Tertullian — Against Marcion 3.9
In this question, if you think the Creator’s angels should be set against us — as if they too acted with Abraham and Lot in a phantasm, of putative flesh of course, and yet truly met and ate and did what was commanded them — first you will not be admitted to examples of that God whom you destroy. For the better and more perfect a god you bring in, so much less do that one’s examples fit him, unless he will be different in the whole, altogether better and more perfect. Next know that this too is not granted you: that the flesh in the angels was putative, but of a true and solid human substance. For if it was not hard for him to show true senses and acts to putative flesh, he much more easily had it to give a true substance of flesh to true senses and acts — or as its own author and craftsman. For your god, because he produced no flesh at all, perhaps deservedly brought in its phantasm, whose truth he had not been able; but my God, who reformed that taken from mud into this quality — not yet from marital seed and yet flesh — could equally from any matter also have built flesh for angels, who even built the world from nothing into so many and such bodies, and by a word at that. And of course, if your god someday promises men the angels’ true substance — for they will be, he says, like angels — why should my God not also have fitted men’s true substance to angels, taken from wherever? Because you will not answer me either from where that angelic stuff with you is taken.
It is enough for me to define this, which fits God: namely the truth of that thing which he cast before three witnessing senses — sight, touch, hearing. It is harder for God to lie than to produce the truth of flesh from wherever, even if not born. But to other heretics too, defining that that flesh in the angels ought to have been born from flesh if it were truly human, we answer with a sure reason by which it both was truly human and unborn: truly human because of God’s truth, foreign to lying and deceit, and because they could not be treated in a human way by men except in a human substance; but unborn, because only Christ had to be born into flesh from flesh, so that by his nativity he would reform our nativity and so also by his death dissolve our death by rising in the flesh in which he was born, so that he could also die. And therefore he himself then with the angels appeared with Abraham in the truth of flesh indeed, but not yet born, because not yet about to die, but already learning to live among men.
So much the more angels, not arranged for dying for us, ought not to have taken a brief passage of flesh by being born, because they were not going to lay it down by dying. But from wherever taken and however altogether sent down, they still did not lie about it. If the Creator makes angels spirits and his attendants a burning fire — as truly spirits as also fire — the same one also truly made them flesh, so that we may now recall and announce to the heretics that the promise of someday reforming men into angels is his who once formed angels into men.
Latin
In ista quaestione qui putaueris opponendos esse nobis angelos creatoris, quasi et illi in phantasmate, putatiuae utique carnis, egerint apud Abraham et Loth, et tamen uere sint et congressi et pasti et operati quod mandatum eis fuerat, primo non admitteris ad eius dei exempla, quem destruis. nam et quanto meliorem et perfectiorem deum inducis, tanto non competunt illi eius exempla, quo nisi diuersus in totum n<m erit omnino melior atque perfectior. dehinc scito nec illud concedi tibi, ut putatiua fuerit in angelis caro, sed uerae et solidae substantiae humanae. si enim difficile non fuit illi. putatiuae carni ueros et sensus et actus exhibere, multo facilius habuit, ueris et sensibus et actibus ueram dedisse substantiam carnis, uel qua proprius auctor et artifex eius. tuus enim deus eo, quod carnem nullam omnino produxerit, merito fortasse phantasma eius intulerit, cuius non ualuerat ueritatem, meus autem deus, qui illam de limo sumptam in hanc reformauit qualitatem, nondum ex semine coniugali et tamen carnem, aeque potuit ex quacumque materia angelis quoque adstruxisse carnem, qui etiam mundum ex nihilo in tot ac talia corpora, et quidem uerbo, aedificauit. et utique, si deus tuus ueram quandoque substantiam angelorum hominibus pollicetur, — erunt enim, inquit, sicut angeli — cur non et deus meus ueram substantiam hominum angelis accommodarit (unde)unde sumptam? quia nec tu mihi respondebis, unde illa apud te angelica sumatur.
sufficit mihi hoc definire, quod deo congruit, ueritatem scilicet eius rei, quam tribus testibus sensibus obiecit: uisui tactui auditui. difficilius deo mentiri quam carnis ueritatem (unde)unde producere, licet non natae. ceterum et aliis haereticis, definientibus carnem illam in angelis ex carne nasci debuisse, si uere fuisset humana, certa ratione respondemus, qua et humana uere fuerit et innata: humana uere propter dei ueritatem, a mendacio et fallacia extranei, et quia non possent humanitus tractari ab hominibus nisi in substantia humana; innata autem, quia solus Christus in carnem ex carne nasci habebat, ut natiuitatem nostram natiuitate sua reformaret atque ita etiam mortem nostram morte sua dissolueret resurgendo in carne, in qua natus est, ut et mori posset. ideoque et ipse cum angelis tunc apud Abraham in ueritate quidem carnis apparuit, sed nondum natae, quia nondum moriturae, sed ediscentis iam inter homines conuersari.
quo magis angeli, neque ad moriendum pro nobis dispositi, breuem carnis commeatum non debuerunt nascendo sumpsisse, quia nec moriendo deposituri eam fuerant. sed (unde)unde sumpta et quoquo modo omnino demissa, mentiti eam tamen non sunt. si creator facit angelos spiritus et apparitores suos ignem flagrantem, tam uere spiritus quam et ignem, idem illos uere fecit et carnem, ut nunc recordemur et haereticis renuntiemus eius esse promissum homines in angelos reformandi quandoque, qui angelos in homines formarit aliquando.