On the Trinity 10
Summary: The heretics' Christ, who rejects the Old Testament and comes only in appearance, is a fiction; the true Christ took real flesh from Mary, died, and rose in that body as the pattern of our resurrection.
Latin text · PL 3:928d–930b
Sed illud admoneo, non alterum in Evangelio Christum exspectandum fuisse, quam hunc a Creatore Veteris Testamenti litteris ante promissum; maxime cum et quae de ipso praedicta sunt impleta sint, et quae impleta sunt ante praedicta sint. Ut merito haereticorum istorum Testamenti Veteris auctoritatem respuentium, nescio cui commentitio et ex fabulis anilibus ficto Christo atque fucato possim vere et constanter dicere: Quis es? unde es? a quo missus es? quare nunc venire voluisti? quare talis? vel qua venire potuisti? vel quare non ad tuos abisti? nisi quod probasti tuos non habere, dum ad alienos venis? Quid tibi cum mundo Creatoris? quid tibi cum homine Conditoris? quid tibi cum figmento corporis, cui eripis spem resurrectionis? quid ad alienum venis famulum, alienum sollicitare desideras filium? quid me a Domino eripere conaris? quid me in Patrem blasphemare atque impium esse compellis? aut quid sum a te in resurrectione consecuturus, qui me ipsum non recipio dum corpus amitto? Si salvare vis, fecisses hominem cui salutem dares. Si a delicto eripere cupis, ante mihi ne derelinquerem contulisses. Quod autem tecum suffragium circumfers legis? Quod habes testimonium propheticae vocis? aut quid mihi possum de te solidum repromittere, cum te videam in phantasmate et non in soliditate venisse? Quid ergo tibi cum figura corporis, si corpus odisti? imo revinceris corporis quod odisti circumferre substantiam, cujus suscipere voluisti etiam figuram. Odisse enim debueras corporis imitationem, si oderas veritatem. Quoniam si alter es, aliter venire debueras: ne dicereris filius Creatoris, si vel imaginem habuisses carnis et corporis. Certe si oderas nativitatem, quia Creatoris oderas nuptiarum conjunctionem, recusare debueras etiam imitationem hominis, qui per nuptias nascitur creatoris. Neque igitur eum haereticorum agnoscimus Christum, qui in imagine (ut dicitur) fuit et non in veritate: nihil enim verum eorum quae gessit fecerit, si ipse phantasma et non veritas fuit: neque eum, qui nihil in se nostri corporis gessit, dum ex Maria nihil accepit, ne non nobis venerit; dum non in nostra substantia visus apparuit. Neque illum, qui aetheream sive sideream, ut alii voluerunt haeretici, voluit carnem: ne ullam in illo nostro intelligamus salutem, si non etiam nostri corporis cognoscamus soliditatem: nec ullum omnino alterum qui quodvis aliud ex figmento haereticorum gesserit corpus fabularum. Omnes enim istos et nativitas Domini et mors ipsa confutat. Nam et Verbum, inquit Joannes, caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis. Ut merito corpus nostrum in illo fuerit, quoniam quidem nostram carnem Sermo suscepit. Et sanguis idcirco de manibus ac pedibus, atque ipso latere demanavit, ut nostri consors corporis probaretur, dum occasus nostri legibus moritur. Qui dum in eadem substantia corporis in qua moritur, resuscitatus ipsius corporis vulneribus comprobatur, etiam resurrectionis nostrae leges in sua carne monstravit, qui corpus, quod ex nobis habuit, in sua resurrectione restituit. Lex enim resurrectionis ponitur, dum Christus ad exemplum caeterorum in substantia corporis suscitatur. Quoniam, cum caro et sanguis non obtinere regnum Dei scribitur, non carnis substantia damnata est, quae divinis manibus, ne periret, exstructa est; sed sola carnis culpa merito reprehensa est, quae voluntaria hominis temeritate contra legis divinae jura grassata est. Quia in Baptismate et in mortis dissolutione, sublata caro ad salutem revertitur: dum ad statum innocentiae, deposita criminis mortalitate, revocatur.
English · Claude translation
But I give this warning: that no other Christ was to be expected in the Gospel than this one, promised beforehand by the Creator in the writings of the Old Testament; especially since the things foretold of him have been fulfilled, and the things fulfilled had been foretold. So that I may rightly say, truly and firmly, to the Christ of those heretics who reject the authority of the Old Testament, some Christ or other, invented and made up and painted over out of old wives' tales: Who are you? Where are you from? By whom were you sent? Why did you choose to come now? Why like this? Or how were you able to come? Or why did you not go to your own, unless you proved that you have no people of your own, since you come to those who belong to another? What have you to do with the Creator's world? What have you to do with the Maker's man? What have you to do with the formation of a body, from which you snatch the hope of resurrection? Why do you come to another's servant, and wish to entice another's son? Why do you try to snatch me from my Lord? Why do you drive me to blaspheme against the Father and to be impious? Or what am I to obtain from you in the resurrection, when I do not receive myself back, since I lose my body? If you wish to save, you should have made a man to whom you could give salvation. If you desire to rescue me from sin, you should earlier have granted me not to sin. What support from the law do you carry about with you? What testimony of a prophetic voice do you have? Or what solid thing can I promise myself from you, when I see that you came as a phantom and not in solidity? What, then, have you to do with the shape of a body, if you hate the body? Indeed, you will be convicted of carrying about the substance of the body you hate, since you were willing to take up even its shape. For you ought to have hated the imitation of a body if you hated its reality. For if you are another, you ought to have come otherwise, lest you be called the Creator's son if you had even the image of flesh and body. Surely, if you hated birth because you hated the Creator's union of marriage, you ought to have refused even the imitation of a man, who is born through the Creator's marriages.
We do not, then, acknowledge that Christ of the heretics who was (as they say) in appearance and not in truth: for he would have done nothing true of the things he did, if he himself was a phantom and not the truth. Nor him who did nothing of our body in himself, since he received nothing from Mary, and so would not have come to us, since he did not appear in our substance. Nor him who, as other heretics have held, chose an ethereal or starry flesh, lest we should understand any salvation of ours to be in him, if we did not recognize in him also the solidity of our body. Nor any other at all who, out of the fabrications of the heretics, bore some other body of fables. For both the Lord's birth and his very death refute all these. For “the Word,” says John, “became flesh and dwelt in us”; so that rightly our body was in him, since indeed the Word took up our flesh. And blood flowed from his hands and feet, and from his very side, so that he might be proved to share our body, since he dies by the laws of our mortality. And since, raised again, he is proved by the wounds of that very body to be in the same substance of body in which he died, he showed in his own flesh the laws of our resurrection too, he who restored in his resurrection the body he had received from us. For the law of resurrection is laid down when Christ is raised in the substance of the body as the pattern for the rest. For when it is written that flesh and blood do not obtain the kingdom of God, it is not the substance of the flesh that is condemned, which was built up by divine hands so that it should not perish; but only the guilt of the flesh is rightly rebuked, which through man's willful rashness has run riot against the rights of the divine law. For in baptism and in the dissolution of death, the flesh, taken away, returns to salvation, since, having laid aside the mortality of its crime, it is called back to the state of innocence.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The targets are Marcion (a Christ foreign to the Creator, rejecting the Old Testament, marriage, and the resurrection of the body), docetists (“in appearance and not in truth”), and those who gave Christ an “ethereal or starry flesh” (Apelles and some Valentinians). The quotations and allusions are John 1:14 (“dwelt in us”, “in nobis”); John 20:27 and 19:34; 1 Cor 15:50 (Migne gives 1 Cor 16:50). The last sentence (“the flesh, taken away, returns to salvation”) is compressed in the Latin; the sense seems to be that the flesh, through baptism and death, is restored to innocence.
Notes on the original text
- Digital text corrected (OCR: doubled letter; OCR: i for t; OCR: l for t; OCR: letter dropped; OCR: letter dropped; stray dot; OCR: stray dot; OCR: u for n; OCR: word divided at a line end; stray period): implleta → impleta; aute mihi → ante mihi; lecum → tecum; libi cum → tibi cum; revin. ceris → revinceris; subtantiam → substantiam; subtantia visus apparuit· → substantia visus apparuit.; inielligamus → intelligamus; Sermo. suscepit → Sermo suscepit; substatia → substantia; ressuscitatus → resuscitatus; restituit· → restituit.; oblinere → obtinere.
Cite this passage
Novatian, Trin. 10 (PL 3:928d–930b; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/novatian-trinitate/10/).
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Plain text
Novatian, Trin. 10 (PL 3:928d–930b; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/novatian-trinitate/10/).
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