Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] These chapters alone, on which Marcion and Apelles chiefly think themselves well equipped, once rightly interpreted according to the truth of the whole, uncorrupted gospel, ought to have sufficed as proof of the human flesh in Christ, by defending his nativity. [2] But since these Apelleians also make a great show of the disgrace of the flesh -- which they want built up out of that fiery ruler of evil out of souls he had seduced, and therefore unworthy of Christ, and therefore claim his substance came instead from the stars -- I must beat them back with their own equipment. They name some famous angel who set up this world, and having set it up, admitted to repentance. [3] We have dealt with this elsewhere in its proper place -- for we have a treatise against them too -- namely, whether a being endowed with Christ's own spirit, purpose, and power could have done anything in its works deserving of repentance. This same angel they also interpret by the figure of the straying sheep. So then, on the very testimony of its founder's repentance, the world will turn out to be a sin, since every repentance is a confession of wrongdoing, for it has no place except where there is wrongdoing. [4] If the world is a wrongdoing, then in the same way a body and its members will be a wrongdoing, and equally heaven and the heavenly things along with heaven; and if the heavenly things are, then so is whatever has been conceived and brought forth from them. A bad tree must needs bear bad fruit. Christ's flesh, then, if built out of heavenly things, consists of the elements of sin, sinful by its very sinful pedigree -- and it will already be part of that very substance, namely ours, which, as sinful, they disdain to bring into Christ. [5] So then, if the disgrace makes no difference either way, let them either think up some purer sort of material for Christ, one which our flesh displeases them by comparison to, or let them acknowledge the very substance which even a heavenly one could be no better than. We read plainly, "The first man was from the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven"; [6] yet this does not bear on a difference of material, but only sets the heavenly substance of the second man, that is Christ, drawn from spirit, against the prior earthly stuff belonging to the flesh of the first man, that is Adam. And it refers "heavenly" to spirit, not to flesh, to such a degree that those he compares to him are agreed to become heavenly in this very earthly flesh, namely by the spirit; [7] whereas if Christ were heavenly according to the flesh as well, those others would not be compared to him as not being heavenly according to the flesh. If, then, those who become heavenly, of the same sort as Christ, carry an earthly substance of flesh, this in turn confirms that Christ himself too was heavenly in earthly flesh, just as those are who are made equal to him.