Opening the library…
On the Flesh of Christ
Tertullian
Since you think that this lay within the competency of
Quatenus.
Nativitatem.
Opinio.
If Christ’s flesh was not real, the pretence of it was wholly wrong.
Viderint homines.
It did not much matter (according to the view which Tertullian attributes to Marcion) if God did practise deception in affecting the assumption of a humanity which He knew to be unreal. Men took it to be real, and that answered every purpose. God knew better: and He was moreover, strong enough to obviate all inconveniences of the deception by His unfaltering fortitude, etc. All this, however, seemed to Tertullian to be simply damaging and perilous to the character of God, even from Marcion’s own point of view.
Edoce.
Non potes dicere ne, etc.
Distat.
In exitu conversionis.
Gen. xviii.
Gen. xix.
Gen. xxxii.
See below in chap. vi. and in the Anti-Marcion, iii. 9.
Corpore.
Matt. iii. 16.