Cornelius a Lapide

The first man is of the earthy earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven . The Vulgate reading here is “ the second man is of heaven, heavenly.” This was corrupted into “the second man is the Lord from heaven ” by Marcion, as Tertullian proves {contra Marcionem i lib. L c. 5). The Latin rendering, therefore, is the more genuine. Valentinus and the Gnostics gathered from this passage that Christ had not a material and human body, but that He brought from heaven a heavenly one, and passed through the Blessed Virgin, not as her child, but as rain-water passes through a pipe. This is a heresy long ago condemned, as S. Augustine testifies {Hares, n), and Irenaeus {lib. i. c. 5), and Tertullian {de Came Christie c. viii.). 1. Bede rightly says : “ Christ is called heavenly , because He led a heavenly life and was always without sin ; Adam is called earthy because he was subject to sin.” Hence there follows : “ As is the earthy,” &c. 2. Christ is called heavenly because He was conceived and bom of the Virgin by the heavenly power of the Holy Spirit, above the ordinary course of nature. S. Ambrose, S. Hilary {de Trin . lib. i.), S. Augustine {Dial, ad Orosium , qu. 4). 3. Christ is called heavenly by reason of His Divine and heavenly substance. In the same way He is called the Son of man, i.e., the Man who came down from heaven (S. John iii. 13). See Gregory of Nazianzen {Oral. 51) and Augustine {Ep. 57 ad Dardanum). 4. The most natural sense in which Christ is called “ heavenly ” is that He is glorious and incorruptible, like the inhabitants of heaven. This celestial glory Christ had substantially in His soul from the moment of His conception. He had it, too, in His body, because THE HEAVENLY BODY 395 it was His due, and was natural to His body ; but its manifestation was suspended and postponed, on account of His Passion, in order that He might assume it in His resurrection. Yet even before His death, Christ now and then assumed this glory, or the four gifts of the glorified body, viz., brightness in His transfiguration, agility when He walked on the sea, subtilty when He penetrated the womb of His mother, impassibility in the Eucharist. On the other hand, Adam is called “ earthy ” because he was formed from the earth, and hence and from sin contracted mortality, and the other qualities of an earthly, animal, mortal, and corruptible body. So S. Chrysostom, Augustine {de Civ . Dei, lib. xiii. c. 23), Tertullian {de Resurr. c. 49) ; for the Apostle is speaking here of the resurrection, and the glory of the bodies of the blessed, the pattern of which is the glorified body of Christ, and hence he calls Christ heavenly, and His body heavenly also