On the Flesh of Christ.

 V.

 Chapter II.—Marcion, Who Would Blot Out the Record of Christ’s Nativity, is Rebuked for So Startling a Heresy.

 Chapter III.—Christ’s Nativity Both Possible and Becoming. The Heretical Opinion of Christ’s Apparent Flesh Deceptive and Dishonourable to God, Even o

 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

 Chapter V.—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.

 Chapter VI.—The Doctrine of Apelles Refuted, that Christ’s Body Was of Sidereal Substance, Not Born. Nativity and Mortality are Correlative Circumstan

 Chapter VII.—Explanation of the Lord’s Question About His Mother and His Brethren. Answer to the Cavils of Apelles and Marcion, Who Support Their Deni

 Chapter VIII.—Apelles and His Followers, Displeased with Our Earthly Bodies, Attributed to Christ a Body of a Purer Sort. How Christ Was Heavenly Even

 Chapter IX.—Christ’s Flesh Perfectly Natural, Like Our Own. None of the Supernatural Features Which the Heretics Ascribed to It Discoverable, on a Car

 Chapter X.—Another Class of Heretics Refuted. They Alleged that Christ’s Flesh Was of a Finer Texture, Animalis, Composed of Soul.

 Chapter XI.—The Opposite Extravagance Exposed.  That is Christ with a Soul Composed of Flesh—Corporeal, Though Invisible. Christ’s Soul, Like Ours, Di

 Chapter XII.—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 Resurrec

 Chapter XIII.—Christ’s Human Nature.  The Flesh and the Soul Both Fully and Unconfusedly Contained in It.

 Chapter XIV.—Christ Took Not on Him an Angelic Nature, But the Human. It Was Men, Not Angels, Whom He Came to Save.

 Chapter XV.—The Valentinian Figment of Christ’s Flesh Being of a Spiritual Nature, Examined and Refuted Out of Scripture.

 Chapter XVI.—Christ’s Flesh in Nature, the Same as Ours, Only Sinless. The Difference Between Carnem Peccati and Peccatum Carnis: It is the Latter Whi

 Chapter XVII.—The Similarity of Circumstances Between the First and the Second Adam, as to the Derivation of Their Flesh. An Analogy Also Pleasantly T

 Chapter XVIII.—The Mystery of the Assumption of Our Perfect Human Nature by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He is Here Called, as Often Else

 Chapter XIX.—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

 Chapter XX.—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

 Chapter XXI.—The Word of God Did Not Become Flesh Except in the Virgin’s Womb and of Her Substance. Through His Mother He is Descended from Her Great

 Chapter XXII.—Holy Scripture in the New Testament, Even in Its Very First Verse, Testifies to Christ’s True Flesh.  In Virtue of Which He is Incorpora

 Chapter XXIII.—Simeon’s “Sign that Should Be Contradicted,” Applied to the Heretical Gainsaying of the True Birth of Christ. One of the Heretics’ Para

 Chapter XXIV.—Divine Strictures on Various Heretics Descried in Various Passages of Prophetical Scripture. Those Who Assail the True Doctrine of the O

 Chapter XXV.—Conclusion. This Treatise Forms a Preface to the Other Work, “On the Resurrection of the Flesh,” Proving the Reality of the Flesh Which W

Chapter X.—Another Class of Heretics Refuted. They Alleged that Christ’s Flesh Was of a Finer Texture, Animalis, Composed of Soul.

I now turn to another class, who are equally wise in their own conceit.  They affirm that the flesh of Christ is composed of soul,142    Animalem: “etherialized; of a finer form, differing from gross, earthy matter” (Neander). that His soul became flesh, so that His flesh is soul; and as His flesh is of soul, so is His soul of flesh. But here, again, I must have some reasons. If, in order to save the soul, Christ took a soul within Himself, because it could not be saved except by Him having it within Himself, I see no reason why, in clothing Himself with flesh, He should have made that flesh one of soul,143    Animalem. as if He could not have saved the soul in any other way than by making flesh of it. For while He saves our souls, which are not only not of flesh,144    Non carneas. but are even distinct from flesh, how much more able was He to secure salvation to that soul which He took Himself, when it was also not of flesh? Again, since they assume it as a main tenet,145    Præsumant. that Christ came forth not to deliver the flesh, but only our soul, how absurd it is, in the first place, that, meaning to save only the soul, He yet made it into just that sort of bodily substance which He had no intention of saving! And, secondly, if He had undertaken to deliver our souls by means of that which He carried, He ought, in that soul which He carried to have carried our soul, one (that is) of the same condition as ours; and whatever is the condition of our soul in its secret nature, it is certainly not one of flesh. However, it was not our soul which He saved, if His own was of flesh; for ours is not of flesh. Now, if He did not save our soul on the ground, that it was a soul of flesh which He saved, He is nothing to us, because He has not saved our soul. Nor indeed did it need salvation, for it was not our soul really, since it was, on the supposition,146    Scilicet. a soul of flesh. But yet it is evident that it has been saved. Of flesh, therefore, it was not composed, and it was ours; for it was our soul that was saved, since that was in peril of damnation. We therefore now conclude that as in Christ the soul was not of flesh, so neither could His flesh have possibly been composed of soul.

CAPUT X.

Convertor ad alios aeque sibi prudentes, qui carnem Christi animalem affirmant, quod anima caro sit facta, ergo et caro anima, et sicut caro animalis, ita et anima carnalis. Et hic itaque caussas requiro. Si, ut animam salvam faceret, in semetipso suscepit animam Christus, quia salva non esset nisi per ipsum, dum in ipso; non video cur eam carnem fecerit animalem, induendo carnem, quasi aliter animam salvam 0773B facere non posset, nisi carneam factam. Cum enim nostras animas non tantum non carneas, sed etiam a carne disjunctas salvas praestet; quanto magis illam, quam ipse suscepit, etiam non carneam redigere potuit in salutem! Item cum praesumant non carnis, sed animae nostrae solius liberandae caussa processisse Christum; primo, quam absurdum est, ut animam solam liberaturus, id genus corporis eam fecerit, quod non erat liberaturus! Deinde, si animas nostras per illam, quam gestavit, liberare susceperat, illam quoque, quam gestavit, nostram gestasse debuerat, id est, nostrae formae, cujuscumque formae est in occulto anima nostra, non tamen carneae. Caeterum, non nostram animam liberavit, si carneam habuit; nostra enim carnea non est. 0773C Porro si non nostram liberavit, quia carneam liberavit , nihil ad nos ; quia non nostram liberavit. Sed nec liberanda erat, quae non erat nostra, ut scilicet carnea; non enim periclitabatur, si non erat nostra, id est, non carnea. Sed liberatam constat illam. Ergo non fuit carnea; et fuit nostra, si ea fuit quae liberaretur, quoniam periclitabatur. Jam ergo, si anima non fuit carnalis in Christo, nec caro potest animalis fuisse.