Chapter XX.—The Epistle to the Philippians. The Variances Amongst the Preachers of Christ No Argument that There Was More Than One Only Christ. St. Paul’s Phrases—Form of a Servant, Likeness, and Fashion of a Man—No Sanction of Docetism. No Antithesis (Such as Marcion Alleged) in the God of Judaism and the God of the Gospel Deducible from Certain Contrasts Mentioned in This Epistle. A Parallel with a Passage in Genesis. The Resurrection of the Body, and the Change Thereof.

When (the apostle) mentions the several motives of those who were preaching the gospel, how that some, “waxing confident by his bonds, were more fearless in speaking the word,” while others “preached Christ even out of envy and strife, and again others out of good-will,” many also “out of love,” and certain “out of contention,” and some “in rivalry to himself,”3773    Phil. i. 14–17. he had a favourable opportunity, no doubt,3774    Utique. of taxing what they preached with a diversity of doctrine, as if it were no less than this which caused so great a variance in their tempers. But while he exposes these tempers as the sole cause of the diversity, he avoids inculpating the regular mysteries of the faith,3775    Regulas sacramentorum. and affirms that there is, notwithstanding, but one Christ and His one God, whatever motives men had in preaching Him.  Therefore, says he, it matters not to me “whether it be in pretence or in truth that Christ is preached,”3776    Phil. i. 18. because one Christ alone was announced, whether in their “pretentious” or their “truthful” faith. For it was to the faithfulness of their preaching that he applied the word truth, not to the rightness of the rule itself, because there was indeed but one rule; whereas the conduct of the preachers varied: in some of them it was true, i.e. single-minded, while in others it was sophisticated with over-much learning.  This being the case, it is manifest that that Christ was the subject of their preaching who was always the theme of the prophets. Now, if it were a completely different Christ that was being introduced by the apostle, the novelty of the thing would have produced a diversity (in belief.). For there would not have been wanting, in spite of the novel teaching,3777    Nihilominus. men to interpret the preached gospel of the Creator’s Christ, since the majority of persons everywhere now-a-days are of our way of thinking, rather than on the heretical side. So that the apostle would not in such a passage as the present one have refrained from remarking and censuring the diversity.  Since, however, there is no blame of a diversity, there is no proof of a novelty. Of course3778    Plane. the Marcionites suppose that they have the apostle on their side in the following passage in the matter of Christ’s substance—that in Him there was nothing but a phantom of flesh. For he says of Christ, that, “being in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God;3779    Compare the treatise, De Resur. Carnis, c. vi. (Oehler). but emptied3780    Exhausit ἐκένωσε. Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant,” not the reality, “and was made in the likeness of man,” not a man, “and was found in fashion as a man,”3781    Phil. ii. 6, 7.not in his substance, that is to say, his flesh; just as if to a substance there did not accrue both form and likeness and fashion. It is well for us that in another passage (the apostle) calls Christ “the image of the invisible God.”3782    Col. i. 15. For will it not follow with equal force from that passage, that Christ is not truly God, because the apostle places Him in the image of God, if, (as Marcion contends,) He is not truly man because of His having taken on Him the form or image of a man? For in both cases the true substance will have to be excluded, if image (or “fashion”) and likeness and form shall be claimed for a phantom. But since he is truly God, as the Son of the Father, in His fashion and image, He has been already by the force of this conclusion determined to be truly man, as the Son of man, “found in the fashion” and image “of a man.”  For when he propounded3783    Posuit. Him as thus “found” in the manner3784    Inventum ratione. of a man, he in fact affirmed Him to be most certainly human. For what is found, manifestly possesses existence. Therefore, as He was found to be God by His mighty power, so was He found to be man by reason of His flesh, because the apostle could not have pronounced Him to have “become obedient unto death,”3785    Phil. ii. 8. if He had not been constituted of a mortal substance. Still more plainly does this appear from the apostle’s additional words, “even the death of the cross.”3786    Phil. ii. 8. For he could hardly mean this to be a climax3787    Non enim exaggeraret. to the human suffering, to extol the virtue3788    Virtutem: perhaps the power. of His obedience, if he had known it all to be the imaginary process of a phantom, which rather eluded the cross than experienced it, and which displayed no virtue3789    See the preceding note. in the suffering, but only illusion. But “those things which he had once accounted gain,” and which he enumerates in the preceding verse—“trust in the flesh,” the sign of “circumcision,” his origin as “an Hebrew of the Hebrews,” his descent from “the tribe of Benjamin,” his dignity in the honours of the Pharisee3790    Candidæ pharisaeæ: see Phil. iii. 4–6.—he now reckons to be only “loss” to himself;3791    Phil. iii. 7. (in other words,) it was not the God of the Jews, but their stupid obduracy, which he repudiates. These are also the things “which he counts but dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ”3792    Phil. iii. 8. (but by no means for the rejection of God the Creator); “whilst he has not his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through Him,” i.e. Christ, “the righteousness which is of God.”3793    Phil. iii. 9. Then, say you, according to this distinction the law did not proceed from the God of Christ.  Subtle enough! But here is something still more subtle for you. For when (the apostle) says, “Not (the righteousness) which is of the law, but that which is through Him,” he would not have used the phrase through Him of any other than Him to whom the law belonged. “Our conversation,” says he, “is in heaven.”3794    Phil. iii. 20. I here recognise the Creator’s ancient promise to Abraham: “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven.”3795    Gen. xxii. 17. Therefore “one star differeth from another star in glory.”3796    1 Cor. xv. 41. If, again, Christ in His advent from heaven “shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body,”3797    Phil. iii. 21. [I have adhered to the original Greek, by a trifling verbal change, because Tertullian’s argument requires it.] it follows that this body of ours shall rise again, which is now in a state of humiliation in its sufferings and according to the law of mortality drops into the ground. But how shall it be changed, if it shall have no real existence? If, however, this is only said of those who shall be found in the flesh3798    1 Cor. xv. 51, 52. at the advent of God, and who shall have to be changed,”3799    Deputari, which is an old reading, should certainly be demutari, and so say the best authorities. Oehler reads the former, but contends for the latter. what shall they do who will rise first?  They will have no substance from which to undergo a change. But he says (elsewhere), “We shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord (in the air).”3800    1 Thess. iv. 16, 17. Then, if we are to be caught up alone with them, surely we shall likewise be changed together with them.

CAPUT XX.

Cum praedicationis enumerat varietatem, quod alii ex fiducia vinculorum ejus, audentius sermonem enuntiarent; alii per invidiam et contentionem; quidam vero et per sermonis existimationem , plerique ex dilectione, nonnulli ex aemulatione, jam aliqui et ex simultate Christum praedicarent; erat utique vel hic locus taxandae ipsius praedicationis de diversitate sententiae, quae tantam efficeret etiam animorum varietatem Sed caussas solas animorum, non regulas sacramentorum in diversitate proponens, unum tamen Christum, et unum ejus Deum, quocumque consilio 0522B praedicatum confirmat, et ideo: Nihil mea, inquit, sive caussatione, sive veritate Christus annuntietur; quia unus annuntiabatur, sive ex caussatione, sive ex veritate fidei. Ad fidem enim praedicationis retulit mentionem veritatis, non ad regulae ipsius: quia una quidem erat regula, sed fides praedicantium quorumdam vera, id est simplex, quorumdam nimis docta. Quod cum ita sit, apparet cum Christum praedicatum, qui semper adnuntiabatur. Nam si alius longe ab Apostolo induceretur, fecisset diversitatem novitas rei. Nec enim defuissent, qui praedicationem evangelicam nihilominus in Christum Creatoris interpretarentur; cum et hodie major pars sit omnibus in locis sententiae nostrae, quam haereticae: quo nec hic Apostolus de diversitatis denotatione et increpatione 0522C tacuisset. Ita cum diversitas ne taxatur quidem, novitas non probatur. Plane de substantia Christi putant et hic Marcionitae suffragari Apostolum sibi, quod phantasma carnis fuerit in Christo, cum dicit, quod in effigie Dei constitutus,non rapinam existimavit pariari Deo; sed exhausit semetipsum, accepta effigie servi, non veritate; et in similitudine hominis, non in homine; et figura inventus homo, non substantia, id est non carne: quasi non et figura, et similitudo, et effigies substantiae quoque accedant. Bene autem quod et alibi Christum imaginem Dei invisibilis appellat. Numquid ergo et hic qua in effigie eum Dei collocat? Aeque non erit Deus Christus vere, si nec homo vere fuit in effigie hominis constitutus. Utrobique enim veritas necesse habebit 0522D cludi, si effigies et similitudo et figura phantasmati vindicabitur. Quod si in effigie et imagine, qua Filius Patris vere Dei praedicatus est , etiam in effigie et imagine hominis, qua filius hominis, vere hominem inventum, nam et inventum ratione posuit, id est 0523A certissime hominem: quod enim invenitur, constat esse. Sic et Deus inventus est per virtutem, sicut homo per carnem; quia nec morti subditum pronuntinsset, non in substantia mortali constitutum. Plus est autem quod adjecit: Et mortem crucis. Non enim exaggerat atrocitatem, extollendo virtutem subjectionis , quam imaginariam phantasmate scisset, frustrato potius eam, quam experto; nec virtute functo in passione, sed lusu. Quae autem retro lucri duxerat, quae et supra numerat, gloriam carnis, notam circumcisionis, generis hebraei ex hebraeo censum, titulum tribus Benjamin, pharisaeae candidae dignitatem; haec modo detrimento sibi deputat, non Deum, sed stuporem Judaeorum. Haec ac si stercora existimat, prae comparatione agnitionis Christi, non prae 0523B rejectione Dei Creatoris, habens justitiam, non suam jam quae ex Lege, sed quae per ipsum, scilicet Christum, ex Deo. Ergo, inquis, hac distinctione Lex non ex Deo erat Christi. Subtiliter satis. Accipe itaque subtilius. Cum enim dicit: Non quae ex lege, sed quae per ipsum; non dixisset, per ipsum, de alio, quam cujus fuit lex. Noster, inquit, municipatus in coelis. Agnosco veterem ad Abraham promissionem Creatoris (Gen. XXII, 17): Et faciam semen tuum tanquam stellas in coelo. Ideo et stella a stella differt in gloria. Quod si Christus adveniens de coelis, transfigurabit 0524Acorpus humilitatis nostrae, conformale corpori gloriae suae; resurget ergo corpus hoc nostrum quod humiliatur in passionibus, et in ipsa lege mortis in terram dejectum. Quomodo enim transfigurabit , si nullum erit? Aut si de eis dictum, qui in adventu Dei deprehensi in carne deputari habebunt, quid facient qui primi resurgent? Non habebunt de quo transfigurentur? Atquin, cum illis, dicit, simul rapiemur in nubibus obviam Domino. Si cum illis sublati, utique cum illis et transfigurati.