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| The General Purport of This Work. The Heretics, Marcion, Apelles, and Valentinus, Wishing to Impugn the Doctrine of the Resurrection, Deprive Christ of All Capacity for Such a Change by Denying His Flesh.
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V.
On the Flesh of Christ.6939
| 6939 In his work
On the Resurrection of the Flesh (chap. ii.), Tertullian refers
to this tract, and calls it “De Carne Domini adversus
quatuor hæreses”: the four heresies being those of Marcion,
Apelles, Basilides, and Valentinus. Pamelius, indeed, designates the
tract by this fuller title instead of the usual one, “De Carne
Christi.” [This tract contains references to works written
while our author was Montanistic, but it contains no positive
Montanism. It should not be dated earlier than a.d. 207.] |
This was written by our author in
confutation of certain heretics who denied the reality of
Christ’s flesh, or at least its identity with human
flesh—fearing that, if they admitted the reality of
Christ’s flesh, they must also admit his resurrection in the
flesh; and, consequently, the resurrection of the human body after
death.
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
————————————
Chapter I.—The General Purport of
This Work. The Heretics, Marcion, Apelles, and Valentinus, Wishing to
Impugn the Doctrine of the Resurrection, Deprive Christ of All Capacity
for Such a Change by Denying His Flesh.
They who are so anxious to
shake that belief in the resurrection which was firmly settled6940
before the appearance of our modern
Sadducees,6941
| 6941 The allusion is to
Matt. xxii. 23; comp. De Præscr.
Hæret. 33 (Fr. Junius). | as even to deny
that the expectation thereof has any relation whatever to the flesh,
have great cause for besetting the flesh of Christ also with doubtful
questions, as if it either had no existence at all, or possessed a
nature altogether different from human flesh. For they cannot but be
apprehensive that, if it be once determined that Christ’s
flesh was human, a presumption would immediately arise in
opposition to them, that that flesh must by all means rise again, which
has already risen in Christ. Therefore we shall have to guard our
belief in the resurrection6942
| 6942 Tertullian’s
phrase is “carnis vota”—the future prospects of the
flesh. | from the same
armoury, whence they get their weapons of destruction. Let us examine
our Lord’s bodily substance, for about His spiritual nature all
are agreed.6943
It is His flesh
that is in question. Its verity and quality are the points in dispute.
Did it ever exist? whence was it derived? and of what kind was it? If
we succeed in demonstrating it, we shall lay down a law for our own
resurrection. Marcion, in order that he might deny the flesh of Christ,
denied also His nativity, or else he denied His flesh in order that he
might deny His nativity; because, of course, he was afraid that His
nativity and His flesh bore mutual testimony to each other’s
reality, since there is no nativity without flesh, and no flesh without
nativity. As if indeed, under the prompting of that licence which is
ever the same in all heresy, he too might not very well have either
denied the nativity, although admitting the flesh,—like Apelles,
who was first a disciple of his, and afterwards an apostate,—or,
while admitting both the flesh and the nativity, have interpreted them
in a different sense, as did Valentinus, who resembled Apelles both in
his discipleship and desertion of Marcion. At all events, he who
represented the flesh of Christ to be imaginary was equally able to
pass off His nativity as a phantom; so that the virgin’s
conception, and pregnancy, and child-bearing, and then the whole
course6944
of her infant too,
would have to be regarded as putative.6945
| 6945 Τῷ δοκεῖν
haberentur. This term gave name to the Docetic
errors. |
These facts pertaining to the nativity of Christ would escape
the notice of the same eyes and the same senses as failed to grasp the
full idea6946
of His
flesh.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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