Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

fested ill the flesh, “made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under
the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” 3173
2. If, then, the sojourn of the Lord in flesh has never taken place, the Redeemer 3174
paid not the fine to death on our behalf, nor through Himself destroyed death’s reign. For
if what was reigned over by death was not that which was assumed by the Lord, death would
not have ceased working his own ends, nor would the sufferings of the God-bearing flesh
have been made our gain; He would not have killed sin in the flesh: we who had died in
Adam should not have been made alive in Christ; the fallen to pieces would not have been
framed again; the shattered would not have been set up again; that which by the serpent’s
trick had been estranged from God would never have been made once more His own. All
these boons are undone by those that assert that it was with a heavenly body that the Lord
came among us. And if the God-bearing flesh was not ordained to be assumed of the lump
of Adam, what need was there of the Holy Virgin? But who has the hardihood now once
again to renew by the help of sophistical arguments and, of course, by scriptural evidence,
that old dogma 3175 of Valentinus, now long ago silenced? For this impious doctrine of the
seeming 3176 is no novelty. It was started long ago by the feeble-minded Valentinus, who,
after tearing off a few of the Apostle’s statements, constructed for himself this impious fabrication,
asserting that the Lord assumed the “form of a servant,” 3177 and not the servant
himself, and that He was made in the “likeness,” but that actual manhood was not assumed
by Him. Similar sentiments are expressed by these men who can only be pitied for bringing
new troubles upon you. 3178
3173 Gal. iv. 4, 5.
3174 Λυτρωτής. cf. Acts vii. 35, where R.V. gives redeemer as marginal rendering. Λυτρωτής=payer of the
λύτρον, which is the means of release (λύω). The word is used of Moses in the Acts in a looser sense than here
of the Saviour.
3175 On the use of “dogma” for heretical opinion, cf. De Sp. S. note on § 66.
3176 δόκησις.
3177 Phil. ii. 7.
3178 On the Docetism of Valentinus vide Dr. Salmon in D. C. Biog. i. 869. “According to V. (Irenæus i. 7)
our Lord’s nature was fourfold: (1) He had a ψυχή or animal soul; (2) He had a πνεῦμα or spiritual principle
derived from Achamoth; (3) He had a body, but not a material body, but a heavenly one.…(4) The pre-existent
Saviour descended on Him in the form of a dove at His Baptism. When our Lord was brought before Pilate,
this Saviour as being incapable of suffering withdrew His power;” (cf. the Gospel of Peter, “The Lord cried, saying,
‘My Power, my Power, Thou hast left me.’”) “and the spiritual part which was also impassible was likewise dis-
missed; the animal soul and the wonderfully contrived body alone remaining to suffer, and to exhibit on the
cross on earth a representation of what had previously taken place on the heavenly Stauros. It thus appears that
Valentinus was only partially docetic.” But cf. Iren. v. 1, 2, and iii. 22.
To the Sozopolitans.
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