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| The Three Several Natures--The Material, the Animal, and the Spiritual, and Their Several Destinations. The Strange Valentinian Opinion About the Structure of Soter's Nature.
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Chapter
XXVI.—The Three Several Natures—The Material, the Animal,
and the Spiritual, and Their Several Destinations. The Strange
Valentinian Opinion About the Structure of Soter’s
Nature.
In like manner they assign to each of them a
separate end.6852
To the material,
that is to say the carnal (nature), which they also call “the
left-handed,” they assign undoubted destruction; to the animal (nature),
which they also call “the right-handed,” a doubtful issue,
inasmuch as it oscillates between the material and the spiritual, and
is sure to fall at last on the side to which it has mainly gravitated.
As regards the spiritual, however, (they say) that it enters into the
formation of the animal, in order that it may be educated in company
with it and be disciplined by repeated intercourse with it. For the
animal (nature) was in want of training even by the senses: for this
purpose, accordingly, was the whole structure of the world provided;
for this purpose also did Soter (the Saviour) present Himself in
the world—even for the salvation of the animal (nature). By yet
another arrangement they will have it that He, in some prodigious
way,6853
clothed Himself with the primary
portions6854
| 6854 Prosicias induisse.
Irenæus says, “Assumed the first-fruits,” τὰς
ἀπαρχάς. | of those
substances, the whole of which He was going to restore to salvation; in
such wise that He assumed the spiritual nature from Achamoth, whilst He
derived the animal (being), Christ, afterwards from the Demiurge; His
corporal substance, however, which was constructed of an animal nature
(only with wonderful and indescribable skill), He wore for a
dispensational purpose, in order that He might, in spite of His own
unwillingness,6855
be capable of
meeting persons, and of being seen and touched by them, and even of
dying. But there was nothing material assumed by Him, inasmuch as
that was incapable of salvation. As if He could possibly have
been more required by any others than by those who were in want of
salvation! And all this, in order that by severing the condition of our
flesh from Christ they may also deprive it of the hope of
salvation!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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