It is evident, then, that Christ did not give a tithe in Abraham. But if Levi gave a tithe because he was in Abraham's loins, then Christ did not give a tithe because He was not in Abraham's loins.
Yet if Levi was in Abraham not according to the soul, but only according to the flesh, then Christ too was there, since Christ also, according to the flesh, is from the seed of Abraham. Therefore He too gave a tithe.
Why, then, is Levi's giving of a tithe to Melchizedek used to show the great difference between Christ's priesthood and the Levitical priesthood? Levi was in Abraham's loins, where Christ also was, and so both alike gave a tithe.
Why, unless because Christ must be thought in some respect not to have been in Abraham? But who will deny that He was in him according to the flesh? Therefore He was not in him according to the soul.
Thus the soul of Christ did not appear by transmission from Adam's disobedience. Otherwise it too would have been in Abraham.
There will be some who say that for them a considerable difficulty lies here. Although the soul of no man is in the loins of his father, Levi was in Abraham's loins according to the seminal principle by which he was to appear in his mother through the union of his parents.
But Christ was not there according to this principle, although Mary's flesh was in Abraham's loins according to that principle. Therefore neither Levi nor Christ was in Abraham's loins according to the soul.
According to the flesh, however, both Levi and Christ were there. Yet Levi was there by fleshly desire, while Christ was there by bodily substance.
For if the seed contains both visible corporeality and an invisible principle, then both the one and the other reach the body of Mary from Abraham, and even from Adam himself, because her body too was conceived in the same way.
But Christ took the visible substance of His body from Mary's flesh, while the cause of His conception was not received from male seed, but in an entirely different way and from above. Hence He was in Abraham's loins according to what He received from His Mother.
Therefore the one who gave a tithe in Abraham was he who, although only according to the flesh, was in his loins in the same way that Abraham himself was in the loins of his father.
That is, he was born from Abraham's father exactly as Abraham himself was born, according to the action of the law that resists the law of the mind in the members, and according to invisible desire.
Yet the pure and good rights of marriage do not prevent this law from having its force, insofar as through it men can attain the continuation of the race.
But He did not give a tithe whose flesh took from Abraham not the wound of an inflamed sore, but the material for healing. For if we relate the giving of the tithe to the prefiguration of healing, then in Abraham's flesh what was given was what required healing, not what served as healing.
Such is the flesh not only of Abraham, but of the first earthly man himself. At one and the same time it contains both the wound of disobedience and the remedy for that wound.
It contains the wound of disobedience in the law that resists the law of the mind in the members. This law is, as it were, copied into all flesh that descends from him.
It contains the healing of the wound in this: without the action of desire, from bodily matter alone, by the action of divine conception and formation, flesh was taken from the Virgin for the guiltless bearing of death and the true example of resurrection.
We likewise answer those who say, "If a sinner begot a sinner, then a righteous man ought to have begotten a righteous man." By the same answer we reply also to those who say that a baptized man ought to have a child born as already baptized.
Why then, they say, could they not be baptized in the loins of their father, if, according to the Epistle written to the Hebrews, Levi could pay tithes in the loins of Abraham?
Let those who say this consider the following. Levi afterward did not fail to pay tithes because he had paid them in Abraham's loins. Rather, he received the priestly appointment and dignity, so that he might collect tithes, not pay them.
Otherwise his other brothers, who paid him tithes, would not have done so, since they too had likewise already paid tithes to Melchizedek in Abraham's loins.
THEOSIS