Against Heresies: Book V

AND THOSE WHO CLAIM THAT GOD CAME TO CLAIM THINGS THAT WERE NOT HIS OWN: as if desiring someone else’s property, are also mistaken. They suggest that He aimed to deliver the man, who was created by another, to a God who neither made nor formed anything, and who lacked the true creation of people from the start. Their depiction of Him coming for others' possessions lacks righteousness, and He could not have truly redeemed us by His own blood if He did not genuinely become man, restoring to His own creation what was originally said—that man was made in the image and likeness of God. He did not seize someone else's property by trickery but righteously and graciously claimed what was His own. In terms of our rebellion, He justly redeems us from it by His blood, but regarding us who have been redeemed, He does this graciously. We have given Him nothing beforehand, nor does He require anything from us, as if He needed it; rather, we need to be united with Him. This is why He graciously gave Himself, to gather us into the embrace of the Father.

2. Those who despise the entire plan of God and reject the salvation of the flesh, treating its regeneration with contempt, are utterly mistaken. If the flesh does not attain salvation, then the Lord did not redeem us with His blood, nor is the cup of the Eucharist a communion of His blood, nor the bread we break a communion of His body. Blood can only come from veins and flesh, along with everything else that makes up the substance of a person, just as the Word of God was truly made. He redeemed us by His own blood, as His apostle states, "In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the remission of sins." Since we are His members, we are also nourished by the creation (which He Himself grants us, as He causes His sun to rise and sends rain when He wishes). He has recognized the cup (a part of creation) as His blood, from which He nourishes our blood; and the bread (also part of creation) He has established as His body, from which He nourishes our bodies.

WHEN: therefore, the mixed cup and the made bread receive the Word of God, and the Eucharist of the blood and body of Christ is formed, from which the substance of our flesh is grown and sustained, how can they claim that the flesh is incapable of receiving the gift of God, which is eternal life, when this flesh is nourished from the body and blood of the Lord and is a part of Him? Just as the blessed Paul states in his letter to the Ephesians, that “we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” He does not speak of some spiritual and invisible person, for a spirit does not have bones or flesh; but he is referring to the arrangement by which the Lord became an actual man, consisting of flesh, and nerves, and bones,—that flesh which is nourished by the cup that is His blood, and grows from the bread that is His body.

And just as a branch from the vine planted in the ground bears fruit in its season, or as a grain of wheat falling into the earth and breaking down, rises with abundant growth by the Spirit of God, who holds all things, and then, through the wisdom of God, serves human use, and having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ; so also our bodies, being nourished by it, and laid in the earth, and decomposing there, shall rise at their appointed time, the Word of God giving them resurrection to the glory of God, even the Father, who freely grants immortality to this mortal, and incorruption to this corruptible, because the strength of God is perfected in weakness, so that we may never become proud, as if we had life from ourselves, and be lifted against God, our minds becoming ungrateful; but learning by experience that we have eternal life from the surpassing power of this Being, not from our own nature, we may neither undervalue the glory that surrounds God as He is, nor be ignorant of our own nature, but come to understand what God can accomplish, and what benefits man receives, and thus never stray from the true understanding of things as they are, concerning both God and man.

And might it be the case, perhaps, as I have previously suggested, that for this purpose God allowed our return to the common dust of mortality, that we, being taught by every means, may be precise in all things for the future, being unaware neither of God nor of ourselves?