Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 5

Plenty of other nonsense attacks God's insults and sufferings, or claims God was crucified as a wise strategy. Drop this one too, Marcion—no, drop this one first. What could be more unworthy of God? What is more shameful: to be born or to die? To wear flesh or to wear a cross? To be circumcised or to be nailed up? To be raised or to be buried? To be laid in a manger or shut in a tomb? You would be wiser if you refused to believe any of it. Yet you will not be wise unless you have played the fool in the world's eyes by believing God's foolishness. Did you refuse to cut the sufferings from Christ because, as a phantom, he felt nothing? We already showed he could have endured imaginary mockeries of birth and infancy just as well. But answer me now, you killer of truth. Was God not truly crucified? Was he not truly dead, so that the crucifixion was real? Was he not truly raised, so that the death was real? Does Paul therefore falsely establish that we know nothing but Jesus crucified? Does he falsely insert the burial? Does he falsely drill in the resurrection? Is our faith therefore a lie, and everything we hope from Christ a phantom? Most wicked of men, you excuse God's murderers. If Christ did not truly suffer, he suffered nothing at their hands. Spare the world's only hope. Why destroy the necessary shame of faith? Whatever is unworthy of God works for my salvation. I am saved if I am not ashamed of my Lord. "Whoever is ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of him," he says (Mark 8:38). I find no other grounds for shame that would prove me gloriously shameless and happily foolish through contempt for shame. The Son of God was born; I am not ashamed, because it is shameful. The Son of God died; it is entirely believable because it is absurd. He was buried and rose; it is certain because it is impossible. But how can these be true in him if he himself was not true—if he did not truly possess what could be pierced, what could die, what could be buried and raised: flesh flushed with blood, built on bones, woven with nerves, laced with veins, flesh that knows birth and death? That flesh is undeniably human, born of a human; therefore it is mortal in Christ, because Christ is human and the son of a human. Why call Christ human and the son of a human if he shares nothing of humanity and comes from no human? Unless a human is something other than flesh, or human flesh comes from somewhere other than a human, or Mary is something other than human, or a human is Marcion's god. Otherwise Christ would not be called human without flesh, nor the son of a human without a human parent—just as there is no God without the Spirit of God, no Son of God without God the Father. The census of both substances displays the man and God together: born on one side, unborn on the other; fleshly here, spiritual there; weak here, almighty there; dying here, living there. The property of the two conditions, divine and human, equally distinguished by the true nature of each, is held by the same faith, the same Spirit and flesh. The miracles proved the Spirit of God; the sufferings proved human flesh. If miracles do not happen without the Spirit, sufferings do not happen without flesh. If flesh with its sufferings is a fiction, the Spirit with its miracles is a fraud. Why make Christ half a lie? He was entirely truth. He chose, believe me, to be born rather than to lie in any part, even in himself—so he would not carry flesh without bones, hard without muscles, solid without blood, clothed without a tunic, hungry without food, eating without teeth, speaking without a tongue; so his speech would be a phantom to the ears, a mere image of a voice. He was therefore a phantom even after the resurrection, when he offered his hands and feet for the disciples to inspect: "Look at what I am, for a spirit does not have bones as you see I have—undoubtedly hands and feet and bones, which a spirit lacks, but flesh has" (Luke 24:39). How do you read this voice, Marcion, who derives Jesus from a God who is good, simple, and only good? Look: he deceives, cheats, and fools every eye, every sense, every approach and touch. You should not have brought Christ down from heaven but from some circus troupe; not God-beyond-man but a human magician; not salvation's high priest but a showman's artisan; not the raiser of the dead but the caller-away of the living. Unless, of course, even if he were a magician, he was still born.