The Valentinian Figment of Christ's Flesh Being of a Spiritual Nature, Examined and Refuted Out of Scripture

Valentinus, indeed, on the strength of his heretical system, might consistently devise a spiritual flesh for Christ. Any one who refused to believe that that flesh was human might pretend it to be anything he liked, forasmuch as (and this remark is applicable to all heretics), if it was not human, and was not born of man, I do not see of what substance Christ Himself spoke when He called Himself man and the Son of man, saying: "But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth;"⁷¹⁴⁹ and "The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath-day."⁷¹⁵⁰ For it is of Him that Isaiah writes: "A man of suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness;"⁷¹⁵¹ and Jeremiah: "He is a man, and who hath known Him?"⁷¹⁵² and Daniel: "Upon the clouds (He came) as the Son of man."⁷¹⁵³ The Apostle Paul likewise says: "The man Christ Jesus is the one Mediator between God and man."⁷¹⁵⁴ Also Peter, in the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of Him as verily human (when he says), "Jesus Christ was a man approved of God among you."⁷¹⁵⁵ These passages alone ought to suffice as a prescriptive⁷¹⁵⁶ testimony in proof that Christ had human flesh derived from man, and not spiritual, and that His flesh was not composed of soul,⁷¹⁵⁷ nor of stellar substance, and that it was not an imaginary flesh; (and no doubt they would be sufficient) if heretics could only divest themselves of all their contentious warmth and artifice. For, as I have read in some writer of Valentinus' wretched faction,⁷¹⁵⁸ they refuse at the outset to believe that a human and earthly substance was created⁷¹⁵⁹ for Christ, lest the Lord should be regarded as inferior to the angels, who are not formed of earthly flesh; whence, too, it would be necessary that, if His flesh were like ours, it should be similarly born, not of the Spirit, nor of God, but of the will of man. Why, moreover, should it be born, not of corruptible [seed], but of incorruptible? Why, again, since His flesh has both risen and returned to heaven, is not ours, being like His, also taken up at once? Or else, why does not His flesh, since it is like ours, return in like manner to the ground, and suffer dissolution? Such objections even the heathen used constantly to bandy about.⁷¹⁶⁰ Was the Son of God reduced to such a depth of degradation? Again, if He rose again as a precedent for our hope, how is it that nothing like it has been thought desirable (to happen) to ourselves?⁷¹⁶¹ Such views are not improper for heathens and they are fit and natural for the heretics too. For, indeed, what difference is there between them, except it be that the heathen, in not believing, do believe; while the heretics, in believing, do not believe? Then, again, they read: "Thou madest Him a little less than angels;"⁷¹⁶² and they deny the lower nature of that Christ who declares Himself to be, "not a man, but a worm;"⁷¹⁶³ who also had "no form nor comeliness, but His form was ignoble, despised more than all men, a man in suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness."⁷¹⁶⁴ Here they discover a human being mingled with a divine one and so they deny the manhood. They believe that He died, and maintain that a being which has died was born of an incorruptible substance;⁷¹⁶⁵ as if, forsooth, corruptibility⁷¹⁶⁶ were something else than death! But our flesh, too, ought immediately to have risen again. Wait a while. Christ has not yet subdued His enemies, so as to be able to triumph over them in company with His friends.

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 Which Christ Abolished. The Flesh of the First Adam, No Less Than that of the Second Adam, Not Received from Human Seed, Although as Entirely Human as Our Own, Which is Derived from It.

The famous Alexander,⁷¹⁶⁷ too, instigated by his love of disputation in the true fashion of heretical temper, has made himself conspicuous against us; he will have us say that Christ put on flesh of an earthly origin,⁷¹⁶⁸ in order that He might in His own person abolish sinful flesh.⁷¹⁶⁹ Now, even if we did assert this as our opinion, we should be able to defend it in such a way as completely to avoid the extravagant folly which he ascribes to us in making us suppose that the very flesh of Christ was in Himself abolished as being sinful; because we mention our belief (in public),⁷¹⁷⁰ that it is sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven; and we further declare that it will come again from thence in all the pomp⁷¹⁷¹ of the Father's glory: it is therefore just as impossible for us to say that it is abolished, as it is for us to maintain that it is sinful, and so made void, since in it there has been no fault. We maintain, moreover, that what has been abolished in Christ is not carnem peccati, "sinful flesh," but peccatum carnis, "sin in the flesh,"—not the material thing, but its condition;⁷¹⁷² not the substance, but its flaw;⁷¹⁷³ and (this we aver) on the authority of the apostle, who says, "He abolished sin in the flesh."⁷¹⁷⁴ Now in another sentence he says that Christ was "in the likeness of sinful flesh,"⁷¹⁷⁵ not, however, as if He had taken on Him "the likeness of the flesh," in the sense of a semblance of body instead of its reality; but he means us to understand likeness to the flesh which sinned,⁷¹⁷⁶ because the flesh of Christ, which committed no sin itself, resembled that which had sinned,—resembled it in its nature, but not in the corruption it received from Adam; whence we also affirm that there was in Christ the same flesh as that whose nature in man is sinful. In the flesh, therefore, we say that sin has been abolished, because in Christ that same flesh is maintained without sin, which in man was not maintained without sin. Now, it would not contribute to the purpose of Christ's abolishing sin in the flesh, if He did not abolish it in that flesh in which was the nature of sin, nor (would it conduce) to His glory. For surely it would have been no strange thing if He had removed the stain of sin in some better flesh, and one which should possess a different, even a sinless, nature! Then, you say, if He took our flesh, Christ's was a sinful one. Do not, however, fetter with mystery a sense which is quite intelligible. For in putting on our flesh, He made it His own; in making it His own, He made it sinless. A word of caution, however, must be addressed to all who refuse to believe that our flesh was in Christ on the ground that it came not of the seed of a human father,⁷¹⁷⁷ let them remember that Adam himself received this flesh of ours without the seed of a human father. As earth was converted into this flesh of ours without the seed of a human father, so also was it quite possible for the Son of God to take to Himself⁷¹⁷⁸ the substance of the selfsame flesh, without a human father's agency.⁷¹⁷⁹