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Tertullian on The Incarnation - Latin Text with English translation
From Apologeticus pro Christianis (Apology), 21: 10-14.
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Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study --------------
Early Christian Thinkers: The Lives and Legacies of Twelve Key Figures --------------
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We have already asserted that God made the world, and
all which it contains, by His Word, and Reason, and Power. It is abundantly
plain that your philosophers, too, regard the Logos—that is, the Word and
Reason—as the Creator of the universe. For Zeno lays it down that he is the
creator, having made all things according to a determinate plan; that his
name is Fate, and God, and the soul of Jupiter, and the necessity of all
things. Cleanthes ascribes all this to spirit, which he maintains pervades
the universe. And we, in like manner, hold that the Word, and Reason, and
Power, by which we have said God made all, have spirit as their proper and
essential substratum, in which the Word has in being to give forth
utterances, and reason abides to dispose and arrange, and power is over all
to execute. We have been taught that He proceeds forth from God, and in that
procession He is generated; so that He is the Son of God, and is called God
from unity of substance with God. For God, too, is a Spirit. Even when the
ray is shot from the sun, it is still part of the parent mass; the sun will
still be in the ray, because it is a ray of the sun—there is no division of
substance, but merely an extension. Thus Christ is Spirit of Spirit, and God
of God, as light of light is kindled. The material matrix remains entire
and unimpaired, though you derive from it any number of shoots possessed of
its qualities; so, too, that which has come forth out of God is at once God
and the Son of God, and the two are one. In this way also, as He is Spirit
of Spirit and God of God, He is made a second in manner of existence—in
position, not in nature; and He did not withdraw from the original source,
but went forth. This ray of God, then, as it was always foretold in ancient
times, descending into a certain virgin, and made flesh in her womb, is in
His birth God and man united. The flesh formed by the Spirit is nourished,
grows up to manhood, speaks, teaches, works, and is the Christ. |
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