Scotus Academicus, Tomus septimus: De Incarnatione Verbi Divini

NOTE 1. That it is beyond doubt that the divine Word, from that time at which He appeared among men, was announced and called man, and there is no heretic who denies that constant truth, since the oracles of Scripture most openly testify it, not only of the Old Testament but especially of the New. Thus John 8 Christ Himself says: you seek to kill me, a man who have spoken the truth to you. And chapter 9 the blind man enlightened by Christ said: that man who is called Jesus made clay, etc. When Christ heard him say this, He did not correct him, but further asked of him that he believe even Him to be the Son of God. And chapter 10 the Jews saying to Christ: for a good work we stone thee not, but because thou being a man makest thyself God: Christ indeed first admitting it nevertheless confirms that He is God and rightly so called. Whence Caiphas

John 11 and 18, moved by a prophetic spirit, gave counsel to the Jews: It is expedient for you that one man die for the people, etc. Which man the Evangelist there declares to be Jesus Christ, who was about to die for the whole human race. Therefore only one doubt remains, whether that appellation of man was truly attributed to Christ, so that it designated true humanity in Him, or however it was only a certain metaphorical manner of speaking, as heretics formerly contended, whoever they were who denied that integral and true humanity existed in Christ.

NOTE 2. There have been various heretics, as we warned in the prelude of this Treatise, who denied a true soul in Christ: first indeed certain Arians taught that Christ had not a true rational soul, but that the Word was to Him in place of a soul, as St. Epiphanius reports, heresy 69, and St. Augustine heresy 19; which error indeed is also attributed to Eusebius of Caesarea and other Arians his followers in the 7th Synod action 6. Apollinaris, however, who at first had held the same opinion with the Arians, afterwards convicted of error by open texts of Scripture, yet not yielding, finally taught that in Christ indeed there was a sentient soul but not a mind, as Epiphanius reports, heresy 77, Nazianzen orat. 16, Augustine heresy 56. But what that heretic understood by the name of mind, namely whether the intellectual power, or the very substance of the rational soul, the said Fathers do not explain quite openly. For Augustine says: He denied the mind which is the rational soul of man. Epiphanius however reports that he asked the heretics what they understood by the name of mind and that they answered it to be substance or spirit: From which, says Suarez disp. 15 sect. 1, it follows that they denied a certain part of human nature, perhaps in that sense in which the heretics called Dimoerites said that of the three parts of human nature, body, soul, and mind, the Word assumed only the two former, as is evident from St. Epiphanius heresy 78, and from the epistles of Damasus, which Nicephorus reports book 12 of History chapter 17, in which Damasus against these heretics defines that Christ assumed a true rational soul, not obscurely indicating that those heretics denied it, and in this followed the error of Apollinaris.

NOTE 3. Various heretics likewise denied in Christ a true body born from the fecundity and seed of the Virgin. Simon Magus seems to have led the column of these with his followers. For just as he boasted himself to be Father, Son, Holy Spirit, he feigned such an appearance in Christ as in himself of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Then they compared the appearance of Christ with the appearances of the Old Testament, which having been made in aerial bodies, compacted and composed only for the time of the apparition, which afterward dissolved into air or into nothing, feigned for themselves such an indwelling character and nature of the body of Christ, and thought nothing about the Incarnation of Christ and its human nature personally assumed and never to be deserted. But when they observed in the Gospel that Christ could not be seen in the midst of crowds, and often withdrew Himself from the eyes of friends or enemies, they readily inclined to this opinion: the body of Christ was not altogether palpable and visible, and therefore Christ used it whenever He would meet men, but often showed by those disappearances that He did not altogether wear true flesh and a true body. To assert which they were moved also by those various appearances after His resurrection, in which He was not recognized by the Apostles even though He conversed familiarly with them; He went toward them, entered while doors were shut and bars strongly impeded and drawn, and performed various things which did not seem to persuade a real body and true flesh. Then by the very Apostles, when once He trod the waves of the sea on foot, He was held for a phantom, whence this delirium could reach others also and adhere more strongly in the minds of heretics than in the hearts of the Apostles, whom such a thought had occupied only for a moment. Wherefore St. John the Evangelist, that he might meet this most pestilential dogma and show that truly there existed in Christ the Lord two natures, namely human and divine, after the asserted and declared nativity of Christ the Lord, finally adds: And the Word was made flesh, by which words he signifies that the divine Word assumed true flesh, and refutes the impious dogma of the Simonians concerning the phantastic and masked flesh of Christ. — Nevertheless Marcion, imbued with this simoniaceous virus, dared to assert that in Christ there was only a phantastic and appearing body, as Justin Martyr reports, Apology 2 for the Christians, Irenaeus book 1 c. 19, who says that therefore this heretic expunged the opening chapters of the Gospel of Luke which are about the human generation of Christ, and Tertullian in those books which he published against Marcion. But there were other heretics who taught that Christ had a true body but not of the same kind as ours, who therefore were split into various parties: some said the body of Christ was formed from the elements, as Apelles disciple of Marcion and later deserter, says Tertullian; others that He had a celestial body, as Valentinus who, says Tertullian, book On Prescription chapter 19, said that Christ brought down from heaven some spiritual body, as water through a pipe, thus passing through Mary the Virgin, taking nothing thence, either receiving or borrowing. Finally some said He had a divine body consubstantial with the Divinity, or certainly formed from Itself, as Apollinaris taught, Justin Martyr reporting, Apology 2 near the end.

Therefore three things are here to be resolved strictly for the sake of greater clarity, which nevertheless converge into the same: First, that Christ assumed true and integral humanity. Second, that He had a true body consubstantial with ours. Third, that He also had a true rational soul altogether similar to ours.

Conclusion first. — THE DIVINE WORD ASSUMED TRUE HUMANITY. This is of faith against Basilides.

The Conclusion is proved first from open oracles of Sacred Scripture, namely from John 8: you seek, says Christ, to kill me a man who have spoken the truth to you. From Matthew 20: Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed and crucified, and the third day he shall rise again. From Luke last chapter: See my hands and feet, that it is I myself. Handle and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have. The same He proved by eating with the Apostles, that through the truth of eating the truth of flesh might be shown, says St. Gregory. The same is confirmed from many other texts of Sacred Scripture, by which it stands that God was made man and like unto us, conversed and spoke among us in human fashion, tempted in all things without sin, through thirst and weariness, through passion and death. Therefore He was not a mask of man but true man. For how often, says Theodoretus, either does Christ call Himself man, or is He inscribed of the seed and stock of Abraham and David, so many times does He bear witness of true flesh and true soul: for if either part be wanting, truth does not underlie these appellations.

It is proved secondly from the most ancient symbols which before the Synod of Nicaea were read throughout the Church, and likewise from the decisions and professions of faith of Nicaea itself and of the following synods, while they set forth the Word incarnate and made man. Hence the second Synod of Constantinople among the Ecumenical, epistle to Damasus and others gathered in the Roman Synod, says: That it admits Him neither destitute of soul or mind, nor an imperfect reason of flesh: but knows itself confessing perfect the Word of God before the ages, and perfect man in the last days for our salvation. The Council of Chalcedon in the decree of faith promulgated at action 3 affirms Christ the Lord to be the same perfect in Divinity and perfect in humanity: God and man truly the same out of rational soul and body: consubstantial to the Father according to Divinity, and consubstantial to us according to humanity, and like to us in all things without sin: which the Symbol of Athanasius expressed in the same sentiment: Perfect, he says, God, perfect man, subsisting out of rational soul and human flesh. It would be long and superfluous here to write all the definitions of later Councils and authorities of the Holy Fathers, by which this Catholic truth is taught and confirmed: yet it pleases us to prove it by arguments which most of the Fathers use for confirming the same truth.

The first argument is deduced from this, that unless the human nature of Christ were integral, it would not be true, nor Christ true man, and therefore neither would He be man altogether: for what something truly is not, that simply it is not: thus Tertullian argues in the book On the Flesh of Christ: Otherwise, he says, Christ would not be called man without flesh: nor son of man without some parent man, just as neither God without Spirit of God, nor Son of God without God the Father... why do you halve Christ with a lie? The whole was truth. Hence book On the Resurrection of the Flesh chapter 10.

Moreover neither is the soul by itself man, which after being called a fiction of man is afterward inserted in the body: nor is flesh without soul man, which after the exile of the soul is inscribed corpse: thus the appellation man is in a certain way the clasp of two partner substances, under which appellation they cannot exist except cohering.

Gelasius forms the same reasoning in the book On the Two Natures, proving against the Acephali that Christ consists of two natures, because when the property of one thing is taken away:

In part Christ will be among them neither one, nor integral; and therefore not true: it follows that He be false, because by every mode it tends to this rupture, if anything is naturally removed thence, out of or in which Christ is one and integral: consequently on this account also true: therefore in order that He be true, it is necessary that He be integral: that He be integral one, and the same will persist.

Such is Gelasius.

The second argument can be drawn from St. Irenaeus, book 5 Against Heresies, chapter 1, and thus be retorted against Basilides: if Christ had been man only in species and according to appearance, there would be no difference between His incarnation and the apparitions made to the ancient patriarchs and prophets. For in those visions He appeared under the species of a sensible body. But this is openly false, both because those things said of the incarnation cannot be verified of such apparitions, namely that God was made man, that He died etc., and because as those visions represented the future true advent of Christ in the flesh, so the incarnation would be only a forewarning of another advent of Christ in true humanity. Such are the words of St. Irenaeus:

If when He was not man He appeared as man: neither did that which He truly was persevere, that is the Spirit of God, since the Spirit is invisible: nor was truth in Him in any way: for He was not what He seemed. But we have foretold that Abraham and the other prophets saw Him prophetically, prophesying through vision that which was to be: therefore if now also He so appeared, not being what He seemed, a certain prophetic vision was made to men, and one ought to await His last advent, in which He will truly be such as He is now seen prophetically.

The third argument is drawn from the same St. Irenaeus, who also supplies many others in the same place. Nothing more constant is asserted in Sacred Scripture than that Christ delivered up His body to be crucified for us, and washed away our sins with His own blood, and also taught us by word and example: but no one will say that we are redeemed in appearance only, and that the price for sins was paid putatively only. Therefore with His own blood, says St. Irenaeus in the cited place,

redeeming us as Lord, and giving His soul for our soul and His flesh for our flesh, and pouring forth the Spirit of the Father unto the union and communion of God and men, bringing down God indeed to men through the Spirit, but placing man again upon God through the incarnation, and firmly and truly in His advent granting us incorruption through communion which is with God, all the doctrines of heretics were blinded.

He concludes the same from this, that Christ was our true and only teacher and not merely in appearance:

For, he says, otherwise we could not learn the things that are of God unless our Teacher, being the Word, had been made man. Nor could another narrate to us the things of the Father, except His own Word. For who else knows the sense of the Lord? or who else has been made His counselor? Nor again could we learn otherwise than by seeing our Teacher, and perceiving through our hearing His voice, that we might be imitators indeed of His works and receive perfect proof.

Again book 3 against heresies, chapter 20:

If our Teacher, he says, did not truly suffer, no grace is to Him, since there was no passion: and when shall we begin truly to suffer, He will seem seducing us, exhorting us to seize and offer the other cheek, if He did not first suffer that in truth: and just as He seduced them so that He seemed to them Himself that which He was not, so He seduces us exhorting us to bear those things which He did not bear. Nay rather we shall be above the Teacher, while we are thought truly to suffer and sustain those things which neither did the Teacher suffer nor sustain: how then did He suffer leaving us an example that we should follow His footsteps, if He suffered only in specious pretence?

The fourth argument most of the Fathers suggest, which can thus be proposed: Truth, as it cannot be deceived, so it cannot deceive: but if the Son of God had assumed only a phantom of a man, He would have deceived men. Thus St. Augustine book 83 Questions, question 11: If the body of Christ was a phantom, Christ deceived: and if He deceives, He is not truth. But Christ is truth: therefore His body was not a phantom. The same reason St. Epiphanius thus presses:

But surely jocular prestidigitations must have been employed by the Word of God, that He might deliver another to death and to undergo the punishment of the cross in His stead (namely Simon of Cyrene whom Basilides feigned crucified for Christ); especially He who said: I am the truth and the life. Yet it belongs not to life to procure death for another: nor to truth, which truly indwells in itself, to dissemble it, and show other things for others: for truth ceases to be, if it be an artificer of fraud and error, and hide its very own work.

He adds still further to undermine that invention of Basilides:

If that Simon of Cyrene was lifted upon the cross, therefore salvation is not wrought for us through Christ, but through Simon: nor ought the world anymore hope to be saved through Christ, seeing that He in no wise suffered: neither through Simon, for Simon cannot be a cause of salvation: pure and mere man indeed, and nothing more.

The fifth argument is sought from this, that Christ the Redeemer ought to be among us and God a surety and reconciler, that is, a middle, or, as Scripture speaks, a Mediator: but it beseemed such a Mediator to embrace both, either part, in Himself, that He might the more easily establish concord. Thus argues St. Hilary book 9 near the beginning:

The Mediator, he says, Himself constituted in Himself for the salvation of the Church, and by that very sacrament of mediator between God and man existing as one with each, while He Himself from natures united into the same is the same thing of either nature; so however that He lacked neither in either.

St. Fulgentius urges this argument with luculent words book 1 to Trasimundus chapter 15, where he says:

Not in vain was the man Jesus Christ called Mediator of God and men: except because the same God received in Himself the whole nature of man, and the same man has in Himself the whole substance of Deity. For because man through sin was separated from God: between God wrathful and man sinning there must intervene the person of such a Mediator, which for propitiating God to man would have in itself the whole true God born of God, and for reconciling man to God would contain in itself the whole true man born of man.

The Heretics objected: He who was made in the likeness of men is not truly man but in appearance only: but the Son of God is said Philippians 2 to have been made in the likeness of men and found in fashion as a man: therefore He was not truly but in appearance only man.

I answer denying the major. For likeness does not always exclude truth, nay it says something common to things which are called similar; and supposes something whereby those same things differ. For likeness does not say entire identity, nor even does it say entire diversity, but there intervenes some agreement together with some discrepancy. Thus, to come to the minor, Christ is said to have been made in the likeness of men, because He agrees with them in human nature; but differs both by reason of the supposit, which in other men is created, in Him truly divine, and by reason of conception, because He was conceived not by the ordinary way but through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit of the Virgin; and by reason of state, for others are liable to sin and servants, but He immune from all sin and alien to it; whence it is said Romans 8: God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And Hebrews 4 it is had that Christ was tempted in all things according to likeness without sin, by which it is intimated that He had the truth of flesh, not of sin, and is in all things like unto us.

Tertullian explains this expressly, book 5 against Marcion, chapter 14:

Suppose now, he says, likeness of substance is said; truth of substance will not on that account be denied. Why then like, if true? Because true indeed, but not from seed; like in state, but true in sense, not dissimilarly true. Moreover in contraries there is no likeness. Spirit would not be called likeness of flesh, because neither would flesh take on the likeness of spirit, but it would be called phantom if what was not seemed to be. But likeness is said when that which seems exists: for it exists while it equals another. But a phantom, which only seems, is not a likeness.

And in the same place:

If, he says, the Father sent the Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, the flesh which appeared in Him will not on that account be said a phantom. Therefore understand the Son sent in the likeness of the flesh of sin thus: that He might redeem the flesh of sin by similar substance, namely flesh which should be like to sinning flesh, while itself is not sinful. For this also will be the power of God, to accomplish salvation in equal substance: for it would be neither great nor wonderful if the Spirit of God remedied flesh; but if flesh quite similar to sinning flesh did this, while it is flesh, but not of sin. Thus likeness will pertain not to the title of sin, not to the falsehood of substance.

Then the cited context ought to be understood as the following ones are understood Genesis 2: God saith: those contexts can no more be so explained that wife and son of Adam had not His true nature, than that the Son of God is not consubstantial to the Father. Therefore from the fact that Christ is said to have been made in the likeness of men, it is badly inferred that He is not true man. Wherefore to remove even the least suspicion concerning the truth of the humanity of Christ arising from these words, that truth is established there in these words: He humbled himself, being made obedient unto death; for neither could He exercise that highest humility and obedience and suffer death unless He had been true man.

You will urge: He who condemned flesh did not assume true flesh: but Christ condemned flesh through His Apostle saying 1 Cor. 15, v. 50: Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God: therefore etc.

I distinguish the minor. He condemned flesh, that is, the works of the flesh, I grant; that is, the substance of flesh, I deny. Thus Tertullian distinguishes in the cited place. But he himself discoursing how he would not have us be in the flesh while we are in the flesh, namely that we not be in the works of the flesh, shows he wrote this reason: flesh and blood cannot attain the kingdom of God; condemning not the substance but its works; which because they can be not admitted by us while still placed in the flesh, will pertain not to the guilt of substance but to conduct.

You will object 2: The Son of God appeared to the holy Fathers in the Old Testament clothed with flesh, nay walked, spoke and ate: yet His flesh was not true but putative: therefore neither in the New Testament did He assume true flesh.

I answer first. With St. Augustine in various places, but especially book 3 On the Trinity, chapters 10 and 11, these apparitions were made by the ministry of Angels, nor did the Son of God appear in His own person.

I answer secondly. According to the opinion of other

Fathers, denying that He did not appear to the ancient fathers in true flesh. For He Himself, says Tertullian, then appeared with the Angels to Abraham in truth indeed of flesh, but as yet unborn, because not yet to die, but also learning already to converse among men. This is had book 3 Against Marcion chapter 9. It can therefore be said that the Son of God then assumed a true body, not indeed hypostatically, but through a peculiar assistance and use.

I answer thirdly denying the consequence. Nay from the fact that those apparitions of God or Angels were made only in human species, because they were figures, it follows that the Son of God in the New Testament appeared in the truth of flesh, that those figures might be fulfilled, since as Tertullian says, in a like cause there would not have been a figure unless the body were of truth. Moreover an empty thing which is a phantom could not take on a figure.

You will urge: Angels appeared to the ancient patriarchs in phantastic flesh, although they walked, spoke, and ate: therefore, although Christ was seen to elicit similar actions, it cannot be gathered that He appeared in true flesh.

I answer. I deny the consequence. For the Angels although they moved a body compacted from air or other matter in the manner of a body informed by human soul, nevertheless they did not exercise actions of corporeal and animal life: whence the Angel says Tobit 10: I seemed indeed to eat and drink with you, but I make use of invisible food, which can be seen by no man. Besides those Angels were neither born, nor suffered, nor died: but Sacred Pages show all these to fall upon Christ.

You will press: Truth of body is unworthy of God who is purest Spirit; therefore etc.

I deny the antecedent. For although, says Tertullian, book 8 Against Marcion, chapter 20, nothing be worthy which God may clothe Himself with, yet whatsoever He shall have clothed Himself with, He makes worthy without falsehood. Add that, as is had in the same place, likeness of flesh was no less unworthy of God than truth, whence, he says, if He disdained it as earthly, why did He likewise despise its image: for the image of nothing to be disdained is to be disdained: likeness follows state.

You will object: If Christ had been perfect man, He would have been part of the world: but this cannot be said, because part of the world cannot bring salvation to the world: therefore He was not perfect man.

I answer 1. The major can be denied: since Christ is not only man but also God, by which reason He is not part of the world but Lord.

I answer secondly. Denying the minor: for what stands in the way that part of the world bring salvation to the world? Indeed it beseemed that man, like unto us, bring salvation to us, according to that of the Psalm: A brother shall not redeem, man shall redeem, not indeed pure man, but God-man, as St. Augustine explains.

Conclusion second. — Christ had a rational soul of the same species with the other souls of men. This also is of faith, as is evident from the preceding Conclusion. And it is proved further by those texts of Scripture in which Christ the Lord spoke concerning His soul. Thus John 12: Now is my soul troubled. And Matthew 26: My soul is sorrowful even unto death. By the name of soul the divine Word cannot here be understood; otherwise it would follow that it is passible and subject to human passions and affections, which not even the Apollinarists themselves admitted, seeing they believed the Word to be true God. Nor can these oracles be taken metaphorically, in the way in which in the Old Testament the soul of God is said, that is, divine will: thus Isaias first: Your new moons, and your solemnities my soul hateth, that is, they are odious to my divinity. For truly by the name of soul Christ sufficiently signified the true vivifying soul of His body distinct from the very divinity, when He says John 12: I have power to lay down my soul; and to take it up again. For this power of laying down the soul was in something distinct from the soul; not indeed in the body, since the body has no power of dismissing and resuming the soul of itself alone: therefore this resided chiefly in the divinity of Christ: therefore the divinity of Christ and His soul are distinguished. Nor can those testimonies be expounded of the sentient soul, both because there is not there speech of any rational sorrow whatsoever, but of voluntary sorrow, as is evident from the following words, yet nevertheless not my will but thine be done. And because from voluntary consideration and attention He excited in Himself that sorrow, as the 6th argues St. Thomas act. 8, which indeed is confirmed from John 10, where Christ addressing the Jews meditating His death thus says: I have power to lay down my soul, and to take it up again. From which it stands that He had liberty of arbitrium, and consequently a rational soul.

Moreover this truth was defined in most many Councils. First indeed in the Roman Council under Pope Damasus in the profession of faith which Theodoretus reports book 5 of History chapter 9; at Ephesus in the epistle of Cyril to Nestorius which is approved there Canon 3; at Chalcedon session 1 and others following: The divine Word assumed integral humanity consisting not of the members of the body only but also of rational soul. This is of faith against Apollinaris. All the holy Fathers hand down the same truth likewise, especially St. Leo in epistles 11, 72 and 93, and St. Augustine book Against Felicianus the Arian c. 13, where he demonstrates that truth with most many reasons, whose principal one he draws from the end of the Incarnation: both because without a rational soul Christ could not have prayed, merited, nor satisfied; and because since He became incarnate to redeem fallen man, He ought to assume that which had principally fallen in man and which most needed redemption; but this is the rational soul.

It can be confirmed even by Philosophical reasons: Since God cannot become form of a body; for form is a constitutive part of the whole composite: but every part denotes imperfection, which must be eliminated far from God. Then, even if He could inform somewhat, since the composite receives its denomination from the form, by no reason would Christ be true man, since He would not have the constitutive form of man. Finally, the rational soul is not in man distinct from the sensitive: therefore if Christ had assumed only a sensitive soul, He would have assumed not the soul of man but of a brute.

Apollinaris objected: If Christ received the whole and perfect man, it is consequent that human cogitations existed in Him: but it cannot come about that there not be in human cogitations something of sin; because, says the Apostle Romans 8: The wisdom of the flesh is death: and the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God; for it is not subject to the law of God. Whence Apollinaris concluded, as Leontius reports, that God did not assume the whole man, seeing that the whole man is not devoid of all sin on this way. The holy Fathers answer, especially St. Athanasius in the book On the salvation of adversaries, denying that vicious cogitations or affections of this kind were in the human nature of Christ: for they are not appendages of that nature but offspring of sin: wherefore in Adam before the fall those cogitations, which are reckoned under the name concupiscence, in no way existed: but, says Athanasius, after he transgressed the mandate he began to be bound by such cogitations: not that God created pressing cogitations of this kind, but that the devil through fraud and deception sowed them upon rational nature, after it was constituted in transgression of the law and rejected by God. Therefore since Christ was infected by utterly no cogitation of sinful Adam, He was immune from cogitations of this kind and the enticements of the flesh.

He objected 2: If Christ had truly had an integral rational soul and human mind, He would also have had two principal moderating faculties of human actions, namely the human mind and the divine will: but this ought not be said, since one moderator sufficed: therefore the other was superfluous: but nothing superfluous ought to have been in Christ: therefore He ought not assume a human mind, since the divine will was most sufficient for moderating His actions.

I deny the minor. For, says St. Maximus martyr in Euth. Panopl. title 1: Just as white wool dyed with the color of purple is not bicolor but of one color only, so in the assumed nature, deified by the mind of man, there are not two principals, God and mind, but one namely, God who made the divine mind. In which words Maximus does not wish the mind to have been extinguished in the soul of Christ through fellowship with divinity, just as the whiteness of wool is abolished when suffused with the redness of purple, but only that, the soul remaining safe and integral, and its principal part, which is the mind, nevertheless that did not hold principality of actions, but since it was imbued and fortified throughout by Divinity, applied itself to its guidance and moderation: so that the divine mind acted the human mind in Christ and governed it.

Conclusion third. — The divine Word did not assume a body formed of celestial matter, but one that was of the same kind with ours. This is of faith against Valentinus saying that Christ took nothing from blessed Mary the Virgin, but brought a body from heaven. But that error is refuted by open oracles of Sacred Scripture in the holy Fathers praised against him and to be adduced below: for thus St. Irenaeus proves our Conclusion book 3 against heresies chapter 32:

If Christ did not receive from man the substance of flesh, he says, neither was He made man, nor son of man; and if He was not made what we were, He accomplished nothing great in suffering and sustaining. But we, because we are a body taken from earth and receiving spirit from God, this also the Word of God became, recapitulating in Himself His own formation: and on account of this He confesses Himself son of man.

And the Apostle to the Galatians manifestly says: God sent his Son made of a woman; and to the Romans: Of his Son who was made to him of the seed of David according to the flesh. Moreover His descent into Mary is superfluous. For what descended into her, if He began to take nothing from her? Or if He had taken nothing from Mary, He never would have perceived those foods that are from earth, by which the body, that which is taken from earth, is nourished: nor fasting 40 days as Moses and Elias would His body hungering seek food: but neither would John His disciple writing of Him have said: But Jesus being wearied with his journey sat: nor would David have proclaimed over Him: Upon the pain of my wounds they have been added: nor would He have wept over Lazarus; nor sweated clots of blood. For all these things are signs of flesh taken from earth; which He recapitulated in Himself, saving His own formation.

Tertullian proves the same truth in five books against Marcion: especially however the book On the Flesh of Christ, whose principal reasons, for the benefit of religious youth to whom this Author is not yet familiar, it pleases us to report here summarily. He proves Christ had true flesh first from His Nativity:

Marcion, he says in chapter 1, in order to deny the flesh of Christ, denied also the Nativity; or, in order to deny the Nativity, denied also the flesh, namely lest the Nativity and the flesh should render testimony to each other and answer for one another, since there is neither a nativity without flesh, nor flesh without a nativity.

Thereupon in chapter 2 he censures Marcion because he cut out the opening chapters of the Gospel of Luke, in which the Nativity and infancy of Christ are delineated:

These devices, I think, says he, Marcion dared to employ in destroying even the original instruments of Christ, lest his flesh should be proved — and with what authority, pray tell? If you are a Prophet: foretell something; if an Apostle: preach publicly; if an Apostolic man: hold the view of the Apostles; if you are merely a Christian: believe what has been handed down; if you are none of these, I shall deservedly say: die — for dead indeed you are by not believing what makes Christians by being believed.

In chapter 3 he proves that this nativity and assumption of flesh is neither impossible nor unbecoming to God:

He cannot say, he says, that if He had been born and had truly put on a man, God would have ceased to be God, losing what He was while assuming what He was not: for there is no peril to His own state for God.

In chapter 4 he shows that this birth from a Virgin is neither unworthy nor foolish for God. Hence he addresses Marcion thus, setting out from his hatred of the nativity once it had been taken up:

Hold forth now, pray, on the filthiness of the genital members within the womb of the elements, the whole curdling of humor and blood, the feeding of the flesh from that same union through nine months; describe the womb swelling day by day, heavy, anxious, bound fast, wholly given over to lust, disgust, and gluttony. Rant away now also at the very birth-pangs of the laboring woman, whether to be honored for its peril or revered for its nature. You shudder assuredly, and so far does it lie poured forth amid its impediments, forgotten and disdained by you: that which is bound in swaddling clothes, that which is twisted in bands, that which is mocked with endearments. Hence, O Marcion, you despise the veneration owed to nature: yet how were you born? You hate the human being as he is born, and how can you love anyone? You plainly did not love yourself when you withdrew from the Church and the faith of Christ; but see whether you please yourself, or whether you were born otherwise. Certainly Christ loved that man in his impurities, coagulated in the womb, brought forth through shameful parts, born amid mockeries: for him He descended, for him He preached; for him He cast Himself down in every humiliation even unto death, and the death of the cross. He surely loved him, whom He redeemed at so great a price. He confirms this in chapter 5, showing that Christ had true flesh, because He truly suffered and was crucified:

For what, he says, is more unworthy of God? What more to be blushed at? To be born, or to die? To bear flesh, or to bear the cross? To be circumcised, or to be crucified? To be reared, to be laid in a manger, or to be entombed in a monument? Answer me here, murderer of truth: did not God truly suffer crucifixion? Did He not truly die, as truly crucified? Was He not truly raised again, as truly dead, namely? Did Paul then wrongly establish among us that the Crucified alone was the cross, wrongly thrust in such a burial, wrongly insist that He was falsely raised? Is our faith therefore false, and all that we hope from Christ but a phantom? Most wicked of men, who excuse the murderers of God. For Christ suffered nothing at their hands, if He suffered nothing truly. Spare the sole hope of the whole world, who destroyest the glory necessary to the faith: whatever in Him seems unworthy is profitable to me: I am saved if I am not ashamed of my Lord. Whoever shall have been ashamed of Me, He says, of him shall I too be ashamed; otherwise I find no materials of shame which may prove me, through contempt of disgrace, nobly shameless and happily foolish: the Son of God was born: I am not ashamed, because it is unfitting; and buried He rose again, it is certain, because it is impossible. But how shall these things be true in Him, if He Himself was not true? If He did not truly possess in Himself what was nailed, what died, what was buried and raised again? Flesh namely suffused with blood, built upon bones, interwoven with nerves, entwined with veins, which knows how to be born and to die, human without doubt, as born of a man.

In chapter 6 he presses hard against Apelles, the disciple of Marcion, who asserted that Christ borrowed flesh from the stars and substances of the upper world, although Angels fashion bodies for themselves out of celestial or aerial matter whenever they appear to men. Therefore he says:

Those who set before us as exemplar of the flesh of Christ that of Angels, saying it was not born, namely fleshy, let them compare, I beg, both the causes of Christ and of the Angels, on account of which they came into flesh. No Angel ever descended in order to be crucified, to undergo death, to be raised from death: if there never was any such cause for embodying Angels, you have the reason why they did not receive flesh by being born. They had not come to die, and therefore neither to be born: but Christ, sent to die, necessarily had also to be born, that He might be able to die; for only what is born is accustomed to die. A mutual debt exists between nativity and mortality: the form of dying is the cause of being born. As truly about to be a man even unto death, it behooved Him to put on that flesh of whose nature it is to die, and further that flesh of which nativity precedes dying.

Then, taking upon himself that passage of Luke 8, where Christ answers: Who is my mother, and who are my brethren? as though He had rejected His mother and brethren, he answers that He said this not to deny His mother, but to make those more excellent who hear the word of God and keep it. He therefore denied His parents in the manner in which He taught them to be denied for the work of God in Matthew 10. Finally in chapter 8, refuting the invention of Apelles, who dreamed that an angel of fire founded celestial things out of penance for a debt, he shows that if from that source the flesh of Christ had been drawn from the elements of sin, it would be sinful from a sinful sense, and would be equal in substance to ours, which Christ disdains to assume as sinful. In chapter 9 he demonstrates that all the signs of truly earthly flesh existed in Christ:

Consider, he says, each single quality: the muscles as clods, the bones as rocks, even certain pebbles around the breasts. Behold the tenacious connections of the sinews and their transplanted roots, the branching courses of the veins like the windings of brooks, the down like moss, the hair like turf; attend likewise to those very treasuries of marrow like mines of flesh: all these are earthly signs of origin, and they existed in Christ: these are the things that concealed Him as the Son of God. For the tokens of earthly flesh we enumerated are so much so, that they belong to our own as well. What do you say of that, ⟦that He takes food and slumbers?⟧ He trembles at death: for the flesh, He says, is weak; lastly He shed blood. These, I suppose, are celestial signs: but how, I ask, could He have been contemned and made to suffer, if anything of celestial nobility had radiated in that flesh?

Finally Tertullian proves in chapter 17 and following, from the fact that Christ was conceived and born of Mary, and not merely in Mary the Virgin:

If the first Adam, he says, is handed down as from the earth, deservedly the following, or last Adam, as the Apostle said, accordingly from the earth, that is, from flesh not yet consigned to generation, was brought forth by God unto a quickening spirit. But reason also defends this here, that God by a rival operation recovered His image and likeness captured by the devil: into the Virgin, still Eve, had crept the word that builds up death: in the Virgin equally was to be introduced the Word of God that builds up life, so that what had perished through such a sex might be restored to salvation through the same sex. Eve believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel: what the former ruined by believing, the latter destroyed by believing: yet Eve then conceived nothing in her womb from the word of the devil: nay rather she did conceive, for thereafter, so that she might bring forth cast out and bring forth in sorrows, the word of the devil made seed for her: finally she brought forth the devil a fratricide: on the contrary Mary brought forth Him who would one day preserve safe the carnal brother of Israel, his own murderer. Into the womb, therefore, God the Word brought down His good brother, that He might escape the memory of the evil brother: thence Christ was to come forth for the salvation of man, from that place whither the condemned had already entered.

And in chapter 20, answering the objection of Valentinus, saying indeed that Christ was born through the Virgin, not of the Virgin, and in the womb, not of the womb; because also the Angel said in dreams to Joseph: What is born in her is of the Holy Ghost; he did not say of her: thus he makes sufficient answer to this objection:

Even if He had said of her, He said in her: for that which was of her was in her: therefore it amounts to the same thing: and both when He said in her, and of her, it accords: because that which was in her was of her. But well does Matthew say the same, tracing the origin of God descending from Abraham down to Mary. Jacob, he says, begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Christ. But Paul too imposes silence upon these Grammarians: God sent, he says, His Son, made of a woman. Was it perhaps through a woman, or in a woman? This the more emphatically, because he says made rather than born; for he would have expressed it more simply by saying born: but by saying made, as also the Word was made flesh, he sealed and asserted that the truth of flesh was made of the Virgin.

And in chapter 21:

I will go even further against their meeting: behold, says Isaiah, a virgin shall conceive in the womb. What then? Assuredly the Word of God, not the seed of man, certainly so as to bear a Son, for

and she shall bear, he says, a Son: therefore as it belonged to Him that she conceived, so what she bore belongs to Him: although that which she conceived may not have been His. On the contrary, if the Word became flesh of itself, for it conceived and bore itself, then the prophecy falls void. For the Virgin neither conceived nor bore, unless whatever she bore from the conception of the Word is flesh of her own. Shall this alone voice of the prophet be evacuated? or also the Angels announcing the conception and birth of the Virgin? or also all Scripture already, whatsoever announces the mother of Christ; for how a mother, except because He was in her womb? but He received nothing from her womb which would make her mother, in whose womb He was.

This name foreign flesh ought not to claim. The womb of a mother names none but the daughter of the womb, flesh. Further, there is no daughter of the womb, if she is born of herself. Shall then Elizabeth also be silent, bearing a prophet, an infant already conscious of his Lord, and moreover filled with the Holy Ghost? For not without cause does she say: and whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? if Mary carried in her womb not a Son but a guest, Jesus, how does she say: blessed is the fruit of thy womb? What fruit of the womb is this, which did not spring from the womb, which took no root in the womb? which is not His whose is the womb, and which assuredly is fruit of the womb? It is Christ; therefore of this fruit God swears that He shall sit upon the throne of David, from the loins of David, that is, from the posterity of his flesh; if from the loins of David, how much more from the loins of Mary, for whose sake He was in the loins of David?

And in chapter 22. Matthew, the most faithful commentator of the Gospel, as companion of the Lord, for no other cause than to make us partakers of the carnal origin of Christ, thus arose: the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. From these fountains of origin, with the stock flowing on, when the order is gradually traced down to the nativity of Christ, what else is described than the very flesh itself of Abraham and David, through each of its successive generations descending even into the Virgin, dwelling inwardly in Christ? but Paul also, as both disciple and master and witness of the same Gospel, since he is the apostle of the same Christ, confirms Christ of the seed of David according to the flesh, namely of that same flesh. Therefore the flesh of Christ is of the seed of David; but according to the flesh of Mary it is of the seed of David: therefore it is of the flesh of Mary, while it is of the seed of David.

And further below: What quality of flesh ought we and can we acknowledge in Christ? surely none other than Abraham's: since Christ is the seed of Abraham: nor any other than Jesse's, since Christ is from the root of Jesse: nor any other than David's, since Christ is the fruit from the loins of David: nor any other than Mary's, since Christ is from the womb of Mary: nor any consequent one other than Adam's, since Christ is the second Adam. Consequently they must either contend that those men had spiritual flesh, whereby the same condition of substance is traced down into Christ; or grant that the flesh of Christ was not spiritual, which is not reckoned as of a spiritual stock.

You will say. — St. Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 says: If we have known Christ according to the flesh, but now we know him so no longer, that is, as Faustus Vanichaeus explained, Paul at first thought Christ had true flesh; but later, having become more learned, he changed his opinion, and acknowledged Him veiled not in true but only in apparent flesh.

I answer, that exposition of Faustus is impious. Whence a twofold sense can be assigned to that oracle: First, that Paul speaks of that time when he was persecuting Christ in His faithful ones; as though he said, although at one time according to the flesh, that is, judging carnally concerning Christ, we held an unworthy estimation of Him, yet now we know Him so no longer, or esteem Him thus. Or the second sense can be, that he speaks of the condition of passible flesh, in which he knew Christ while He led a mortal life: but now knows Him no longer such. Which exposition is given in the acts 6 of the VIIth Synod, and by Augustine book 11 against Faustus, and fits the words of Paul; since he afterwards subjoins: and who live now may not live to themselves, but to him who died for them, and rose again.

You will say 2. — The same Apostle in 1 Corinthians 15 teaches that Christ is the heavenly man come down from heaven to earth; for he says: The first man was of the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly; but Christ is not called the heavenly man except by reason of a body formed from celestial matter: therefore the body of Christ was not of the same substance and nature as ours. — The same thing St. John teaches us in chapter 3 of his Gospel, where we read: No man ascendeth into heaven, but he that descendeth from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven. And chapter 6: I am the living bread which came down from heaven, says Christ the Lord.

I answer, by distinguishing and expounding such contexts: Christ is a heavenly man and descended from heaven by reason of His person and divine nature, I concede; by reason of the assumed body, I deny. Or that the very body of Christ came down from heaven by reason of the matter of which it was compacted, I deny: by reason of the power by which it was formed, I concede. Thus St. Hilary expounds these passages of sacred Scripture, lib. 10. De Trinitate: Hence the Lord Himself showed that greatest and most beautiful mystery of the man assumed, saying: no man ascendeth into heaven, etc. That He descended from heaven is the cause of His origin conceived of the Spirit. For Mary gave the body no origin from herself; although toward the growth and birth of the body she contributed everything natural to her sex. That the Son of man is so called is the issue of the flesh assumed in the Virgin. And afterward, explaining how God, who fills all things and is everywhere, could descend, he says the Word descended because He began to be present in a certain special manner in the assumed body, in which He was not previously present on earth: because the power of the Word, he says, had not remained in the earth after bodily modes, and there was not wanting whence He might descend. — And soon after: The Apostle spoke absolutely, saying: the first man of the mire, the second man from heaven; for by saying man he taught the nativity from the Virgin: which workshop executed the nature of her maternal sex in conception and birth: and when he says the second man from heaven, he attested His origin from the approach of the Holy Spirit supervening upon the Virgin: and thus He both is man, and is from the heavens: the offspring of this man is both from the Virgin, and conceived of the Spirit. Finally, in the same place he adds: The Lord Himself, unfolding the mystery of this nativity, spoke thus: I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of my bread he shall live forever; calling Himself His own bread: for He Himself is the origin of His own body; lest indeed the power and nature of the Word be thought to have failed of itself in the flesh by this, that descending from the heavens He is bread, He showed that His body did not take its origin from human conception. But whereas the profession of His own bread is that of the body assumed through the Word, for he subjoined: unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you; that by the bread descending from heaven, and by the flesh of the Son of man, the assumption may be understood both of flesh conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin. — Wherefore Christ is not called the heavenly man because His body was compacted of celestial matter, but He is so called according to His person, by which He is divine by reason of the formation of His body, because it was formed by the power of the Holy Ghost without seed: or He is called a heavenly man because He lived a heavenly life: wherefore the same Apostle calls men imitating Christ celestial in the same place: but Adam is said to be the earthly man, as subjected to sin: wherefore St. Paul subjoins: Such as the earthly is, such also are the earthly; such as the heavenly is, such also are the heavenly. In which manner Tertullian also explains it, book De carne Christi, chapter 8. Not, he says, with respect to difference of matter, but only did he oppose the earthly substance of the flesh of the first man behind, namely, to the celestial substance of the Spirit of the second man, namely Christ: and he refers the man to spirit, not to celestial flesh, so that, comparing them thus, it may stand that in this earthly flesh men become celestial, namely by the spirit: but if Christ were celestial also according to the flesh, they would not be compared to Him who are not celestial according to the flesh: if therefore those who become celestial, such as Christ is, bear an earthly substance of flesh; hence also it is confirmed that Christ Himself likewise in earthly flesh was celestial, as are those who are made equal to Him. Thirdly, finally, Christ is called a heavenly man on account of the glory which He had from the beginning: for although it did not redound to His very body from the beginning, but only at His resurrection: nevertheless it was connaturally owed by reason of His union with the Word: but the first man is said to be earthly on account of the mortality contracted from sin. So St. Chrysostom Homily 12 on 1 Corinthians, and Augustine book 15 De Civitate, chapter 23.

You will say 3. — If Christ had assumed earthly flesh, He would have been of worse condition than an Angel, which is not immersed in earthly things in its flesh: yet Christ was not worse than an Angel. Then our like flesh would have obtained the same condition of nativity: but the condition of the flesh of Christ was far different, inasmuch as conceived of the Holy Ghost it caused no burden or pain to the pregnant Virgin: therefore etc.

I distinguish the minor: Christ was not inferior to the Angels qua God, I concede; qua man precisely taken, I deny. They read, Tertullian says, book De carne Christi, chapter 16: Thou hast made him a little less than the Angels, and they deny the inferior substance of Christ, and pronouncing themselves not man but Word acknowledge man mingled with God, and deny the man: they believe He died, and contend that what died was born of incorruption, as though corruption were anything else than death.

I answer the second, distinguishing the major: flesh like ours would have been similarly born if it were the flesh of mere man, I concede: if it were the flesh of man mingled with God, I deny. But Christ is a man mingled with God, to speak with Tertullian, that is, man is personally united to God; whence although He was born of the Virgin in a new and wholly wonderful manner, the Holy Ghost having made her fruitful, He nonetheless had flesh of the same condition as ours as regards substance. Hence Tertullian, chapter 29 of the aforesaid book, says: Christ was born of God, because the Word of God: but since the flesh was not of blood, nor of the will of flesh and of man, nay rather of the will of God was the Word made flesh; for to the flesh, not to the Word, belongs the formal denial of our nativity, because thus the flesh was to be born, not the Word. But denying that He was born also of the will of the flesh, why did He not deny also of the substance of the flesh? For He denied, because He denied of blood; He removed not the substance of flesh, but the matter of seed. We understand, therefore, that the nativity of the Lord was denied of concubinage, which savors of the will of man and of flesh, not of participation of the womb.