Tertullian on The Incarnation - Latin Text with English translation

From Tertullian passage from Apologeticus pro Christianis (Apology), 21: 10-14.

 

Amazon Kindle Reading Device Click on picture for more details. For UK click here. -------------- Relevant books available at Amazon Studies   Eric Francis Osborn Tertullian, First Theologian of the West -------------- Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study Timothy David Barnes --------------   Early Christian Thinkers: The Lives and Legacies of Twelve Key Figures Paul Foster (A helpful chapter) -------------- The Early Christian World P.F. Esler, with a helpful chapter by David Wright --------------   Tertullian and the Church David Rankin --------------  Ancient Rhetoric and the Art of Tertullian (Oxford theological monographs) Robert D. Sider --------------   David E. Wilhite --------------   Translations  Tertullian (The Early Church Fathers) Geoffrey D. Dunn --------------  Disciplinary, Moral And Ascetical Works R. Arbesmann, E.J. Daly, and E. A. Quain, eds. --------------  Tertullian: Apologetical Works, & Minucius Felix: Octavius Emily J. Daly, trans. --------------  28. Tertullian: Treatises on Penance: On Penitence and On Purity (Ancient Christian Writers) W.P. Le Saint, trans. --------------  13. Tertullian: Treatises on Marriage and Remarriage: To His Wife, An Exhortation to Chastity, Monogamy (Ancient Christian Writers) W.P. Le Saint, trans. --------------  Christian and Pagan in the Roman Empire: The Witness of Tertullian (Selections from the Fathers of the Church) Robert D. Sider, ed.  --------------  Tertullian, Cyprian, And Origen On The Lord's Prayer (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press Popular Patristics Series) Alistair Stewart-Sykes, ed.  --------------  24. Tertullian: The Treatise against Hermogenes (Ancient Christian Writers) J.H. Waszink, trans.

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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