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| God's Honour in the Incarnation of His Son Vindicated. Marcion's Disparagement of Human Flesh Inconsistent as Well as Impious. Christ Has Cleansed the Flesh. The Foolishness of God is Most Wise.
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Chapter
IV.—God’s Honour in the Incarnation of His Son
Vindicated. Marcion’s Disparagement of Human Flesh
Inconsistent as Well as Impious. Christ Has Cleansed the Flesh. The
Foolishness of God is Most Wise.
Since, therefore, you do not reject the assumption
of a body6986
as impossible or as
hazardous to the character of God, it remains for you to repudiate and
censure it as unworthy of Him. Come now, beginning from the
nativity itself, declaim6987
| 6987 Compare similar
passages in the Anti-Marcion, iii. 1 and iv. 21. | against the
uncleanness of the generative elements within the womb, the filthy
concretion of fluid and blood, of the growth of the flesh for nine
months long out of that very mire. Describe the womb as it
enlarges6988
from day to day,
heavy, troublesome, restless even in sleep, changeful in its feelings
of dislike and desire. Inveigh now likewise against the shame itself of
a woman in travail6989
which, however,
ought rather to be honoured in consideration of that peril, or to be
held sacred6990
in respect of (the
mystery of) nature. Of course you are horrified also at the
infant, which is shed into life with the embarrassments which accompany
it from the womb;6991
| 6991 Cum suis impedimentis
profusum. | you likewise, of
course, loathe it even after it is washed, when it is dressed out in
its swaddling-clothes, graced with repeated anointing,6992
| 6992 Unctionibus
formatur. | smiled on with nurse’s fawns. This
reverend course of nature,6993
| 6993 Hanc venerationem
naturæ. Compare Tertullian’s phrase, “Illa sanctissima
et reverenda opera naturæ,” in the
Anti-Marcion, iii. 11. | you, O Marcion,
(are pleased to) spit upon; and yet, in what way were you born? You
detest a human being at his birth; then after what fashion do you love
anybody? Yourself, of course, you had no love of, when you departed
from the Church and the faith of Christ. But never mind,6994
if you are not on good terms with yourself,
or even if you were born in a way different from other people. Christ,
at any rate, has loved even that man who was condensed in his
mother’s womb amidst all its uncleannesses, even that man who was
brought into life out of the said womb, even that man who was nursed
amidst the nurse’s simpers.6995
| 6995 Per ludibria nutritum.
Compare the phrase just before, “smiled on with nurse’s
fawns”—“blanditiis deridetur.” Oehler, however,
compares the phrase with Tertullian’s expression
(“puerperii spurcos, anxios, ludicros
exitus,”) in the Anti-Marcion, iv.
21. | For his sake
He came down (from heaven), for his sake He preached, for his sake
“He humbled Himself even unto death—the death of the
cross.”6996
He loved, of
course, the being whom He redeemed at so great a cost. If Christ is the
Creator’s Son, it was with justice that He loved His own
(creature); if He comes from another god, His love was excessive, since
He redeemed a being who belonged to another. Well, then, loving man He
loved his nativity also, and his flesh as well. Nothing can be loved
apart from that through which whatever exists has its existence. Either
take away nativity, and then show us your man; or else withdraw
the flesh, and then present to our view the being whom God has
redeemed—since it is these very conditions6997
| 6997 Hæc: i.e.
man’s nativity and his flesh. | which constitute the man whom God has
redeemed. And are you for turning these conditions into
occasions of blushing to the very creature whom He has redeemed,
(censuring them), too, as unworthy of Him who certainly would not have
redeemed them had He not loved them? Our birth He reforms from
death by a second birth from heaven;6998
our flesh He
restores from every harassing malady; when leprous, He cleanses it of
the stain; when blind, He rekindles its light; when palsied, He renews
its strength; when possessed with devils, He exorcises it; when dead,
He reanimates it,—then shall we blush to own it? If, to be
sure,6999
| 6999 Revera. [I cannot let
the words which follow, stand in the text; they are sufficiently
rendered.] | He had chosen to be born of a mere animal,
and were to preach the kingdom of heaven invested with the body of a
beast either wild or tame, your censure (I imagine) would have
instantly met Him with this demurrer: “This is disgraceful for
God, and this is unworthy of the Son of God, and simply foolish.”
For no other reason than because one thus judges. It is of
course foolish, if we are to judge God by our own conceptions. But,
Marcion, consider well this Scripture, if indeed you have not erased
it: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound
the wise.”7000
Now what are those
foolish things? Are they the conversion of men to the worship of the
true God, the rejection of error, the whole training in righteousness,
chastity, mercy, patience, and innocence? These things certainly
are not “foolish.” Inquire again, then, of what things he
spoke, and when you imagine that you have discovered what they are will
you find anything to be so “foolish” as believing in a God
that has been born, and that of a virgin, and of a fleshly nature too,
who wallowed in all the before-mentioned humiliations of nature?
But some one may say, “These are not the foolish things; they
must be other things which God has chosen to confound the wisdom of the
world.” And yet, according to the world’s wisdom, it is
more easy to believe that Jupiter became a bull or a swan, if we listen
to Marcion, than that Christ really became a man.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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