Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But let us set Alexander aside, along with the syllogisms he twists in his arguments, and also the psalms of Valentinus, which with enormous impudence he inserts as though from some qualified author, and turn now to a single line of engagement: did Christ receive his flesh from a virgin? For it is chiefly by this that his flesh will be established as human, if it drew its substance from a human womb — although we might already have established its humanity from the man's name, the condition of his status, the character of his conduct, and the manner of his suffering. [2] But before all else we must explain why it was fitting for the Son of God to come into being through a virgin's womb: he who was to dedicate a new kind of birth had to be born in a new way, and it was of this very birth that the Lord, through Isaiah, was foretold to give a sign. What is that sign? "Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son." And so the virgin conceived and bore Emmanuel, God with us. [3] This is the new birth: a man is born in God, from whom, in a man, God was born, having taken on flesh of the ancient seed without the ancient seed itself — so that he might reshape that flesh with a new seed, that is, a spiritual one, cleansed and purged of the filth of its old origin. But this whole novelty, as with everything else, was prefigured out of the old order, by that rational arrangement in which man, as Lord, was born through a virgin. The virgin was still the earth, not yet pressed by cultivation, not yet subdued by sowing, when man was made from it — we are told — by God, into a living soul. [4] So then, if the first Adam is handed down this way, it is fitting that the second, or last, Adam, as the apostle called him, should likewise be brought forth by God from the earth (that is, the flesh) — flesh not yet given over to human generation — into a life-giving spirit. And yet, lest I leave unaddressed the difficulty raised by the name "Adam" — how could the apostle call Christ "Adam" if the man in him were not of earthly origin? — here too the reasoning defends us: God, by a rival operation, recovered his own image and likeness, which had been seized by the devil. [5] For it was into a virgin that the word which built up death had crept, in Eve's case; so too into a virgin the word of God which builds up life had, in like manner, to be introduced — so that what had gone to ruin through that sex might, through the very same sex, be led back to salvation. Eve believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel. What the one destroyed by believing, the other, by believing, wiped away. "But Eve," you say, "conceived nothing then in her womb from the devil's word." [6] On the contrary, she did conceive. For from that moment when she was cast out to give birth, and to give birth in pain, the devil's word became a seed within her: in the end she bore a devil, a killer of his own brother. Mary, by contrast, brought forth one who would one day save her fleshly brother, Israel, the very one who destroyed him. Into that womb, then, God carried down his Word, the good brother, so as to erase the memory of the evil brother: from there Christ had to come forth for the salvation of man, entering by the same gate through which condemned man had already gone in.