Ante-Nicene Fathers (Volume 3) - XIX - Book IV of The five books against Marcion continued

Required reading
Ante-Nicene Fathers (Volume 3) (Available from Amazon or free here) - Commence Book IV of 'The five books against Marcion' by reading Chapters 14 to 22.

My summary
This week Tertullian continues to argue against Marcion by showing that Jesus is the Christ of the Creator.

Tertullian shows that Jesus is the Christ because of:
(i) the teaching in the sermon on the mount;
(ii) the healing of the centurion's daughter;
(iii) the raising of the widow's son;
(iv) the message Jesus sent to John the Baptist;
(v) the mercy shown to the sinful woman;
(vi) the women who followed Jesus;
(vii) the parables;
(viii) the way Jesus treated his family;
(ix) the calming of the storm;
(x) the exorcisms;
(xi) the healing of the bleeding woman;
(xii) the sending of the disciples;
(xiii) the feeding of the thousands;
(xiv) the confession of Peter;
(xv) the transfiguration.

What grabbed me
Tertullian gave a good description of the shame that Jesus' life involved: 'Now to none but my Christ can be assigned the occasion of such a shame as this. His whole course was so exposed to shame as to open a way for even the taunts of heretics, declaiming with all the bitterness in their power against the utter disgrace of His birth and bringing-up, and the unworthiness of His very flesh. But how can that Christ of yours [Marcion] be liable to a shame, which it is impossible for him to experience? Since he was never condensed into human flesh in the womb of a woman, although a virgin; never grew from human seed, although only after the law of corporeal substance, from the fluids of a woman; was never deemed flesh before shaped in the womb; never called fœtus after such shaping; was never delivered from a ten months’ writhing in the womb; was never shed forth upon the ground, amidst the sudden pains of parturition, with the unclean issue which flows at such a time through the sewerage of the body, forthwith to inaugurate the light of life with tears, and with that primal wound which severs the child from her who bears him; never received the copious ablution, nor the meditation of salt and honey; nor did he initiate a shroud with swaddling clothes; nor afterwards did he ever wallow in his own uncleanness, in his mother’s lap; nibbling at her breast; long an infant; gradually a boy; by slow degrees a man.'

Jesus' whole life was one of shame, not just the end of his life.

Next week's reading
Continue Book IV of 'The five books against Marcion' by reading Chapters 23 to 34.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.