Trypho said: We have now heard your opinion on these subjects. Take up and finish your discourse where you left off, for it seems to me to be somewhat strange and wholly incapable of proof. For your assertion that this Christ existed, and was God, before all ages, then that He was even born and became man and suffered, and that He is not man by origin, seems to me to be not only strange but even foolish.
To this I replied: I know that the matter seems to be strange, and especially to those of your race who have never desired either to perceive or to do the things of God, but rather those of your teachers, as God Himself cries out.Isaiah 29:13 However at the present point, Trypho, I said, the fact that He is the Christ of God is not destroyed, if I cannot prove that He existed beforehand as the Son of the Maker of the universe, being God, and that He has been born man by the Virgin.
It has however been completely proved that this is the Christ of God, whoever He eventually is, and even if I do not prove that He existed beforehand, and endured, according to the will of the Father, being born man of like passions with us, having flesh, it is right that I should be said to have erred in this respect alone, but it is not right to deny that this is the Christ, if He should appear to have been born man of merely human origin, and is proved to have come to be Christ by God’s selection.
For, my Friends, I said, there are some of your race who acknowledged Him to be Christ, yet declare that He was man of merely human origin; with whom I do not agree, nor would I even do so even though most of those who hold the same opinion as myself were to say so, since we have been commanded by Christ Himself not to obey the doctrines of men but those proclaimed by the blessed Prophets and taught by Him.Matthew 15:3-9