Cont’d
Ch19…Pray, tell me, why the Spirit of God270 descended into a woman’s womb at all, if He did not do so for the purpose of partaking of flesh from the womb. For He could have become spiritual flesh271 without such a process,----much more simply, indeed, without the womb than in it. He had no reason for enclosing Himself within one, if He was to bear forth nothing from it. Not without reason, however, did He descend into a womb. Therefore He received (flesh) therefrom; else, if He received nothing therefrom, His descent into it would have been without a reason, especially if He meant to become flesh of that sort which was not derived from a womb, that is to say, a spiritual one…
…He sings to us of Christ, and through his voice Christ indeed also sang concerning Himself. [4]** Hear, then, Christ the Lord speaking to God the Father: “Thou art He that didst draw281 me out of my mother’s womb.” **282…
see.Psalm 22:9-10 & (see odes of Solomon - *19:6-10 *…“For He delivered her.”
*irenaeus thought (from memory)"… The pure one that opened that pure womb purely…"
… * * Here is the first point. "Thou art my hope from my mother’s breasts; upon Thee have I been cast from the womb."283 Here is another point. "Thou art my God from my mother’s belly."284 Here is a third point. Now let us carefully attend to the sense of these passages. [5] “Thou didst draw me,” He says, “out of the womb.” Now what is it which is drawn, if it be not that which adheres, that which is firmly fastened to anything from which it is drawn in order to be sundered? If He clove not to the womb, how could He have been drawn from it? If He who clove thereto was drawn from it, how could He have adhered to it, if it were not that, all the while He was in the womb, He was tied to it, as to His origin,285 by the umbilical cord, which communicated growth to Him from the matrix?..
his focus is clearly the fact that Jesus literally occupied the womb and opened it bythe pregnancy and growing within it*
*…Even when one strange matter amalgamates with another, it becomes so entirely incorporated286 with that with which it amalgamates, that when it is drawn off from it, it carries with it some part of the body from which it is torn, as if in consequence of the severance of the union and growth which the constituent pieces had communicated to each other. [6] But what were His “mother’s breasts” which He mentions? No doubt they were those which He sucked. Midwives, and doctors, and naturalists, can tell us, from the nature of women’s breasts, whether they usually flow at any other time than when the womb is affected with pregnancy, when the veins convey therefrom the blood of the lower parts287 to the mammilla, and in the act of transference convert the secretion into the nutritious288 substance of milk. Whence it comes to pass that during the period of lactation the monthly issues are suspended. But if the Word was made flesh of Himself without any communication with a womb, no mother’s womb operating upon Him with its usual function and support, how could the lacteal fountain have been conveyed (from the womb) to the breasts, since (the womb) can only effect the change by actual possession of the proper substance? But it could not possibly have had blood for transformation into milk, unless it possessed the causes of blood also, that is to say, the severance (by birth)289 of its own flesh from the mother’s womb. [7]
Now it is easy to see what was the novelty of Christ’s being born of a virgin. It was simply this, that (He was born) of a virgin in the real manner which we have indicated, in order that our regeneration might have virginal purity,----spiritually cleansed from all pollutions through Christ,
who was Himself a virgin, even in the flesh, in that He was born of a virgin’s flesh….
Scripture clearly says a virgin/maiden(same thing) shall conceive & bear …(isa7:14)
But the reality of the flesh is still upheld
Turning now to the law, which is properly ours— that is, to the Gospel— by what kind of examples are we met, until we come to definite dogmas? Behold, there immediately present themselves to us, on the threshold as it were, the two priestesses of Christian sanctity, Monogamy and Continence: one modest, in Zechariah the priest; one absolute, in John the forerunner: one appeasing God; one preaching Christ: one proclaiming a perfect priest;…For who was more worthily to perform the initiatory rite on the body of the Lord, than flesh similar in kind to that which conceived and gave birth to that (body)? And indeed it was a virgin, about to marry once for all after her delivery, who gave birth to Christ, in order that each title of sanctity might be fulfilled in Christ’s parentage, by means of a mother who was both virgin, and wife of one husband. On Monagamy 8*
Here Tertullian sounds as if he is putting forward a view similar to Helvidius’s (as described by Jerome)…namely that Mary held both of the titles of sanctity by being both the virgin and the wife (a wife being a non-virgin, as being under the very law of opening the womb)…
i’ve gave my view on this one *to u before I think
But I read this as strong support for PV
Given as soon as she is no longer virgin
His parentage does not enjoy both titles.
As shown previously he describes Jesus within her womb as the opening that made her a “wife”*
Tertullian describes a chaste marriage in more than one place, and if I recall correctly it is included quite close to the above extract.
Ie …"… the second, virginity from one’s second birth, that is, from the font; which (second virginity)
either in the marriage state keeps (its subject) pure by mutual compact…"
