True God and True Man

But he says, “by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” That renowned and admirable teacher knew that our Lord Jesus Christ must be preached as true man as well as true God. So he always declares the glory of the divine in him in such a way as never to lose hold of the confession of the incarnation. By a real incarnation he plainly shuts out Marcion’s phantom, and by the divinity he shuts out the Ebionite’s poverty, so that neither of these wicked blasphemies might lead anyone to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was either wholly man without God, or God without man. So the apostle did excellently when, after declaring that he was sent by God the Son as well as by God the Father, he at once added a confession of the Lord’s incarnation by saying, “who raised him from the dead.” He plainly teaches that it was the real body of God made flesh that was raised from the dead. This agrees with the words, “And though we have known Christ according to the flesh,” to which he excellently added, “yet now we know him so no longer.” For he says that he knows this in him according to the flesh, namely that he was raised from the dead; but that he no longer knows him according to the flesh, since, now that the weakness of the flesh is at an end, he knows that he exists in the power of God alone. Surely he is a faithful and sufficient witness to our Lord’s divinity, which had to be proclaimed. At his first call he was struck down from heaven itself. He did not merely believe in his heart the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, but actually proved its truth by the evidence of his own bodily eyes. [a]