Chapter V.

As it is blasphemy to pare away the Divinity of Christ, so also is it blasphemous to deny that He is true man.

But he says “by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead.” 565That renowned and admirable teacher, knowing that our Lord Jesus Christ must be preached as true man, as well as true God, always declares the glory of the Divine in Him, in such a way as not to lose hold of the confession of the Incarnation: plainly excluding the phantasm of Marcion, by a real Incarnation, and the poverty of the Ebionite, by Divinity: lest through one or other of these wicked blasphemies it might be believed that our Lord Jesus Christ was either altogether man without God, or God without man. Excellently then did the Apostle, when declaring that He was sent by God the Son as well as by God the Father, add at once a confession of the Lord’s Incarnation, by saying: “Who raised Him from the dead:” clearly teaching that it was a real body of the Incarnate God, which was raised from the dead: in accordance with this: “And though we have known Christ according to the flesh,” excellently adding: “Yet now we know Him so no longer.” For he says that he knows this in Him according to the flesh; viz., that He was raised from the dead; but that he knows Him no longer according to the flesh inasmuch as when the weakness of the flesh is at an end, he knows that He exists in the Power of God only. Surely he is a faithful and satisfactory witness of our Lord’s Divinity which had to be proclaimed, who at his first call was smitten from heaven itself, and did not merely believe in his heart the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was raised from the dead, but actually established its truth by the evidence of his bodily eyes.