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| Christ Truly Lived and Died in Human Flesh. Incidents of His Human Life on Earth, and Refutation of Marcion's Docetic Parody of the Same.
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Chapter V.—Christ Truly
Lived and Died in Human Flesh. Incidents of His Human Life on Earth,
and Refutation of Marcion’s Docetic Parody of the
Same.
There are, to be sure, other things also quite as
foolish (as the birth of Christ), which have reference to the
humiliations and sufferings of God. Or else, let them call a
crucified God “wisdom.” But Marcion will apply the
knife7001
| 7001 Aufer, Marcion.
Literally, “Destroy this also, O Marcion.” | to this doctrine also, and even with
greater reason. For which is more unworthy of God, which is more likely
to raise a blush of shame, that God should be born, or that He
should die? that He should bear the flesh, or the cross? be
circumcised, or be crucified? be cradled, or be coffined?7002
| 7002 Educari an
sepeliri. | be laid in a manger, or in a tomb? Talk
of “wisdom!” You will show more of that
if you refuse to believe this also. But, after all, you will not be
“wise” unless you become a “fool” to the world,
by believing “the foolish things of God.” Have you, then,
cut away7003
all sufferings from
Christ, on the ground that, as a mere phantom, He was incapable of
experiencing them? We have said above that He might possibly have
undergone the unreal mockeries7004
of an imaginary
birth and infancy. But answer me at once, you that murder truth:
Was not God really crucified? And, having been really crucified,
did He not really die? And, having indeed really died, did He not
really rise again? Falsely did Paul7005
“determine to know nothing amongst us but Jesus and Him
crucified;”7006
falsely has he
impressed upon us that He was buried; falsely inculcated that He rose
again. False, therefore, is our faith also. And all that we hope for
from Christ will be a phantom. O thou most infamous of men, who
acquittest of all guilt7007
the murderers of
God! For nothing did Christ suffer from them, if He really suffered
nothing at all. Spare the whole world’s one only hope, thou who
art destroying the indispensable dishonour of our faith.7008
Whatsoever is unworthy of God, is of gain to
me. I am safe, if I am not ashamed of my Lord. “Whosoever,”
says He, “shall be ashamed of me, of him will I also be
ashamed.”7009
| 7009 Matt. x. 33, Mark viii. 38, and Luke ix.
26. | Other matters for
shame find I none which can prove me to be shameless in a good sense,
and foolish in a happy one, by my own contempt of shame. The Son of God
was crucified; I am not ashamed because men must needs be ashamed of
it. And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be
believed, because it is absurd.7010
And He was
buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is
impossible. But how will all this be true in Him, if He was not
Himself true—if He really had not in Himself that which might be
crucified, might die, might be buried, and might rise again? I
mean this flesh suffused with blood, built up with bones,
interwoven with nerves, entwined with veins, a flesh which knew
how to be born, and how to die, human without doubt, as born of a human
being. It will therefore be mortal in Christ, because Christ is man and
the Son of man. Else why is Christ man and the Son of man, if he
has nothing of man, and nothing from man? Unless it be either that man
is anything else than flesh, or man’s flesh comes from any other
source than man, or Mary is anything else than a human being, or
Marcion’s man is as Marcion’s god.7011
| 7011 That is, imaginary and
unreal. | Otherwise Christ could not be described as
being man without flesh, nor the Son of man without any human parent;
just as He is not God without the Spirit of God, nor the Son of God
without having God for His father. Thus the nature7012
| 7012 Census: “the
origin.” | of the two substances displayed Him as man
and God,—in one respect born, in the other unborn; in one respect
fleshly, in the other spiritual; in one sense weak, in the other
exceeding strong; in one sense dying, in the other living. This
property of the two states—the divine and the human—is
distinctly asserted7013
with equal truth of
both natures alike, with the same belief both in respect of the
Spirit7014
| 7014 This term is
almost a technical designation of the divine nature of Christ in
Tertullian. (See our translation of the Anti-Marcion, p. 247,
note 7, Edin.) | and of the flesh.
The powers of the Spirit,7015
| 7015 This term is
almost a technical designation of the divine nature of Christ in
Tertullian. (See our translation of the Anti-Marcion, p. 247,
note 7, Edin.) | proved Him to be
God, His sufferings attested the flesh of man. If His powers were not
without the Spirit7016
| 7016 This term is
almost a technical designation of the divine nature of Christ in
Tertullian. (See our translation of the Anti-Marcion, p. 247,
note 7, Edin.) | in like manner,
were not His sufferings without the flesh. If His flesh with its
sufferings was fictitious, for the same reason was the Spirit false
with all its powers. Wherefore halve7017
Christ with a
lie? He was wholly the truth. Believe me, He chose rather to be born, than in any part to
pretend—and that indeed to His own detriment—that He was
bearing about a flesh hardened without bones, solid without muscles,
bloody without blood, clothed without the tunic of
skin,7018
| 7018 See his Adv.
Valentin, chap. 25. | hungry without
appetite, eating without teeth, speaking without a tongue, so that His
word was a phantom to the ears through an imaginary voice. A phantom,
too, it was of course after the resurrection, when, showing His hands
and His feet for the disciples to examine, He said, “Behold and
see that it is I myself, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye
see me have;”7019
without doubt,
hands, and feet, and bones are not what a spirit possesses, but
only the flesh. How do you interpret this statement, Marcion,
you who tell us that Jesus comes only from the most excellent God, who
is both simple and good? See how He rather cheats, and deceives,
and juggles the eyes of all, and the senses of all, as well as their
access to and contact with Him! You ought rather to have brought Christ
down, not from heaven, but from some troop of mountebanks, not as God
besides man, but simply as a man, a magician; not as the High Priest of
our salvation, but as the conjurer in a show; not as the raiser of the
dead, but as the misleader7020
of the
living,—except that, if He were a magician, He must have had a
nativity!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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