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| The Doctrine of Apelles Refuted, that Christ's Body Was of Sidereal Substance, Not Born. Nativity and Mortality are Correlative Circumstances, and in Christ's Case His Death Proves His Birth.
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Chapter VI.—The Doctrine of Apelles Refuted, that
Christ’s Body Was of Sidereal Substance, Not Born. Nativity and
Mortality are Correlative Circumstances, and in Christ’s Case His
Death Proves His Birth.
But certain disciples7021
| 7021 He has Appelles mainly
in view. | of
the heretic of Pontus, compelled to be wiser than their teacher,
concede to Christ real flesh, without effect, however, on7022
| 7022 Sine præjudicio
tamen. “Without prejudice to their denial, etc.” | their denial of His nativity. He might have
had, they say, a flesh which was not at all born. So we have found our
way “out of a frying-pan,” as the proverb runs, “into
the fire,”7023
—from Marcion
to Apelles. This man having first fallen from the principles of Marcion
into (intercourse with) a woman, in the flesh, and afterwards
shipwrecked himself, in the spirit, on the virgin Philumene,7024
| 7024 See Tertullian, de
Præscr. Hæret. c. xxx. | proceeded from that time7025
| 7025 Ab eo: or,
“from that event of the carnal contact.” A
good reading, found in most of the old books, is ab ea,
that is, Philumene. | to preach that the body of Christ was of
solid flesh, but without having been born. To this angel, indeed, of
Philumene, the apostle will reply in tones like those in which he even
then predicted him, saying, “Although an angel from heaven preach
any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you,
let him be accursed.”7026
To the arguments,
however, which have been indicated just above, we have now to show our
resistance. They allow that Christ really had a body. Whence was the
material of it, if not from the same sort of thing as7027
| 7027 Ex ea qualitate in
qua. | that in which He appeared? Whence came His
body, if His body were not flesh? Whence came His flesh, if it
were not born? Inasmuch as that which is born must undergo this
nativity in order to become flesh. He borrowed, they say, His
flesh from the stars, and from the substances of the higher world. And
they assert it for a certain principle, that a body without nativity is
nothing to be astonished at, because it has been submitted to angels to
appear even amongst ourselves in the flesh without the intervention of
the womb. We admit, of course, that such facts have been related.
But then, how comes it to pass that a faith which holds to a different
rule borrows materials for its own arguments from the faith which it
impugns? What has it to do with Moses, who has rejected the God of
Moses? Since the God is a different one, everything belonging to him
must be different also. But let the heretics always use the
Scriptures of that God whose world they also enjoy. The fact will
certainly recoil on them as a witness to judge them, that they maintain
their own blasphemies from examples derived from Him.7028
| 7028 Ipsius: the
Creator. | But it is an easy task for the truth to
prevail without raising any such demurrer against them. When,
therefore, they set forth the flesh of Christ after the pattern of the
angels, declaring it to be not born, and yet flesh for all that, I
should wish them to compare the causes, both in Christ’s case and
that of the angels, wherefore they came in the flesh. Never did any
angel descend for the purpose of being crucified, of tasting death,
and of rising again from the dead. Now, since there never was
such a reason for angels becoming embodied, you have the cause why they
assumed flesh without undergoing birth. They had not come to die,
therefore they also (came not) to be born. Christ, however, having been
sent to die, had necessarily to be also born, that He might be capable
of death; for nothing is in the habit of dying but that
which is born. Between
nativity and mortality there is a mutual contrast. The law7029
which makes us die is the cause of our being
born. Now, since Christ died owing to the condition which undergoes
death, but that undergoes death which is also born, the consequence
was—nay, it was an antecedent necessity—that He must have
been born also,7030
by reason of the
condition which undergoes birth; because He had to die in obedience to
that very condition which, because it begins with birth, ends in
death.7031
| 7031 Quod, quia nascitur,
moritur. | It was not fitting
for Him not to be born under the pretence7032
that it was fitting for Him to die. But the Lord Himself at that very
time appeared to Abraham amongst those angels without being born, and
yet in the flesh without doubt, in virtue of the before-mentioned
diversity of cause. You, however, cannot admit this, since you do
not receive that Christ, who was even then rehearsing7033
| 7033 Ediscebat.
Compare a fine passage of Tertullian on this subject in our
Anti-Marcion, note 10, p. 112, Edin. | how to converse with, and liberate, and
judge the human race, in the habit of a flesh which as yet was not
born, because it did not yet mean to die until both its nativity and
mortality were previously (by prophecy) announced. Let them, then,
prove to us that those angels derived their flesh from the stars. If
they do not prove it because it is not written, neither will the flesh
of Christ get its origin therefrom, for which they borrowed the
precedent of the angels. It is plain that the angels bore a flesh which
was not naturally their own; their nature being of a spiritual
substance, although in some sense peculiar to themselves, corporeal;
and yet they could be transfigured into human shape, and for the time
be able to appear and have intercourse with men. Since, therefore, it
has not been told us whence they obtained their flesh, it remains for
us not to doubt in our minds that a property of angelic power is this,
to assume to themselves bodily shape out of no material substance. How
much more, you say, is it (within their competence to take a body) out
of some material substance? That is true enough. But there is no
evidence of this, because Scripture says nothing. Then, again,7034
how should they who are able to form
themselves into that which by nature they are not, be unable to do this
out of no material substance? If they become that which they are not,
why cannot they so become out of that which is not? But that
which has not existence when it comes into existence, is made
out of nothing. This is why it is unnecessary either to inquire or to
demonstrate what has subsequently become of their7035
bodies. What came out of nothing, came to
nothing. They, who were able to convert themselves into flesh
have it in their power to convert nothing itself into flesh. It
is a greater thing to change a nature than to make matter. But even if
it were necessary to suppose that angels derived their flesh
from some material substance, it is surely more credible that it was
from some earthly matter than from any kind of celestial substances,
since it was composed of so palpably terrene a quality that it fed on
earthly ailments. Suppose that even now a celestial
flesh7036
| 7036 Sidera. Drawn, as they
thought, from the stars. | had fed on earthly
aliments, although it was not itself earthly, in the same way that
earthly flesh actually fed on celestial aliments, although it had
nothing of the celestial nature (for we read of manna having been food
for the people: “Man,” says the Psalmist, “did
eat angels’ bread,”7037
) yet this does
not once infringe the separate condition of the Lord’s flesh,
because of His different destination. For One who was to be truly
a man, even unto death, it was necessary that He should be clothed with
that flesh to which death belongs. Now that flesh to which death
belongs is preceded by birth.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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