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| Christ Was Truly Born; Marcion's Absurd Cavil in Defence of a Putative Nativity.
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Chapter XI.—Christ
Was Truly Born; Marcion’s Absurd Cavil in Defence of a Putative
Nativity.
All these illusions of an imaginary corporeity3235
in (his)
Christ, Marcion adopted with this view, that his nativity also might
not be furnished with any evidence from his human substance, and that
thus the Christ of the Creator might be free to have assigned to Him
all predictions which treated of Him as one capable of human birth, and
therefore fleshly. But most foolishly did our Pontic heresiarch act in
this too. As if it would not be more readily believed that flesh in the
Divine Being should rather be unborn than untrue, this belief having in
fact had the way mainly prepared for it by the Creator’s angels
when they conversed in flesh which was real, although unborn. For
indeed the notorious Philumena3236
| 3236 This woman is called
in De Præscr. Hæret. 6, “an angel of
deceit,” and (in 30) “a virgin, but afterwards a monstrous
prostitute.” Our author adds: “Induced by her tricks and
miracles, Apelles introduced a new heresy.” See also Eusebius,
Hist. Eccl. v. 13; Augustin, De Hæres. 42;
Hieronymus, Epist. adv. Ctesiph. p. 477, tom. iv. ed.
Benedictin. | persuaded Apelles
and the other seceders from Marcion rather to believe that Christ did
really carry about a body of flesh; not derived to Him, however, from
birth, but one which He borrowed from the elements. Now, as Marcion was
apprehensive that a belief of the fleshly body would also involve a
belief of birth, undoubtedly He who seemed to be man was believed to be
verily and indeed born. For a certain woman had exclaimed,
“Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast
sucked!”3237
And how else could
they have said that His mother and His brethren were standing
without?3238
But we shall see
more of this in the proper place.3239
| 3239 Below, iv. 26; also in
De carne Christi, cap. vii. | Surely, when
He also proclaimed Himself as the Son of man, He, without doubt,
confessed that He had been born. Now I would rather refer all these
points to an examination of the gospel; but still, as I have already
stated, if he, who seemed to be man, had by all means to pass as having
been born, it was vain for him to suppose that faith in his nativity
was to be perfected3240
| 3240 Expungendam,
“consummated,” a frequent use of the word in our
author. | by the device of an
imaginary flesh. For what advantage was there in that being not true
which was held to be true, whether it were his flesh or his birth? Or
if you should say, let human opinion go for nothing;3241
| 3241 Viderit opinio
humana. | you are then honouring your god under the
shelter of a deception, since he knew himself to be something different
from what he had made men to think of him. In that case you might
possibly have assigned to him a putative nativity even, and so not have
hung the question on this point. For silly women fancy themselves
pregnant sometimes, when they are corpulent3242
either from their natural flux3243
or from some other
malady. And, no doubt, it had become his duty, since he had put on the
mere mask of his substance, to act out from its earliest scene the play
of his phantasy, lest he should have failed in his part at the
beginning of the flesh. You have, of course,3244
| 3244 Plane, ironically
said. |
rejected the sham of a nativity, and have produced true flesh itself.
And, no doubt, even the real nativity of a God is a most mean
thing.3245
Come then, wind up
your cavils3246
against the most
sacred and reverend works of nature; inveigh against all that you are;
destroy the origin of flesh and life; call the womb a sewer of the
illustrious animal—in other words, the manufactory for the
production of man; dilate on the impure and shameful tortures of
parturition, and then on the filthy, troublesome, contemptible issues
of the puerperal labour itself! But yet, after you have pulled all
these things down to infamy, that you may affirm them to be unworthy of
God, birth will not be worse for Him than death, infancy than the
cross, punishment than nature, condemnation than the flesh. If Christ
truly suffered all this, to be born was a less thing for Him. If Christ
suffered evasively,3247
as a phantom;
evasively, too, might He have been born. Such are Marcion’s chief
arguments by which he makes out another Christ; and I think that we
show plainly enough that they are utterly irrelevant, when we teach how
much more truly consistent with God is the reality rather than the
falsehood of that condition3248
in which He
manifested His Christ. Since He was “the truth,” He was
flesh; since He was flesh, He was born. For the points which this
heresy assaults are confirmed, when the means of the assault are
destroyed. Therefore if He is to be considered in the flesh,3249
because He was born; and born, because He is
in the flesh, and because He is no phantom,—it follows that He
must be acknowledged as Himself the very Christ of the Creator, who was
by the Creator’s prophets foretold as about to come in the flesh,
and by the process of human birth.3250
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