On the Flesh of Christ

Tertullian

  1. 1. 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
  2. 2. Marcion, Who Would Blot Out the Record of Christ's Nativity, is Rebuked for So Startling a Heresy
  3. 3. Christ's Nativity Both Possible and Becoming. The Heretical Opinion of Christ's Apparent Flesh Deceptive and Dishonourable to God, Even on Marcion's Principles
  4. 4. 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
  5. 5. Christ Truly Lived and Died in Human Flesh. Incidents of His Human Life on Earth, and Refutation of Marcion's Docetic Parody of the Same
  6. 6. 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
  7. 7. Explanation of the Lord's Question About His Mother and His Brethren. Answer to the Cavils of Apelles and Marcion, Who Support Their Denial of Christ's Nativity by It
  8. 8. Apelles and His Followers, Displeased with Our Earthly Bodies, Attributed to Christ a Body of a Purer Sort. How Christ Was Heavenly Even in His Earthly Flesh
  9. 9. Christ's Flesh Perfectly Natural, Like Our Own. None of the Supernatural Features Which the Heretics Ascribed to It Discoverable, on a Careful View
  10. 10. Another Class of Heretics Refuted. They Alleged that Christ's Flesh Was of a Finer Texture, Animalis, Composed of Soul
  11. 11. The Opposite Extravagance Exposed. That is Christ with a Soul Composed of Flesh — Corporeal, Though Invisible. Christ's Soul, Like Ours, Distinct from Flesh, Though Clothed in It
  12. 12. The True Functions of the Soul. Christ Assumed It in His Perfect Human Nature, Not to Reveal and Explain It, But to Save It. Its Resurrection with the Body Assured by Christ
  13. 13. Christ's Human Nature. The Flesh and the Soul Both Fully and Unconfusedly Contained in It
  14. 14. Christ Took Not on Him an Angelic Nature, But the Human. It Was Men, Not Angels, Whom He Came to Save
  15. 15. The Valentinian Figment of Christ's Flesh Being of a Spiritual Nature, Examined and Refuted Out of Scripture
  16. 16. Christ's Flesh in Nature, the Same as Ours, Only Sinless
  17. 17. The Similarity of Circumstances Between the First and the Second Adam, as to the Derivation of Their Flesh. An Analogy Also Pleasantly Traced Between Eve and the Virgin Mary
  18. 18. The Mystery of the Assumption of Our Perfect Human Nature by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He is Here Called, as Often Elsewhere, the Spirit
  19. 19. Christ, as to His Divine Nature, as the Word of God, Became Flesh, Not by Carnal Conception, Nor by the Will of the Flesh and of Man, But by the Will of God. Christ's Divine Nature, of Its Own Accord, Descended into the Virgin's Womb
  20. 20. Christ Born of a Virgin, of Her Substance. The Physiological Facts of His Real and Exact Birth of a Human Mother, as Suggested by Certain Passages of Scripture
  21. 21. The Word of God Did Not Become Flesh Except in the Virgin's Womb and of Her Substance
  22. 22. Holy Scripture in the New Testament, Even in Its Very First Verse, Testifies to Christ's True Flesh. In Virtue of Which He is Incorporated in the Human Stock of David, and Abraham, and Adam
  23. 23. Simeon's Sign that Should Be Contradicted, Applied to the Heretical Gainsaying of the True Birth of Christ. One of the Heretics' Paradoxes Turned in Support of Catholic Truth
  24. 24. Divine Strictures on Various Heretics Descried in Various Passages of Prophetical Scripture. Those Who Assail the True Doctrine of the One Lord Jesus Christ, Both God and Man, Thus Condemned
  25. 25. Conclusion. This Treatise Forms a Preface to the Other Work, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, Proving the Reality of the Flesh Which Was Truly Born, and Died, and Rose Again

They who are so anxious to shake that belief in the resurrection which was firmly settled before the appearance of our modern Sadducees, 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 resurrection 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. 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 course of her infant too, would have to be regarded as putative. 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 idea of His flesh.