Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 15

Valentinus, invoking the heretic's privilege, also tried to devise a "spiritual flesh" for Christ. Anyone who refused to believe Christ was truly human could imagine His body to be anything at all. After all, as has been said to everyone: if Christ was not human, and not from a human being, I cannot see from what substance He would have called Himself a human being and the Son of Man. Jesus said, "Now you want to kill me, a man who has told you the truth" (John 8:40), and "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" (Mark 2:28). Isaiah speaks of Him: "A man of suffering, acquainted with weakness" (Isaiah 53:3). Jeremiah asks: "He is a man, and who can know him?" (Jeremiah 17:9 LXX). Daniel sees "one like a son of man coming with the clouds" (Daniel 7:13). The apostle Paul writes: "The mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). Peter declares in Acts: "Jesus of Nazareth, a man accredited by God to you" (Acts 2:22). These testimonies alone should have been sufficient proof that Christ's flesh was human, taken from a human being — not spiritual, just as it was not animal, celestial, or imaginary — if heresies could exist without the zeal and artifice of contention.

I have read the writings of a certain Valentinian. First, they deny that Christ's substance was formed from earthly, human material, lest the Lord be found inferior to the angels, who were not made of earthly flesh. Then they claim it was necessary for Him to be born with flesh similar to ours, but not from the Spirit, nor from God, but from the will of a man. But why from incorruption rather than corruption? And why, if that flesh rose and was taken up into heaven, is our flesh — equal to His — not immediately assumed? Or why, if that flesh was equal to ours, was it not equally dissolved into the earth? Even pagans raise such objections: "Was the Son of God reduced to such depths of humility?" And: "If He rose as the pattern of our hope, why has nothing similar been proven in us?" Pagans deserve to ask these things, but so do heretics. What difference is there between them, except that pagans, by not believing, believe, while heretics, by believing, do not believe?

Finally, they read: "You made him a little lower than the angels" (Psalm 8:5), yet they deny that Christ's substance is inferior. They refuse to call Him a man, calling Him instead a worm — "who had no form or comeliness" (Isaiah 53:2), "a man of suffering, acquainted with weakness" (Isaiah 53:3). They acknowledge a man mixed with God, yet they deny the man. They believe He died, yet they contend that what is dead was born from incorruption — as if corruption were something other than death. "But our flesh ought to have risen immediately." Wait. Christ has not yet crushed His enemies, so that He may triumph over them together with His friends.