descended and rested upon the Lord in the body of a dove. Which Spirit, being what it was, was as truly a dove as it was also a Spirit, nor had it destroyed its own substance by assuming a foreign substance. But you ask, where is the body of the dove, now that the Spirit has been taken back into heaven? Likewise that of the angels was withdrawn by the same means by which it had been produced. If you had seen it when it was brought forth from nothing, you would have known when it was withdrawn into nothing. If the beginning was not visible, neither was the end.

Yet the solidity of the body was real at the moment when it was seen as a body. What is written cannot be said not to have existed.

Therefore, if you reject the embodiment as neither impossible nor dangerous for God, it remains that you reject and accuse it as unworthy. Beginning indeed from the birth itself, declaim away, come now—the filth of the generative elements in the womb, the foul clottings of moisture and blood, the flesh to be nourished from that same flesh through nine months. Describe the womb growing heavier day by day, burdensome, distressed, not even safe in sleep, uncertain with the caprices of disgust and appetite. Inveigh now also against the very shame of the woman in labor, to be honored even for its peril, or held sacred for its nature. You shudder, no doubt, at the infant too, poured forth with all its encumbrances, smeared all over. You disdain that it is straightened in swaddling-bands, that it is shaped with ointments, that it is coaxed with caresses. This reverence of nature, Marcion, you spit upon; and in what manner were you yourself born? You hate the man who is being born; and in what manner do you love anyone?

You plainly did not love yourself, when you withdrew from the Church and from the faith of Christ. But consider whether you displease yourself, or whether you were born otherwise. Certainly Christ loved that man who was curdled in filth in the womb, who was brought forth through shameful parts, who was nurtured through mockeries: for his sake he descended; for his sake he preached; for his sake he cast himself down in all humility even to death, and the death of the cross. He loved, surely, him whom he redeemed at great cost. If Christ belongs to the Creator, he rightly loved his own; if he is from another God, he loved the more ardently, since he redeemed one who was another's. He loved therefore, together with the man, his birth also, and his flesh. Nothing can be loved apart from that through which it is what it is. Take away the birth, and produce the man; remove the flesh, and present him whom God redeemed.

If these things are the man whom God redeemed, do you make these things shameful to him, which he redeemed, and unworthy—which, had he not loved them, he would not have redeemed? Having reformed birth by heavenly regeneration, he restored the flesh from all its afflictions: he cleanses the leprous, he illumines the blind, he restores the paralytic, he purifies the demoniac, he raises the dead; and he is ashamed to be born into it? If in truth he had wished to come forth from a she-wolf, or a sow, or a cow, and clothed in the body of a wild beast or a domestic animal had preached the kingdom of heaven, your censure, I suppose, would prescribe to him: this is base for God, and this is unworthy of the Son of God, and therefore foolish for anyone to believe. Let it be altogether foolish, if we judge God by our own understanding. But look around, Marcion—if indeed you have not erased it: God chose the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise.

What are these foolish things? The conversion of man to the worship of the true God? The rejection of error? The discipline of justice, chastity, patience, mercy, innocence? All these things indeed are not foolish. Seek therefore of what things he spoke; and if you shall have presumed to find them, nothing will be so foolish as to believe in a God who was born, and indeed of a virgin, and indeed in flesh, who was rolled through those indignities of nature. Let someone say these things are not foolish, and let there be others which God chose in rivalry with worldly wisdom. And yet among them Jupiter is more readily believed to have been made a bull or a swan, than Christ to have been truly man, in Marcion's view.

There are plainly also other things equally foolish, which pertain to the indignities and sufferings of God; or let them call it wisdom that God was crucified. Away with this too, Marcion—nay, away with this above all. For what is more unworthy of God? What more to be blushed at: to be born, or to die? To bear flesh, or a cross? To be circumcised, or to be nailed up? To be nursed, or to be buried? To be laid in a manger, or to be enclosed in a tomb? You will be wiser if you believe not even these things. But you will not be wise unless you have been foolish to the world, by believing the foolish things of God. Or did you therefore not cut away the sufferings from Christ, because as a phantom he was free from the sensation of them? We have said above that he could equally have undergone the empty mockeries of an imaginary birth and infancy. But now answer here, destroyer of truth. Was not God truly crucified?

Was he not truly dead, as truly crucified? Was he not truly raised again, as truly dead, of course? If falsely, then Paul falsely determined to know nothing among us but Jesus crucified? Falsely did he press upon us his burial? Falsely did he insist upon his resurrection? False therefore is our faith also, and all that we hope from Christ is a phantom? Most wicked of men, you who excuse the slayers of God. For Christ suffered nothing from them, if he truly suffered nothing. Spare the one hope of the whole world. Why do you destroy the necessary dishonour of the faith? Whatever is unworthy of God is to my advantage. I am saved, if I am not ashamed of my Lord. He who shall be ashamed of me, he says, I also will be ashamed of him. Otherwise I find no grounds for shame which prove me, through contempt of disgrace, well and truly shameless and happily foolish.

The Son of God was born; it is not shameful, because it is shameful: and the Son of God died; it is by all means credible, because it is absurd: and he was buried and rose again; it is certain, because it is impossible. But how will these things be true in him, if he himself was not true, if he did not truly have in himself that which could be pierced, which could die, which could be buried and raised again—namely, flesh suffused with blood, built up with bones, interwoven with sinews, intertwined with veins, which knows how to be born and to die? Human without doubt, as born of a human being; and therefore this flesh will be mortal in Christ, because Christ is man and son of man. Or why is Christ man and son of man, if he has nothing of man and nothing from man?

Unless either man is something other than flesh, or the flesh of man comes from somewhere other than from man; or Mary is something other than human, or the god of Marcion is human. Otherwise, Christ would not be called man, without flesh; nor son of man, without some human parent: just as he would not be called God, without the Spirit of God; nor Son of God, without God the Father. Thus the reckoning of both substances presented him as man and God: from the one side born, from the other not born; from the one side fleshly, from the other spiritual; from the one side weak, from the other supremely strong; from the one side dying, from the other living. Which distinction of conditions, divine and human, was marked out with equal truth of each nature, by the same faith, both of spirit and of flesh. His mighty works proved the Spirit of God, his sufferings proved the flesh of man.

If the mighty works were not without the spirit, likewise the sufferings also were not without the flesh: if the flesh with its sufferings was fictitious, then the spirit also with its mighty works was false. Why do you halve Christ with a lie? He was wholly truth. Believe that he preferred to be born rather than to be in any part a liar, and indeed in regard to himself; so as to bear flesh hard without bones, solid without muscles, bloody without blood, clothed without a tunic, hungry without hunger, eating without teeth, speaking without a tongue; so that his word would have been a phantom to ears, through the image of a voice. He was therefore a phantom also after the resurrection, when he offered his hands and feet to the disciples for inspection: Behold, he says, what I am, because a spirit has not bones, as you see me having—without doubt hands and feet and bones, which a spirit does not have, but flesh does.

How do you interpret this utterance, Marcion, you who bring Jesus from the supremely good and simple and only good God? Behold, he deceives and misleads, and circumvents the eyes of all, the senses of all, the approach and touch of all. Therefore you ought not to have brought Christ down from heaven, but from some company of mountebanks; nor God beyond man, but a magician-man; nor the high priest of salvation, but the craftsman of spectacle; nor the raiser of the dead, but the summoner of the living. Except that even if he was a magician, he was born.

But certain disciples of that Pontic master, compelled to be wiser than their teacher, concede to Christ the reality of flesh, yet without prejudice to their rejection of birth. He had flesh, they say, provided only it was not born. We have arrived therefore, as the saying goes, from the lime-kiln into the coal-pit, from Marcion to Apelles, who, after he had fallen from Marcion's school into a woman in the flesh, and thereafter was overturned in spirit into the virgin Philumene, undertook to preach from her a solid body of Christ, but without birth. And to that angel of Philumene the Apostle will indeed respond with the same words with which he had already then foretold even that one, saying: Even if an angel from heaven shall have preached to you otherwise than we have preached, let him be anathema. But to those arguments which they advance in addition, we shall offer resistance. They confess that Christ truly had a body. Whence the matter, if not from that quality in which he appeared?

Whence a body, if a body is not flesh? Whence flesh, if not born? Because that which is to be born would be what is born. From the stars, they say, and from the substances of the higher world he borrowed flesh: and they certainly propose that it is not to be wondered at that a body exists without birth, since even among us angels were permitted to come forth into flesh with no work of a womb. We acknowledge indeed that this is so reported; but yet what sort of thing is it, that the faith of one rule should borrow from that faith which it attacks the instruments for its arguments? What have they to do with Moses, who reject the God of Moses? If there is another God, let his affairs be otherwise. But let all heretics use the Scriptures of him whose world they also use: this too will be to them for a testimony of judgment, that they furnish their blasphemies from his own examples.

It is easy for truth to prevail even when it makes no such objection against them. Therefore, those who propose the flesh of Christ after the example of angels, saying it was not born, though it was flesh, I would ask them to compare also the causes both of Christ and of the angels, on account of which they came forth into flesh. No angel ever descended for the purpose of being crucified, of experiencing death, of being raised from death. If there was never any such cause for angels to be embodied, you have the reason why they did not receive flesh by being born. They had not come to die; therefore neither to be born. But truly Christ, sent to die, necessarily had also to be born, so that he could die. For that which is born is not accustomed to die. Birth and mortality are mutually indebted to each other. The manner of dying is the cause of being born.

If on account of that by reason of which he dies Christ died, but that dies which is also born, it followed—nay, it preceded—that he should equally be born on account of that by reason of which one is born; because he was to die on account of that very thing which, because it is born, dies. It was not fitting that he should not be born, for whom it was fitting to die. "But even then among those Angels the Lord himself appeared to Abraham without birth, with flesh." Evidently, on account of the same diversity of cause. But you do not accept this, not accepting that Christ who was even then learning to address, and to deliver, and to judge the human race in the guise of flesh not yet born, because not yet about to die, unless first both his birth and his mortality were announced. Let them therefore prove that those angels received the substance of flesh from the stars.

If they cannot prove it, because it is not written, neither will the flesh of Christ be from thence, to which they accommodate the example of angels. It is established that the angels did not bear flesh of their own, inasmuch as they are by nature of spiritual substance, and, if of any body, yet of their own kind; but transfigurable for a time into human flesh, so that they could be seen and have dealings with men. Therefore, since it is not reported that they took flesh nakedly, it is left to our understanding not to doubt that it is the proper power of angelic nature to take a body for itself from no material. "How much more certain is it," you say, "from some material!" But nothing is established about this, because Scripture does not show it. Moreover, those who are able to make themselves what by nature they are not, why should they not also be able to make from no substance?

If they become what they are not, why should they not come to be from that which is not? But that which is not, when it exists, is from nothing. Therefore neither is it required, nor is it shown, what afterwards became of their bodies. What was from nothing, was made nothing. They can convert nothing itself into flesh, who were able to convert themselves into flesh. It is a greater thing to change a nature than to make matter. But also if it had been necessary for angels to have taken flesh from matter, it is more credible that it was from earthly matter than from any kind of heavenly substances; since it proved to be of so earthly a quality as to be nourished on earthly food.

Let that flesh also have been now starry in the same way nourished on earthly food, when it was not earthly; in the same way as earthly flesh was nourished on heavenly food, when it was not heavenly (for we read that manna was given to the people for food: Man ate, it says, the bread of angels); yet the condition of the Lord's flesh, once set apart, is not broken down on account of a different dispensation. He who was truly to be man even unto death ought to put on that flesh whose death it is: but that flesh whose death it is, birth precedes.

But whenever the nativity is disputed, all who reject it as prejudging the truth of the flesh in Christ wish to deny that God himself was born, because he said: Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Let Apelles therefore also hear what has already been answered by us to Marcion in that treatise in which we appealed to his own Gospel, namely that the context of that pronouncement must be considered. First of all, no one would ever have announced to him that his mother and brothers were standing outside, who was not certain that he had a mother and brothers, and that those were the very ones whom he was then announcing, whether known previously or discovered there at that moment, even though the heresies have for that reason removed from the Gospel the passage in which those who marveled at his teaching said that his father Joseph the carpenter, and his mother Mary, and his brothers and sisters were very well known to them.

"But they had announced both the mother and the brothers, whom he did not have, for the purpose of testing him." This indeed Scripture does not say, since it is not elsewhere silent when something was done for the purpose of testing him: Behold, it says, a doctor of the law arose, testing him. And elsewhere: And the Pharisees came to him, testing him. Nothing prevented it from being indicated here also that it was done for the purpose of testing. I do not accept what you bring in from outside Scripture on your own account. Furthermore, there must be an underlying subject matter for the testing. What did they think was to be tested in him? Surely, whether he had been born or not; for if his response denied this, then the announcement of the tester aimed at this. But no temptation tending toward the recognition of something about which one doubts by testing proceeds so suddenly that a question does not first precede it, which, by introducing doubt, compels the testing.

Moreover, if the question of Christ's nativity was never raised anywhere, why do you argue that they wished by means of a test to inquire into what they had never brought into question? To this we add: even if he were to be tested concerning his nativity, he would certainly not be tested in this manner, by the announcement of those persons who could, even if Christ had been born, have not existed. We are all born, and yet not all of us have either brothers or a mother. Furthermore, one may have a father rather than a mother, and uncles rather than brothers. So the testing of nativity is altogether inapplicable, since it could have been established even without the mention of a mother and brothers.

It is plainly more likely that, being certain he had both a mother and brothers, they tested his divinity rather than his nativity: whether, while acting within, he would know what was outside, being falsely informed of the presence of those who were not present at that moment—unless, even if the device of testing had been empty, it could have happened that those whom they announced as standing outside, he knew to be absent, by reason of illness, or business, or travel, already known to him by necessity. No one tests in a manner in which he knows he may bring back the blush of the test upon himself. Since therefore no subject matter for testing is applicable, the simplicity of the announcers is vindicated, namely that his mother and brothers had truly come. But let Apelles also learn what is the reason for the response that for the moment denied mother and brothers. The brothers of the Lord did not believe in him, as is also contained in the Gospel published before Marcion.

The mother likewise is not shown to have adhered to him, while other Marthas and Marys are frequently mentioned in his company. Indeed in this very passage their unbelief appears: while he was teaching the way of life, while he was proclaiming the kingdom of God, while he was laboring to heal infirmities and vices, with strangers fixed upon him, his nearest relatives were so far away. Finally they come, and stand outside; they do not enter, not reckoning, of course, what was being transacted within; nor do they endure even to wait, as though they were bringing something necessary, given what he was then chiefly doing, but they interrupt further, and wish to call him away from so great a work. I ask you, Apelles, or you, Marcion, if while playing at dice, or intent upon actors or charioteers, you were called away by such a message, would you not have said: Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?

Was Christ, preaching God, fulfilling the Law and the Prophets, scattering the darkness of the former age, unworthy to use such a saying to strike at the unbelief of those standing outside, or to shake off the importunity of those calling him away from his work? Besides, to deny his nativity, another place, and time, and order of speech would have been necessary, not that of one who could pronounce the same even if he had both a mother and brothers, since indignation does not deny parents but rebukes them. Finally, he made others more important, and showing the merit of the preference—namely, the hearing of the word—he demonstrates on what condition he denied mother and brothers. For by the same means by which he adopted others who clung to him, he disowned those who stood apart from him. Christ is also accustomed to fulfill what he teaches others.

What sort of thing would it have been, if while teaching that mother or brothers are not to be valued as highly as the word of God, he himself, being the word of God, upon the announcement of mother and brotherhood, were to abandon it? He therefore denied his parents in the manner in which he taught they are to be denied for the work of God. But in another sense there is a figure of the synagogue in the mother who is set aside, and of the Jews in the unbelieving brothers. Israel was outside in them; but the new disciples within, hearing and believing and clinging to Christ, were sketching the Church, which, rejecting his carnal kindred, he named as a more excellent mother and a worthier brotherhood. In the same way also he responded to that exclamation, not denying a mother and breasts, but designating as more blessed those who hear the word of God.

With these chapters, by which Marcion and Apelles considered themselves especially well-armed, having been interpreted according to the truth of the genuine and uncorrupted Gospel, it would have been sufficient for the proof of human flesh in Christ and the defense of his nativity. But since the Valentinians also put forward the ignominy of the flesh, which they wish to have been imposed upon souls by that fiery ruler of evil, and for that reason to have been assumed by Christ, and for that reason to have been fitting for him from the stars, I must address them from their own construction. They name a certain illustrious angel, saying that he established this world, and upon establishing it mixed in punishment. And this matter has been treated by us in its proper place in our treatise against them: whether Christ, having the mind and will and power of that angel, did anything worthy of repentance; and the angel is also interpreted from the figure of the wandering sheep.

By the testimony therefore of the repentance of its founder, the world will be evil; since all repentance is the acknowledgment of a fault, because it has no place except in fault. If the world is a fault because it is body and flesh, then heaven likewise will be a fault, and along with heaven whatever has been conceived and brought forth, since a bad tree must necessarily bear bad fruit. The flesh of Christ therefore, being constructed from heavenly things, was constituted from the elements of sin, sinful from a sinful stock, and will now be on a par with that substance, that is, ours, which they disdain to introduce into Christ as sinful. Thus if there is no difference in terms of ignominy, let them either devise for Christ some other material of a purer kind, those to whom ours is displeasing, or let them acknowledge the same, by which even a heavenly one could not have been better. We read plainly: The first man from the slime of the earth; the second man from heaven.

Yet this does not refer to a difference of material, but only opposes the heavenly substance of the spirit of the second man, that is Christ, to the formerly earthly substance of the flesh of the first man, that is Adam. And so far does he refer the heavenly man to the spirit, not to the flesh, that those whom he thus compares are established to become heavenly in this earthly flesh, namely by the spirit. But if Christ is heavenly also according to the flesh, those who are not heavenly according to the flesh would not be compared to him. If therefore those who become heavenly, such as Christ also is, bear the earthly substance of flesh; hence also it is confirmed that Christ himself was heavenly in earthly flesh, just as those are who are made equal to him.

We maintain further that nothing which has been taken from another, so as to be something other than that from which it was taken, is so other as not to suggest whence it was taken. Every material is not without testimony of its own origin, even if it be changed into a new property. Our own body itself, which was fashioned from clay—a truth transmitted even to the fables of the nations—confesses both elements of its origin: in flesh, the earthy; in blood, the watery. For, although the appearance of the quality is different, that is, although what is made from another is other than it, yet what is blood but a red fluid? What is flesh but earth converted into its own forms?

Consider the individual qualities: muscles as clods, bones as stones, and even around the nipples certain small pebbles; observe the tenacious connections of the sinews as the runners of roots, and the branching courses of the veins as the windings of streams, and the down as mosses, and the hair as turf, and the very treasures of the marrow hidden in the depths as the mines of the flesh. All these signs of earthly origin were also in Christ: these are the things that concealed him as the Son of God, since he was otherwise thought to be merely a man only by reason of the substance of a human body. Or produce something heavenly in him borrowed from the Bears, and the Pleiades, and the Hyades. For the things we have enumerated are so much testimonies of earthly flesh as to be also of ours. But I find nothing new, nothing foreign. Finally, it was only by his words and deeds, by his teaching and power alone, that men were astonished at Christ.

The novelty of his flesh also would have been noted as a marvel. But the condition of earthly flesh is not marvelous: it was itself what made his other things marvelous. When they said: Whence has this man this teaching and these signs? Even this was the voice of those who despised his form. So far was his body from human comeliness, let alone heavenly splendor. Even though the Prophets among us are silent concerning his ignoble appearance, his very sufferings and his very indignities speak: the sufferings indeed proved his flesh to be human; the indignities proved it to be without honor. Would anyone have dared to touch with the tip of a finger a new body, to defile his face with spittle, unless it were deserving of it? What do you say about heavenly flesh, for which you have no means of understanding it to be heavenly? Why do you deny it to be earthly, for which you have the means of recognizing it as earthly?

He hungered under the devil, he thirsted under the Samaritan woman, he wept over Lazarus, he trembled at death.

For the flesh, he says, is weak. He shed his blood at last. These are, I suppose, the heavenly signs. But how, I ask, could he be despised and suffer, as I have also said, if anything from heavenly nobility had shone forth in that flesh? From this therefore we prove that there was nothing in it from the heavens, precisely so that it could be despised and suffer.

I turn to others equally wise in their own estimation, who affirm that the flesh of Christ is animate, on the ground that the soul was made flesh, and therefore flesh is soul, and just as the flesh is animate, so also the soul is carnal. Here too I seek the reasons. If, in order to save the soul, Christ took up a soul in himself, because it would not be saved except through him, while in him; I do not see why he made it animate flesh by putting on flesh, as though he could not otherwise save the soul except by making it flesh. For since he preserves our souls as saved, not only without their being fleshly, but even when separated from the flesh; how much more could he have brought that soul which he himself took up, even without making it fleshly, into salvation!

Likewise, since they presume that Christ came forth for the sake of liberating not the flesh but our soul alone; first, how absurd it is that, intending to liberate the soul alone, he should have made it a kind of body which he was not going to liberate! Then, if he had undertaken to liberate our souls through that which he bore, he ought also to have borne that which he bore as ours, that is, of our form, of whatever form our soul is in its hidden nature, yet not fleshly. Otherwise, he did not liberate our soul, if he had a fleshly one; for ours is not fleshly. Moreover, if he did not liberate ours because he liberated a fleshly one, it is nothing to us; because he did not liberate ours. But neither was that which was not ours in need of liberation, namely the fleshly one; for it was not in peril, if it was not ours, that is, not fleshly. But it is established that it was liberated.

Therefore it was not fleshly; and it was ours, if it was the kind that was to be liberated, since it was in peril. Now therefore, if the soul in Christ was not fleshly, neither can the flesh have been animate.

But we encounter another argument of theirs, demanding why, by taking on animal flesh, Christ should seem to have had a fleshly soul. For God, they say, was eager to make the soul visible to men by making it a body—the soul which had previously been invisible, by nature perceiving nothing, not even seeing itself, on account of the impediment of this flesh—so that it might even be debated whether the soul is born or not, whether it is mortal or not. And so the soul was made a body in Christ, that we might see it both being born and dying, and, what is more, rising again. But what kind of thing was this—that the soul should be demonstrated to itself or to us through flesh, when it could not be known through flesh: that it should be shown in this way, while that through which it lay hidden, namely the flesh, was the very thing being used? It received darkness, evidently, so that it might be able to shine.

Finally, let us first reconsider whether the soul ought to have been shown in this manner, or whether they allege it was altogether invisible from the beginning—whether as incorporeal, or as also having some kind of body of its own. And yet, when they call it invisible, they establish it as corporeal, as having something that is invisible. For how can something that has nothing invisible be called invisible? But it cannot even exist unless it has that through which it exists. But since it exists, it must necessarily have something through which it exists. If it has something through which it exists, that will be its body. Everything that exists is a body of its own kind; nothing is incorporeal except that which does not exist.

Since the soul therefore has an invisible body, whoever had undertaken to make it visible would surely have more worthily made visible that part of it which was held to be invisible—because neither does falsehood nor weakness befit God: falsehood, if he showed the soul to be other than what it was; weakness, if he was unable to show what it was. No one wishing to show a man puts a helmet or a mask on him. But this is what was done to the soul, if, having been turned into flesh, it put on an alien appearance.

But even if the soul is reckoned incorporeal—so that by some hidden force of reason the soul is indeed hidden, yet is not a body, whatever the soul is—it was not impossible for God, and it was more fitting to his purpose, to show it by some new kind of body, rather than by this common one belonging to all, already known from another acquaintance; lest he should have been eager without cause to make the soul visible from invisible, suited to those questions, through the defense of human flesh against it. But Christ could not be seen among men except as a man. Restore therefore to Christ his own truth; so that he who willed to walk as a man also showed the soul under human condition—not making it fleshly, but clothing it with flesh.

Let the soul now be shown through flesh, if it shall have been established that it also needed to be shown in some manner—that is, as unknown to itself and to us. Although in this there is a vain distinction, as if we were something apart from the soul, when everything that we are is soul. For without the soul we are nothing—not even bearing the name of man, but of a corpse. If therefore we are ignorant of the soul, it is ignorant of itself. And so it remains only to examine this: whether the soul was here ignorant of itself, so that it might come to be known in some manner. I think the nature of the soul is sentient. So much so that nothing animate is without sense; nothing sentient is without soul. And to speak more emphatically, the sense of the soul is its very soul.

Therefore, since the soul grants sensation to all things, and itself perceives the senses of all things—and indeed their qualities—who would believe it likely that it did not from the beginning receive perception of itself? Whence would it know what is sometimes necessary for itself, from the necessity of natural needs, if it does not know its own quality—to which something is necessary? This indeed is to be recognized in every soul: I mean self-knowledge; without which self-knowledge no soul could have ministered to itself. But I think that man, the only rational animal, has also been allotted a soul that makes him a rational animal, being itself above all rational. Moreover, how is it rational—the soul that makes man a rational animal—if it does not know its own reason, being ignorant of itself? But so far is it from being ignorant, that it knows its author, its judge, and its own condition.

Having as yet learned nothing about God, it names God; having as yet admitted nothing about his judgment, it says it commends itself to God. Having heard nothing more than that there is no hope after death, it calls down curses upon each of the departed, both good and evil. These matters are pursued more fully in the little book we wrote On the Testimony of the Soul. Otherwise, if the soul was ignorant of itself from the beginning, it ought to have learned nothing from Christ except what it was like. But now it does not learn its own form from Christ, but salvation. For this reason the Son of God descended and took on a soul—not that the soul itself might know itself in Christ, but that it might know Christ in itself; for it is not by ignorance of itself that it is endangered with respect to salvation, but by ignorance of the Word of God.

The Life, he says, was manifested—not the soul: I came, he says, to save the soul—he did not say, to show it. We were ignorant, forsooth, that the soul, though invisible, is born and dies, unless it were exhibited in bodily form. We were plainly ignorant that it would rise again with the flesh. This is what Christ made manifest. But even this not otherwise in himself than in some Lazarus, whose flesh was not animal, and so neither was his soul fleshly. What then became more known to us concerning the previously unknown disposition of the soul? What was there invisible about it that required visibility through flesh?

The soul was made flesh, so that the soul might be shown. Was the flesh therefore also made soul, so that the flesh might be manifested? If the flesh is soul, it is no longer soul, but flesh. If the soul is flesh, it is no longer flesh, but soul. Where therefore flesh is, and where soul is, each has become the other. Indeed, if they are neither, while each becomes the other, it is certainly most perverse that, when we name flesh, we should understand soul, and when we signify soul, we should interpret it as flesh. All things will be in danger of being received as other than they are, and of losing what they are while they are received as other, if they are named as other than they are. The trustworthiness of names is the preservation of properties. Even when qualities are changed, they receive the possession of new names.

For example, baked clay takes on the name of pottery; nor does it share in the name of its former kind, because neither does it share in the kind itself. Likewise also the soul of Christ, made flesh, cannot but be what it was made, and cannot be what it had been—having been made, that is, something else. And since we have used a close example, let us use it more fully. Certainly pottery made from clay is one body and one name, namely of one body. Nor can it be called also clay; what it was, it is not; but what it is not, adheres to nothing at all. Therefore also the soul made flesh is consolidated into unity: that is, the whole singularity is an undivided substance.

But in Christ we find the soul and the flesh in simple and bare terms—that is, the soul as soul, and the flesh as flesh; for soul as flesh, or flesh as soul: they ought to have been so named, if they had been so; but there each substance is pronounced separately by him, assuredly on account of the distinction of two qualities—the soul separately, and the flesh separately. My soul, he says, is sorrowful even unto death; and: The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. Now if the soul had been flesh, there would be one thing—a fleshly soul, or an animal flesh. But since he shows two distinct kinds, flesh and soul, they are already not one; if not one, then neither is the soul fleshly, nor the flesh animal; for the soul is one thing and the flesh another. Unless he also carried separately another soul besides that which was flesh, and another flesh besides that which was soul.

But there is one flesh, and one soul; the one sorrowful unto death, the other the bread for the salvation of the world; the integrity of the two substances, distinct in their own kind, is preserved, excluding the single form of a fleshly soul.

Christ bore an angel, they say. For what reason? A man. The same reason therefore applies, that Christ should bear a man: the salvation of man was the cause; to restore what had perished. Man perished; man had to be restored. That Christ bore an angel—there is nothing of the kind as a cause. For even if perdition is reckoned for them, in the fire prepared for the devil and his angels, yet restoration was never promised to them. Christ received no commission from the Father concerning the salvation of angels. What the Father neither resolved upon nor commissioned, Christ could not carry out. For what purpose then did he also bear an angel, unless as a strong attendant, with whose help he might work the salvation of man? Was the Son of God not sufficient to free man alone—man who had been cast down by a single and solitary serpent? Then there is no longer one God, nor one Saviour, if there are two artificers of salvation, each needing the other.

Or was it to free man through an angel? Why then did he descend to accomplish what he was going to carry out through an angel? If through an angel, what need was there of himself? If through himself, what need was there of the angel? He was indeed called the angel of great counsel—that is, the messenger—a word of office, not of nature. For he was about to announce to the world the great design of the Father, namely concerning the restoration of man. Not for that reason, however, is he to be understood as an angel in the way that some Gabriel or Michael is. For the son is also sent by the lord of the vineyard to the tenants, just as the servants were, to seek the fruits. But the son will not on that account be reckoned as one of the servants, because he succeeded to the office of servants.

More readily therefore shall I say, if need be, that the son himself is an angel—that is, a messenger of the Father—than that there is an angel in the son. But since it has been declared concerning the son himself: Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels—how will he appear to have put on an angel, being thus diminished below the angels while he becomes man, in that he is flesh and soul and son of man? But in that he is the Spirit of God and the power of the Highest, he cannot be held to be below the angels—being, that is, God and the Son of God. By as much therefore as, while bearing a man, he was made less than the angels, by so much was he not so while bearing an angel.

This opinion could suit Hebion, who establishes Jesus as a bare man, and only from the seed of David—that is, not also the Son of God—somewhat more glorious than the Prophets, so that an angel might be said to have been in him in that way; just as in some Zechariah. Except that it was never said by Christ: And the angel who spoke in me said to me; nor that daily saying of all the Prophets: Thus says the Lord. For he himself was the Lord present, pronouncing from his own authority: But I say to you. What more? Hear Isaiah still crying out: Not an angel, nor a legate, but the Lord himself saved them.

Valentinus too was permitted, by heretical privilege, to fabricate a spiritual flesh for Christ. Anyone who was unwilling to believe it human could fashion it as whatever he pleased; since (as has been said to all) if it was not human, nor from a human being, I do not see from what substance Christ himself could have declared himself a man and son of man: But now you seek to kill a man who has spoken the truth to you; and: The Son of man is Lord of the sabbath. For of him Isaiah says: A man in affliction, and knowing how to bear weakness; and Jeremiah: And he is a man, and who shall know him? And Daniel: And upon the clouds as a son of man. Also the apostle Paul: The mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Likewise Peter in the Acts of the Apostles: Jesus of Nazareth, a man appointed to you by God—a human being, certainly.

These testimonies alone ought to have sufficed by way of prescription as witness to a human flesh, taken from a human being, and not spiritual; just as it is neither animal, nor sidereal, nor imaginary; if heresies could have existed without zeal and the artifice of contention. For, as I have read in a certain writer of Valentinus's faction, they first hold that no earthly and human substance was formed for Christ, lest the Lord be found inferior to the angels, who did not consist of earthly flesh; and then, that it would have been necessary for a flesh like ours to be born in like manner, not of spirit, nor of God, but of the will of a man. And why not from corruption rather than from incorruption? And why, just as that flesh rose again and was taken up into heaven, is not ours also, being its equal, immediately assumed? Or why was that flesh, being equal to ours, not likewise dissolved into the earth?

Such things the pagans too will toss about: Was the Son of God then so utterly emptied into such humility? And, if he rose again as an example of our hope, why has nothing of the sort been demonstrated in our case?

Rightly do the pagans say such things, but rightly also the heretics. For in what do they differ from one another, except that the pagans believe by not believing, while the heretics do not believe by believing? They read: Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and they deny the inferior substance of Christ; and of him who declares himself not a man but a worm; who had neither form nor comeliness; but whose form was ignoble, despised beyond all men; a man in affliction, and knowing how to bear weakness. They acknowledge a man mingled with God, and deny the man. They believe him dead, and contend that what is dead was born of incorruption—as though corruption were something other than death. But our flesh too ought to rise again in due course. Wait: Christ has not yet crushed his enemies, so that he may triumph over enemies together with friends.

Moreover, that Alexander, out of a lust for argument—characteristic of the heretical mind—made room for himself, as though we were affirming that Christ therefore put on flesh of earthly condition in order to annul in himself the flesh of sin. Even if we said this, and defended our position by whatever reasoning, provided we were not so mad as he supposed—as though we thought the very flesh of Christ to be sinful, annulled in him—since we both remember that it presides at the right hand of the Father in the heavens, and proclaim that it will come thence, upheld by the Father's glory. So, just as we cannot call it annulled, neither can we call it sinful; nor annulled, since in it there was no guile. We maintain, however, that it is not the flesh of sin that was annulled in Christ, but the sin of the flesh; not the matter, but the nature; not the substance, but the fault; according to the authority of the Apostle who says: He annulled sin in the flesh.

For also elsewhere: he says that Christ was in the likeness of sinful flesh. Not that he took on a likeness of flesh, as though an image of a body and not the reality; but he means that the likeness of sinful flesh is to be understood; because the very flesh of Christ, itself not sinful, was the equal of that flesh whose kind it shared, not the vice of Adam: since from this we affirm that the flesh in Christ was the same as that which is sinful in man; and thus that which in Christ was without sin—which in man was not had without sin—was annulled in it. What purpose would the annulling of flesh serve for Christ's design, if he were to annul it not in flesh of sinful nature, nor to glory? For what if in a better flesh, and of another—that is, not of this—nature, he redeemed the blemish? Therefore, putting on ours, the flesh of Christ was sinful. To press an inexplicable meaning.

For he made ours his own; by making it his own, he made it not sinful. For the rest (as is said to all, they do not think our flesh was in Christ, since it came from the seed of a man) let them remember Adam himself—flesh not made from the seed of a man. Just as it was turned into this flesh without the seed of a man, so the Word was able without that element to enter into the matter of the same.

Alexander being dismissed along with his syllogisms, which he tortures into temptations, and also with the psalms he interposes with great impudence as though from some suitable author, let us now direct our inquiry to a single line: whether Christ took flesh from a virgin, so that in this way especially he drew his human substance from a human womb. Although, as has already been said, both from the name of man, and from the quality, and from the sense of the discussion, and from the passion, it has been established as human. But first of all, the reason must be given which governed why the Son of God should be born of a virgin. He who was to be the author of a new birth had to be born in a new manner, concerning which the Lord was foretold by Isaiah as about to give a sign. What is that sign? Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and shall bear a son. A virgin conceived and bore Emmanuel, God-with-us.

This is a new birth: while a man is born in God; in which man God was born, flesh of the ancient seed being received, without the ancient seed, so that he might reform it by a new seed—that is, spiritually—the defilements of antiquity being expelled and expiated. But all this newness, as in all things, is derived from an ancient figure, the Lord being born of a virgin by a rational dispensation. The earth was still a virgin, not yet pressed by toil, not yet broken in for sowing: from it we receive that man was made by God into a living soul. Therefore, if the first Adam is handed down as being from the earth, rightly is the second, or last Adam, as the Apostle said, likewise brought forth from the earth—that is, from flesh not yet surrendered to generation—by God into a life-giving spirit.

And yet, lest the assault of the name Adam be for nothing—whence Christ was called Adam by the Apostle—if the man of him was not of earthly condition? But here too reason defends the fact that God recovered his image and likeness, captured by the devil, by a rival operation. For into Eve, still a virgin, the word that builds up death had crept; into a virgin equally was the Word of God, that builds up life, to be introduced: so that what had gone through a sex of that kind into perdition might through the same sex be brought back into salvation. Eve had believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel. What the one destroyed by believing, the other blotted out by believing. "But Eve at that time conceived nothing in her womb from the devil's word." On the contrary, she did conceive. For from that point, since she was cast out to bring forth, and to bring forth in pain, the devil's word was her seed. She brought forth at last the devil—a fratricide.

Mary, on the contrary, brought forth him who would one day save the carnal brother of Israel, her destroyer. Into the womb, therefore, God brought his Word—a good brother—to erase the memory of the evil brother. From there Christ had to come forth for the salvation of man, by the same way by which man, already condemned, had entered.

Now, to answer more simply: it was not fitting for the Son of God to be born of human seed, lest if he were, and also in those who believe in him. If therefore this too applies to him, he would be wholly son of man, and would not also be Son of God, and would have nothing more than Solomon, and more than Jonah; and he would have to be believed according to the opinion of Hebion. Therefore, the Son of God already being from the seed of God the Father—that is, from the Spirit—so that he might also be son of man, flesh alone was to be taken by him from the flesh of man, without the seed of a man. For the seed of a man was superfluous in one who had the seed of God. And so, just as before being born of a virgin he could have God as father without a human mother; equally, when being born of a virgin, he could have a human being as mother without a human father.

Thus at last man with God, since the flesh of man is with the Spirit of God. Flesh without seed, from man; Spirit with seed, from God. If therefore there was a rational dispensation for bringing forth the Son of God from a virgin, did he not receive from the virgin the body which came forth from the virgin? Because, they say, the Word was made flesh. That expression attests what was made flesh; yet it is not endangered, as though something other than the Word was immediately made flesh. If the word was made flesh from flesh, or if it was made from the seed itself, let Scripture say so. Since Scripture says only that it was made, and not also from what it was made; it therefore suggests that it was made from something other than the seed itself.

If not from the seed itself, but from something else, then draw from this the conclusion from which it is more fitting to believe that the Word was made flesh—namely, from flesh—in which also it was made; or because the Lord himself pronounced definitively and conclusively: That which is born of flesh is flesh, because it is born of flesh. But if he said this only of man, and not also of himself, plainly deny that Christ is a man, and so defend that it did not apply to him as well. Yet he adds: And that which is born of Spirit is spirit. Because God is Spirit, and he was born of God. This at any rate, or all the more, is held to apply to him—and not also that above? For you cannot divide this as applying to him, and that above to other men, you who do not deny both substances of Christ, both of flesh and of spirit.

For the rest, if he had flesh as well as spirit, when he pronounces concerning the condition of two substances which he himself also bears, he cannot be seen to have determined concerning his own spirit, but not concerning his own flesh. Thus, since he himself is of the Spirit of God, and the Spirit is God, and God born of God is he himself, he is also born of the flesh of man, a man generated in flesh.

What then is the meaning of: they were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God? This passage indeed I shall rather use myself, once I have exposed those who corrupt it. For they contend that it is written thus: He was born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of man, but of God, as though it designates the believers in his name mentioned above, so as to show from himself that secret seed of the elect and spiritual ones, which they instil into themselves. But how shall this be so, when all who believe in the name of the Lord are born, by the common law of the human race, of blood, and of the will of the flesh, and of man—even Valentinus himself? So singularly, as it is written of the Lord: And he was born of God.

Rightly so, because he is the Word of God, and with the Word of God the Spirit, and in the Spirit of God the power, and whatever belongs to God is Christ. But as to flesh, he was born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh and of man: because by the will of God the Word was made flesh. For the formal transaction of our birth pertains to the flesh, not to the Word, because the flesh was thus to be born, not the Word. But in denying that he was born of the will of the flesh also, why did he not deny that he was born of the substance of the flesh? For in denying that he was born of blood, he did not reject the substance of flesh, but the material of seed, which is known to be the heat of blood, changed by a kind of skimming into the clot of the woman's blood.

For from the clot, as in cheese, there is the force of substance, which curdling constrains by its working—that is, of milk. We understand, therefore, that the Lord's birth from sexual intercourse is denied, which is what the will of man and of the flesh implies, not from participation of the womb. And why did he so emphatically insist that he was born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, or of man, unless it was because that was flesh which no one would doubt to have been born from intercourse? In denying birth from intercourse, he did not deny birth from flesh; nay, he confirmed birth from flesh, because he did not deny birth from flesh in the same way as he denied birth from intercourse. I ask you: if the Spirit of God descended into the womb not intending to take flesh from the womb, why did he descend into the womb?

For he could far more simply have become spiritual flesh outside the womb than he could have become outside the womb while inside the womb. Without cause did he enter there, from which he brought nothing forth. But not without cause did he descend into the womb: therefore he received something from it. For if he received nothing from it, he descended into it without cause, especially since the flesh he was to have was of such a quality as was not of the womb—that is, spiritual.

How tortuous is your reasoning, that you seek to remove the very preposition ex, assigned to its prepositional function, and to use another instead, which in this context is not found in the holy Scriptures? You say he was born through a virgin, not of a virgin; and in the womb, not of the womb. Because the angel also said in a dream to Joseph: For that which is conceived in her, he said, is of the Holy Spirit; he did not say of her. Yet even if he had said of her, he had said in her: for that which was of her was in her. Therefore it amounts to the same thing, and when he says in her, it agrees with of her; because that which was in her was of her. But it is well that Matthew himself says the same, tracing the Lord's origin from Abraham down to Mary: Jacob, he says, begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom is born Christ.

And Paul also imposes silence on these grammarians: God sent, he says, his Son, made of a woman. Does he say through a woman, or in a woman? This is indeed more emphatic, in that he says made rather than born: for he would have expressed it more simply by saying born. But by saying made, he both confirmed the word was made flesh, and asserted the truth of the flesh made of a virgin. The Psalms also will be our advocates in this matter—not those of the apostate and heretical and Platonist Valentinus, but those of the most holy and most received prophet David. He sings of Christ among us, through whom Christ himself sang. Receive Christ, and hear the Lord speaking to God the Father: For thou art he who drew me out of my mother's womb: behold, one thing. And my hope from my mother's breasts; upon thee was I cast from the womb: behold another. And from my mother's womb thou art my God: behold yet another.

Now let us decide upon the meanings themselves. Thou hast drawn me out, he says, from the womb. What is drawn out, except that which clings, which is fixed and bound to that from which it is drawn out in order to be removed? If he did not adhere to the womb, how was he drawn out? If he who was drawn out did adhere, how would he have adhered, unless while he was of the womb he was connected through that umbilical cord, like the runner of its own pouch, to the origin of the womb. Even when something foreign is glued to something foreign, it is so enfleshed and entwined with that to which it is glued, that when it is torn away, it carries with it something from the body from which it is torn, as a kind of sequel of the broken union, and the extension of their mutual joining. Furthermore, what are the mother's breasts that he names? Without doubt, those from which he drew. Let midwives answer.

Let midwives, physicians, and natural philosophers speak about the nature of the breasts, whether they are accustomed to flow in any other way than through the generative suffering of the womb, with the veins thence suspending that dregs of dark blood, and by the very process of transfer cooking it down into the more pleasant substance of milk. Hence it comes about that during the time of the breasts, the monthly flows of blood cease. But if the Word was made flesh of itself, without participation of the womb, the womb having done nothing, performed nothing, suffered nothing; how did it pour its source into the breasts, which cannot transform unless they possess? But it could not possess the blood to supply the milk, unless it possessed the causes of the blood itself—namely, the tearing away of its own flesh.

What was new in Christ's being born of a virgin is plain: namely, this alone, that it was of a virgin, according to the principle which we have set forth; and that our regeneration might be a virgin, sanctified spiritually from all defilements through Christ, himself also a virgin carnally, as being of a virgin's flesh.

If therefore they contend that this befitted the newness, that just as the Word of God was not made flesh from the seed of a man, so neither from the flesh of a virgin; why should not this be the whole newness, that flesh not born of seed proceeded from flesh? Let them come still closer to the contest: Behold, he says, a virgin shall conceive in the womb. What? Surely the Word of God, not the seed of a man: certainly so that she might bear a son. For, And she shall bear, he says, a son. Therefore, as it was hers to conceive, so what she bore is hers; even if what she conceived was not hers. On the other hand, if the Word was made flesh of itself, then it conceived itself, and bore itself, and the prophecy is void. For the virgin did not conceive, nor did she bear, if whatever she bore from the conception of the Word is not her own flesh. But shall this one voice of the prophet be made void?

Or also that of the angel, announcing the conception and birth of the virgin? Or indeed all Scripture now, whatever pronounces Mary the mother of Christ? For how is she a mother, unless by reason of him who was in her womb? But he received nothing from her womb that would make her a mother, in whose womb he was. That name is not owed by foreign flesh to a mother. One does not call a womb a mother's womb, unless it is the daughter of the womb—flesh. But it is not the daughter of the womb if it was born of itself. Elizabeth therefore will also be silent, bearing the prophet who was already conscious of his Lord as an infant, and moreover filled with the Holy Spirit. For she says in vain: And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? If Mary was carrying Jesus in her womb not as a son but as a guest. How does she say: Blessed is the fruit of thy womb?

What is this fruit of the womb, which did not spring from the womb; which did not take root in the womb; which does not belong to her whose womb it is? And what fruit of the womb indeed? Christ. Or is it because he himself is the flower that came forth from the rod proceeding from the root of Jesse; and the root of Jesse is the lineage of David; the rod from the root is Mary from David? The flower from the rod is the son of Mary, who is called Jesus Christ—he shall be also the fruit. For the flower is the fruit: because through the flower, and from the flower, every fruit is brought to fruition. What then? Do they deny to the fruit its own flower, and to the flower its own rod, and to the rod its own root, so that the root may not claim for itself through the rod the property of what comes from the rod—the flower and the fruit?

Since every degree of lineage is reckoned from the last back to the first, so that now they may know that the flesh of Christ adheres not only to Mary, but also to David through Mary, and to Jesse through David. Therefore God swears to give him this fruit from the loins of David—that is, from the posterity of his flesh—upon his throne. If from the loins of David, how much more from the loins of Mary, on account of whom he is in the loins of David!

Let them therefore blot out also the testimonies of demons proclaiming Jesus to be the son of David: but they will not be able to blot out the testimonies of the Apostles, if those of demons are present. Matthew himself above all, the most faithful recorder of the Gospel, as a companion of the Lord, began thus, with no other purpose than to make us believe in the carnal origin of Christ: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. With these fountains of origin flowing, as the order is led down step by step to his very birth, what else is it but the very flesh of David, making itself a runner through each individual, until it is described as bringing forth Christ—nay, Christ himself is shown to come forth from the virgin?

But Luke also, as both disciple and witness of the same Gospel, and witness as apostle of the same, confirms that Christ is of the seed of David according to the flesh—his own flesh, that is. Therefore the flesh of Christ is of seed. But according to Mary's flesh, it is of the seed of David: therefore it is of Mary's flesh, since it is of the seed of David. Whichever way you twist the statement, either what is of the seed of David is Mary's from Mary; or what is of Mary's flesh is of David's seed. The Apostle himself settles this whole controversy, in defining that he is the seed of Abraham. With Abraham, how much more David, as being more recent. Recall the promise of the blessing of the nations in the seed of Abraham: And in thy seed shall all nations be blessed: he did not say, In seeds, as of many; but In seed, as of one, who is Christ.

We who read and believe these things, how else can we acknowledge the origin of Christ's flesh? Surely no other than Abraham's, since Christ is the seed of Abraham: nor other than David's, since Christ is the flower from the root of Jesse: nor other than David's, since Christ is the fruit from the loins of David: nor other than from Mary, since Christ is from Mary's womb. And going still further back: nor other than from Adam, since he is the second Adam. It follows therefore that they must either contend that those men had spiritual flesh, so that the same condition of their flesh may be traced down to Christ: or they must concede that the flesh of Christ was not spiritual, since it is not reckoned from a spiritual stock.

We recognize the fulfillment of the prophetic word of Simeon, pronounced over the Lord still a newborn infant: Behold, this one is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that shall be contradicted. For the sign of the birth of Christ, according to Isaiah: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son. We acknowledge, therefore, the contradictable sign—the conception and birth of the virgin Mary; concerning which these Academics say, She bore, and she did not bear; Virgin, and not virgin: as though, even if it were to be said thus, it would not be more fitting for us to say it. For she bore, in that it was from her own flesh; and she did not bear, in that it was not from a man's seed. And she is a virgin, insofar as she was untouched by a man; not a virgin, insofar as she gave birth.

Not, however, that she therefore bore and did not bear, and is therefore virgin and not virgin, because she was not a mother from her own womb. But among us there is nothing doubtful, nor twisted into an ambiguous defense. Light is light; and darkness is darkness; and Yes is yes; and No is no. What is more than this is from evil. She bore, who bore. And if a virgin conceived, in her delivery she was wedded, 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, that same organ of sex was unsealed. This, finally, is the womb on account of which it is also written of others: Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord. Who is truly holy, if not the Son of God? Who properly opened the womb, if not he who laid open what was closed? For in all other cases, marriage lays it open.

And so it was laid open all the more, because it had been all the more closed. Certainly she is to be called not-virgin rather than virgin, being in a sense a mother before a bride. And why should this be debated further, since by this reasoning the Apostle declared the Son of God to have been born not of a virgin but of a woman, acknowledging the nuptial experience of the opened womb? We read indeed in Ezekiel of that cow which bore and did not bear. But see whether the Holy Spirit, foreseeing even then, did not mark you with that expression—you who were going to dispute over the womb of Mary. Otherwise, he would not have spoken doubtfully, against his own simplicity, when Isaiah says: She shall conceive, and shall bring forth.

For what Isaiah hurls as a reproach against the heretics themselves, and first: Woe to those who make sweet bitter, and darkness light; he is plainly marking those who do not preserve even these words in the light of their proper meanings; so that the soul is none other than what it is called, and the flesh is none other than what is seen, and God is none other than what is proclaimed. Therefore also looking ahead to Marcion, he says: I am God, and there is no other beside me. And when in another place he says the same thing in the same manner: Before me there was no God, he strikes at those genealogies of the Valentinian Aeons, whatever they may be. And, Not of blood, nor of the will of flesh and of man, but of God was he born—this answered Hebion. Likewise, Even if an angel from heaven shall have preached to you otherwise than we have, let him be anathema; this directs its thrust at the working of Apelles' virgin Philumene.

Certainly, he who denies that Christ has come in the flesh, this one is antichrist. Pronouncing flesh by its bare, absolute, and simple name of its own nature, he strikes all who dispute about it. Just as also, in defining Christ himself as one, he shakes the arguers of a multiform Christ, who make one person Christ and another Jesus; one who slipped away through the midst of the crowds, another who was detained; one on the mountain's retreat, conspicuous in the encompassing cloud before three witnesses; another passive among the rest, inglorious; one magnanimous, another indeed trembling; and finally, one who suffered, another who was raised—through which they also assert their own resurrection in another flesh. But it is well that the same one who suffered shall come from the heavens; the same one who was raised shall appear to all. And they shall see and recognize him whom they pierced: that very flesh, surely, against which they raged; without which he himself could neither exist nor be recognized.

So that those too may be put to shame who affirm that the flesh sits empty of sense in the heavens, like a scabbard with Christ drawn out; or those who hold that flesh and soul are the same thing, or only the soul, but the flesh no longer.

But thus far enough on the present subject. For I now consider the proof of the flesh in Christ—both born of a virgin and human—to have been established. Which alone, having been discussed, could have sufficed, apart from the engagement with the individual opinions from the opposing side; which we have also provoked in abundance, both by their arguments and by the scriptures they use, so that by what we have proved—what the flesh of Christ was and whence it came, and what it was not—we have established a prior judgment against all. But in order that the resurrection of our flesh, to be defended in another treatise, may make a conclusion from the common preface, it shall here have its foundation; it being now manifest what manner of thing that was which rose again in Christ.