Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 5

There are other foolish claims, too, that touch on the insults and sufferings of God—claims that call it prudent for God to have been crucified. Take that one back as well, Marcion; better yet, take it back first of all. What could be more unworthy of God? What is more shameful—to be born or to die? To bear flesh or to bear a cross? To be circumcised or to be nailed up? To be raised or to be buried? To be laid in a manger or hidden in a tomb? You would be wiser if you refused to believe such things. But you will never be wise unless you have become a fool in the world's eyes by believing the foolishness of God. Is that why you stripped the passions from Christ—because as a phantom he was exempt from feeling them? We have already shown he could just as well have undergone the imaginary mockeries of birth and infancy. But now answer me, you killer of truth. Was God not truly crucified? Was he not truly dead, so that he was truly crucified? Was he not truly raised, so that he was truly dead? Does Paul therefore falsely declare that he knows nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified? Does he falsely hand down his burial? Does he falsely drill his resurrection into us? Is our faith therefore a lie, and everything we hope for from Christ a mere phantom? You are the most wicked of men, excusing the murderers of God. For Christ suffered nothing at their hands if he did not truly suffer. 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,' he says, 'I will be ashamed of him' (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 again; it is certain because it is impossible. But how can these things be true in him if he himself was not true, if he did not truly possess in himself what could be pierced, what could die, what could be buried and raised—flesh suffused with blood, structured with bones, woven with nerves, laced with veins, flesh that knows how to be born and how to die? It is unquestionably human, since it was born of a human; and therefore this flesh is mortal in Christ, because Christ is human and the son of a human. Or why call Christ human and the son of a human if he shares nothing of humanity and derives nothing from a 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 the 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, and no Son of God without God the Father. So the inventory of both substances displayed him as both human and God: born from one side, unbegotten from the other; fleshly from one, spiritual from the other; weak from one, supremely strong from the other; dying from one, living from the other. The distinctive property of the two conditions, divine and human, each equally true to its own nature, is marked off by the same faith—by spirit and by flesh. The miracles proved the Spirit of God; the sufferings proved the flesh of a human. If miracles are not without spirit, then sufferings are not without flesh: if flesh with its sufferings is a fiction, then spirit with its miracles is a lie. Why make Christ half a lie? He was entirely truth. He chose, believe me, to be born rather than to falsify himself in any part—so that he might carry flesh without bones to harden it, without muscles to strengthen it, without blood to redden it, without skin to clothe it, hunger without food, eating without teeth, speaking without a tongue; so that his speech would be a phantom to the ear, 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 my hands and my feet; it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have' (Luke 24:39). How do you read that voice, Marcion, you who derive Jesus from a God who is only good, simple, and kind? Look: he deceives, he cheats, he evades every eye, every sense, every approach, every contact. You should not have brought Christ down from heaven, but from some circus troupe; not God beyond a human, but a human magician; not the high priest of salvation, but the stage-manager of a spectacle; not the raiser of the dead, but the caller-away of the living. Unless, of course, even a magician had to be born.