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| Refutation of Marcion's Objections Derived from the Cases of the Angels, and the Pre-Incarnate Manifestations of the Son of God.
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Chapter IX.—Refutation of
Marcion’s Objections Derived from the Cases of the Angels, and
the Pre-Incarnate Manifestations of the Son of God.
Now, in this discussion of yours,3222
| 3222 Ista. [See Kaye, p.
205.] | when you suppose that we are to be met with
the case of the Creator’s angels, as if they held intercourse
with Abraham and Lot in a phantom state, that of merely putative
flesh,3223
| 3223 [Pamelius attributes
this doctrine to Appelles a disciple of Marcion, of whom see Kaye, pp.
479, 480.] | and yet did truly
converse, and eat, and work, as they had been commissioned to do, you
will not, to begin with, be permitted to use as examples the acts of
that God whom you are destroying. For by how much you make your god a
better and more perfect being, by just so much will all examples be
unsuitable to him of that God from whom he totally differs, and without
which difference he would not be at all better or more perfect. But
then, secondly, you must know that it will not be conceded to you, that
in the angels there was only a putative flesh, but one of a true and
solid human substance. For if (on your terms) it was no difficulty to
him to manifest true sensations and actions in a putative flesh, it was
much more easy for him still to have assigned the true substance of
flesh to these true sensations and actions, as the proper maker and
former thereof. But your god, perhaps on the ground of his having
produced no flesh at all, was quite right in introducing the mere
phantom of that of which he had been unable to produce the reality. My
God, however, who formed that which He had taken out of the dust of the
ground in the true quality of flesh, although not issuing as yet from
conjugal seed, was equally able to apply to angels too a flesh of any
material whatsoever, who built even the world out of nothing, into so
many and so various bodies, and that at a word! And, really, if your
god promises to men some time or other the true nature of
angels3224
(for he says, “They shall be like the
angels”), why should not my God also have fitted on to angels the
true substance of men, from whatever source derived? For not even you
will tell me, in reply, whence is obtained that angelic nature on your
side; so that it is enough for me to define this as being fit and
proper to God, even the verity of that thing which was objective to
three senses—sight, touch, and hearing. It is more difficult for
God to practise deception3225
than to produce
real flesh from any material whatever, even without the means of birth.
But for other heretics, also, who maintain that the flesh in the angels
ought to have been born of flesh, if it had been really human, we have
an answer on a sure principle, to the effect that it was truly
human flesh, and yet not born. It was truly human,
because of the truthfulness of God, who can neither lie nor deceive,
and because (angelic beings) cannot be dealt with by men in a human way
except in human substance: it was withal unborn, because none3226
but Christ could become incarnate by being
born of the flesh in order that by His own nativity He might
regenerate3227
our birth, and
might further by His death also dissolve our death, by rising again in
that flesh in which, that He might even die, He was born. Therefore on
that occasion He did Himself appear with the angels to Abraham in the
verity of the flesh, which had not as yet undergone birth, because it
was not yet going to die, although it was even now learning to hold
intercourse amongst men. Still greater was the propriety in
angels, who never received a dispensation to die for us, not having
assumed even a brief experience3228
of flesh by
being born, because they were not destined to lay it down again by
dying; but, from whatever quarter they obtained it, and by what means
soever they afterwards entirely divested themselves of it, they yet
never pretended it to be unreal flesh. Since the Creator “maketh
His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire”—as
truly spirits as also fire—so has He truly made them flesh
likewise; wherefore we can now recall to our own minds, and remind the
heretics also, that He has promised that He will one day form men into
angels, who once formed angels into men.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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