Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John b
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Translated by John Patrick, D.D.
Text edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson and
first published by T&T Clark in Edinburgh in 1867. Additional
introductionary material and notes provided for the American
edition by A. Cleveland Coxe, 1886.
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Book I.
1. How Christians are the Spiritual Israel.
That people which was called of old the people of God was divided into
twelve tribes, and over and above the other tribes it had the
levitical order, which itself again carried on the service of God in
various priestly and levitical suborders. In the same manner, it
appears to me that the whole people of Christ, when we regard it in
the aspect of the hidden man of the heart, [4455] that people which is
called "Jew inwardly," and is circumcised in the spirit, has in a more
mystic way the characteristics of the tribes. This may be more
plainly gathered from John in his Apocalyse, though the other prophets
also do not by any means conceal the state of matters from those who
have the faculty of hearing them. John speaks as follows: [4456]
"And I saw another angel ascending from the sunrising, having the seal
of the living God, and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels
to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Hurt not
either the earth, or the sea, or the trees, till we have sealed the
servants of our God on their foreheads. And I heard the number of
them that were sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand who were
sealed, out of every tribe of the children of Israel; of the tribe of
Juda were sealed twelve thousand, of the tribe of Roubem twelve
thousand." And he mentioned each of the tribes singly, with the
exception of Dan. Then, some way further on, [4457] he continues:
"And I saw, and behold the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with Him a
hundred and forty-four thousand, having His name and the name of His
Father written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven as
the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder. And
the voice which I heard was as the voice of harpers harping with their
harps; and they sing a new song before the throne and before the four
beasts and the elders, and no one could learn the song but the hundred
and forty-four thousand who had been purchased from the earth. These
are they which were not defiled with women, for they are virgins.
These are they who follow the Lamb whithersover He goeth. These were
purchased from among men, a first fruits to God and to the Lamb; and
in their mouth was found no lie, for they are without blemish." Now
this is said in John with reference to those who have believed in
Christ, for they also, even if their bodily descent cannot be traced
to the seed of the Patriarchs, are yet gathered out of the tribes.
That this is so we may conclude from what is further said about them:
"Hurt not," he says, "the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, till we
have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads. And I heard
the number of them that were sealed, a hundred and forty-four
thousand, sealed from every tribe of the children of Israel."
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Footnotes
[4455] Rom. ii. 29.
[4456] Apoc. vii. 2-5.
[4457] Apoc. xiv. 1-5.
2. The 144,000 Sealed in the Apocalypse are Converts to Christ from
the Gentile World.
These, then, who are sealed on their foreheads [4458] from every tribe
of the children of Israel, are a hundred and forty-four thousand in
number; and these hundred and forty-four thousand are afterwards said
in John to have the name of the Lamb and of His Father written on
their foreheads, and to be virgins, not having defiled themselves with
women. What else could the seal be which is on their foreheads but
the name of the Lamb and the name of His Father? In both passages
their foreheads are said to have the seal; in one the seal is spoken
of, in the other it appears to contain the letters forming the name of
the Lamb, and the name of His Father. Now these taken from the tribes
are, as we showed before, the same persons as the virgins. But the
number of believers is small who belong to Israel according to the
flesh; one might venture to assert that they would not nearly make up
the number of a hundred and forty-four thousand. It is clear,
therefore, that the hundred and forty-four thousand who have not
defiled themselves with women must be made up of those who have come
to the divine word out of the Gentile world. In this way the truth of
the statement may be upheld that the first fruits of each tribe are
its virgins. For the passage goes on: "These were brought from among
men to be a first fruits to God and to the Lamb; and in their mouth
was found no guile, for they are without blemish." The statement
about the hundred and forty-four thousand no doubt admits of mystical
interpretation; but it is unnecessary at this point, and would divert
us from our purpose, to compare with it those passages of the prophets
in which the same lesson is taught regarding those who are called from
among the Gentiles.
Footnotes
[4458] Apoc. vii. 3, 4.
3. In the Spiritual Israel the High-Priests are Those Who Devote
Themselves to the Study of Scripture.
But what is the bearing of all this for us? So you will ask when you
read these words, Ambrosius, thou who art truly a man of God, a man in
Christ, and who seekest to be not a man only, but a spiritual man.
[4459]The bearing is this. Those of the tribes offer to God,
through the levites and priests, tithes and first fruits; not
everything which they possess do they regard as tithe or first fruit.
The levites and priests, on the other hand, have no possessions but
tithes and first fruits; yet they also in turn offer tithes to God
through the high-priests, and, I believe, first fruits too. The same
is the case with those who approach Christian studies. Most of us
devote most of our time to the things of this life, and dedicate to
God only a few special acts, thus resembling those members of the
tribes who had but few transactions with the priest, and discharged
their religious duties with no great expense of time. But those who
devote themselves to the divine word and have no other employment but
the service of God may not unnaturally, allowing for the difference of
occupation in the two cases, be called our levites and priests. And
those who fulfil a more distinguished office than their kinsmen [4460]
will perhaps be high-priests, according to the order of Aaron, not
that of Melchisedek. Here some one may object that it is somewhat too
bold to apply the name of high-priests to men, when Jesus Himself is
spoken of in many a prophetic passage as the one great priest, as
[4461] "We have a great high-priest who has passed through the
heavens, Jesus, the Son of God." But to this we reply that the
Apostle clearly defined his meaning, and declared the prophet to have
said about the Christ, "Thou [4462] art a priest for ever, according
to the order of Melchisedek," and not according to the order of Aaron.
We say accordingly that men can be high-priests according to the
order of Aaron, but according to the order of Melchisedek only the
Christ of God.
Footnotes
[4459] 1 Cor. ii. 14.
[4460] Reading with Neander and Lommatzsch (note), diapheron ti for
diapherontes.
[4461] Heb. iv. 14.
[4462] Ps. cx. 4; Heb. v. 6. Cf. vii. 11.
4. The Study of the Gospels is the First Fruits Offered by These
Priests of Christianity.
Now our whole activity is devoted to God, and our whole life, since we
are bent on progress in divine things. If, then, it be our desire to
have the whole of those first fruits spoken of above which are made up
of the many first fruits, if we are not mistaken in this view, in what
must our first fruits consist, after the bodily separation we have
undergone from each other, but in the study of the Gospel? For we may
venture to say that the Gospel is the first fruits of all the
Scriptures. Where, then, could be the first fruits of our activity,
since the time when we came to Alexandria, but in the first fruits of
the Scriptures? It must not be forgotten, however, that the first
fruits are not the same as the first growth. For the first fruits
[4463] are offered after all the fruits (are ripe), but the first
growth [4464] before them all. Now of the Scriptures which are
current and are believed to be divine in all the churches, one would
not be wrong in saying that the first growth is the law of Moses, but
the first fruits the Gospel. For it was after all the fruits of the
prophets who prophesied till the Lord Jesus, that the perfect word
shot forth.
Footnotes
[4463] aparche, Exod. xxii. 29.
[4464] protogennema, Exod. xxiii. 16.
5. All Scripture is Gospel; But the Gospels are Distinguished Above
Other Scriptures.
Here, however, some one may object, appealing to the notion just put
forward of the unfolding of the first fruits last, and may say that
the Acts and the letters of the Apostles came after the Gospels, and
that this destroys our argument to the effect that the Gospel is the
first fruits of all Scripture. To this we must reply that it is the
conviction of men who are wise in Christ, who have profited by those
epistles which are current, and who see them to be vouched for by the
testimonies deposited in the law and the prophets, [4465] that the
apostolic writings are to be pronounced wise and worthy of belief, and
that they have great authority, but that they are not on the same
level with that "Thus sayeth the Lord Almighty." [4466]Consider on
this point the language of St. Paul. When he declares that [4467]
"Every Scripture is inspired of God and profitable," does he include
his own writings? Or does he not include his dictum, [4468] "I say,
and not the Lord," and [4469] "So I ordain in all the churches," and
[4470] "What things I suffered at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra," and
similar things which he writes in virtue of his own authority, and
which do not quite possess the character of words flowing from divine
inspiration. Must we also show that the old Scripture is not Gospel,
since it does not point out the Coming One, but only foretells Him and
heralds His coming at a future time; but that all the new Scripture is
the Gospel. It not only says as in the beginning of the Gospel,
[4471] "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world;" it also contains many praises of Him, and many of His
teachings, on whose account the Gospel is a Gospel. Again, if God set
in the Church [4472] apostles and prophets and evangelists
(gospellers), pastors and teachers, we must first enquire what was the
office of the evangelist, and mark that it is not only to narrate how
the Saviour cured a man who was blind from his birth, [4473] or raised
up a dead man who was already stinking, [4474] or to state what
extraordinary works he wrought; and the office of the evangelist being
thus defined, we shall not hesitate to find Gospel in such discourse
also as is not narrative but hortatory and intended to strengthen
belief in the mission of Jesus; and thus we shall arrive at the
position that whatever was written by the Apostles is Gospel. As to
this second definition, it might be objected that the Epistles are not
entitled "Gospel," and that we are wrong in applying the name of
Gospel to the whole of the New Testament. But to this we answer that
it happens not unfrequently in Scripture when two or more persons or
things are named by the same name, the name attaches itself most
significantly to one of those things or persons. Thus the Saviour
says, [4475] "Call no man Master upon the earth;" while the Apostle
says that Masters [4476] have been appointed in the Church. These
latter accordingly will not be Masters in the strict sense of the
dictum of the Gospel. In the same way the Gospel in the Epistles will
not extend to every word of them, when it is compared with the
narrative of Jesus' actions and sufferings and discourses. No: the
Gospel is the first fruits of all Scripture, and to these first fruits
of the Scriptures we devote the first fruits of all those actions of
ours which we trust to see turn out as we desire.
Footnotes
[4465] This passage is difficult and disputed.
[4466] 2 Cor. vi. 18.
[4467] 2 Tim. iii. 16.
[4468] 1 Cor. vii. 12.
[4469] 1 Cor. vii. 17.
[4470] 2 Tim. iii. 11.
[4471] John i. 29.
[4472] Ephes. iv. 11.
[4473] John ix. 1.
[4474] John xi. 39.
[4475] Matt. xxiii. 8, 9.
[4476] didaskaloi, Ephes. iv. 11.
6. The Fourfold Gospel. John's the First Fruits of the Four.
Qualifications Necessary for Interpreting It.
Now the Gospels are four. These four are, as it were, the elements of
the faith of the Church, out of which elements the whole world which
is reconciled to God in Christ is put together; as Paul says, [4477]
"God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself;" of which world
Jesus bore the sin; for it is of the world of the Church that the word
is written, [4478] "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin
of the world." The Gospels then being four, I deem the first fruits
of the Gospels to be that which you [4479] have enjoined me to search
into according to my powers, the Gospel of John, that which speaks of
him whose genealogy had already been set forth, but which begins to
speak of him at a point before he had any genealogy. For Matthew,
writing for the Hebrews who looked for Him who was to come of the line
of Abraham and of David, says: [4480]"The book of the generation of
Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." And Mark,
knowing what he writes, narrates the beginning of the Gospel; we may
perhaps find what he aims at in John; in the beginning the Word, God
the Word. But Luke, though he says at the beginning of Acts, "The
former treatise did I make about all that Jesus began to do and to
teach," yet leaves to him who lay on Jesus' breast the greatest and
completest discourses about Jesus. For none of these plainly declared
His Godhead, as John does when he makes Him say, "I am the light of
the world," "I am the way and the truth and the life," "I am the
resurrection," "I am the door," "I am the good shepherd;" and in the
Apocalypse, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end,
the first and the last." We may therefore make bold to say that the
Gospels are the first fruits of all the Scriptures, but that of the
Gospels that of John is the first fruits. No one can apprehend the
meaning of it except he have lain on Jesus' breast and received from
Jesus Mary to be his mother also. Such an one must he become who is
to be another John, and to have shown to him, like John, by Jesus
Himself Jesus as He is. For if Mary, as those declare who with sound
mind extol her, had no other son but Jesus, and yet Jesus says to His
mother, "Woman, behold thy son," [4481] and not "Behold you have this
son also," then He virtually said to her, "Lo, this is Jesus, whom
thou didst bear." Is it not the case that every one who is perfect
lives himself no longer, [4482] but Christ lives in him; and if Christ
lives in him, then it is said of him to Mary, "Behold thy son
Christ." What a mind, then, must we have to enable us to interpret in
a worthy manner this work, though it be committed to the earthly
treasure-house of common speech, of writing which any passer-by can
read, and which can be heard when read aloud by any one who lends to
it his bodily ears? What shall we say of this work? He who is
accurately to apprehend what it contains should be able to say with
truth, [4483] "We have the mind of Christ, that we may know those
things which are bestowed on us by God." It is possible to quote one
of Paul's sayings in support of the contention that the whole of the
New Testament is Gospel. He writes in a certain place: [4484]
"According to my Gospel." Now we have no written work of Paul which
is commonly called a Gospel. But all that he preached and said was
the Gospel; and what he preached and said he was also in the habit of
writing, and what he wrote was therefore Gospel. But if what Paul
wrote was Gospel, it follows that what Peter wrote was also Gospel,
and in a word all that was said or written to perpetuate the knowledge
of Christ's sojourn on earth, and to prepare for His second coming, or
to bring it about as a present reality in those souls which were
willing to receive the Word of God as He stood at the door and knocked
and sought to come into them.
Footnotes
[4477] 2 Cor. v. 19.
[4478] John i. 29.
[4479] Ambrosius.
[4480] Matt. i. 1.
[4481] John xix. 26.
[4482] Gal. ii. 20.
[4483] 1 Cor. ii. 12, 16.
[4484] Rom. ii. 16.
7. What Good Things are Announced in the Gospels.
But it is time we should inquire what is the meaning of the
designation "Gospel," and why these books have this title. Now the
Gospel is a discourse containing a promise of things which naturally,
and on account of the benefits they bring, rejoice the hearer as soon
as the promise is heard and believed. Nor is such a discourse any the
less a Gospel that we define it with reference to the position of the
hearer. A Gospel is either a word which implies the actual presence
to the believer of something that is good, or a word promising the
arrival of a good which is expected. Now all these definitions apply
to those books which are named Gospels. For each of the Gospels is a
collection of announcements which are useful to him who believes them
and does not misinterpret them; it brings him a benefit and naturally
makes him glad because it tells of the sojourn with men, on account of
men, and for their salvation, of the first-born of all creation,
[4485] Christ Jesus. And again each Gospel tells of the sojourn of
the good Father in the Son with those minded to receive Him, as is
plain to every believer; and moreover by these books a good is
announced which had been formerly expected, as is by no means hard to
see. For John the Baptist spoke in the name almost of the whole
people when he sent to Jesus and asked, [4486] "Art thou He that
should come or do we look for another?" For to the people the Messiah
was an expected good, which the prophets had foretold, and they all
alike, though under the law and the prophets, fixed their hopes on
Him, as the Samaritan woman bears witness when she says: [4487]"I
know that the Messiah comes, who is called Christ; when He comes He
will tell us all things." Simon and Cleopas too, when talking to each
other about all that had happened to Jesus Christ Himself, then risen,
though they did not know that He had risen from the dead, speak thus,
[4488] "Dost thou sojourn alone in Jerusalem, and knowest not the
things which have taken place there in these days? And when he said
what things? they answered, The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth,
[4489] which was a prophet, mighty in deed and in word before God and
all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him
up to be sentenced to death and crucified Him. But we hoped that it
was He which should redeem Israel." Again, Andrew the brother of
Simon Peter found his own brother Simon and said to him, [4490] "We
have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, Christ." And a
little further on Philip finds Nathanael and says to him, [4491] "We
have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, wrote,
Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth."
Footnotes
[4485] Col. i. 15.
[4486] Matt. xi. 3.
[4487] John iv. 25.
[4488] Luke xxiv. 18-21.
[4489] Nazarenou.
[4490] John i. 42.
[4491] John i. 46.
8. How the Gospels Cause the Other Books of Scripture Also to Be
Gospel.
Now an objection might be raised to our first definition, because it
would embrace books which are not entitled Gospels. For the law and
the prophets also are to our eyes books containing the promise of
things which, from the benefit they will confer on him, naturally
rejoice the hearer as soon as he takes in the message. To this it may
be said that before the sojourn of Christ, the law and the prophets,
since He had not come who interpreted the mysteries they contained,
did not convey such a promise as belongs to our definition of the
Gospel; but the Saviour, when He sojourned with men and caused the
Gospel to appear in bodily form, by the Gospel caused all things to
appear as Gospel. Here I would not think it beside the purpose to
quote the example of Him who...a few things...and yet all. [4492]
For when he had taken away the veil which was present in the law and
the prophets, and by His divinity had proved the sons of men that the
Godhead was at work, He opened the way for all those who desired it to
be disciples of His wisdom, and to understand what things were true
and real in the law of Moses, of which things those of old worshipped
the type and the shadow, and what things were real of the things
narrated in the histories which "happened to them in the way of type,"
[4493] but these things "were written for our sakes, upon whom the
ends of the ages have come." With whomsoever, then, Christ has
sojourned, he worships God neither at Jerusalem nor on the mountain of
the Samaritans; he knows that God is a spirit, and worships Him
spiritually, in spirit and in truth; no longer by type does he worship
the Father and Maker of all. Before that Gospel, therefore, which
came into being by the sojourning of Christ, none of the older works
was a Gospel. But the Gospel, which is the new covenant, having
delivered us from the oldness of the letter, lights up for us, by the
light of knowledge, [4494] the newness of the spirit, a thing which
never grows old, which has its home in the New Testament, but is also
present in all the Scriptures. It was fitting, therefore, that that
Gospel, which enables us to find the Gospel present, even in the Old
Testament, should itself receive, in a special sense, the name of
Gospel.
Footnotes
[4492] Text defective here. The words as they stand would yield the
sense, "the formula, little and yet all."
[4493] 1 Cor. x. 11.
[4494] guosis.
9. The Somatic and the Spiritual Gospel.
We must not, however, forget that the sojourning of Christ with men
took place before His bodily sojourn, in an intellectual fashion, to
those who were more perfect and not children, and were not under
pedagogues and governors. In their minds they saw the fulness of the
time to be at hand--the patriarchs, and Moses the servant, and the
prophets who beheld the glory of Christ. And as before His manifest
and bodily coming He came to those who were perfect, so also, after
His coming has been announced to all, to those who are still children,
since they are under pedagogues and governors and have not yet arrived
at the fulness of the time, forerunners of Christ have come to
sojourn, discourses (logoi) suited for minds still in their childhood,
and rightly, therefore, termed pedagogues. But the Son Himself, the
glorified God, the Word, has not yet come; He waits for the
preparation which must take place on the part of men of God who are to
admit His deity. And this, too, we must bear in mind, that as the law
contains a shadow of good things to come, which are indicated by that
law which is announced according to truth, so the Gospel also teaches
a shadow of the mysteries of Christ, the Gospel which is thought to be
capable of being understood by any one. What John calls the eternal
Gospel, and what may properly be called the spiritual Gospel, presents
clearly to those who have the will to understand, all matters
concerning the very Son of God, both the mysteries presented by His
discourses and those matters of which His acts were the enigmas. In
accordance with this we may conclude that, as it is with Him who is a
Jew outwardly and circumcised in the flesh, so it is with the
Christian and with baptism. Paul and Peter were, at an earlier
period, Jews outwardly and circumcised, but later they received from
Christ that they should be so in secret, too; so that outwardly they
were Jews for the sake of the salvation of many, and by an economy
they not only confessed in words that they were Jews, but showed it by
their actions. And the same is to be said about their Christianity.
As Paul could not benefit those who were Jews according to the flesh,
without, when reason shows it to be necessary, circumcising Timothy,
and when it appears the natural course getting himself shaved and
making a vow, and, in a word, being to the Jews a Jew that he might
gain the Jews--so also it is not possible for one who is responsible
for the good of many to operate as he should by means of that
Christianity only which is in secret. That will never enable him to
improve those who are following the external Christianity, or to lead
them on to better and higher things. We must, therefore, be
Christians both somatically and spiritually, and where there is a call
for the somatic (bodily) Gospel, in which a man says to those who are
carnal that he knows nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, so we
must do. But should we find those who are perfected in the spirit,
and bear fruit in it, and are enamoured of the heavenly wisdom, these
must be made to partake of that Word which, after it was made flesh,
rose again to what it was in the beginning, with God.
10. How Jesus Himself is the Gospel.
The foregoing inquiry into the nature of the Gospel cannot be regarded
as useless; it has enabled us to see what distinction there is between
a sensible Gospel and an intellectual and spiritual one. What we have
now to do is to transform the sensible Gospel into a spiritual one.
For what would the narrative of the sensible Gospel amount to if it
were not developed to a spiritual one? It would be of little account
or none; any one can read it and assure himself of the facts it
tells--no more. But our whole energy is now to be directed to the
effort to penetrate to the deep things of the meaning of the Gospel
and to search out the truth that is in it when divested of types. Now
what the Gospels say is to be regarded in the light of promises of
good things; and we must say that the good things the Apostles
announce in this Gospel are simply Jesus. One good thing which they
are said to announce is the resurrection; but the resurrection is in a
manner Jesus, for Jesus says: [4495]"I am the resurrection." Jesus
preaches to the poor those things which are laid up for the saints,
calling them to the divine promises. And the holy Scriptures bear
witness to the Gospel announcements made by the Apostles and to that
made by our Saviour. David says of the Apostles, perhaps also of the
evangelists: [4496]"The Lord shall give the word to those that
preach with great power; the King of the powers of the beloved;"
teaching at the same time that it is not skilfully composed discourse,
nor the mode of delivery, nor well practised eloquence that produces
conviction, but the communication of divine power. Hence also Paul
says: [4497]"I will know not the word that is puffed up, but the
power; for the kingdom of God is not in word but in power." And in
another passage: [4498]"And my word and my preaching were not
persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of
power." To this power Simon and Cleophas bear witness when they say:
[4499]"Was not our heart burning within us by the way, as he opened
to us the Scriptures?" And the Apostles, since the quantity of the
power is great which God supplies to the speakers, had great power,
according to the word of David: "The Lord will give the word to the
preachers with great power." Isaiah too says: [4500]"How beautiful
are the feet of them that proclaim good tidings;" he sees how
beautiful and how opportune was the announcement of the Apostles who
walked in Him who said, "I am the way," and praises the feet of those
who walk in the intellectual way of Christ Jesus, and through that
door go in to God. They announce good tidings, those whose feet are
beautiful, namely, Jesus.
Footnotes
[4495] John xi. 25.
[4496] Ps. lxvii. 11, 12.
[4497] 1 Cor. iv. 19, 20 (with a peculiar reading).
[4498] 1 Cor. ii. 4.
[4499] Luke xxiv. 32.
[4500] Isa. lii. 7; Rom. x. 15.
11. Jesus is All Good Things; Hence the Gospel is Manifold.
Let no one wonder if we have understood Jesus to be announced in the
Gospel under a plurality of names of good things. If we look at the
things by the names of which the Son of God is called, we shall
understand how many good things Jesus is, whom those preach whose feet
are beautiful. One good thing is life; but Jesus is the life.
Another good thing is the light of the world, when it is true light,
and the light of men; and all these things the Son of God is said to
be. And another good thing which one may conceive to be in addition
to life or light is the truth. And a fourth in addition to time is
the way which leads to the truth. And all these things our Saviour
teaches that He is, when He says: [4501]"I am the way and the truth
and the life." Ah, is not that good, to shake off earth and
mortality, and to rise again, obtaining this boon from the Lord, since
He is the resurrection, as He says: [4502]"I am the resurrection."
But the door also is a good, through which one enters into the highest
blessedness. Now Christ says: [4503]"I am the door." And what
need is there to speak of wisdom, which "the Lord created [4504] the
first principle of His ways, for His works," in whom the father of her
rejoiced, delighting in her manifold intellectual beauty, seen by the
eyes of the mind alone, and provoking him to love who discerns her
divine and heavenly charm? A good indeed is the wisdom of God,
proclaimed along with the other good foresaid by those whose feet are
beautiful. And the power of God is the eighth good we enumerate,
which is Christ. Nor must we omit to mention the Word, who is God
after the Father of all. For this also is a good, less than no
other. Happy, then, are those who accept these goods and receive them
from those who announce the good tidings of them, those whose feet are
beautiful. Indeed even one of the Corinthians to whom Paul declared
that he knew nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, should he
learn Him who for our sakes became man, and so receive Him, he would
become identified with the beginning of the good things we have spoken
of; by the man Jesus he would be made a man of God, and by His death
he would die to sin. For "Christ, [4505] in that He died, died unto
sin once." But from His life, since "in that He liveth, He liveth
unto God," every one who is conformed to His resurrection receives
that living to God. But who will deny that righteousness, essential
righteousness, is a good, and essential sanctification, and essential
redemption? And these things those preach who preach Jesus, saying
[4506] that He is made to be of God righteousness and sanctification
and redemption. Hence we shall have writings about Him without
number, showing that Jesus is a multitude of goods; for from the
things which can scarcely be numbered and which have been written we
may make some conjecture of those things which actually exist in Him
in whom [4507] "it pleased God that the whole fulness of the Godhead
should dwell bodily," and which are not contained in writings. Why
should I say, "are not contained in writings"? For John speaks of the
whole world in this connection, and says: [4508]"I suppose that not
even the world itself would contain the books which would be
written." Now to say that the Apostles preach the Saviour is to say
that they preach these good things. For this is He who received from
the good Father that He Himself should be these good things, so that
each man receiving from Jesus the thing or things he is capable of
receiving may enjoy good things. But the Apostles, whose feet were
beautiful, and those imitators of them who sought to preach the good
tidings, could not have done so had not Jesus Himself first preached
the good tidings to them, as Isaiah says: [4509]"I myself that
speak am here, as the opportunity on the mountains, as the feet of one
preaching tidings of peace, as one preaching good things; for I will
make My salvation to be heard, saying, God shall reign over thee, O
Zion!" For what are the mountains on which the speaker declares that
He Himself is present, but those who are less than none of the highest
and the greatest of the earth? And these must be sought by the able
ministers of the New Covenant, in order that they may observe the
injunction which says: [4510]Go up into a high mountain, thou that
preachest good tidings to Zion; thou that preachest good tidings to
Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength!" Now it is not wonderful
if to those who are to preach good tidings Jesus Himself preaches good
tidings of good things, which are no other than Himself; for the Son
of God preaches the good tidings of Himself to those who cannot come
to know Him through others. And He who goes up into the mountains and
preaches good things to them, being Himself instructed by His good
Father, [4511] who "makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,
and sends rain on the just and on the unjust," He does not despise
those who are poor in soul. To them He preaches good tidings, as He
Himself bears witness to us when He takes Isaiah [4512] and reads:
"The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the Lord hath anointed me to
preach good tidings to the poor, He hath sent me to proclaim liberty
to the captives, and sight to the blind. For closing the book He
handed it to the minister and sat down. And when the eyes of all were
fastened upon Him, He said, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in
your ears."
Footnotes
[4501] John xiv. 6.
[4502] John xi. 25.
[4503] John x. 9.
[4504] Prov. viii. 22.
[4505] Rom. vi. 10.
[4506] 1 Cor. i. 30.
[4507] Col. i. 19; ii. 9.
[4508] John xxi. 25.
[4509] Isa. lii. 6.
[4510] Isa. xl. 9.
[4511] Matt. v. 45.
[4512] Luke iv. 18 sq.
12. The Gospel Contains the Ill Deeds Also Which Were Done to Jesus.
It ought not to be forgotten that in such a Gospel as this there is
embraced every good deed which was done to Jesus; as, for example, the
story of the woman [4513] who had been a sinner and had repented, and
who, having experienced a genuine recovery from her evil state, had
grace to pour her ointment over Jesus so that every one in the house
smelt the sweet savour. Hence, too, the words, "Wherever this Gospel
shall be preached among all the nations, there also this that she has
done shall be spoken of, for a memorial of her." And it is clear that
whatever is done to the disciples of Jesus is done to Him. Pointing
to those of them who met with kind treatment, He says to those who
were kind to them, [4514] "What ye did to these, ye did to Me." So
that every good deed we do to our neighbours is entered in the Gospel,
that Gospel which is written on the heavenly tablets and read by all
who are worthy of the knowledge of the whole of things. But on the
other side, too, there is a part of the Gospel which is for the
condemnation of the doers of the ill deeds which have been done to
Jesus. The treachery of Judas and the shouts of the wicked crowd when
it said, [4515] "Away with such a one from the earth," and "Crucify
Him, crucify Him," the mockings of those who crowned Him with thorns,
and everything of that kind, is included in the Gospels. And as a
consequence of this we see that every one who betrays the disciples of
Jesus is reckoned as betraying Jesus Himself. To Saul, [4516] when
still a persecutor it is said, "Saul Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"
and, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." There are those who still
have thorns with which they crown and dishonour Jesus, those, namely,
who are choked by the cares, and riches, and pleasures of life, and
though they have received the word of God, do not bring it to
perfection. [4517]We must beware, therefore, lest we also, as
crowning Jesus with thorns of our own, should be entered in the Gospel
and read of in this character by those who learn the Jesus, who is in
all and is present in all rational and holy lives, learn how He is
anointed with ointment, is entertained, is glorified, or how, on the
other side, He is dishonoured, and mocked, and beaten. All this had
to be said; it is part of our demonstration that our good actions, and
also the sins of those who stumble, are embodied in the Gospel, either
to everlasting life or to reproach and everlasting shame.
Footnotes
[4513] Matt. xxvi. 6-13, combined with Luke vii. 36-50.
[4514] Matt. xxv. 40.
[4515] John xix. 6, 15.
[4516] Acts ix. 4, 5.
[4517] Luke viii. 14.
13. The Angels Also are Evangelists.
Now if there are those among men who are honoured with the ministry of
evangelists, and if Jesus Himself brings tidings of good things, and
preaches the Gospel to the poor, surely those messengers who were made
spirits by God, [4518] those who are a flame of fire, ministers of the
Father of all, cannot have been excluded from being evangelists also.
Hence an angel standing over the shepherds made a bright light to
shine round about them, and said: [4519]"Fear not; behold I bring
you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people; for
there is born to you, this day, a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in
the city of David." And at a time when there was no knowledge among
men of the mystery of the Gospel, those who were greater than men and
inhabitants of heaven, the army of God, praised God, saying, "Glory to
God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men." [4520]
And having said this, the angels go away from the shepherds into
heaven, leaving us to gather how the joy preached to us through the
birth of Jesus Christ is glory in the highest to God; they humbled
themselves even to the ground, and then returned to their place of
rest, to glorify God in the highest through Jesus Christ. But the
angels also wonder at the peace which is to be brought about on
account of Jesus on the earth, that seat of war, on which Lucifer,
star of the morning, fell from heaven, to be warred against and
destroyed by Jesus.
Footnotes
[4518] Ps. civ. 4.
[4519] Luke ii. 10, 11.
[4520] Origen, however, appears also to have read eudokias: "among
men of good will."
14. The Old Testament, Typified by John, is the Beginning of the
Gospel.
In addition to what we have said, there is also this to be considered
about the Gospel, that in the first instance it is that of Christ
Jesus, the head of the whole body of the saved; as Mark says, [4521]
"The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Then also it is the
Gospel of the Apostles; whence Paul [4522] says, "According to my
Gospel." But the beginning of the Gospel--for in respect of its
extent it has a beginning, a continuation, a middle, and an end--is
nothing but the whole Old Testament. John is, in this respect, a type
of the Old Testament, or, if we regard the connection of the New
Testament with the Old, John represents the termination of the Old.
For the same Mark says: [4523]"The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold I send my
messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way. The voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His
paths straight." And here I must wonder how the dissentients [4524]
can connect the two Testaments with two different Gods. These words,
were there no others, are enough to convict them of their error. For
how can John be the beginning of the Gospel if they suppose he belongs
to a different God, if he belongs to the demiurge, and, as they hold,
is not acquainted with the new deity? And the angels are not
entrusted with but one evangelical ministry, and that a short one, not
only with that addressed to the shepherds. For at the end an exalted
and flying angel, having the Gospel, will preach it to every nation,
for the good Father has not entirely deserted those who have fallen
away from Him. John, son of Zebedee, says in his Apocalypse: [4525]
"And I saw an angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the Eternal
Gospel, to preach it to those who dwell upon the earth, and to every
nation, and tribe, and tongue, and people, saying, with a loud voice,
Fear God and give Him glory, for the hour of His judgment hath come,
and worship Him that made the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and
the fountains of waters."
Footnotes
[4521] Mark i. 1.
[4522] Rom. ii. 16.
[4523] i. 2, 3.
[4524] heterodoxoi.
[4525] Apoc. xiv. 6, 7.
15. The Gospel is in the Old Testament, and Indeed in the Whole
Universe. Prayer for Aid to Understand the Mystical Sense of the Work
in Hand.
As, then, we have shown that the beginning of the Gospel, according to
one interpretation, is the whole Old Testament, and is signified by
the person of John, we shall add, lest this should be called a mere
unsupported assertion, what is said in the Acts [4526] about the
eunuch of the queen of the Ethiopians and Philip. Philip, it is said,
began at the passage of Isaiah: "He was led as a lamb to the
slaughter, and as a lamb before his shearer is dumb," and so preached
to him the Lord Jesus. How can he begin with the prophet and preach
Jesus, if Isaiah was not a part of the beginning of the Gospel? From
this we may derive a proof of the assertion made at the outset, that
every divine Scripture is Gospel. If he who preaches the Gospel
preaches good things, and all those who spoke before the sojourn of
Jesus in the flesh preach Christ, who is as we saw good things, then
the words spoken by all of them alike are in a sense a part of the
Gospel. And when the Gospel is said to be declared throughout the
whole world, we infer that it is actually preached in the whole world,
not, that is to say, in this earthly district only, but in the whole
system of heaven and earth, or from heaven and earth. And why should
we discuss any further what the Gospel is? What we have said is
enough. Besides the passages we have adduced, passages by no means
inept or unsuited for our purpose,--much to the same effect might be
collected from the Scriptures, so that it is clearly seen what is the
glory of the good things in Jesus Christ shed forth by the Gospel, the
Gospel ministered by men and angels, and, I believe, also by
authorities and powers, [4527] and thrones and dominions, and every
name that is named, not only in this world, but also in the world to
come, and indeed even by Christ Himself. Here, then, let us bring to
a close what has to be said before proceeding to read the work
itself. And now let us ask God to assist us through Jesus Christ by
the Holy Spirit, so that we may be able to unfold the mystical sense
which is treasured up in the words before us.
Footnotes
[4526] Acts viii. 26, sqq.
[4527] Ephes. i. 21.
16. Meaning of "Beginning." (1) in Space.
"In the beginning was the Word." [4528]It is not only the Greeks
who consider the word "beginning" to have many meanings. Let any one
collect the Scripture passages in which the word occurs, and with a
view to an accurate interpretation of it note what it stands for in
each passage, and he will find that the word has many meanings in
sacred discourse also. We speak of a beginning in reference to a
transition. Here it has to do with a road and with length. This
appears in the saying: [4529]"The beginning of a good way is to do
justice." For since the good way is long, there have first to be
considered in reference to it the question connected with action, and
this side is presented in the words "to do justice;" the contemplative
side comes up for consideration afterwards. In the latter the end of
it comes to rest at last in the so-called restoration of all things,
since no enemy is left them to fight against, if that be true which is
said: [4530]"For He must reign until He have placed His enemies
under His feet. But the last enemy to be destroyed is death." For
then but one activity will be left for those who have come to God on
account of His word which is with Him, that, namely, of knowing God,
so that, being found by the knowledge of the Father, they may all be
His Son, as now no one but the Son knows the Father. For should any
one enquire carefully at what time those are to know the Father to
whom He who knows the Father reveals Him, and should he consider how a
man now sees only through a glass and in a riddle, never having
learned to know as he ought to know, he would be justified in saying
that no one, no apostle even, and no prophet had known the Father, but
when he became one with Him as a son and a father are one. And if any
one says that it is a digression which has led us to this point, our
consideration of that one meaning of the word beginning, we must show
that the digression is necessary and useful for the end we have in
view. For if we speak of a beginning in the case of a transition, and
of a way and its length, and if we are told that the beginning of a
good way is to do justice, then it concerns us to know in what manner
every good way has for its beginning to do justice, and how after such
beginning it arrives at contemplation, and in what manner it thus
arrives at contemplation.
Footnotes
[4528] John i. 1.
[4529] Prov. xvi. 5.
[4530] 1 Cor. xv. 25, 26.
17. (2) in Time. The Beginning of Creation.
Again, there is a beginning in a matter of origin, as might appear in
the saying: [4531]"In the beginning God made the heaven and the
earth." This meaning, however, appears more plainly in the Book of
Job in the passage: [4532]"This is the beginning of God's creation,
made for His angels to mock at." One would suppose that the heavens
and the earth were made first, of all that was made at the creation of
the world. But the second passage suggests a better view, namely,
that as many beings were framed with a body, the first made of these
was the creature called dragon, but called in another passage [4533]
the great whale (leviathan) which the Lord tamed. We must ask about
this; whether, when the saints were living a blessed life apart from
matter and from any body, the dragon, falling from the pure life,
became fit to be bound in matter and in a body, so that the Lord could
say, speaking through storm and clouds, "This is the beginning of the
creation of God, made for His angels to mock at." It is possible,
however, that the dragon is not positively the beginning of the
creation of the Lord, but that there were many creatures made with a
body for the angels to mock at, and that the dragon was the first of
these, while others could subsist in a body without such reproach.
But it is not so. For the soul of the sun is placed in a body, and
the whole creation, of which the Apostle says: [4534]"The whole
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now," and
perhaps the following is about the same: "The creation was made
subject to vanity, not willingly, but on account of Him who subjected
it for hope;" so that bodies might be in vanity, and doing the things
of the body, as he who is in the body must. [4535] ...One who is in
the body does the things of the body, though unwillingly. Wherefore
the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but he who
does unwillingly the things of the body does what he does for the sake
of hope, as if we should say that Paul desired to remain in the flesh,
not willingly, but on account of hope. For though he thought it
better [4536] to be dissolved and to be with Christ, it was not
unreasonable that he should wish to remain in the flesh for the sake
of the benefit to others and of advancement in the things hoped for,
not only by him, but also by those benefited by him. This meaning of
the term "beginning," as of origin, will serve us also in the passage
in which Wisdom speaks in the Proverbs. [4537]"God," we read,
"created me the beginning of His ways, for His works." Here the term
could be interpreted as in the first application we spoke of, that of
a way: "The Lord," it says, "created me the beginning of His ways."
One might assert, and with reason, that God Himself is the beginning
of all things, and might go on to say, as is plain, that the Father is
the beginning of the Son; and the demiurge the beginning of the works
of the demiurge, and that God in a word is the beginning of all that
exists. This view is supported by our: "In the beginning was the
Word." In the Word one may see the Son, and because He is in the
Father He may be said to be in the beginning.
Footnotes
[4531] Gen. i. 1.
[4532] Job xl. 19.
[4533] Job iii. 8.
[4534] Rom. viii. 22, 20.
[4535] The text is defective here.
[4536] Phil. i. 23.
[4537] viii. 22.
18. (3) of Substance.
In the third place a beginning may be that out of which a thing comes,
the underlying matter from which things are formed. This, however, is
the view of those who hold matter itself to be uncreated, a view which
we believers cannot share, since we believe God to have made the
things that are out of the things which are not, as the mother of the
seven martyrs in the Maccabees teaches, [4538] and as the angel of
repentance in the Shepherd inculcated. [4539]
Footnotes
[4538] 2 Macc. vii. 28.
[4539] Herm. Sim. viii.
19. (4) of Type and Copy.
In addition to these meanings there is that in which we speak of an
arche, [4540] according to form; thus if the first-born of every
creature [4541] is the image of the invisible God, then the Father is
his arche. In the same way Christ is the arche of those who are made
according to the image of God. For if men are according to the image,
but the image according to the Father; in the first case the Father is
the arche of Christ, and in the other Christ is the arche of men, and
men are made, not according to that of which he is the image, but
according to the image. With this example our passage will agree:
"In the arche was the Word."
Footnotes
[4540] We must here reproduce the Greek word, as Origen passes to
meanings of it which the English "beginning" does not cover.
[4541] Coloss. i. 15.
20. (5) of Elements and What is Formed from Them.
There is also an arche in a matter of learning, as when we say that
the letters are the arche of grammar. The Apostle accordingly says:
[4542]"When by reason of the time you ought to be teachers, you
have need again that some one teach you what are the elements of the
arche of the oracles of God." Now the arche spoken of in connection
with learning is twofold; first in respect of its nature, secondly in
its relation to us; as we might say of Christ, that by nature His
arche is deity, but that in relation to us who cannot, for its very
greatness, command the whole truth about Him, His arche is His
manhood, as He is preached to babes, "Jesus Christ and Him
crucified." In this view, then, Christ is the arche of learning in
His own nature, because He is the wisdom and power of God; but for us,
the Word was made flesh, that He might tabernacle among us who could
only thus at first receive Him. And perhaps this is the reason why He
is not only the firstborn of all creation, but is also designated the
man, Adam. For Paul says He is Adam: [4543]"The last Adam was made
a life-giving spirit."
Footnotes
[4542] Heb. v. 12.
[4543] 1 Cor. xv. 45.
21. (6) of Design and Execution.
Again we speak of the arche of an action, in which there is a design
which appears after the beginning. It may be considered whether
wisdom is to be regarded as the arche of the works of God because it
is in this way the principle of them.
22. The Word Was in the Beginning, I.e., in Wisdom, Which Contained
All Things in Idea, Before They Existed. Christ's Character as Wisdom
is Prior to His Other Characters.
So many meanings occur to us at once of the word arche. We have now
to ask which of them we should adopt for our text, "In the beginning
was the Word." It is plain that we may at once dismiss the meaning
which connects it with transition or with a road and its length. Nor,
it is pretty plain, will the meaning connected with an origin serve
our purpose. One might, however, think of the sense in which it
points to the author, to that which brings about the effect, if, as we
read, [4544] "God commanded and they were created." For Christ is, in
a manner, the demiurge, to whom the Father says, "Let there be light,"
and "Let there be a firmament." But Christ is demiurge as a beginning
(arche), inasmuch as He is wisdom. It is in virtue of His being
wisdom that He is called arche. For Wisdom says in Solomon: [4545]
"God created me the beginning of His ways, for His works," so that the
Word might be in an arche, namely, in wisdom. Considered in relation
to the structure of contemplation and thoughts about the whole of
things, it is regarded as wisdom; but in relation to that side of the
objects of thought, in which reasonable beings apprehend them, it is
considered as the Word. And there is no wonder, since, as we have
said before, the Saviour is many good things, if He comprises in
Himself thoughts of the first order, and of the second, and of the
third. This is what John suggested when he said about the Word:
[4546]"That which was made was life in Him." Life then came in the
Word. And on the one side the Word is no other than the Christ, the
Word, He who was with the Father, by whom all things were made; while,
on the other side, the Life is no other than the Son of God, who says:
[4547]"I am the way and the truth and the life." As, then, life
came into being in the Word, so the Word in the arche. Consider,
however, if we are at liberty to take this meaning of arche for our
text: "In the beginning was the Word," so as to obtain the meaning
that all things came into being according to wisdom and according to
the models of the system which are present in his thoughts. For I
consider that as a house or a ship is built and fashioned in
accordance with the sketches of the builder or designer, the house or
the ship having their beginning (arche) in the sketches and reckonings
in his mind, so all things came into being in accordance with the
designs of what was to be, clearly laid down by God in wisdom. And we
should add that having created, so to speak, ensouled [4548] wisdom,
He left her to hand over, from the types which were in her, to things
existing and to matter, the actual emergence of them, their moulding
and their forms. [4549]But I consider, if it be permitted to say
this, that the beginning (arche) of real existence was the Son of God,
saying: [4550]"I am the beginning and the end, the A and the O, the
first and the last." We must, however, remember that He is not the
arche in respect of every name which is applied to Him. For how can
He be the beginning in respect of His being life, when life came in
the Word, and the Word is manifestly the arche of life? It is also
tolerably evident that He cannot be the arche in respect of His being
the first-born from the dead. And if we go through all His titles
carefully we find that He is the arche only in respect of His being
wisdom. Not even as the Word is He the arche, for the Word was in the
arche. And so one might venture to say that wisdom is anterior to all
the thoughts that are expressed in the titles of the first-born of
every creature. Now God is altogether one and simple; but our
Saviour, for many reasons, since God [4551] set Him forth a
propitiation and a first fruits of the whole creation, is made many
things, or perhaps all these things; the whole creation, so far as
capable of redemption, stands in need of Him. [4552]And, hence, He
is made the light of men, because men, being darkened by wickedness,
need the light that shines in darkness, and is not overtaken by the
darkness; had not men been in darkness, He would not have become the
light of men. The same thing may be observed in respect of His being
the first-born of the dead. For supposing the woman had not been
deceived, and Adam had not fallen, and man created for incorruption
had obtained it, then He would not have descended into the grave, nor
would He have died, there being no sin, nor would His love of men have
required that He should die, and if He had not died, He could not have
been the first-born of the dead. We may also ask whether He would
ever have become a shepherd, had man not been thrown together with the
beasts which are devoid of reason, and made like to them. For if God
saves man and beasts, He saves those beasts which He does save, by
giving them a shepherd, since they cannot have a king. Thus if we
collect the titles of Jesus, the question arises which of them were
conferred on Him later, and would never have assumed such importance
if the saints had begun and had also persevered in blessedness.
Perhaps Wisdom would be the only remaining one, or perhaps the Word
would remain too, or perhaps the Life, or perhaps the Truth, not the
others, which He took for our sake. And happy indeed are those who in
their need for the Son of God have yet become such persons as not to
need Him in His character as a physician healing the sick, nor in that
of a shepherd, nor in that of redemption, but only in His characters
as wisdom, as the word and righteousness, or if there be any other
title suitable for those who are so perfect as to receive Him in His
fairest characters. So much for the phrase "In the beginning."
Footnotes
[4544] Ps. cxlviii. 5.
[4545] Prov. viii. 22.
[4546] John i. 3, 4.
[4547] John xiv. 6.
[4548] Opp. to embodied.
[4549] Mr. Brooke, T. and S. I. iv. p. 15, discusses this corrupt
passage and suggests an improved text which would yield the sense,
that wisdom was to give to things and matter, "it might be rash to say
bluntly their essences, but their moulding and their forms."
[4550] Apoc. xxii. 13.
[4551] Rom. iii. 25.
[4552] Passage obscure and probably corrupt.
23. The Title "Word" Is to Be Interpreted by the Same Method as the
Other Titles of Christ. The Word of God is Not a Mere Attribute of
God, But a Separate Person. What is Meant When He is Called the Word.
Let us consider, however, a little more carefully what is the Word
which is in the beginning. I am often led to wonder when I consider
the things that are said about Christ, even by those who are in
earnest in their belief in Him. Though there is a countless number of
names which can be applied to our Saviour, they omit the most of them,
and if they should remember them, they declare that these titles are
not to be understood in their proper sense, but tropically. But when
they come to the title Logos (Word), and repeat that Christ alone is
the Word of God, they are not consistent, and do not, as in the case
of the other titles, search out what is behind the meaning of the term
"Word." I wonder at the stupidity of the general run of Christians in
this matter. I do not mince matters; it is nothing but stupidity.
The Son of God says in one passage, "I am the light of the world," and
in another, "I am the resurrection," and again, "I am the way and the
truth and the life." It is also written, "I am the door," and we have
the saying, "I am the good shepherd," and when the woman of Samaria
says, "We know the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ; when He
comes, He will tell us all things," Jesus answers, "I that speak unto
thee am He." Again, when He washed the disciples' feet, He declared
Himself in these words [4553] to be their Master and Lord: "You call
Me Master and Lord, and you say well, for so I am." He also
distinctly announces Himself as the Son of God, when He says, [4554]
"He whom the Father sanctified and sent unto the world, to Him do you
say, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God?" and
[4555] "Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son also
may glorify Thee." We also find Him declaring Himself to be a king,
as when He answers Pilate's question, [4556] "Art Thou the King of the
Jews?" by saying, "My kingdom is not of this world; if My kingdom were
of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be
delivered to the Jews, but now is My kingdom not from hence." We have
also read the words, [4557] "I am the true vine and My Father is the
husbandman," and again, "I am the vine, ye are the branches." Add to
these testimonies also the saying, [4558] "I am the bread of life,
that came down from heaven and giveth life to the world." These texts
will suffice for the present, which we have picked up out of the
storehouse of the Gospels, and in all of which He claims to be the Son
of God. But in the Apocalypse of John, too, He says, [4559] "I am the
first and the last, and the living One, and I was dead. Behold, I am
alive for evermore." And again, [4560] "I am the A and the O, and the
first and the last, the beginning and the end." The careful student
of the sacred books, moreover, may gather not a few similar passages
from the prophets, as where He calls Himself [4561] a chosen shaft,
and a servant of God, [4562] and a light of the Gentiles. [4563]
Isaiah also says, [4564] "From my mother's womb hath He called me by
my name, and He made my mouth as a sharp sword, and under the shadow
of His hand did He hide me, and He said to me, Thou art My servant, O
Israel, and in thee will I be glorified." And a little farther on:
"And my God shall be my strength, and He said to me, This is a great
thing for thee to be called My servant, to set up the tribes of Jacob
and to turn again the diaspora of Israel. Behold I have set thee for
a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation to the
end of the earth." And in Jeremiah too [4565] He likens Himself to a
lamb, as thus: "I was as a gentle lamb that is led to the
slaughter." These and other similar sayings He applies to Himself.
In addition to these one might collect in the Gospels and the Apostles
and in the prophets a countless number of titles which are applied to
the Son of God, as the writers of the Gospels set forth their own
views of what He is, or the Apostles extol Him out of what they had
learned, or the prophets proclaim in advance His coming advent and
announce the things concerning Him under various names. Thus John
calls Him the Lamb of God, saying, [4566] "Behold the Lamb of God
which taketh away the sins of the world," and in these words he
declares Him as a man, [4567] "This is He about whom I said, that
there cometh after me a man who is there before me; for He was before
me." And in his Catholic Epistle John says that He is a Paraclete for
our souls with the Father, as thus: [4568]"And if any one sin, we
have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous," and he
adds that He is a propitiation for our sins, and similarly Paul says
He is a propitiation: [4569]"Whom God set forth as a propitiation
through faith in His blood, on account of forgiveness of the forepast
sins, in the forbearance of God." According to Paul, too, He is
declared to be the wisdom and the power of God, as in the Epistle to
the Corinthians: [4570]"Christ the power of God and the wisdom of
God." It is added that He is also sanctification and redemption: "He
was made to us of God," he says, "wisdom and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption." But he also teaches us, writing to
the Hebrews, that Christ is a High-Priest: [4571]"Having,
therefore, a great High-Priest, who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession." And the
prophets have other names for Him besides these. Jacob in his
blessing of his sons [4572] says, "Judah, thy brethren shall extol
thee; thy hands are on the necks of thine enemies. A lion's whelp is
Judah, from a shoot, my son, art thou sprung up; thou hast lain down
and slept as a lion; who shall awaken him?" We cannot now linger over
these phrases, to show that what is said of Judah applies to Christ.
What may be quoted against this view, viz., "A ruler shall not part
from Judah nor a leader from his loins, until He come for whom it is
reserved;" this can better be cleared up on another occasion. But
Isaiah knows Christ to be spoken of under the names of Jacob and
Israel, when he says, [4573] "Jacob is my servant, I will help Him;
Israel is my elect, my soul hath accepted Him. He shall declare
judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall
any one hear His voice on the streets. A bruised rod shall He not
break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He bring forth
judgment from victory, and in His name shall the nations hope." That
it is Christ about whom such prophecies are made, Matthew shows in his
Gospel, where he quotes from memory and says: [4574]"That the
saying might be fulfilled, He shall not strive nor cry," etc. David
also is called Christ, as where Ezekiel in his prophecy to the
shepherds adds as from the mouth of God: [4575]"I will raise up
David my servant, who shall be their shepherd." For it is not the
patriarch David who is to rise and be the shepherd of the saints, but
Christ. Isaiah also called Christ the rod and the flower: [4576]
"There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower
shall spring out of this root, and the spirit of God shall rest upon
Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and
of might, the spirit of knowledge and of godliness, and He shall be
full of the spirit of the fear of the Lord." And in the Psalms our
Lord is called the stone, as follows: [4577]"The stone which the
builders rejected is made the head of the corner. It is from the
Lord, and it is wonderful in our eyes." And the Gospel shows, as also
does Luke in the Acts, that the stone is no other than Christ; the
Gospel as follows: [4578]"Have ye never read, the stone which the
builders rejected is made the head of the corner. Whosoever falls on
this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will
scatter him as dust." And Luke writes in Acts: [4579]"This is the
stone, which was set at naught of you the builders, which has become
the head of the corner." And one of the names applied to the Saviour
is that which He Himself does not utter, but which John records;--the
Word who was in the beginning with God, God the Word. And it is worth
our while to fix our attention for a moment on those scholars who omit
consideration of most of the great names we have mentioned and regard
this as the most important one. As to the former titles, they look
for any account of them that any one may offer, but in the case of
this one they proceed differently and ask, What is the Son of God when
called the Word? The passage they employ most is that in the Psalms,
[4580] "My heart hath produced a good Word;" and they imagine the Son
of God to be the utterance of the Father deposited, as it were, in
syllables, and accordingly they do not allow Him, if we examine them
farther, any independent hypostasis, nor are they clear about His
essence. I do not mean that they confuse its qualities, but the fact
of His having an essence of His own. For no one can understand how
that which is said to be "Word" can be a Son. And such an animated
Word, not being a separate entity from the Father, and accordingly as
it, having no subsistence. is not a Son, or if he is a Son, let them
say that God the Word is a separate being and has an essence of His
own. We insist, therefore, that as in the case of each of the titles
spoken of above we turn from the title to the concept it suggests and
apply it and demonstrate how the Son of God is suitably described by
it, the same course must be followed when we find Him called the
Word. What caprice it is, in all these cases, not to stand upon the
term employed, but to enquire in what sense Christ is to be understood
to be the door, and in what way the vine, and why He is the way; but
in the one case of His being called the Word, to follow a different
course. To add to the authority, therefore, of what we have to say on
the question, how the Son of God is the Word, we must begin with those
names of which we spoke first as being applied to Him. This, we
cannot deny, will seem to some to be superfluous and a digression, but
the thoughtful reader will not think it useless to ask as to the
concepts for which the titles are used; to observe these matters will
clear the way for what is coming. And once we have entered upon the
theology concerning the Saviour, as we seek with what diligence we can
and find the various things that are taught about Him, we shall
necessarily understand more about Him not only in His character as the
Word, but in His other characters also.
Footnotes
[4553] John xiii. 13.
[4554] John x. 36.
[4555] John xvii. 1.
[4556] John xviii. 33, 36.
[4557] John xv. 1, 5.
[4558] John vi. 35, 41, 33.
[4559] Apoc. i. 18.
[4560] Apoc. xxii. 13.
[4561] Isa. xlix. 2.
[4562] Isa. xlii. 1, etc.
[4563] Isa. xlix. 6.
[4564] Isa. xlix. 1, 2, 3.
[4565] Jerem. xi. 19.
[4566] John i. 29.
[4567] John i. 30, 31.
[4568] 1 John ii. 1, hilasmos
[4569] Rom. iii. 25, 26, hilasterion
[4570] 1 Cor. i. 24, 30.
[4571] Heb. iv. 14.
[4572] Gen. xlix. 10.
[4573] Isa. xlii. 1-4.
[4574] Matt. xii. 17, 19.
[4575] Ezek. xxxiv. 23.
[4576] Isa. xi. 1-3.
[4577] Ps. cxviii. 22, 23.
[4578] Matt. xxi. 42, 44.
[4579] Acts iv. 11.
[4580] Ps. xlv. 1.
24. Christ as Light; How He, and How His Disciples are the Light of
the World.
He said, then, that He was the light of the world; and we have to
examine, along with this title, those which are parallel to it; and,
indeed, are thought by some to be not merely parallel, but identical
with it. He is the true light, and the light of the Gentiles. In the
opening of the Gospel now before us He is the light of men: "That
which was made," [4581] it says, "was life in Him, and the life was
the light of men; and the light shines in darkness, and the darkness
did not overtake it." A little further on, in the same passage, He is
called the true light: [4582]"The true light, which lightens every
man, was coming into the world." In Isaiah, He is the light of the
Gentiles, as we said before. "Behold, [4583] I have set Thee for a
light of the Gentiles, that Thou shouldest be for salvation to the end
of the earth." Now the sensible light of the world is the sun, and
after it comes very worthily the moon, and the same title may be
applied to the stars; but those lights of the world are said in Moses
to have come into existence on the fourth day, and as they shed light
on the things on the earth, they are not the true light. But the
Saviour shines on creatures which have intellect and sovereign reason,
that their minds may behold their proper objects of vision, and so he
is the light of the intellectual world, that is to say, of the
reasonable souls which are in the sensible world, and if there be any
beings beyond these in the world from which He declares Himself to be
our Saviour. He is, indeed, the most determining and distinguished
part of that world, and, as we may say, the sun who makes the great
day of the Lord. In view of this day He says to those who partake of
His light, "Work [4584] while it is day; the night cometh when no man
can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the
world." Then He says to His disciples, [4585] "Ye are the light of
the world," and "Let your light shine before men." Thus we see the
Church, the bride, to present an analogy to the moon and stars, and
the disciples have a light, which is their own or borrowed from the
true sun, so that they are able to illuminate those who have no
command of any spring of light in themselves. We may say that Paul
and Peter are the light of the world, and that those of their
disciples who are enlightened themselves, but are not able to
enlighten others, are the world of which the Apostles were the light.
But the Saviour, being the light of the world, illuminates not bodies,
but by His incorporeal power the incorporeal intellect, to the end
that each of us, enlightened as by the sun, may be able to discern the
rest of the things of the mind. And as when the sun is shining the
moon and the stars lose their power of giving light, so those who are
irradiated by Christ and receive His beams have no need of the
ministering apostles and prophets--we must have courage to declare
this truth--nor of the angels; I will add that they have no need even
of the greater powers when they are disciples of that first-born
light. To those who do not receive the solar beams of Christ, the
ministering saints do afford an illumination much less than the
former; this illumination is as much as those persons can receive, and
it completely fills them. Christ, again, the light of the world, is
the true light as distinguished from the light of sense; nothing that
is sensible is true. Yet though the sensible is other than the true,
it does not follow that the sensible is false, for the sensible may
have an analogy with the intellectual, and not everything that is not
true can correctly be called false. Now I ask whether the light of
the world is the same thing with the light of men, and I conceive that
a higher power of light is intended by the former phrase than by the
latter, for the world in one sense is not only men. Paul shows that
the world is something more than men when he writes to the Corinthians
in his first Epistle: [4586]"We are made a spectacle unto the
world, and to angels, and to men." In one sense, too, it may be
considered, [4587] the world is the creation which is being delivered
from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the
children of God, whose earnest expectation is waiting for the
manifestation of the sons of God. We also draw attention to the
comparison which may be drawn between the statement, "I am the light
of the world," and the words addressed to the disciples, "Ye are the
light of the world." Some suppose that the genuine disciples of Jesus
are greater than other creatures, some seeking the reason of this in
the natural growth of these disciples, others inferring it from their
harder struggle. For those beings which are in flesh and blood have
greater labours and a life more full of dangers than those which are
in an ethereal body, and the lights of heaven might not, if they had
put on bodies of earth, have accomplished this life of ours free from
danger and from error. Those who incline to this argument may appeal
to those texts of Scripture which say the most exalted things about
men, and to the fact that the Gospel is addressed directly to men; not
so much is said about the creation, or, as we understand it, about the
world. We read, [4588] "As I and Thou are one, that they also may be
one in Us," and [4589] "Where I am, there will also My servant be."
These sayings, plainly, are about men; while about the creation it is
said that it is delivered from the bondage of corruption into the
liberty of the glory of the children of God. It might be added that
not even when it is delivered will it take part in the glory of the
sons of God. Nor will those who hold this view forget that the
first-born of every creature, honouring man above all else, became
man, and that it was not any of the constellations existing in the
sky, but one of another order, appointed for this purpose and in the
service of the knowledge of Jesus, that was made to be the Star of the
East, whether it was like the other stars or perchance better than
they, to be the sign of Him who is the most excellent of all. And if
the boasting of the saints is in their tribulations, since [4590]
"tribulation worketh patience, and patience probation, and probation
hope, and hope maketh not ashamed," then the afflicted creation cannot
have the like patience with man, nor the like probation, nor the like
hope, but another degree of these, since [4591] "the creation was made
subject to vanity, not willingly, but on account of Him who subjected
it, for hope." Now he who shrinks from conferring such great
attributes on man will turn to another direction and say that the
creature being subjected to vanity groans and suffers greater
affliction than those who groan in this tabernacle, for has she not
suffered for the utmost extent of time in her service of vanity--nay,
many times as long as man? For why does she do this not willingly,
but that it is against her nature to be subject to vanity, and not to
have the best arrangement of her life, that which she shall receive
when she is set free, when the world is destroyed and released even
from the vanity of bodies. Here, however, we may appear to be
stretching too far, and aiming at more than the question now before us
requires. We may return, therefore, to the point from which we set
out, and ask for what reason the Saviour is called the light of the
world, the true light, and the light of men. Now we saw that He is
called the true light with reference to the sensible light of the
world, and that the light of the world is the same thing as the light
of men, or that we may at least enquire whether they are the same.
This discussion is not superfluous. Some students do not take
anything at all out of the statement that the Saviour is the Word; and
it is important for us to assure ourselves that we are not chargeable
with caprice in fixing our attention on that notion. If it admits of
being taken in a metaphorical sense we ought not to take it literally.
[4592]When we apply the mystical and allegorical method to the
expression "light of the world" and the many analogous terms mentioned
above, we should surely do so with this expression also.
Footnotes
[4581] John i. 3-5.
[4582] John i. 9.
[4583] Isa. xlix. 6.
[4584] John ix. 4, 5.
[4585] Matt. v. 14, 16.
[4586] 1 Cor. iv. 9.
[4587] Rom. viii. 24, 19.
[4588] John xvii. 21.
[4589] John xii. 26.
[4590] Rom. v. 3-5.
[4591] Rom. viii. 20.
[4592] Text corrupt. The above seems to be the meaning. Cf. chap. 23
init. p. 306.
25. Christ as the Resurrection.
Now He is called the light of men and the true light and the light of
the word, because He brightens and irradiates the higher parts of men,
or, in a word, of all reasonable beings. And similarly it is from and
because of the energy with which He causes the old deadness to be put
aside and that which is par excellence life to be put on, so that
those who have truly received Him rise again from the dead, that He is
called the resurrection. And this He does not only at the moment at
which a man says, [4593] "We are buried with Christ through baptism
and have risen again with Him," but much rather when a man, having
laid off all about him that belongs to death, walks in the newness of
life which belongs to Him, the Son, while here. We always [4594]
"carry about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus," and thus we
reap the vast advantage, "that the life of the Lord Jesus might be
made manifest in our bodies."
Footnotes
[4593] Rom. vi. 4.
[4594] 2 Cor. iv. 10.
26. Christ as the Way.
But that progress too, which is in wisdom and which is found by those
who seek their salvation in it to do for them what they require both
in respect of exposition of truth in the divine word and in respect of
conduct according to true righteousness, it lets us understand how
Christ is the way. In this way we have to take nothing with us,
[4595] neither wallet nor coat; we must travel without even a stick,
nor must we have shoes on our feet. For this road is itself
sufficient for all the supplies of our journey; and every one who
walks on it wants nothing. He is clad with a garment which is fit for
one who is setting out in response to an invitation to a wedding; and
on this road he cannot meet anything that can annoy him. "No one,"
Solomon says, [4596] "can find out the way of a serpent upon a rock."
I would add, or that of any other beast. Hence there is no need of a
staff on this road, on which there is no trace of any hostile
creature, and the hardness of which, whence also it is called rock
(petra), makes it incapable of harbouring anything hurtful.
Footnotes
[4595] Matt. x. 10.
[4596] Prov. xxx. 19.
27. Christ as the Truth.
Further, the Only-begotten is the truth, because He embraces in
Himself according to the Father's will the whole reason of all things,
and that with perfect clearness, and being the truth communicates to
each creature in proportion to its worthiness. And should any one
enquire whether all that the Father knows, according to the depth of
His riches and His wisdom and His knowledge, is known to our Saviour
also, and should he, imagining that he will thereby glorify the
Father, show that some things known to the Father are unknown to the
Son, although He might have had an equal share of the apprehensions of
the unbegotten God, we must remind him that it is from His being the
truth that He is Saviour, and add that if He is the truth complete,
then there is nothing true which He does not know; truth must not limp
for the want of the things which, according to those persons, are
known to the Father only. Or else let it be shown that some things
are known to which the name of truth does not apply, but which are
above the truth.
28. Christ as Life.
It is clear also that the principle of that life which is pure and
unmixed with any other element, resides in Him who is the first-born
of all creation, taking from which those who have a share in Christ
live the life which is true life, while all those who are thought to
live apart from this, as they have not the true light, have not the
true life either.
29. Christ as the Door and as the Shepherd.
But as one cannot be in the Father or with the Father except by
ascending from below upwards and coming first to the divinity of the
Son, through which one may be led by the hand and brought to the
blessedness of the Father Himself, so the Saviour has the inscription
"The Door." And as He is a lover of men, and approves the impulse of
human souls to better things, even of those who do not hasten to
reason (the Logos), but like sheep have a weakness and gentleness
apart from all accuracy and reason, so He is the Shepherd. For the
Lord saves men and beasts, [4597] and Israel and Juda are sowed with
the seed not of men only but also of beasts. [4598]
Footnotes
[4597] Ps. xxxvi. 6.
[4598] Jer. xxxi. 27.
30. Christ as Anointed (Christ) and as King.
In addition to these titles we must consider at the outset of our work
that of Christ, and we must also consider that of King, and compare
these two so as to find out the difference between them. Now it is
said in the forty-fourth Psalm, [4599] "Thou hast loved righteousness
and hated iniquity, whence Thou art anointed (Christ) above Thy
fellows." His loving righteousness and hating iniquity were thus
added claims in Him; His anointing was not contemporary with His being
nor inherited by Him from the first. Anointing is a symbol of
entering on the kingship, and sometimes also on the priesthood; and
must we therefore conclude that the kingship of the Son of God is not
inherited nor congenital to Him? But how is it conceivable that the
First-born of all creation was not a king and became a king afterwards
because He loved righteousness, when, moreover, He Himself was
righteousness? We cannot fail to see that it is as a man that He is
Christ, in respect of His soul, which was human and liable to be
troubled and sore vexed, but that He is conceived as king in respect
of the divine in Him. I find support for this in the seventy-first
Psalm, [4600] which says, "Give the king Thy judgment, O God, and Thy
righteousness to the king's Son, to judge Thy people in righteousness
and Thy poor in judgment." This Psalm, though addressed to Solomon,
is evidently a prophecy of Christ, and it is worth while to ask to
what king the prophecy desires judgment to be given by God, and to
what king's Son, and what king's righteousness is spoken of. I
conceive, then, that what is called the King is the leading nature of
the First-born of all creation, to which judgment is given on account
of its eminence; and that the man whom He assumed, formed and moulded
by that nature, according to righteousness, is the King's Son. I am
the more led to think that this is so, because the two beings are here
brought together in one sentence, and are spoken of as if they were
not two but one. For the Saviour made both one, [4601] that is, He
made them according to the prototype of the two which had been made
one in Himself before all things. The two I refer to human nature,
since each man's soul is mixed with the Holy Spirit, and each of those
who are saved is thus made spiritual. Now as there are some to whom
Christ is a shepherd, as we said before, because of their meek and
composed nature, though they are less guided by reason; so there are
those to whom He is a king, those, namely, who are led in their
approach to religion rather by the reasonable part of their nature.
And among those who are under a king there are differences; some
experience his rule in a more mystic and hidden and more divine way,
others in a less perfect fashion. I should say that those who, led by
reason, apart from all agencies of sense, have beheld incorporeal
things, the things which Paul speaks of as "invisible," or "not seen,"
that they are ruled by the leading nature of the Only-begotten, but
that those who have only advanced as far as the reason which is
conversant with sensible things, and on account of these glorify their
Maker, that these also are governed by the Word, by Christ. No
offence need be taken at our distinguishing these notions in the
Saviour; we draw the same distinctions in His substance.
Footnotes
[4599] Ps. xlv. 8.
[4600] Ps. lxxii. 1, 2.
[4601] Ephes. ii. 14.
31. Christ as Teacher and Master.
It is plain to all how our Lord is a teacher and an interpreter for
those who are striving towards godliness, and on the other hand a
master of those servants who have the spirit of bondage to fear,
[4602] who make progress and hasten towards wisdom, and are found
worthy to possess it. For [4603] "the servant knoweth not what the
master wills," since he is no longer his master, but has become his
friend. The Lord Himself teaches this, for He says to hearers who
were still servants: [4604]"You call Me Master and Lord, and you
say well, for so I am," but in another passage, [4605] "I call you no
longer servants, for the servant knoweth not what is the will of his
master, but I call you friends," because [4606] "you have continued
with Me in all My temptations." They, then, who live according to
fear, which God exacts from those who are not good servants, as we
read in Malachi, [4607] "If I am a Master, where is My fear?" are
servants of a master who is called their Saviour.
Footnotes
[4602] Rom. viii. 15.
[4603] John xv. 15; thelei for potei.
[4604] John xiii. 13.
[4605] John xv. 15.
[4606] Luke xxii. 28.
[4607] i. 6.
32. Christ as Son.
None of these testimonies, however, sets forth distinctly the
Saviour's exalted birth; but when the words are addressed to Him,
"Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee," [4608] this is
spoken to Him by God, with whom all time is to-day, for there is no
evening with God, as I consider, and there is no morning, nothing but
time that stretches out, along with His unbeginning and unseen life.
The day is to-day with Him in which the Son was begotten, and thus the
beginning of His birth is not found, as neither is the day of it.
Footnotes
[4608] Mark i. 11; Ps. ii. 7; Heb. i. 5.
33. Christ the True Vine, and as Bread.
To what we have said must be added how the Son is the true vine.
Those will have no difficulty in apprehending this who understand, in
a manner worthy of the prophetic grace, the saying: [4609]"Wine
maketh glad the heart of man." For if the heart be the intellectual
part, and what rejoices it is the Word most pleasant of all to drink
which takes us off human things, makes us feel ourselves inspired, and
intoxicates us with an intoxication which is not irrational but
divine, that, I conceive, with which Joseph made his brethren merry,
[4610] then it is very clear how He who brings wine thus to rejoice
the heart of man is the true vine. He is the true vine, because the
grapes He bears are the truth, the disciples are His branches, and
they, also, bring forth the truth as their fruit. It is somewhat
difficult to show the difference between the vine and bread, for He
says, not only that He is the vine, but that He is the bread of life.
May it be that as bread nourishes and makes strong, and is said to
strengthen the heart of man, but wine, on the contrary, pleases and
rejoices and melts him, so ethical studies, bringing life to him who
learns them and reduces them to practice, are the bread of life, but
cannot properly be called the fruit of the vine, while secret and
mystical speculations, rejoicing the heart and causing those to feel
inspired who take them in, delighting in the Lord, and who desire not
only to be nourished but to be made happy, are called the juice of the
true vine, because they flow from it.
Footnotes
[4609] Ps. civ. 15.
[4610] Gen. xliii. 34.
34. Christ as the First and the Last; He is Also What Lies Between
These.
Further, we have to ask in what sense He is called in the Apocalypse
the First and the Last, and how, in His character as the First, He is
not the same as the Alpha and the beginning, while in His character as
the Last He is not the same as the Omega and the end. It appears to
me, then, that the reasonable beings which exist are characterized by
many forms, and that some of them are the first, some the second, some
the third, and so on to the last. To pronounce exactly, however,
which is the first, what kind of a being the second is, which may
truly be designated third, and to carry this out to the end of the
series, this is not a task for man, but transcends our nature. We
shall yet venture, such as we are, to stand still a little at this
point, and to make some observations on the matter. There are some
gods of whom God is god, as we hear in prophecy, [4611] "Thank ye the
God of gods," and [4612] "The God of gods hath spoken, and called the
earth." Now God, according to the Gospel, [4613] "is not the God of
the dead but of the living." Those gods, then, are living of whom God
is god. The Apostle, too, writing to the Corinthians, says: [4614]
"As there are gods many and lords many," and so we have spoken of
these gods as really existing. Now there are, besides the gods of
whom God is god, certain others, who are called thrones, and others
called dominions, lordships, also, and powers in addition to these.
The phrase, [4615] "above every name that is named, not only in this
world, but also in that which is to come," leads us to believe that
there are yet others besides these which are less familiar to us; one
kind of these the Hebrews called Sabai, from which Sabaoth was formed,
who is their ruler, and is none other than God. Add to all these the
reasonable being who is mortal, man. Now the God of all things made
first in honour some race of reasonable beings; this I consider to be
those who are called gods, and the second order, let us say, for the
present, are the thrones, and the third, undoubtedly, the dominions.
And thus we come down in order to the last reasonable race, which,
perhaps, cannot be any other than man. The Saviour accordingly
became, in a diviner way than Paul, all things to all, that He might
either gain all or perfect them; it is clear that to men He became a
man, and to the angels an angel. As for His becoming man no believer
has any doubt, but as to His becoming an angel, we shall find reason
for believing it was so, if we observe carefully the appearances and
the words of the angels, in some of which the powers of the angels
seem to belong to Him. In several passages angels speak in such a way
as to suggest this, as when [4616] "the angel of the Lord appeared in
a flame of fire. And he said, I am the God of Abraham and of Isaac
and of Jacob." But Isaiah also says: [4617] "His name is called
Angel of Great Counsel." The Saviour, then, is the first and the
last, not that He is not what lies between, but the extremities are
named to show that He became all things. Consider, however, whether
the last is man, or the things said to be under the earth, of which
are the demons, all of them or some. We must ask, too, about those
things which the Saviour became which He speaks of through the prophet
David, [4618] "And I became as a man without any to help him, free
among the dead." His birth from the Virgin and His life so admirably
lived showed Him to be more than man, and it was the same among the
dead. He was the only free person there, and His soul was not left in
hell. Thus, then, He is the first and the last. Again, if there be
letters of God, as such there are, by reading which the saints may say
they have read what is written on the tablets of heaven, these
letters, by which heavenly things are to be read, are the notions,
divided into small parts, into A and so on to O, the Son of God.
Again, He is the beginning and the end, but He is this not in all His
aspects equally. For He is the beginning, as the Proverbs teach us,
inasmuch as He is wisdom; it is written: "The Lord founded Me in the
beginning of His ways, for His works." In the respect of His being
the Logos He is not the beginning. "The Word was in the beginning."
Thus in His aspects one comes first and is the beginning, and there is
a second after the beginning, and a third, and so on to the end, as if
He had said, I am the beginning. inasmuch as I am wisdom, and the
second, perhaps, inasmuch as I am invisible, and the third in that I
am life, for "what was made was life in Him." One who was qualified
to examine and to discern the sense of Scripture might, no doubt, find
many members of the series; I cannot say if he could find them all.
"The beginning and the end" is a phrase we usually apply to a thing
that is a completed unity; the beginning of a house is its foundation
and the end the parapet. We cannot but think of this figure, since
Christ is the stone which is the head of the corner, to the great
unity of the body of the saved. For Christ the only-begotten Son is
all and in all, He is as the beginning in the man He assumed, He is
present as the end in the last of the saints, and He is also in those
between, or else He is present as the beginning in Adam, as the end in
His life on earth, according to the saying: "The last Adam was made a
quickening spirit." This saying harmonizes well with the
interpretation we have given of the first and the last.
Footnotes
[4611] Ps. cxxxvi. 2.
[4612] Ps. l. 1.
[4613] Matt. xx. 2.
[4614] 1 Cor. viii. 5.
[4615] Ephes. i. 21.
[4616] Exod. iii. 2, 6.
[4617] Isa. ix. 6.
[4618] Ps. lxxxviii. 4, 5.
35. Christ as the Living and the Dead.
In what has been said about the first and the last, and about the
beginning and the end, we have referred these words at one point to
the different forms of reasonable beings, at another to the different
conceptions of the Son of God. Thus we have gained a distinction
between the first and the beginning, and between the last and the end,
and also the distinctive meaning of A and O. It is not hard to see
why he is called [4619] "the Living and the Dead," and after being
dead He that is alive for evermore. For since we were not helped by
His original life, sunk as we were in sin, He came down into our
deadness in order that, He having died to sin, we, [4620] bearing
about in our body the dying of Jesus. might then receive that life of
His which is for evermore. For those who always carry about in their
body the dying of Jesus shall obtain the life of Jesus also,
manifested in their bodies.
[4619] Apoc. i. 17, 18.
[4620] 2 Cor. iv. 10.
36. Christ as a Sword.
The texts of the New Testament, which we have discussed, are things
said by Himself about Himself. Isaiah, however, He said [4621] that
His mouth had been set by His Father as a sharp sword, and that He was
hidden under the shadow of His hand, made like to a chosen shaft and
kept close in the Father's quiver, called His servant by the God of
all things, and Israel, and Light of the Gentiles. The mouth of the
Son of God is a sharp sword, for [4622] "The word of God is living,
and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing to the
dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to
discern the thoughts and intents of the heart." And indeed He came
not to bring peace on the earth, that is, to corporeal and sensible
things, but a sword, and to cut through, if I may say so, the
disastrous friendship of soul and body, so that the soul, committing
herself to the spirit which was against the flesh, may enter into
friendship with God. Hence, according to the prophetic word, He made
His mouth as a sword, as a sharp sword. Can any one behold so many
wounded by the divine love, like her in the Song of Songs, who
complained that she was wounded: [4623]"I am wounded with love,"
and find the dart that wounded so many souls for the love of God, in
any but Him who said, "He hath made Me as a chosen shaft."
Footnotes
[4621] Isa. xlix. 2, 3.
[4622] Heb. iv. 12.
[4623] Song ii. 5.
37. Christ as a Servant, as the Lamb of God, and as the Man Whom John
Did Not Know.
Again, let any one consider how Jesus was to His disciples, not as He
who sits at meat, but as He who serves, and how though the Son of God
He took on Him the form of a servant for the sake of the freedom of
those who were enslaved in sin, and he will be at no loss to account
for the Father's saying to Him: [4624]"Thou art My servant," and a
little further on: "It is a great thing that thou shouldst be called
My servant." For we do not hesitate to say that the goodness of
Christ appears in a greater and more divine light, and more according
to the image of the Father, because [4625] "He humbled Himself,
becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," than if He
had judged it a thing to be grasped to be equal with God, and had
shrunk from becoming a servant for the salvation of the world. Hence
He says, [4626] desiring to teach us that in accepting this state of
servitude He had received a great gift from His Father: "And My God
shall be My strength. And He said to Me, It is a great thing for Thee
to be called My servant." For if He had not become a servant, He
would not have raised up the tribes of Jacob, nor have turned the
heart of the diaspora of Israel, and neither would He have become a
light of the Gentiles to be for salvation to the ends of the earth.
And it is no great thing for Him to become a servant, even if it is
called a great thing by His Father, for this is in comparison with His
being called with an innocent sheep and with a lamb. For the Lamb of
God became like an innocent sheep being led to the slaughter, that He
may take away the sin of the world. He who supplies reason (logos) to
all is made like a lamb which is dumb before her shearer, that we
might be purified by His death, which is given as a sort of medicine
against the opposing power, and also against the sin of those who open
their minds to the truth. For the death of Christ reduced to
impotence those powers which war against the human race, and it set
free from sin by a power beyond our words the life of each believer.
Since, then, He takes away sin until every enemy shall be destroyed
and death last of all, in order that the whole world may be free from
sin, therefore John points to Him and says: [4627]"Behold the Lamb
of God which taketh away the sin of the world." It is not said that
He will take it away in the future, nor that He is at present taking
it, nor that He has taken it, but is not taking it away now. His
taking away sin is still going on, He is taking it away from every
individual in the world, till sin be taken away from the whole world,
and the Saviour deliver the kingdom prepared and completed to the
Father, a kingdom in which no sin is left at all, and which,
therefore, is ready to accept the Father as its king, and which on the
other hand is waiting to receive all God has to bestow, fully, and in
every part, at that time when the saying [4628] is fulfilled, "That
God may be all in all." Further, we hear of a man who is said to be
coming after John, who was made before him and was before him. This
is to teach us that the man also of the Son of God, the man who was
mixed with His divinity, was older than His birth from Mary. John
says he does not know this man, but must he not have known Him when he
leapt for joy when yet a babe unborn in Elisabeth's womb, as soon as
the voice of Mary's salutation sounded in the ears of the wife of
Zacharias? Consider, therefore, if the words "I know Him not" may
have reference to the period before the bodily existence. Though he
did not know Him before He assumed His body, yet he knew Him when yet
in his mother's womb, and perhaps he is here learning something new
about Him beyond what was known to him before, namely, that on
whomsoever the Holy Spirit shall descend and abide on him, that is he
who is to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He knew him
from his mother's womb, but not all about Him. He did not know
perhaps that this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with
fire, when he saw the Spirit descending and abiding on Him. Yet that
He was indeed a man, and the first man, John did not know.
Footnotes
[4624] Isa. xlix. 3, 6.
[4625] Philipp. ii. 6, 8.
[4626] Isa. xlix. 5, 6.
[4627] John i. 29.
[4628] 1 Cor. v. 28.
38. Christ as Paraclete, as Propitiation, and as the Power of God.
But none of the names we have mentioned expresses His representation
of us with the Father, as He pleads for human nature, and makes
atonement for it; the Paraclete, and the propitiation, and the
atonement. He has the name Paraclete in the Epistle of John: [4629]
"If any man sin, we have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous." And He is said in the same epistle to be the atonement
[4630] for our sins. Similarly, in the Epistle to the Romans, He is
called a propitiation: [4631]"Whom God set forth to be a
propitiation through faith." Of this proportion there was a type in
the inmost part of the temple, the Holy of Holies, namely, the golden
mercy-seat placed upon the two cherubim. But how could He ever be the
Paraclete, and the atonement, and the propitiation without the power
of God, which makes an end of our weakness, flows over the souls of
believers, and is administered by Jesus, who indeed is prior to it and
Himself the power of God, who enables a man to say: [4632]"I can do
all things through Jesus Christ who strengtheneth me." Whence we know
that Simon Magus, who gave himself the title of "The power of God,
which is called great," was consigned to perdition and destruction, he
and his money with him. We, on the contrary, who confess Christ as
the true power of God, believe that we share with Him, inasmuch as He
is that power, all things in which any energy resides.
Footnotes
[4629] 1 John ii. 1, 2.
[4630] hilasmhos.
[4631] hilasterion, Rom. iii. 25.
[4632] Philipp. iv. 13.
39. Christ as Wisdom and Sanctification and Redemption.
We must not, however, pass over in silence that He is of right the
wisdom of God, and hence is called by that name. For the wisdom of
the God and Father of all things does not apprehend His substance in
mere visions, like the phantasms of human thoughts. Whoever is able
to conceive a bodiless existence of manifold speculations which extend
to the rationale of existing things, living and, as it were, ensouled,
he will see how well the Wisdom of God which is above every creature
speaks of herself, when she says: [4633]"God created me the
beginning of His ways, for His works." By this creating act the whole
creation was enabled to exist, not being unreceptive of that divine
wisdom according to which it was brought into being; for God,
according to the prophet David, [4634] made all things in wisdom. But
many things came into being by the help of wisdom, which do not lay
hold of that by which they were created: and few things indeed there
are which lay hold not only of that wisdom which concerns themselves,
but of that which has to do with many things besides, namely, of
Christ who is the whole of wisdom. But each of the sages, in
proportion as he embraces wisdom, partakes to that extent of Christ,
in that He is wisdom; just as every one who is greatly gifted with
power, in proportion as he has power, in that proportion also has a
share in Christ, inasmuch as He is power. The same is to be thought
about sanctification and redemption; for Jesus Himself is made
sanctification to us and redemption. Each of us is sanctified with
that sanctification, and redeemed with that redemption. Consider,
moreover, if the words "to us," added by the Apostle, have any special
force. Christ, he says, "was made to us of God, wisdom, and
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." In other
passages, he speaks about Christ as being wisdom, without any such
qualification, and of His being power, saying that Christ is the power
of God and the wisdom of God, though we might have conceived that He
was not the wisdom of God or the power of God, absolutely, but only
for us. Now, in respect of wisdom and power, we have both forms of
the statement, the relative and the absolute; but in respect of
sanctification and redemption, this is not the case. Consider,
therefore, since [4635] "He that sanctifies and they that are
sanctified are all of one," whether the Father is the sanctification
of Him who is our sanctification, as, Christ being our head, God is
His head. But Christ is our redemption because we had become
prisoners and needed ransoming. I do not enquire as to His own
redemption, for though He was tempted in all things as we are, He was
without sin, and His enemies never reduced Him to captivity.
Footnotes
[4633] Prov. viii. 22.
[4634] Ps. civ. 24.
[4635] Heb. ii. 11.
40. Christ as Righteousness; As the Demiurge, the Agent of the Good
God, and as High-Priest.
Having expiscated the "to us" and the "absolutely"--sanctification and
redemption being "to us" and not absolute, wisdom and redemption both
to us and absolute--we must not omit to enquire into the position of
righteousness in the same passage. That Christ is righteousness
relatively to us appears clearly from the words: "Who was made to us
of God wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption."
And if we do not find Him to be righteousness absolutely as He is the
wisdom and the power of God absolutely, then we must enquire whether
to Christ Himself, as the Father is sanctification, so the Father is
also righteousness. There is, we know, no unrighteousness with God;
[4636] He is a righteous and holy Lord, [4637] and His judgments are
in righteousness, and being righteous, He orders all things
righteously.
The heretics drew a distinction for purposes of their own between the
just and the good. They did not make the matter very clear, but they
considered that the demiurge was just, while the Father of Christ was
good. That distinction may, I think, if carefully examined, be
applied to the Father and the Son; the Son being righteousness, and
having received power [4638] to execute judgment, because He is the
Son of Man and will judge the world in righteousness, but the Father
doing good to those who have been disciplined by the righteousness of
the Son. This is after the kingdom of the Son; then the Father will
manifest in His works His name the Good, when God becomes all in all.
And perhaps by His righteousness the Saviour prepares everything at
the fit times, and by His word, by His ordering, by His chastisements,
and, if I may use such an expression, by His spiritual healing aids,
disposes all things to receive at the end the goodness of the Father.
It was from His sense of that goodness that He answered him who
addressed the Only-begotten with the words "Good Master," [4639] and
said, "Why callest thou Me good? None is good but one, God, the
Father." This we have treated of elsewhere, especially in dealing
with the question of the greater than the demiurge; Christ we have
taken to be the demiurge, and the Father the greater than He. Such
great things, then, He is, the Paraclete, the atonement, the
propitiation, the sympathizer with our weaknesses, who was tempted in
all human things, as we are, without sin; and in consequence He is a
great High-Priest, having offered Himself as the sacrifice which is
offered once for all, and not for men only but for every rational
creature. For without [4640] God He tasted death for every one. In
some copies of the Epistle to the Hebrews the words are "by the grace
of God." Now, whether He tasted death for every one without God, He
died not for men only but for all other intellectual beings too, or
whether He tasted death for every one by the grace of God, He died for
all without God, for by the grace of God He tasted death for every
one. It would surely be absurd to say that He tasted death for human
sins and not for any other being besides man which had fallen into
sin, as for example for the stars. For not even the stars are clean
in the eyes of God, as we read in Job, [4641] "The stars are not clean
in His sight," unless this is to be regarded as a hyperbole. Hence he
is a great High-Priest, since He restores all things to His Father's
kingdom, and arranges that whatever defects exist in each part of
creation shall be filled up so as to be full of the glory of the
Father. This High-Priest is called, from some other notion of him
than those we have noticed, Judas, that those who are Jews secretly
[4642] may take the name of Jew not from Judah, son of Jacob, but from
Him, since they are His brethren, and praise Him for the freedom they
have attained. For it is He who sets them free, saving them from
their enemies on whose backs He lays His hand to subdue them. When He
has put under His feet the opposing power, and is alone in presence of
His Father, then He is Jacob and Israel; and thus as we are made light
by Him, since He is the light of the world, so we are made Jacob since
He is called Jacob, and Israel since He is called Israel.
Footnotes
[4636] John vii. 18.
[4637] Apoc. xvi. 5, 7.
[4638] John v. 27.
[4639] Heb. ii. 9.
[4640] choris for chariti, a widely diffused early variant.
[4641] Job xxv. 5.
[4642] Rom. ii. 29.
41. Christ as the Rod, the Flower, the Stone.
Now He receives the kingdom from the king whom the children of Israel
appointed, beginning the monarchy not at the divine command and
without even consulting God. He therefore fights the battles of the
Lord and so prepares peace for His Son, His people, and this perhaps
is the reason why He is called David. Then He is called a rod; [4643]
such He is to those who need a harder and severer discipline, and have
not submitted to the love and gentleness of God. On this account, if
He is a rod, He has to "go forth;" He does not remain in Himself, but
appears to go beyond His earlier state. Going forth, then, and
becoming a rod, He does not remain a rod, but after the rod He becomes
a flower that rises up, and after being a rod He is made known as a
flower to those who, by His being a rod, have met with visitation.
For "God will visit their iniquities with a rod," [4644] that is,
Christ. But "His mercy He will not take from him," for He will have
mercy on him, for on whom the Son has mercy the Father has mercy
also. An interpretation may be given which makes Him a rod and a
flower in respect of different persons, a rod to those who have need
of chastisement, a flower to those who are being saved; but I prefer
the account of the matter given above. We must add here, however,
that, perhaps, looking to the end, if Christ is a rod to any man He is
also a flower to him, while it is not the case that he who receives
Him as a flower must also know Him as a rod. And yet as one flower is
more perfect than another and plants are said to flower, even though
they bring forth no perfect fruit, so the perfect receive that of
Christ which transcends the flower. Those, on the other hand, who
have known Him as a rod will partake along with it, not in His
perfection, but in the flower which comes before the fruit. Last of
all, before we come to the word Logos, Christ was a stone, [4645] set
at naught by the builders but placed on the head of the corner, for
the living stones are built up as on a foundation on the other stones
of the Apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself our Lord being the
chief corner-stone, because He is a part of the building made of
living stones in the land of the living; therefore He is called a
stone. All this we have said to show how capricious and baseless is
the procedure of those who, when so many names are given to Christ,
take the mere appellation "the Word," without enquiring, as in the
case of His other titles, in what sense it is used; surely they ought
to ask what is meant when it is said of the Son of God that He was the
Word, and God, and that He was in the beginning with the Father, and
that all things were made by Him.
Footnotes
[4643] Isa. xi. 1.
[4644] Ps. lxxxix. 32, 33.
[4645] Ps. cxviii. 22.
42. Of the Various Ways in Which Christ is the Logos.
As, then, from His activity in enlightening the world whose light He
is, Christ is named the Light of the World, and as from His making
those who sincerely attach themselves to Him put away their deadness
and rise again and put on newness of life, He is called the
Resurrection, so from an activity of another kind He is called
Shepherd and Teacher, King and Chosen Shaft, and Servant, and in
addition to these Paraclete and Atonement and Propitiation. And after
the same fashion He is also called the Logos, [4646] because He takes
away from us all that is irrational, and makes us truly reasonable, so
that we do all things, even to eating and drinking, to the glory of
God, and discharge by the Logos to the glory of God both the commoner
functions of life and those which belong to a more advanced stage.
For if, by having part in Him, we are raised up and enlightened,
herded also it may be and ruled over, then it is clear that we become
in a divine manner reasonable, when He drives away from us what in us
is irrational and dead, since He is the Logos (reason) and the
Resurrection. Consider, however, whether all men have in some way
part in Him in His character as Logos. On this point the Apostle
teaches us that He is to be sought not outside the seeker, and that
those find Him in themselves who set their heart on doing so; "Say not
[4647] in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? That is to bring
Christ down; or, Who shall descend into the abyss? That is to bring
Christ up from the dead. But what saith the Scripture? The Word is
very nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart," as if Christ Himself
were the same thing as the Word said to be sought after. But when the
Lord Himself says [4648] "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they
had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin," the only
sense we can find in His words is that the Logos Himself says that
those are not chargeable with sin to whom He (reason) has not fully
come, but that those, if they sin, are guilty who, having had part in
Him, act contrary to the ideas by which He declares His full presence
in us. Only when thus read is the saying true: "If I had not come
and spoken to them, they had not had sin." Should the words be
applied, as many are of opinion that they should, to the visible
Christ, then how is it true that those had no sin to whom He did not
come? In that case all who lived before the advent of the Saviour
will be free from sin, since Jesus, as seen in flesh, had not yet
come. And more--all those to whom He has never been preached will
have no sin, and if they have no sin, then it is clear they are not
liable to judgment. But the Logos in man, in which we have said that
our whole race had part, is spoken of in two senses; first, in that of
the filling up of ideas which takes place, prodigies excepted, in
every one who passes beyond the age of boyhood, but secondly, in that
of the consummation, which takes place only in the perfect. The
words, therefore, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would
not have had sin, but now they have no cloak for their sin," are to be
understood in the former sense; but the words, [4649] "All that ever
came before me are thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not hear
them," in the latter. For before the consummation of reason comes,
there is nothing in man but what is blameworthy; all is imperfect and
defective, and can by no means command the obedience of those
irrational elements in us which are tropically spoken of as sheep.
And perhaps the former meaning is to be recognized in the words "The
Logos was made flesh," but the second in "The Logos was God." We must
accordingly look at what there is to be seen in human affairs between
the saying, "The Word (reason) was made flesh" and "The Word was
God." When the Word was made flesh can we say that it was to some
extent broken up and thinned out, and can we say that it recovered
from that point onward till it became again what it was at first, God
the Word, the Word with the Father; the Word whose glory John saw, the
verily only-begotten, as from the Father. But the Son may also be the
Logos (Word), because He reports the secret things of His Father who
is intellect in the same way as the Son who is called the Word. For
as with us the word is a messenger of those things which the mind
perceives, so the Word of God, knowing the Father, since no created
being can approach Him without a guide, reveals the Father whom He
knows. For no one knows the Father save the Son, [4650] and he to
whomsoever the Son reveals Him, and inasmuch as He is the Word He is
the Messenger of Great Counsel, [4651] who has the government upon His
shoulders; for He entered on His kingdom by enduring the cross. In
the Apocalypse, [4652] moreover, the Faithful and True (the Word), is
said to sit on a white horse, the epithets indicating, I consider, the
clearness of the voice with which the Word of truth speaks to us when
He sojourns among us. This is scarcely the place to show how the word
"horse" is often used in passages spoken for our encouragement in
sacred learning. I only cite two of these: "A horse is deceitful for
safety," [4653] and "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we
will rejoice in the name of the Lord our God." [4654]Nor must we
leave unnoticed a passage in the forty-fourth Psalm, [4655] frequently
quoted by many writers as if they understood it: "My heart hath
belched forth a good word, I speak my works to the King." Suppose it
is God the Father who speaks thus; what is His heart, that the good
word should appear in accordance with His heart? If, as these writers
suppose, the Word (Logos) needs no interpretation, then the heart is
to be taken in the natural sense too. But it is quite absurd to
suppose God's heart to be a part of Him as ours is of our body. We
must remind such writers that as when the hand of God is spoken of,
and His arm and His finger, we do not read the words literally but
enquire in what sound sense we may take them so as to be worthy of
God, so His heart is to be understood of His rational power, by which
He disposes all things, and His word of that which announces what is
in this heart of His. But who is it that announces the counsel of the
Father to those of His creatures who are worthy and who have risen
above themselves, who but the Saviour? That "belched forth" is not,
perhaps, without significance; a hundred other terms might have been
employed; "My heart has produced a good word," it might have been
said, or "My heart has spoken a good word." But in belching, some
wind that was hidden makes its way out to the world, and so it may be
that the Father gives out views of truth not continuously, but as it
were after the fashion of belching, and the word has the character of
the things thus produced, and is called, therefore, the image of the
invisible God. We may enter our agreement, therefore, with the
ordinary acceptation of these words, and take them to be spoken by the
Father. It is not, however, a matter of course, that it is God
Himself who announces these things. Why should it not be a prophet?
Filled with the Spirit and unable to contain himself, he brings forth
a word about his prophecy concerning Christ: "My heart hath belched
forth a good word, I speak my works to the King, my pen is the tongue
of a ready writer. Excellent in beauty is He beyond the sons of
men." Then to the Christ Himself: "Grace is poured out on Thy
lips." If the Father were the speaker, how could He go on after the
words, "Grace is poured out on thy lips," to say, "Therefore God hath
blessed thee for ever," and a little further on, "Therefore God, thy
God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows."
Some of those who wish to make the Father the speaker may appeal to
the words, "Hear, O daughter, and behold and incline thine ear, and
forget thy people and thy father." The prophet, it may be said, could
not address the Church in the words, "Hear, O daughter." It is not
difficult, however, to show that changes of person occur frequently in
the Psalms, so that these words, "Hear, O daughter," might be from the
Father, in this passage, though the Psalm as a whole is not. To our
discussion of the Word we may here add the passage, [4656] "By the
word of the Lord were the heavens founded, and all the power of them
by the breath of His mouth." Some refer this to the Saviour and the
Holy Spirit. The passage, however, does not necessarily imply any
more than that the heavens were founded by the reason (logos) of God,
as when we say that a house is built by the plan (logos) of the
architect, or a ship by the plan (logos) of the shipbuilder. In the
same way the heavens were founded (made solid) by the Word of God, for
they are [4657] of a more divine substance, which on this account is
called solid; [4658] it has little fluidity for the most part, nor is
it easily melted like other parts of the world, and specially the
lower parts. On account of this difference the heavens are said in a
special manner to be constituted by the Word of God.
The saying then stands, first, "In the beginning was the Logos;" we
are to place that full in our view; but the testimonies we cited from
the Proverbs led us to place wisdom first, and to think of wisdom as
preceding the Word which announces her. We must observe, then, that
the Logos is in the beginning, that is, in wisdom, always. Its being
in wisdom, which is called the beginning, does not prevent it from
being with God and from being God, and it is not simply with God, but
is in the beginning, in wisdom, with God. For he goes on: "He was in
the beginning with God." He might have said, "He was with God;" but
as He was in the beginning, so He was with God in the beginning, and
"All things were made by Him," being in the beginning, for God made
all things, as David tells us, in wisdom. And to let us understand
that the Word has His own definite place and sphere as one who has
life in Himself (and is a distinct person), we must also speak about
powers, not about power. "Thus saith the Lord of powers, (A.V.
hosts)" we frequently read; there are certain creatures, rational and
divine, which are called powers: and of these Christ was the highest
and best, and is called not only the wisdom of God but also His
power. As, then, there are several powers of God, each of them in its
own form, and the Saviour is different from these, so also Christ,
even if that which is Logos in us is not in respect of form outside of
us, will be understood from our discussion up to this point to be the
Logos, who has His being in the beginning, in wisdom. This for the
present may suffice, on the word: "In the beginning was the Logos."
Footnotes
[4646] It is impossible to render by any one English word the Greek
logos as used by Origen in the following discussion. We shall
therefore in many passages leave it untranslated.
[4647] Rom. x. 6-8.
[4648] John xv. 22.
[4649] John x. 8.
[4650] Matt. xi. 27.
[4651] Isa. ix. 5, 6.
[4652] xix. 11.
[4653] Ps. xxxiii. 17.
[4654] Ps. xx. 7.
[4655] Ps. xlv. 1.
[4656] Ps. xxxiii. 6.
[4657] Reading tunchanomtas.
[4658] stereos, of which the sterheoma, firmament, is made.
.
Book II.
1. "And the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
In the preceding section, my revered brother Ambrosius, brother formed
according to the Gospel, we have discussed, as far as is at present in
our power, what the Gospel is, and what is the beginning in which the
Word was, and what the Word is which was in the beginning. We now
come to consider the next point in the work before us, How the Word
was with God. To this end it will be of service to remember that what
is called the Word came to certain persons; as "The Word of the Lord
[4659] which came to Hosea, the son of Beeri," and "The Word [4660]
which came to Isaiah, the son of Amos, concerning Judah and concerning
Jerusalem," and "The Word which came to Jeremiah [4661] concerning the
drought." We must enquire how this Word came to Hosea, and how it
came also to Isaiah the son of Amos, and again to Jeremiah concerning
the drought; the comparison may enable us to find out how the Word was
with God. The generality will simply look at what the prophets said,
as if that were the Word of the Lord or the Word, that came to them.
May it not be, however, that as we say that this person comes to that,
so the Son, the Word, of whom we are now theologizing, came to Hosea,
sent to him by the Father; historically, that is to say, to the son of
Beeri, the prophet Hosea, but mystically to him who is saved, for
Hosea means, etymologically, Saved; and to the son of Beeri, which
etymologically means wells, since every one who is saved becomes a son
of that spring which gushes forth out of the depths, the wisdom of
God. And it is nowise marvellous that the saint should be a son of
wells. From his brave deeds he is often called a son, whether, from
his works shining before men, of light, or from his possessing the
peace of God which passes all understanding, of peace, or, once more,
from the help which wisdom brings him, a child of wisdom; for wisdom,
[4662] it says, is justified of her children. Thus he who by the
divine spirit searches all things, and even the deep things of God, so
that he can exclaim, [4663] "O the depth of the riches both of the
wisdom and the knowledge of God!" he can be a son of wells, to whom
the Word of the Lord comes. Similarly the Word comes also to Isaiah,
teaching the things which are coming upon Judæa and Jerusalem in the
last days; and so also it comes to Jeremiah lifted up by a divine
elation. For Iao means etymologically lifting up, elation. Now the
Word comes to men who formerly could not receive the advent of the Son
of God who is the Word; but to God it does not come, as if it had not
been with Him before. The Word was always with the Father; and so it
is said, "And the Word was with God." He did not come to God, and
this same word "was" is used of the Word because He was in the
beginning at the same time when He was with God, neither being
separated from the beginning nor being bereft of His Father. And
again, neither did He come to be in the beginning after He had not
been in it, nor did He come to be with God after not having been with
Him. For before all time and the remotest age [4664] the Word was in
the beginning, and the Word was with God. Thus to find out what is
meant by the phrase, "The Word was with God," we have adduced the
words used about the prophets, how He came to Hosea, to Isaiah, to
Jeremiah, and we have noticed the difference, by no means accidental,
between "became" and "was." We have to add that in His coming to the
prophets He illuminates the prophets with the light of knowledge,
causing them to see things which had been before them, but which they
had not understood till then. With God, however, He is God, just
because He is with Him. And perhaps it was because he saw some such
order in the Logos, that John did not place the clause "The Word was
God" before the clause "The Word was with God." The series in which
he places his different sentences does not prevent the force of each
axiom from being separately and fully seen. One axiom is, "In the
beginning was the Word," a second, "The Word was with God," and then
comes, "And the Word was God." The arrangement of the sentences might
be thought to indicate an order; we have first "In the beginning was
the Word," then, "And the Word was with God," and thirdly, "And the
Word was God," so that it might be seen that the Word being with God
makes Him God.
Footnotes
[4659] Hos. i. 1.
[4660] Isa. ii. 1.
[4661] Jer. xiv. 1.
[4662] Matt. xi. 19.
[4663] Rom. xi. 33.
[4664] Omitting to, with Jacobi.
2. In What Way the Logos is God. Errors to Be Avoided on This
Question.
We next notice John's use of the article in these sentences. He does
not write without care in this respect, nor is he unfamiliar with the
niceties of the Greek tongue. In some cases he uses the article, and
in some he omits it. He adds the article to the Logos, but to the
name of God he adds it sometimes only. He uses the article, when the
name of God refers to the uncreated cause of all things, and omits it
when the Logos is named God. Does the same difference which we
observe between God with the article and God without it prevail also
between the Logos with it and without it? We must enquire into this.
As the God who is over all is God with the article not without it, so
"the Logos" is the source of that reason (Logos) which dwells in every
reasonable creature; the reason which is in each creature is not, like
the former called par excellence The Logos. Now there are many who
are sincerely concerned about religion, and who fall here into great
perplexity. They are afraid that they may be proclaiming two Gods,
and their fear drives them into doctrines which are false and wicked.
Either they deny that the Son has a distinct nature of His own besides
that of the Father, and make Him whom they call the Son to be God all
but the name, or they deny the divinity of the Son, giving Him a
separate existence of His own, and making His sphere of essence fall
outside that of the Father, so that they are separable from each
other. To such persons we have to say that God on the one hand is
Very God (Autotheos, God of Himself); and so the Saviour says in His
prayer to the Father, [4665] "That they may know Thee the only true
God;" but that all beyond the Very God is made God by participation in
His divinity, and is not to be called simply God (with the article),
but rather God (without article). And thus the first-born of all
creation, who is the first to be with God, and to attract to Himself
divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other gods beside
Him, of whom God is the God, as it is written, [4666] "The God of
gods, the Lord, hath spoken and called the earth." It was by the
offices of the first-born that they became gods, for He drew from God
in generous measure that they should be made gods, and He communicated
it to them according to His own bounty. The true God, then, is "The
God," and those who are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were,
of Him the prototype. But the archetypal image, again, of all these
images is the Word of God, who was in the beginning, and who by being
with God is at all times God, not possessing that of Himself, but by
His being with the Father, and not continuing to be God, if we should
think of this, except by remaining always in uninterrupted
contemplation of the depths of the Father.
Footnotes
[4665] John xvii. 3.
[4666] Ps. l. 1.
3. Various Relations of the Logos to Men.
Now it is possible that some may dislike what we have said
representing the Father as the one true God, but admitting other
beings besides the true God, who have become gods by having a share of
God. They may fear that the glory of Him who surpasses all creation
may be lowered to the level of those other beings called gods. We
drew this distinction between Him and them that we showed God the Word
to be to all the other gods the minister of their divinity. To this
we must add, in order to obviate objections, that the reason which is
in every reasonable creature occupied the same relation to the reason
who was in the beginning with God, and is God the Word, as God the
Word occupies to God. As the Father who is Very God and the True God
is to His image and to the images of His image--men are said to be
according to the image, not to be images of God--so He, the Word, is
to the reason (word) in every man. Each fills the place of a
fountain--the Father is the fountain of divinity, the Son of reason.
As, then, there are many gods, but to us there is but one God the
Father, and many Lords, but to us there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, so
there are many Logoi, but we, for our part, pray that that one Logos
may be with us who was in the beginning and was with God, God the
Logos. For whoever does not receive this Logos who was in the
beginning with God, or attach himself to Him as He appeared in flesh,
or take part in some of those who had part in this Logos, or whoever
having had part in Him falls away from Him again, he will have his
portion in what is called most opposite to reason. What we have drawn
out from the truths with which we started will now be clear enough.
First, we spoke about God and the Word of God, and of Gods, either,
that is, beings who partake in deity or beings who are called Gods and
are not. And again of the Logos of God and of the Logos of God made
flesh, and of logoi, or beings which partake in some way of the Logos,
of second logoi or of third, thought to be logoi, in addition to that
Logos that was before them all, but not really so. Irrational Reasons
these may be styled; beings are spoken of who are said to be Gods but
are not, and one might place beside these Gods who are no Gods,
Reasons which are no Reasons. Now the God of the universe is the God
of the elect, and in a much greater degree of the Saviours of the
elect; then He is the God of these beings who are truly Gods, and then
He is the God, in a word, of the living and not of the dead. But God
the Logos is the God, perhaps, of those who attribute everything to
Him and who consider Him to be their Father. Now the sun and the moon
and the stars were connected, according to the accounts of men of old
times, with beings who were not worthy to have the God of gods counted
their God. To this opinion they were led by a passage in Deuteronomy
which is somewhat on this wise: [4667]"Lest when thou liftest up
thine eyes to heaven, and seest the sun and the moon and the whole
host of heaven, thou wander away and worship them and serve them which
the Lord thy God hath appointed to all the peoples. But to you the
Lord thy God hath not so given them." But how did God appoint the sun
and the moon and all the host of heaven to all the nations, if He did
not give them in the same way to Israel also, to the end that those
who could not rise to the realm of intellect, might be inclined by
gods of sense to consider about the Godhead, and might of their own
free will connect themselves with these and so be kept from falling
away to idols and demons? Is it not the case that some have for their
God the God of the universe, while a second class, after these, attach
themselves to the Son of God, His Christ, and a third class worship
the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, wandering, it is
true, from God, but with a far different and a better wandering than
that of those who invoke as gods the works of men's hands, silver and
gold,--works of human skill. Last of all are those who devote
themselves to the beings which are called gods but are no gods. In
the same way, now, some have faith in that Reason which was in the
beginning and was with God and was God; so did Hosea and Isaiah and
Jeremiah and others who declared that the Word of the Lord, or the
Logos, had come to them. A second class are those who know nothing
but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, considering that the Word made
flesh is the whole Word, and knowing only Christ after the flesh.
Such is the great multitude of those who are counted believers. A
third class give themselves to logoi (discourses) having some part in
the Logos which they consider superior to all other reason: these are
they who follow the honourable and distinguished philosophical schools
among the Greeks. A fourth class besides these are they who put their
trust in corrupt and godless discourses, doing away with Providence,
which is so manifest and almost visible, and who recognize another end
for man to follow than the good. It may appear to some that we have
wandered from our theme, but to my thinking the view we have reached
of four things connected with the name of God and four things
connected with the Logos comes in very well at this point. There was
God with the article and God without the article, then there were gods
in two orders, at the summit of the higher order of whom is God the
Word, transcended Himself by the God of the universe. And, again,
there was the Logos with the article and the Logos without the
article, corresponding to God absolutely and a god; and the Logoi in
two ranks. And some men are connected with the Father, being part of
Him, and next to these, those whom our argument now brings into
clearer light, those who have come to the Saviour and take their stand
entirely in Him. And third are those of whom we spoke before, who
reckon the sun and the moon and the stars to be gods, and take their
stand by them. And in the fourth and last place those who submit to
soulless and dead idols. To all this we find analogies in what
concerns the Logos. Some are adorned with the Word Himself; some with
what is next to Him and appears to be the very original Logos Himself,
those, namely, who know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified,
and who behold the Word as flesh. And the third class, as we
described them a little before. Why should I speak of those who are
thought to be in the Logos, but have fallen away, not only from the
good itself, but from the very traces of it and from those who have a
part in it?
Footnotes
[4667] Deut. iv. 19, quoted apparently from memory.
4. That the Logos is One, Not Many. Of the Word, Faithful and True,
and of His White Horse.
"He was in the beginning with God." By his three foregoing
propositions the Evangelist has made us acquainted with three orders,
and he now sums up the three in one, saying, "This (Logos) was in the
beginning with God." In the first premiss we learned where the Logos
was: He was in the beginning; then we learned with whom He was, with
God; and then who He was, that He was God. He now points out by this
word "He," the Word who is God, and gathers up into a fourth
proposition the three which went before, "In the beginning was the
Word," "The Word was with God," and "The Word was God." Now he says,
He, this (Word) was in the beginning with God. The term beginning may
be taken of the beginning of the world, so that we may learn from what
is said that the Word was older than the things which were made from
the beginning. For if "in the beginning God created heaven and
earth," but "He" was in the beginning, then the Logos is manifestly
older than those things which were made at the beginning, older not
only than the firmament and the dry land, but than the heavens and
earth. Now some one might ask, and not unreasonably, why it is not
said, "In the beginning was the Word of God, and the Word of God was
with God, and the Word of God was God." But he who asked such a
question could be shown to be taking for granted that there are a
plurality of logoi, differing perhaps from each other in kind, one
being the word of God, another perhaps the word of angels, a third of
men, and so on with the other logoi. Now, if this were so with the
Logos, the case would be the same with wisdom and with righteousness.
But it would be absurd that there should be a number of things equally
to be called "The Word;" and the same would apply to wisdom and to
righteousness. We shall be driven to confess that we ought not to
look for a plurality of logoi, or of wisdom, or of righteousness, if
we look at the case of truth. Any one will confess that there is only
one truth; it could never be said in this case that there is one truth
of God, and another of the angels, and another of man,--it lies in the
nature of things that the truth about anything is one. Now, if truth
be one, it is clear that the preparation of it and its demonstration,
which is wisdom, must in reason be conceived as one, since what is
regarded as wisdom cannot justly claim that title where truth, which
is one, is absent from its grasp. But if truth is one and wisdom one,
then Reason (Logos) also, which announces truth and makes truth simple
and manifest to those who are fitted to receive it, will be one. This
we say, by no means denying that truth and wisdom and reason are of
God, but we wish to indicate the purpose of the omission in this
passage of the words "of God," and of the form of the statement, "In
the beginning the Logos was with God." The same John in the
Apocalypse gives Him His name with the addition "of God," where he
says: [4668]"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse, and
He that sat thereon called Faithful and True; and in righteousness
doth He judge and make war. And His eyes are as a flame of fire, and
on His head are many diadems, and He hath a name written which no one
knoweth but He Himself. And He is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with
blood, and His name is called [4669] Word of God. And His armies in
heaven followed Him on white horses, clothed in pure fine linen. And
out of His mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that with it He should
smite the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron, and He
treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty
God. And He hath on His garment and on His thigh a name written:
King of kings, and Lord of lords." In this passage Logos is
necessarily spoken of absolutely without the article, and also with
the addition Logos of God; had the first not been the case (i.e., had
the article been given) we might have been led to take up the meaning
wrongly, [4670] and so to depart from the truth about the Logos. For
if it had been called simply Logos, and had not been said to be the
Logos of God, then we would not be clearly informed that the Logos is
the Logos of God. And, again, had it been called Logos of God but not
said to be Logos absolutely, then we might imagine many logoi,
according to the constitution of each of the rational beings which
exist; then we might assume a number of logoi properly so called.
Again, in his description in the Apocalypse of the Logos of God, the
Apostle and Evangelist (and the Apocalypse entitles him to be styled a
prophet, too) says he saw the Word of God in the opened heaven, and
that He was riding on a white horse. Now we must consider what he
means to convey when he speaks of heaven being opened and of the white
horse, and of the Word of God riding on the white horse, and also what
is meant by saying that the Word of God is Faithful and True, and that
in righteousness He judges and makes war. All this will greatly
advance our study on the subject of the Word of God. Now I conceive
heaven to have been shut against the ungodly, and those who bear the
image of the earthly, and to have been opened to the righteous and
those adorned with the image of the heavenly. For to the former,
being below and still dwelling in the flesh, the better things are
closed, since they cannot understand them and have neither power nor
will to see their beauty, looking down as they do and not striving to
look up. But to the excellent, or those who have their commonwealth
in heaven, [4671] he opens, with the key of David, the things in
heavenly places and discloses them to their view, and makes all clear
to them by riding on his horse. These words also have their meaning;
the horse is white because it is the nature of higher knowledge
(gnosis) to be clear and white and full of light. And on the white
horse sits He who is called Faithful, seated more firmly, and so to
speak more royally, on words which cannot be set aside, words which
run sharply and more swiftly than any horse, and overhear in their
rushing course every so-called word that simulates the Word, and every
so-called truth that simulates the Truth. He who sits on the white
horse is called Faithful, not because of the faith He cherishes, but
of that which He inspires, because He is worthy of faith. Now the
Lord Jehovah, according to Moses, [4672] is Faithful and True. He is
true also in respect of His relation to shadow, type, and image; for
such is the Word who is in the opened heaven, for He is not on earth
as He is in heaven; on earth He is made flesh and speaks through
shadow, type, and image. The multitude, therefore, of those who are
reputed to believe are disciples of the shadow of the Word, not of the
true Word of God which is in the opened heaven. Hence Jeremiah says,
[4673] "The Spirit of our face is Christ the Lord, of whom we said, In
His shadow shall we live among the nations." Thus the Word of God who
is called Faithful is also called True, and in righteousness He judges
and makes war; since He has received from God the faculty of judging
in very righteousness and very judgment, and of apportioning its due
to every existing creature. For none of those who have some portion
of righteousness and of the faculty of judgment can receive on his
soul such copies and impressions of righteousness and judgment as to
come short in no point of absolute righteousness and absolute justice,
just as no painter of a picture can communicate to the representation
all the qualities of the original. This, I conceive, is the reason
why David says, [4674] "Before Thee shall no living being be
justified." He does not say, no man, or no angel, but no living
being, since even if any being partakes of life and has altogether put
off mortality, not even then can it be justified in comparison of
Thee, who art, as it were, Life itself. Nor is it possible that one
who partakes of life and is therefore called living, should become
life itself, or that one who partakes of righteousness and, therefore,
is called righteous should become equal to righteousness itself. Now
it is the function of the Word of God, not only to judge in
righteousness, but also to make war in righteousness, that by making
war on His enemies by reason and righteousness, so that what is
irrational and wicked is destroyed, [4675] He may dwell in the soul of
him who, for his salvation, so to speak, has become captive to Christ,
and may justify that soul and cast out from her all adversaries. We
shall, however, obtain a better view of this war which the Word
carries on if we remember that He is an ambassador for the truth,
while there is another who pretends to be the Word and is not, and one
who calls herself the truth and is not, but a lie. Then the Word,
arming Himself against the lie, slays it with the breath of His mouth
and brings it to naught by the manifestation of His coming. [4676]
And consider whether these words of the Apostle to the Thessalonians
may be understood in an intellectual sense. For what is that which is
destroyed by the breath of the mouth of Christ, Christ being the Word
and Truth and Wisdom, but the lie? And what is that which is brought
to naught by the manifestation of Christ's coming, Christ being
conceived as wisdom and reason, what but that which announces itself
as wisdom, when in reality it is one of those things with which God
deals as the Apostle describes, [4677] "He taketh the wise, those who
are not wise with the true wisdom, in their own craftiness"? To what
he says of the rider on the white horse, John adds the wonderful
statement: "His eyes are like a flame of fire." For as the flame of
fire is bright and illuminating, but at the same time fiery and
destructive of material things, so, if I may so say, are the eyes of
the Logos with which He sees, and every one who has part in Him; they
have not only the inherent quality of laying hold of the things of the
mind, but also that of consuming and putting away those conceptions
which are more material and gross, since whatever is in any way false
flees from the directness and lightness of truth. It is in a very
natural order that after speaking of Him who judges in righteousness
and makes war in accordance with His righteous judgments, and then
after His warring of His giving light, the writer goes on to say, "On
His head are many diadems." For had the lie been one, and of one form
only, against which the True and Faithful Word contended, and for
conquering which, He was crowned, then one crown alone would naturally
have been given Him for the victory. As it is, however, as the lies
are many which profess the truth and for warring against which the
Word is crowned, the diadems are many which surround the head of the
conqueror of them all. As He has overcome every revolting power many
diadems mark His victory. Then after the diadems He is said to have a
name written which no one knows but He Himself. For there are some
things which are known to the Word alone; for the beings which come
into existence after Him have a poorer nature than His, and none of
them is able to behold all that He apprehends. And perhaps it is the
case that only those who have part in that Word know the things which
are kept from the knowledge of those who do not partake of Him. Now,
in John's vision, the Word of God as He rides on the white horse is
not naked: He is clothed with a garment sprinkled with blood, for the
Word who was made flesh and therefore died is surrounded with marks of
the fact that His blood was poured out upon the earth, when the
soldier pierced His side. For of that passion, even should it be our
lot some day to come to that highest and supreme contemplation of the
Logos, we shall not lose all memory, nor shall we forget the truth
that our admission was brought about by His sojourning in our body.
This Word of God is followed by the heavenly armies one and all; they
follow the Word as their leader, and imitate Him in all things, and
chiefly in having mounted, they also, white horses. To him that
understands, this secret is open. And as sorrow and grief and wailing
fled away at the end of things, so also, I suppose, did obscurity and
doubt, all the mysteries of God's wisdom being precisely and clearly
opened. Look also at the white horses of the followers of the Word
and at the white and pure linen with which they were clothed. As
linen comes out of the earth, may not those linen garments stand for
the dialects on the earth in which those voices are clothed which make
clear announcements of things? We have dealt at some length with the
statements found in the Apocalypse about the Word of God; it is
important for us to know clearly about Him.
Footnotes
[4668] Apoc. xix. 11-16.
[4669] In the Greek the article is here omitted.
[4670] Reading parekdexasthai, with Huet.
[4671] Philipp. iii. 20.
[4672] Deut. xxxii. 4.
[4673] Lam. iv. 20.
[4674] Ps. cxliii. 2.
[4675] Omitting legesthai, with Jacobi.
[4676] 2 Thess. ii. 8.
[4677] 1 Cor. iii. 19.
5. He (This One) Was in the Beginning with God.
To those who fail to distinguish with care the different propositions
of the context the Evangelist may appear to be repeating himself. "He
was in the beginning with God" may seem to add nothing to "And the
Word was with God." We must observe more carefully. In the statement
"The Word was with God" we are not told anything of the when or the
where; that is added in the fourth axiom. There are four axioms, or,
as some call them, propositions, the fourth being "He was in the
beginning with God." Now "The Word was with God" is not the same
thing as "He was," etc.; for here we are told, not only that He was
with God, but when and where He was so: "He was in the beginning with
God." The "He," too, used as it is for a demonstration, will be
considered to refer to the Word, or by a less careful enquirer, to
God. What was noted before is now summed up in this designation "He,"
the notion of the Logos and that of God; and as the argument proceeds
the different notions are collected in one; for the notion God is not
included in the notion Logos, nor the notion Logos in that of God.
And perhaps the proposition before us is a summing up in one of the
three which have preceded. Taking the statement that the Word was in
the beginning, we have not yet learned that He was with God, and
taking the statement that the Word was with God it is not yet clear to
us that He was with God in the beginning; and taking the statement
that the Word was God, it has neither been shown that He was in the
beginning, nor that He was with God.
Now when the Evangelist says, "He was in the beginning with God," if
we apply the pronoun "He" to the Word and to God (as He is God) and
consider that "in the beginning" is conjoined with it, and "with God"
added to it, then there is nothing left of the three propositions that
is not summed up and brought together in this one. And as "in the
beginning" has been said twice, we may consider if there are not two
lessons we may learn. First, that the Word was in the beginning, as
if He was by Himself and not with any one, and secondly, that He was
in the beginning with God. And I consider that there is nothing
untrue in saying of Him both that He was in the beginning, and in the
beginning with God, for neither was He with God alone, since He was
also in the beginning, nor was He in the beginning alone and not with
God, since "He was in the beginning with God."
6. How the Word is the Maker of All Things, and Even the Holy Spirit
Was Made Through Him.
"All things were made through Him." The "through [4678] whom" is
never found in the first place but always in the second, as in the
Epistle to the Romans, [4679] "Paul a servant of Christ Jesus, a
called Apostle, separated to the Gospel of God which He promised
before by His prophets in Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was
born of the seed of David according to the flesh, determined the Son
of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the
resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we
received grace and apostleship, for obedience of the faith among all
the nations, for His name's sake." For God promised aforehand by the
prophets His own Gospel, the prophets being His ministers, and having
their word to speak about Him "through whom." And again God gave
grace and apostleship to Paul and to the others for the obedience of
the faith among all the nations, and this He gave them through Jesus
Christ the Saviour, for the "through whom" belonged to Him. And the
Apostle Paul says in the Epistle to the Hebrews: [4680]"At the end
of the days He spoke to us in His Son, whom He made the heir of all
things, `through whom' also He made the ages," showing us that God
made the ages through His Son, the "through whom" belonging, when the
ages were being made, to the Only-begotten. Thus, if all things were
made, as in this passage also, through the Logos, then they were not
made by the Logos, but by a stronger and greater than He. And who
else could this be but the Father? Now if, as we have seen, all
things were made through Him, we have to enquire if the Holy Spirit
also was made through Him. It appears to me that those who hold the
Holy Spirit to be created, and who also admit that "all things were
made through Him," must necessarily assume that the Holy Spirit was
made through the Logos, the Logos accordingly being older than He.
And he who shrinks from allowing the Holy Spirit to have been made
through Christ must, if he admits the truth of the statements of this
Gospel, assume the Spirit to be uncreated. There is a third resource
besides these two (that of allowing the Spirit to have been made by
the Word, and that of regarding it as uncreated), namely, to assert
that the Holy Spirit has no essence of His own beyond the Father and
the Son. But on further thought one may perhaps see reason to
consider that the Son is second beside the Father, He being the same
as the Father, while manifestly a distinction is drawn between the
Spirit and the Son in the passage, [4681] "Whosoever shall speak a
word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him, but whosoever
shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, he shall not have
forgiveness, either in this world or in the world to come." We
consider, therefore, that there are three hypostases, the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit; and at the same time we believe nothing
to be uncreated but the Father. We therefore, as the more pious and
the truer course, admit that all things were made by the Logos, and
that the Holy Spirit is the most excellent and the first in order
[4682] of all that was made by the Father through Christ. And this,
perhaps, is the reason why the Spirit is not said to be God's own
Son. The Only-begotten only is by nature and from the beginning a
Son, and the Holy Spirit seems to have need of the Son, to minister to
Him His essence, so as to enable Him not only to exist, but to be wise
and reasonable and just, and all that we must think of Him as being.
All this He has by participation of the character of Christ, of which
we have spoken above. And I consider that the Holy Spirit supplies to
those who, through Him and through participation in Him, are called
saints, the material of the gifts, which come from God; so that the
said material of the gifts is made powerful by God, is ministered by
Christ, and owes its actual existence in men to the Holy Spirit. I am
led to this view of the charisms by the words of Paul which he writes
somewhere, [4683] "There are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit,
and diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are
diversities of workings, but it is the same God that worketh all in
all." The statement that all things were made by Him, and its seeming
corollary, that the Spirit must have been called into being by the
Word, may certainly raise some difficulty. There are some passages in
which the Spirit is placed above Christ; in Isaiah, for example,
Christ declares that He is sent, not by the Father only, but also by
the Holy Spirit. "Now the Lord hath sent Me," He says, [4684] "and
His Spirit," and in the Gospel He declares that there is forgiveness
for the sin committed against Himself, but that for blasphemy against
the Holy Spirit there is no forgiveness, either in this age or in the
age to come. What is the reason of this? Is it because the Holy
Spirit is of more value than Christ that the sin against Him cannot be
forgiven? May it not rather be that all rational beings have part in
Christ, and that forgiveness is extended to them when they repent of
their sins, while only those have part in the Holy Spirit who have
been found worthy of it, and that there cannot well be any forgiveness
for those who fall away to evil in spite of such great and powerful
cooperation, and who defeat the counsels of the Spirit who is in
them. When we find the Lord saying, as He does in Isaiah, that He is
sent by the Father and by His Spirit, we have to point out here also
that the Spirit is not originally superior to the Saviour, but that
the Saviour takes a lower place than He in order to carry out the plan
which has been made that the Son of God should become man. Should any
one stumble at our saying that the Saviour in becoming man was made
lower than the Holy Spirit, we ask him to consider the words used in
the Epistle to the Hebrews, [4685] where Jesus is shown by Paul to
have been made less than the angels on account of the suffering of
death. "We behold Him," he says, "who hath been made a little lower
than the angels, Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned
with glory and honour." And this, too, has doubtless to be added,
that the creation, in order to be delivered from the bondage of
corruption, and not least of all the human race, required the
introduction into human nature of a happy and divine power, which
should set right what was wrong upon the earth, and that this action
fell to the share, as it were, of the Holy Spirit; but the Spirit,
unable to support such a task, puts forward the Saviour as the only
one able to endure such a conflict. The Father therefore, the
principal, sends the Son, but the Holy Spirit also sends Him and
directs Him to go before, promising to descend, when the time comes,
to the Son of God, and to work with Him for the salvation of men.
This He did, when, in a bodily shape like a dove, He flew to Him after
the baptism. He remained on Him, and did not pass Him by, as He might
have done with men not able continuously to bear His glory. Thus
John, when explaining how he knew who Christ was, spoke not only of
the descent of the Spirit on Jesus, but also of its remaining upon
him. For it is written that John said: [4686]"He who sent me to
baptize said, On whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending and
abiding upon Him, the same is He that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit
and with fire." It is not said only, "On whomsoever thou shalt see
the Spirit descending," for the Spirit no doubt descended on others
too, but "descending and abiding on Him." Our examination of this
point has been somewhat extended, since we were anxious to make it
clear that if all things were made by Him, then the Spirit also was
made through the Word, and is seen to be one of the "all things" which
are inferior to their Maker. This view is too firmly settled to be
disturbed by a few words which may be adduced to the opposite effect.
If any one should lend credence to the Gospel according to the
Hebrews, where the Saviour Himself says, "My mother, the Holy Spirit
took me just now by one of my hairs and carried me off to the great
mount Tabor," he will have to face the difficulty of explaining how
the Holy Spirit can be the mother of Christ when it was itself brought
into existence through the Word. But neither the passage nor this
difficulty is hard to explain. For if he who does the will of the
Father in heaven [4687] is Christ's brother and sister and mother, and
if the name of brother of Christ may be applied, not only to the race
of men, but to beings of diviner rank than they, then there is nothing
absurd in the Holy Spirit's being His mother, every one being His
mother who does the will of the Father in heaven.
On the words, "All things were made by Him," there is still one point
to be examined. The "word" is, as a notion, from "life," and yet we
read, "What was made in the Word was life, and the life was the light
of men." Now as all things were made through Him, was the life made
through Him, which is the light of men, and the other notions under
which the Saviour is presented to us? Or must we take the "all things
were made by Him" subject to the exception of the things which are in
Himself? The latter course appears to be the preferable one. For
supposing we should concede that the life which is the light of men
was made through Him, since it said that the life "was made" the light
of men, what are we to say about wisdom, which is conceived as being
prior to the Word? That, therefore, which is about the Word (His
relations or conditions) was not made by the Word, and the result is
that, with the exception of the notions under which Christ is
presented, all things were made through the Word of God, the Father
making them in wisdom. "In wisdom hast Thou made them all," it says,
[4688] not through, but in wisdom.
Footnotes
[4678] See R.V. margin, John i. 3.
[4679] Rom. i. 1-5.
[4680] i. 1, 2.
[4681] Matt. xii. 32.
[4682] Reading pro pauton, with Jacobi.
[4683] 1 Cor. xii. 4-6.
[4684] Isa. xlviii. 16.
[4685] ii. 9.
[4686] John i. 32.
[4687] Matt. xii. 50.
[4688] Ps. civ. 24.
7. Of Things Not Made Through the Logos.
Let us see, however, why the words are added, "And without Him was not
anything (Gr. even one thing) made." Some might think it superfluous
to add to the words "All things were made through Him," the phrase
"Without Him was not anything made." For if everything whatsoever was
made through the Logos, then nothing was made without Him. Yet it
does not follow from the proposition that without the Logos nothing
was made, that all things were made through the Logos. It is possible
that though nothing was made without the Logos, all things were made,
not through the Logos only, but some things by Him. We must,
therefore, make ourselves sure in what sense the "all things" is to be
understood, and in what sense the "nothing." For, without a clear
preliminary definition of these terms, it might be maintained that, if
all things were made through the Logos, and evil is a part of all
things, then the whole matter of sin, and everything that is wicked,
that these also were made through the Logos. But this we must regard
as false. There is nothing absurd in thinking that creatures were
made through the Logos, and also that men's brave deeds have been done
through Him, and all the useful acts of those who are now in bliss;
but with the sins and misfortunes of men it is otherwise. Now some
have held that since evil is not based in the constitution of
things--for it did not exist at the beginning and at the end it will
have ceased--that, therefore, the evils of which we spoke are the
Nothing; and as some of the Greeks say that genera and forms, such as
the (general) animal and the man, belong to the category of Nothings,
so it has been supposed that all that is not of God is Nothing, and
has not even obtained through the Word the subsistence it appears to
have. We ask whether it is possible to show from Scripture in any
convincing way that this is so. As for the meanings of the word
"Nothing" and "Not-being," they would appear to be synonymous, for
Nothing can be spoken of as Not-being, and the Not-being can be
described as Nothing. The Apostle, however, appears to count the
things which are not, not among those which have no existence
whatever, but rather among things which are evil. To him the
Not-being is evil; "God," he says, [4689] "called the things that are
not as things that are." And Mardochæus, too, in the Esther of the
Septuagint, calls the enemies of Israel "those that are not," saying,
[4690] "Deliver not Thy sceptre, O Lord, to those that are not." We
may also notice how evil men, on account of their wickedness, are said
not to be, from the name ascribed to God in Exodus: [4691]"For the
Lord said to Moses, I am, that is My name." The good God says this
with respect of us also who pray that we may be part of His
congregation. The Saviour praises him, saying, [4692] "None is good
but one, God the Father." The good, then, is the same as He who is.
Over against good is evil or wickedness, and over against Him who is
that which is not, whence it follows that evil and wickedness are that
which is not. This, perhaps, is what has led some to affirm that the
devil is not created by God. In respect that he is the devil he is
not the work of God, but he who is the devil is a created being, and
as there is no other creator but our God, he is a work of God. It is
as if we should say that a murderer is not a work of God, while we may
say that in respect he is a man, God made him. His being as a man he
received from God; we do not assert that he received from God his
being as a murderer. All, then, who have part in Him who is, and the
saints have part in Him, may properly be called Beings; but those who
have given up their part in the Being, by depriving themselves of
Being, have become Not-beings. But we said when entering on this
discussion, that Not-being and Nothing are synonymous, and hence those
who are not beings are Nothing, and all evil is nothing, since it is
Not-being, and thus since they are called Not-being came into
existence without the Logos, not being numbered among the all things
which were made through Him. Thus we have shown, so far as our powers
admit, what are the "all things" which were made through the Logos,
and what came into existence without Him, since at no time is it
Being, and it is, therefore, called "Nothing."
Footnotes
[4689] Rom. iv. 17.
[4690] Esth. iv. 22.
[4691] Exod. iii. 14, 15.
[4692] Mark x. 18.
8. Heracleon's View that the Logos is Not the Agent of Creation.
It was, I consider, a violent and unwarranted procedure which was
adopted by Heracleon, [4693] the friend, as it is said, of Valentinus,
in discussing this sentence: "All things were made through Him." He
excepted the whole world and all that it contains, excluding, as far
as his hypothesis goes, from the "all things" what is best in the
world and its contents. For he says that the æon (age), and the
things in it, were not made by the Logos; he considers them to have
come into existence before the Logos. He deals with the statement,
"Without Him was nothing made," with some degree of audacity, nor is
he afraid of the warning: [4694]"Add not to His words, lest He find
thee out and thou prove a liar," for to the "Nothing" he adds: "Of
what is in the world and the creation." And as his statements on the
passage are obviously very much forced and in the face of the
evidence, for what he considers divine is excluded from the all, and
what he regards as purely evil is, that and nothing else, the all
things, we need not waste our time in rebutting what is, on the face
of it, absurd, when, without any warrant from Scripture, he adds to
the words, "Without Him was nothing made," the further words, "Of what
is in the earth and the creation." In this proposal, which has no
inner probability to recommend it, he is asking us, in fact, to trust
him as we do the prophets, or the Apostles, who had authority and were
not responsible to men for the writings belonging to man's salvation,
which they handed to those about them and to those who should come
after. He had, also, a private interpretation of his own of the
words: "All things were made through Him," when he said that it was
the Logos who caused the demiurge to make the world, not, however, the
Logos from whom or by whom, but Him through whom, taking the written
words in a different sense from that of common parlance. [4695]For,
if the truth of the matter was as he considers, then the writer ought
to have said that all things were made through the demiurge by the
Word, and not through the Word by the demiurge. We accept the
"through whom," as it is usually understood, and have brought evidence
in support of our interpretation, while he not only puts forward a new
rendering of his own, unsupported by the divine Scripture, but appears
even to scorn the truth and shamelessly and openly oppose it. For he
says: "It was not the Logos who made all things, as under another who
was the operating agent," taking the "through whom" in this sense,
"but another made them, the Logos Himself being the operating agent."
This is not a suitable occasion for the proof that it was not the
demiurge who became the servant of the Logos and made the world; but
that the Logos became the servant of the demiurge and formed the
world. For, according to the prophet David, [4696] "God spake and
they came into being, He commanded and they were created." For the
unbegotten God commanded the first-born of all creation, [4697] and
they were created, not only the world and what is therein, but also
all other things, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or
powers, for all things were made through Him and unto Him, and He is
before all things."
Footnotes
[4693] On the fragments of Heracleon in this work of Origen, see Texts
and Studies, vol. i. part iv. by A. E. Brooke, M.A.
[4694] Prov. xxx. 6.
[4695] Accepting Jacobi's and Brook's correction para ten.
[4696] Ps. cxlviii. 5.
[4697] Coloss. i. 15, 16.
9. That the Logos Present in Us is Not Responsible for Our Sins.
One point more on the words: "Without Him was not anything made."
The question about evil must receive adequate discussion; what was
said of it has not, it is true, a very likely appearance, and yet it
appears to me that it ought not to be simply overlooked. The question
is whether evil, also, was made through the Logos, taking the Logos,
now be it well noted, in the sense of that reason which is in every
one, as thus brought into being by the reason which was from the
beginning. The Apostle says: [4698]"Without the law sin was dead,"
and adds, "But when the commandment came sin revived," and so teaches
generally about sin that it has no power before the law and the
commandment (but the Logos is, in a sense, law and commandment), and
there would be no sin were there no law, for, [4699] "sin is not
imputed where there is no law." And, again, there would be no sin but
for the Logos, for "if I had not come and spoken unto them," Christ
says, [4700] "they had not had sin." For every excuse is taken away
from one who wants to make excuse for his sin, if, though the Word is
in him and shows him what he ought to do, he does not obey it. It
seems, then, that all things, the worse things not excepted, were made
by the Logos, and without Him, taking the nothing here in its simpler
sense, was nothing made. Nor must we blame the Logos if all things
were made by Him, and without Him nothing was made, any more than we
blame the master who has showed the pupil his duty, when the
instruction has been such as to leave the pupil, should he sin, no
excuse or room to say that he erred through ignorance. This appears
the more plainly when we consider that master and pupil are
inseparable. For as master and pupil are correlatives, and belong
together, so the Logos is present in the nature of reasonable beings
as such, always suggesting what they ought to do, even should we pay
no heed to his commands, but devote ourselves to pleasure and allow
his best counsels to pass by us unregarded. As the eye is a servant
given us for the best purposes, and yet we use it to see things on
which it is wrong for us to look, and as we make a wrong use of our
hearing when we spend our time in listening to singing competitions
and to other forbidden sounds, so we outrage the Logos who is in us,
and use Him otherwise than as we ought, when we make Him assist in our
transgressions. For He is present with those who sin, for their
condemnation, and He condemns the man who does not prefer Him to
everything else. Hence we find it written: [4701]"The word which I
have spoken unto you, the same shall judge you." That is as if He
should say: "I, the Word, who am always lifting up my voice in you,
I, myself, will judge you, and no refuge or excuse will then be left
you." This interpretation, however, may appear somewhat strained, as
we have taken the Word in one sense to be the Word in the beginning,
who was with God, God the Word, and have now taken it in another
sense, speaking of it, not only in reference to the principal works of
creation, as in the words, "All things were made through Him," but as
related to all the acts of reasonable beings, this last being the
Logos (reason), without whose presence none of our sins are
committed. The question arises whether the Logos in us is to be
pronounced the same being as that which was in the beginning and was
with God, God the Word. The Apostle, certainly, does not appear to
make the Logos in us a different being from the Logos who was in the
beginning with God. "Say not in thine heart," he says, [4702] "who
shall go up into heaven; that is to bring Christ down, or who shall go
down into the abyss; that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But
what saith the Scripture? The Logos is very nigh thee, in thy mouth
and in thy heart."
Footnotes
[4698] Rom. vii. 8, 9.
[4699] Rom. v. 13.
[4700] John xv. 22.
[4701] John xii. 48.
[4702] Rom. x. 6-8.
10. "That Which Was Made Was Life in Him, and the Life Was the Light
of Men." This Involves the Paradox that What Does Not Derive Life
from the Logos Does Not Live at All.
The Greeks have certain apothegms, called paradoxes, in which the
wisdom of their sages is presented at its highest, and some proof, or
what appears to be proof, is given. Thus it is said that the wise man
alone, and that every wise man, is a priest, because the wise man
alone and every wise man possesses knowledge as to the service of
God. Again, that the wise man alone and that every wise man is free
and has received from the divine law authority to do what he himself
is minded to do, and this authority they call lawful power of
decision. Why should we say more about these so-called paradoxes?
Much discussion is devoted to them, and they call for a comparison of
the sense of Scripture with the doctrine thus conveyed. so that we may
be in a position to determine where religious doctrine agrees with
them and where it differs from them. This has been suggested to us by
our study of the words, "That which was made was life in Him;" for it
appears possible to follow the words of Scripture here and to make out
a number of things which partake of the character of the paradoxes and
are even more paradoxical than these sentences of the Greeks. If we
consider the Logos in the beginning, who was with God, God the Word,
we shall perhaps be able to declare that only he who partakes of this
being, considered in this character, is to be pronounced reasonable
("logical"), and thus we should demonstrate that the saint alone is
reasonable. Again, if we apprehend that life has come in the Logos,
he, namely, who said, "I am the life," then we shall say that no one
is alive who is outside the faith of Christ, that all are dead who are
not living to God, that their life is life to sin, and therefore, if I
may so express myself, a life of death. Consider however, whether the
divine Scriptures do not in many places teach this; as where the
Saviour says, [4703] "Or have ye not read that which was spoken at the
bush, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of
Jacob. He is not God of the dead but of the living." And [4704]
"Before Thee shall no living being be justified." But why need we
speak about God Himself or the Saviour? For it is disputed to which
of them the voice belongs which says in the prophets, [4705] "As I
live, saith the Lord."
Footnotes
[4703] Mark xii. 26.
[4704] Ps. cxliii. 2.
[4705] Numb. xiv. 28.
11. How No One is Righteous or Can Truly Be Said to Live in
Comparison with God.
First let us look at the words, "He is not the God of the dead but of
the living." That is equivalent to saying that He is not the God of
sinners but of saints. For it was a great gift to the Patriarchs that
God in place of His own name should add their name to His own
designation as God, as Paul says, [4706] "Therefore God is not ashamed
to be called their God." He is the God, therefore, of the fathers and
of all the saints; it might be hard to find a passage to the effect
that God is the God of any of the wicked. If, then, He is the God of
the saints, and is said to be the God of the living, then the saints
are the living and the living are saints; neither is there any saint
outside the living, nor when any one is called living is the further
implication absent that in addition to his having life he is a holy
one. Near akin to this is the lesson to be drawn from the saying,
[4707] "I shall be well pleasing to the Lord in the land of the
living." The good pleasure of the Lord, he appears to say, is in the
ranks of the saints, or in the place of the saints, and it is there
that he hopes to be. No one pleases God well who has not entered the
rank of the saints, or the place of the saints; and to that place
every one must come who has assumed beforehand, as it were in this
life, the shadow and image of true God-pleasing. The passage which
declares that before God no living being shall be justified shows that
in comparison with God and the righteousness that is in Him none, even
of the most finished saints, will be justified. We might take a
parable from another quarter and say that no candle can give light
before the sun, not that the candle will not give light, only it will
not when the sun outshines it. In the same way every "living" will be
justified, only not before God, when it is compared with those who are
below and who are in the power of darkness. To them the light of the
saints will shine. Here, perhaps, we have the key to the meaning of
that verse: [4708]"Let your light shine before men." He does not
say, Let your light shine before God; had he said so he would have
given a commandment impossible of fulfilment, as if he had bidden
those lights which have souls to let their light shine before the
sun. It is not only, therefore, the ordinary mass of the living who
will not be justified before God, but even those among the living who
are distinguished above the rest, or, to put it more truly, the whole
righteousness of the living will not be justified before God, as
compared with the righteousness of God, as if I were to call together
all the lights which shine on the earth by night, and to say that they
could not give light in comparison with the rays of the sun. We rise
from these considerations to a higher level when we take the words
before our minds, "I live, saith the Lord." Life, in the full sense
of the word, especially after what we have been saying on the subject,
belongs perhaps to God and none but Him. Is this the reason why the
Apostle, after speaking of the supreme excellency of the life of God
and being led to the highest expression about it, says about God
(showing in this a true understanding of that saying, "I live, saith
the Lord"); "who only hath immortality." [4709]No living being
besides God has life free from change and variation. Why should we be
in further doubt? Even Christ did not share the Father's immortality;
for He "tasted death for every man."
Footnotes
[4706] Heb. xi. 16.
[4707] Ps. cxvi. 9.
[4708] Matt. v. 16.
[4709] 1 Tim. iv. 16.
12. Is the Saviour All that He Is, to All?
We have thus enquired as to the life of God, and the life which is
Christ, and the living who are in a place by themselves, and have seen
how the living are not justified before God, and we have noticed the
cognate statement, "Who alone hath immortality." We may now take up
the assumption which may appear to be involved in this, namely, that
whatever being is gifted with reason does not possess blessedness as a
part of its essence, or as an inseparable part of its nature. For if
blessedness and the highest life were an inseparable characteristic of
reasonable being, how could it be truly said of God that He only has
immortality? We should therefore remark, that the Saviour is some
things, not to Himself but to others, and some things both to Himself
and others, and we must enquire if there are some things which He is
to Himself and to no other. Clearly it is to others that He is a
Shepherd, not a shepherd like those among men who make gain out of
their occupation; unless the benefit conferred on the sheep might be
regarded, on account of His love to men, as a benefit to Himself
also. Similarly it is to others that He is the Way and the Door, and,
as all will admit, the Rod. To Himself and to others He is Wisdom and
perhaps also Reason (Logos). It may be asked whether, as He has in
Himself a system of speculations, inasmuch as He is wisdom, there are
some of those speculations which cannot be received by any nature that
is begotten, but His own, and which He knows for Himself only. Nor
should the reverence we owe to the Holy Spirit keep us from seeking to
answer this question. For the Holy Spirit Himself receives
instruction, as is clear from what is said about the Paraclete and the
Holy Spirit, [4710] "He shall take of mine and shall declare it to
you." Does He, then, from these instructions, take in everything that
the Son, gazing at the Father from the first, Himself knows? That
would require further consideration. And if the Saviour is some
things to others, and some things it may be to Himself, and to no
other, or to one only, or to few, then we ask, in so far as He is the
life which came in the Logos, whether he is life to Himself and to
others, or to others, and if to others, to what others. And are life
and the light of men the same thing, for the text says, "That which
was made was life in Him and the life was the light of men." But the
light of men is the light only of some, not of all, rational
creatures; the word "men" which is added shows this. But He is the
light of men, and so He is the life of those whose light he is also.
And inasmuch as He is life He may be called the Saviour, not for
Himself but to be life to others, whose light also He is. And this
life comes to the Logos and is inseparable from Him, once it has come
to Him. But the Logos, who cleanses the soul, must have been in the
soul first; it is after Him and the cleansing that proceeds from Him,
when all that is dead or weak in her has been taken away, that pure
life comes to every one who has made himself a fit dwelling for the
Logos, considered as God.
Footnotes
[4710] John xvi. 14, 15.
13. How the Life in the Logos Comes After the Beginning.
Here, we must carefully observe, we have two things which are one, and
we have to define the difference between them. First, what is before
us in The Word in the beginning, then what is implied in The Life in
the Word. The Word was not made in the beginning; there was no time
when the beginning was devoid of the Word, and hence it is said, "In
the beginning was the Word." Of life, on the other hand, we read, not
that it was as the Word, but that it was made; if at least it be the
case that the life is the light of men. For when man was not yet,
there was no light of men; for the light of men is conceived only in
relation to men. And let no one annoy us with the objection that we
have put this under the category of time, though it be the order of
the things themselves, that make them first and second and so on, and
even though there should have been no time when the things placed by
the Logos third and fourth were not in existence. As, then, all
things were made by Him, not all things were by Him, and as without
Him was nothing made, not, without Him nothing was, so what was made
in Him, not what was in Him, was life. And, again, not what was made
in the beginning was the Word, but what was in the beginning was the
Word. Some of the copies, it is true, have a reading which is not
devoid of probability, "What was made is life in Him." But if life is
the same thing as the light of men, then no one who is in darkness is
living, and none of the living is in darkness; but every one who is
alive is also in light, and every one who is in light is living, so
that not he only who is living, but every one who is living, is a son
of light; and he who is a son of light is he whose work shines before
men.
14. How the Natures of Men are Not So Fixed from the First, But that
They May Pass from Darkness to Light.
We have been discussing certain things which are opposite, and what
has been said of them may serve to suggest what has been omitted. We
are speaking of life and the light of men, and the opposite to life is
death; the opposite to the light of men, the darkness of men. It is
therefore plain that he who is in the darkness of men is in death, and
that he who works the works of death is nowhere but in darkness. But
he who is mindful of God, if we consider what it is to be mindful of
Him, is not in death, according to the saying, [4711] "In death there
is no one who remembers Thee." Are the darkness of men, and death,
such as they are by nature? On this point we have another passage,
[4712] "We were once darkness, but now light in the Lord," even if we
be now in the fullest sense saints and spiritual persons. Thus he who
was once darkness has become, like Paul, capable of being light in the
Lord. Some consider that some natures are spiritual from the first,
such as those of Paul and the holy Apostles; but I scarcely see how to
reconcile with such a view, what the above text tells us, that the
spiritual person was once darkness and afterwards became light. For
if the spiritual was once darkness what can the earthy have been? But
if it is true that darkness became light, as in the text, how is it
unreasonable to suppose that all darkness is capable of becoming
light? Had not Paul said, "We were once in darkness, but now are we
light in the Lord," and thus implied of those whom they consider to be
naturally lost, that they were darkness, or are darkness still, the
hypothesis about the different natures might have been admissible.
But Paul distinctly says that he had once been darkness but was now
light in the Lord, which implies the possibility that darkness should
turn into light. But he who perceives the possibility of a change on
each side for the better or for the worse, will not find it hard to
gain an insight into every darkness of men, or into that death which
consists in the darkness of men.
Footnotes
[4711] Ps. vi. 6.
[4712] Ephes. v. 8.
15. Heracleon's View that the Lord Brought Life Only to the
Spiritual. Refutation of This.
Heracleon adopts a somewhat violent course when he arrives at this
passage, "What was made in Him was life." Instead of the "In Him" of
the text he understands "to those men who are spiritual," as if he
considered the Logos and the spiritual to be identical, though this he
does not plainly say; and then he proceeds to give, as it were, an
account of the origin of the matter and says, "He (the Logos) provided
them with their first form at their birth, carrying further and making
manifest what had been sown by another, [4713] into form and into
illumination and into an outline of its own." He did not observe how
Paul speaks of the spiritual, [4714] and how he refrains from saying
that they are men. "A natural man receiveth not the things of the
spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; but the spiritual
judgeth all things." We maintain that it was not without a meaning
that he did not add the word men to the word spiritual. Spiritual is
something better than man, for man receives his form either in soul,
or in body, or in both together, not in what is more divine than
these, namely, in spirit; and it is after he has come to have a
prevailing share of this that he is called "spiritual." Moreover, in
bringing forward such a hypothesis as this, he furnishes not even the
pretence of a proof, and shows himself unable to reach even a moderate
degree of plausibility for his argument on the subject. So much,
then, for him.
Footnotes
[4713] The demiurge.
[4714] 1 Cor. ii. 14, 15.
16. The Life May Be the Light of Others Besides.
Let us suggest another question, namely, whether the life was the
light of men only, and not of every being as well that is in
blessedness. For if the life were the same thing as the light of men,
and if the light of Christ were for men alone, then the life also
would be only for men. But such a view is both foolish and impious,
since the other Scriptures testify against this interpretation and
declare that, when we are somewhat more advanced, we shall be equal to
the angels. [4715]The question is to be solved on the principle
that when a predicate is applied to certain persons, it is not to be
at once taken to apply to them alone. Thus, when the light of men is
spoken of, it is not the light of men only; had that been the meaning,
a word would have been added to express it; the life, it would have
read, was the light of men only. For it is possible for the light of
men to be the light of others besides men, just as it is possible that
certain animals and certain plants may form the food of men, and that
the same animals and plants should be the food of other creatures
too. That is an example from common life; it is fitting that another
analogy should be adduced from the inspired books. Now the question
here before us, is why the light of men should not be the light of
other creatures also, and we have seen that to speak of the light of
men by no means excludes the possibility that the light may be that of
other beings besides man, whether inferior to him or like him. Now a
name is given to God; He is said to be the God of Abraham and of Isaac
and of Jacob. He, then, who infers from the saying, "The life was the
light of men," that the light is for no other than for men, ought also
to conclude that the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God
of Jacob is the God of no one else but these three patriarchs. But He
is also the God of Elijah, [4716] and, as Judith says, [4717] of her
father Simeon, and the God of the Hebrews. By analogy of reasoning,
then, if nothing prevents Him from being the God of others, nothing
prevents the light of men from being the light of others besides men.
Footnotes
[4715] Matt. xxii. 30.
[4716] 2 Kings ii. 14.
[4717] Judith ix. 2.
17. The Higher Powers are Men; And Christ is Their Light Also.
Another, again, appeals to the text, "Let us make man according to our
image and likeness, [4718] " and maintains that whatever is made
according to God's image and likeness is man. To support this,
numberless instances are adduced to show that in Scripture "man" and
"angel" are used indifferently, and that the same subject is entitled
both angel and man. This is true of the three who were entertained by
Abraham, and of the two who came to Sodom; in the whole course of
Scripture, persons are styled sometimes men, sometimes angels. Those
who hold this view will say that since persons are styled angels who
are manifestly men, as when Zechariah says, [4719] "The messenger of
the Lord, I am with you, saith the Lord Almighty," and as it is
written of John the Baptist, [4720] "Behold I send My messenger before
thy face," the angels (messengers) of God are so called on account of
their office, and are not here called men on account of their nature.
It confirms this view that the names applied to the higher powers are
not those of species of living beings, but those of the orders,
assigned by God to this and to that reasonable being. "Throne" is not
a species of living being, nor "dominion," nor "principality," nor
"power"; these are names of the businesses to which those clothed with
the names have been appointed; the subjects themselves are nothing but
men, but the subject has come to be a throne, or a dominion, or a
principality, or a power. In Joshua, the son of Nun, we read [4721]
that in Jericho there appeared to Joshua a man who said, "I am captain
of the Lord's host, now am I come." The outcome of this is that the
light of men must be held to be the same as the light of every being
endowed with reason; for every reasonable being is man, since it is
according to the image and likeness of God. It is spoken of in three
different ways, "the light of men," and simply "the light," and "the
true light." It is the light of men either, as we showed before,
because there is nothing to prevent us from regarding it as the light
of other beings besides men, or because all beings endowed with reason
are called men because they are made in the image of God.
Footnotes
[4718] Gen. i. 26.
[4719] Zechar. i.; Hagg. i. 13.
[4720] Mal. iii. 1; Mark i. 2.
[4721] v. 13, 14.
18. How God Also is Light, But in a Different Way; And How Life Came
Before Light.
The Saviour is here called simply light. But in the Catholic Epistle
of this same John [4722] we read that God is light. This, it has been
maintained, furnishes a proof that the Son is not in substance
different from the Father. Another student, however, looking into the
matter more closely and with a sounder judgment, will say that the
light which shines in darkness and is not overtaken by it, is not the
same as the light in which there is no darkness at all. The light
which shines in darkness comes upon this darkness, as it were, and is
pursued by it, and, in spite of attempts made upon it, is not
overtaken. But the light in which there is no darkness at all neither
shines on darkness, nor is at first pursued by it, so as to prove
victor and to have it recorded that it was not overtaken by its
pursuer. The third designation was "the true light." But in
proportion as God, since He is the Father of truth, is more and
greater than truth, and since He is the Father of wisdom is greater
and more excellent than wisdom, in the same proportion He is more than
the true light. We may learn, perhaps, in a more suggestive manner,
how the Father and the Son are two lights, from David, who says in the
thirty-fifth Psalm, [4723] "In Thy light we shall see light." This
same light of men which shines in darkness, the true light, is called,
further on in the Gospel, the light of the world; Jesus says, [4724]
"I am the light of the world." Nor must we omit to notice that
whereas the passage might very well have run, "That which was made was
in Him the light of men, and the light of men was life," he chose the
opposite order. He puts life before the light of men, even if life
and the light of men are the same thing; in thinking of those who have
part in life, though that life is also the light of men, we are to
come first to the fact that they are living the divine life spoken of
before; then we come to their enlightenment. For life must come first
if the living person is to be enlightened; it would not be a good
arrangement to speak of the illumination of one not yet conceived as
living, and to make life come after the illumination. For though
"life" and "the light" of men are the same thing, the notions are
taken separately. This light of men is also called, by Isaiah, "the
light of the Gentiles," where he says, [4725] "Behold I have set Thee
for a covenant of the generation, for a light of the Gentiles;" and
David, placing his confidence in this light, says in the twenty-sixth
Psalm, [4726] "The Lord is my illumination and my Saviour; whom shall
I fear?"
Footnotes
[4722] i. 5.
[4723] Ps. xxxvi. 10.
[4724] viii. 12.
[4725] Isa. xlii. 6.
[4726] Ps. xxvii. 1.
19. The Life Here Spoken of is the Higher Life, that of Reason.
As for those who make up a mythology about the æons and arrange them
in syzygies (yokes or pairs), and who consider the Logos and Life to
have been emitted by Intellect and Truth, it may not be beside the
point to state the following difficulties. How can life, in their
system, the yokefellow of the Word, derive his origin from his
yokefellow? For "what was made in Him," he says, evidently referring
to the Word, mentioned immediately before, "was life." Will they tell
us how life, the yokefellow, as they say, of the Word, came into being
in the Word, and how life rather than the Word is the light of men.
It would be quite natural if men of reasonable minds, who are
perplexed with such questions and find the point we have raised hard
to dispose of, should turn round upon us and invite us to discuss the
reason why it is not the Word that is said to be the light of men, but
life which originated in the Word. To such an enquiry we shall reply
that the life here spoken of is not that which is common to rational
beings and to beings without reason, but that life which is added to
us upon the completion of reason in us, our share in that life, being
derived from the first reason (Logos). It is when we turn away from
the life which is life in appearance only, not in truth, and when we
yearn to be filled with the true life, that we are made partakers of
it, and when it has arisen in us it becomes the foundation of the
light of the higher knowledge (gnosis). With some it may be that this
life is only potentially and not actually light, with those who do not
strive to search out the things of the higher knowledge, while with
others it is actually light. With these it clearly is so who act on
Paul's injunction, "Seek earnestly the best gifts;" and among the
greatest gifts is that which all are enjoined to seek, namely, the
word of wisdom, and it is followed by the word of knowledge. This
wisdom and this knowledge lie side by side; into the difference
between them this is not a fitting occasion to enquire.
20. Different Kinds of Light; And of Darkness.
"And [4727] the light shineth in darkness and the darkness hath not
overtaken it." We are still enquiring about the light of men, since
it is what was spoken of in the preceding verse, and also, I consider,
about darkness, which is named as its adversary, the darkness also
being, if the definition of it is correct, that of men. The light of
men is a generic notion covering two special things; and with the
darkness of men it is the same. He who has gained the light of men
and shares its beams will do the work of light and know in the higher
sense, being illuminated by the light of the higher knowledge. And we
must recognize the analogous case of those on the other side, and of
their evil actions, and of that which is thought to be but is not
really knowledge, since those who exercise it have the reason (Logos)
not of light but of darkness. And because the sacred word knows the
things which produce light, Isaiah says: [4728]"Because Thy
commandments are a light upon the earth," and David says in the Psalm,
[4729] "The precept of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes." But
since in addition to the commandments and the precepts there is a
light of higher knowledge, we read in one of the twelve (prophets),
[4730] "Sow to yourselves for righteousness, reap to yourselves for
the fruit of life, make light for yourselves the light of knowledge."
There is a further light of knowledge in addition to the commandments,
and so we read, "Make light for yourselves," not simply light, but
what light?--the light of knowledge. For if any light that a man
kindles for himself were a light of knowledge, then the added words,
"Make light for yourselves, the light of knowledge," would have no
meaning. And again that darkness is brought upon men by their evil
deeds, we learn from John himself, when he says in his epistle, [4731]
"If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we
lie and do not the truth," and again, "He that saith he is in the
light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now," and
again, "He that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in
darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because darkness hath
blinded his eyes." Walking in darkness signifies evil conduct, and to
hate one's brother, is not that to fall away from that which is
properly called knowledge? But he also who is ignorant of divine
things walks in darkness, just because of that ignorance; as David
says, [4732] "They knew not, they understood not, they walk in
darkness." Consider, however, this passage, [4733] "God is light and
in Him is no [4734] darkness," and see if the reason for this saying
is not that darkness is not one, being either two, because there are
two kinds of it, or many, because it is taken distributively,
individually with reference to the many evil actions and the many
false doctrines; so that there are many darknesses, not one of which
is in God. The saying of the Saviour could not be spoken of the Holy
One, "Ye are the light of the world;" for the Holy One is light of the
world (absolute, not particular), and there is not in Him any
darkness.
Footnotes
[4727] i. 5.
[4728] xxvi. 9.
[4729] xix. 9.
[4730] Hosea x. 12.
[4731] 1 John i. 6; ii. 9, 11.
[4732] Ps. lxxxii. 5.
[4733] 1 John i. 5.
[4734] oudemia, not one.
21. Christ is Not, Like God, Quite Free from Darkness: Since He Bore
Our Sins.
Now some one will ask how this statement that there is no darkness in
Him can be regarded as a thing peculiar to Him, when we consider that
the Saviour also was quite without sin. Could it not be said of Him
also that "He is light, and that there is no darkness in Him"? The
difference between the two cases has been partly set forth above. We
will now, however, go a step further than we did before, and add, that
if God made Christ who knew no sin to be sin for us, [4735] then it
could not be said of Him that there was no darkness in Him. For if
Jesus was in the likeness [4736] of the flesh of sin and for sin, and
condemned sin by taking upon Him the likeness of the flesh of sin,
then it cannot be said of Him, absolutely and directly, that there was
no darkness in Him. We may add that "He [4737] took our infirmities
and bare our sicknesses," both infirmities of the soul and sicknesses
of the hidden man of our heart. On account of these infirmities and
sicknesses which He bore away from us, He declares His soul to be
sorrowful and sore troubled, [4738] and He is said in Zechariah to
have put on filthy garments, [4739] which, when He was about to take
them off, are said to be sins. "Behold, it is said, I have taken away
thy sins." Because He had taken on Himself the sins of the people of
those who believed in Him, he uses many such expressions as these:
"Far from my salvation are the words of my transgressions," [4740] and
"Thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins were not hid from Thee."
[4741]And let no one suppose that we say this from any lack of
piety towards the Christ of God; for as the Father alone has
immortality and our Lord took upon Himself, for His love to men, the
death He died for us, so to the Father alone the words apply, "In Him
is no darkness," since Christ took upon Himself, for His goodwill
towards men, our darknesses. This He did, that by His power He might
destroy our death and remove the darkness which is in our soul, so
that the saying in Isaiah might be fulfilled, [4742] "The people that
sat in darkness saw a great light." This light, which came into being
in the Logos, and is also life, shines in the darkness of our souls,
and it has come where the rulers of this darkness carry on their
struggle with the race of men and strive to subdue to darkness those
who do not stand firm with all their power; that they might be
enlightened the light has come so far, and that they might be called
sons of light. And shining in darkness this light is pursued by the
darkness, but not overtaken.
Footnotes
[4735] 2 Cor. v. 21.
[4736] Rom. viii. 3.
[4737] Matt. viii. 17.
[4738] Matt. xxvi. 38.
[4739] Zech. iii. 4.
[4740] Ps. xxii. 1.
[4741] Ps. lxix. 5.
[4742] ix. 2.
22. How the Darkness Failed to Overtake the Light.
Should any one consider that we are adding something that is not
written, namely, the pursuit of the light by the darkness, let him
reflect that unless the darkness had pursued the light the words, "The
darkness did not overtake it," would have no meaning. John writes for
those who have wit to see what is omitted and to supply it as the
context requires, and so he wrote, "The darkness did not overtake
it." If it did not overtake it, it must first have pursued it, and
that the darkness did pursue the light is clear from what the Saviour
suffered, and those also who received His teachings, His own children,
when darkness was doing what it could against the sons of light and
was minded to drive light away from men. But since, if God be for us,
[4743] no one, however that way minded, can be against us, the more
they humbled themselves the more they grew, and they prevailed
exceedingly. In two ways the darkness did not overtake the light.
Either it was left far behind and was itself so slow, while the light
was in its course so sharp and swift, that it was not even able to
keep following it, or if the light sought to lay a snare for the
darkness, and waited for it in pursuance of the plan it had formed,
then darkness, coming near the light, was brought to an end. In
either case the darkness did not overtake the light.
Footnotes
[4743] Rom. viii. 31.
23. There is a Divine Darkness Which is Not Evil, and Which
Ultimately Becomes Light.
In connection with this subject it is necessary for us to point out
that darkness is not to be understood, every time it is mentioned, in
a bad sense; Scripture speaks of it sometimes in a good sense. The
heterodox have failed to observe this distinction, and have
accordingly adopted most shameful doctrines about the Maker of the
world, and have indeed revolted from Him, and addicted themselves to
fictions and myths. We must, therefore, show how and when the name of
darkness is taken in a good sense. Darkness and clouds and tempest
are said in Exodus [4744] to be round about God, and in the
seventeenth Psalm, [4745] "He made darkness His secret place, His tent
round about Him, dark water in clouds of the air." Indeed, if one
considers the multitude of speculation and knowledge about God, beyond
the power of human nature to take in, beyond the power, perhaps, of
all originated beings except Christ and the Holy Spirit, then one may
know how God is surrounded with darkness, because the discourse is hid
in ignorance which would be required to tell in what darkness He has
made His hiding-place when He arranged that the things concerning Him
should be unknown and beyond the grasp of knowledge. Should any one
be staggered by these expositions, he may be reconciled to them both
by the "dark sayings" and by the "treasures of darkness," hidden,
invisible, which are given to Christ by God. In nowise different, I
consider, are the treasures of darkness which are hid in Christ, from
what is spoken of in the text, "God made darkness His secret place,"
and (the saint) "shall understand parable and dark saying." [4746]
And consider if we have here the reason of the Saviour's saying to His
disciples, "What ye have heard in darkness, speak ye in the light."
The mysteries committed to them in secret and where few could hear,
hard to be known and obscure, He bids them, when enlightened and
therefore said to be in the light, to make known to every one who is
made light. I might add a still stranger feature of this darkness
which is praised, namely, that it hastens to the light and overtakes
it, and so at last, after having been unknown as darkness, undergoes
for him who does not see its power such a change that he comes to know
it and to declare that what was formerly known to him as darkness has
now become light.
Footnotes
[4744] xix. 9, 16.
[4745] Ps. xviii. 11.
[4746] Prov. i. 6.
24. John the Baptist Was Sent. From Where? His Soul Was Sent from a
Higher Region.
"There was a man sent from God, whose name was John." [4747]He who
is sent is sent from somewhere to somewhere; and the careful student
will, therefore, enquire from what quarter John was sent, and
whither. The "whither" is quite plain on the face of the story; he
was sent to Israel, and to those who were willing to hear him when he
was staying in the wilderness of Judæa and baptizing by the banks of
the Jordan. According to the deeper sense, however, he was sent into
the world, the world being understood as this earthly place where men
are; and the careful student will have this in view in enquiring from
where John was sent. Examining the words more closely, he will
perhaps declare that as it is written of Adam, [4748] "And the Lord
sent him forth out of the Paradise of pleasure to till the earth, out
of which he was taken," so also John was sent, either from heaven or
from Paradise, or from some other quarter to this place on the earth.
He was sent that he might bear witness of the light. There is,
however, an objection to this interpretation, which is not to be
lightly dismissed. It is written in Isaiah: [4749]"Whom shall I
send, and who will go to the people?" The prophet answers: "Here am
I,--send me." He, then, who objects to that rendering of our passage
which appears to be the deeper may say that Isaiah was sent not to
this world from another place, but after having seen "the Lord sitting
on a throne high and lifted up," was sent to the people, to say,
"Hearing, ye shall hear and shall not understand," and so on; and that
in the same manner John, the beginning of his mission not being
narrated, is sent after the analogy of the mission of Isaiah, to
baptize, [4750] and to make ready for the Lord a people prepared for
Him, and to bear witness of the light. So much we have said of the
first sense; and now we adduce certain solutions which help to confirm
the deeper meaning about John. In the same passage it is added, "He
came for witness, to bear witness of the light." Now, if he came,
where did he come from? To those who find it difficult to follow us,
we point to what John says afterwards of having seen the Holy Spirit
as a dove descending on the Saviour. "He that sent me," he says,
[4751] "to baptize with water, He said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou
shalt see the Holy Spirit descending and abiding upon Him, the same is
He that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit and with fire." When did He
send him and give him this injunction? The answer to this question
will probably be that when He sent him to begin to baptize, then He
who was dealing with him uttered this word. But a more convincing
argument for the view that John was sent from another region when he
entered into the body, the one object of his entry into this life
being that he should bear witness of the truth, may be drawn from the
narrative of his birth. Gabriel, when announcing to Zacharias the
birth of John, and to Mary the advent of our Saviour among men, says:
[4752]That John is to be "filled with the Holy Spirit even from his
mother's womb." And we have also the saying, "For behold, when the
voice of thy salutation came into mine ears, the babe leaped in my
womb for joy." He who sedulously guards himself in his dealings with
Scripture against forced, or casual, or capricious procedure, must
necessarily assume that John's soul was older than his body, and
subsisted by itself before it was sent on the ministry of the witness
of the light. Nor must we overlook the text, "This is Elijah which is
to come." [4753]For if that general doctrine of the soul is to be
received, namely, that it is not sown at the same time with the body,
but is before it, and is then, for various causes, clothed with flesh
and blood; then the words "sent from God" will not appear to be
applicable to John alone. The most evil of all, the man of sin, the
son of perdition, is said by Paul to be sent by God: [4754]"God
sendeth them a working of error that they should believe a lie; that
they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure
in unrighteousness." But our present question may, perhaps, be solved
in this way, that as every man is a man of God, simply because God
created him, but not every man is called a man of God, but only he who
has devoted himself to God, such as Elijah and those who are called
men of God in the Scriptures, thus every man might be said in ordinary
language to be sent from God, but in the absolute sense no one is to
be spoken of in this way who has not entered this life for a divine
ministry and in the service of the salvation of mankind. We do not
find it said of any one but the saints that he is sent by God. It is
said of Isaiah as we showed before; it is also said of Jeremiah, "To
whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go"; [4755] and it is said of
Ezekiel, [4756] "I send thee to nations that are rebellious and have
not believed in Me." The examples, however, do not expressly speak of
a mission from the region outside life into life, and as it is a
mission into life that we are enquiring about, they may seem to have
little bearing on our subject. But there is nothing absurd in our
transferring the argument derived from them to our question. They
tell us that it is only the saints, and we were speaking of them, whom
God is said to send, and in this sense they may be applied to the case
of those who are sent into this life.
Footnotes
[4747] John i. 6.
[4748] Gen. iii. 23.
[4749] vi. 1, 9.
[4750] Luke i. 17.
[4751] John i. 33.
[4752] Luke i. 13, 15.
[4753] Matt. xi. 14.
[4754] 2 Thess. ii. 11, 12.
[4755] Jer. i. 7.
[4756] Ezek. ii. 3.
25. Argument from the Prayer of Joseph, to Show that the Baptist May
Have Been an Angel Who Became a Man.
As we are now engaged with what is said of John, and are asking about
his mission, I may take the opportunity to state the view which I
entertain about him. We have read this prophecy about him, "Behold, I
send My messenger (angel) before Thy face, who shall prepare Thy way
before Thee;" and at this we ask if it can be one of the holy angels
who is sent down on this ministry as forerunner of our Saviour. No
wonder if, when the first-born of all creation was assuming a human
body, some of them should have been filled with love to man and become
admirers and followers of Christ, and thought it good to minister to
his kindness towards man by having a body like that of men. And who
would not be moved at the thought of his leaping for joy when yet in
the belly, surpassing as he did the common nature of man? Should the
piece entitled "The prayer of Joseph," one of the apocryphal works
current among the Hebrews, be thought worthy of credence, this dogma
will be found in it clearly expressed. Those at the beginning, it is
represented, having some marked distinction beyond men, and being much
greater than other souls, because they were angels, they have come
down to human nature. Thus Jacob says: "I, Jacob, who speak to you,
and Israel, I am an angel of God, a ruling spirit, and Abraham and
Isaac were created before every work of God; and I am Jacob, called
Jacob by men, but my name is Israel, called Israel by God, a man
seeing God, because I am the first-born of every creature which God
caused to live." And he adds: "When I was coming from Mesopotamia of
Syria, Uriel, the angel of God, came forth, and said, I have come down
to the earth and made my dwelling among men, and I am called Jacob by
name. He was wroth with me and fought with me and wrestled against
me, saying that his name and the name of Him who is before every angel
should be before my name. And I told him his name and how great he
was among the sons of God; Art not thou Uriel my eighth, and I am
Israel and archangel of the power of the Lord and a chief captain
among the sons of God? Am not I Israel, the first minister in the
sight of God, and I invoked my God by the inextinguishable name?" It
is likely that this was really said by Jacob, and was therefore
written down, and that there is also a deeper meaning in what we are
told, "He supplanted his brother in the womb." Consider whether the
celebrated question about Jacob and Esau has a solution. We read,
[4757] "The children being not yet born, neither having done anything
good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might
stand, not of works but of him that calleth, it was said, "The elder
shall serve the younger." Even as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but
Esau I hated." What shall we say, then? Is there unrighteousness
with God? God forbid." If, then, when they were not yet born, and
had not done anything either good or evil, in order that God's purpose
according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that
calleth, if at such a period this was said, how if we do not go back
to the works done before this life, can it be said that there is no
unrighteousness with God when the elder serves the younger and is
hated (by God) before he has done anything worthy of slavery or of
hatred? We have made something of a digression in introducing this
story about Jacob and appealing to a writing which we cannot well
treat with contempt; but it certainly adds weight to our argument
about John, to the effect that as Isaiah's voice declares [4758] he is
an angel who assumed a body for the sake of bearing witness to the
light. So much about John considered as a man.
Footnotes
[4757] Rom. ix. 11-14.
[4758] Isa. xl. 3.
26. John is Voice, Jesus is Speech. Relation of These Two to Each
Other
Now we know voice and speech to be different things. The voice can be
produced without any meaning and with no speech in it, and similarly
speech can be reported to the mind without voice, as when we make
mental excursions, within ourselves. And thus the Saviour is, in one
view of Him, speech, and John differs from Him; for as the Saviour is
speech, John is voice. John himself invites me to take this view of
him, for to those who asked who he was, he answered, "I am the voice
of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord! make His
paths straight!" This explains, perhaps, how it was that Zacharias
lost his voice at the birth of the voice which points out the Word of
God, and only recovered it when the voice, forerunner of the Word, was
born. A voice must be perceived with the ears if the mind is
afterwards to receive the speech which the voice indicates. Hence,
John is, in point of his birth, a little older than Christ, for our
voice comes to us before our speech. But John also points to Christ;
for speech is brought forward by the voice. And Christ is baptized by
John, though John declares himself to have need to be baptized by
Christ; for with men speech is purified by voice, though the natural
way is that speech should purify the voice which indicates it. In a
word, when John points out Christ, it is man pointing out God, the
Saviour incorporeal, the voice pointing out the Word.
27. Significance of the Names of John and of His Parents.
The force that is in names may be applied in many matters, and it may
be worth our while to ask at this point what is the significance of
the names John and Zacharias. The relatives wish, as the giving of a
name is a thing not to be lightly disposed of, to call the child
Zacharias, and are surprised that Elisabeth should want him to be
called John. Zacharias then writes, "His name is John," and is at
once freed from his troublesome silence. On examining the names,
then, we find "Joannes" to be "Joa" without the "nes." The New
Testament gives Hebrew names a Greek form and treats them as Greek
words; Jacob is changed into Jacobus, Symeon into Simon, and Joannes
is the same as Joa. Zacharias is said to be memory, and Elisabeth
"oath of my God," or "strength of my God." John then came into the
world from grace of God (=Joa=Joannes), and his parents were Memory
(about God) and the Oath of our God, about the fathers. Thus was he
born to make ready for the Lord a people fit for Him, at the end of
the Covenant now grown old, which is the end of the Sabbatic period.
Hence it is not possible that the rest after the Sabbath should have
come into existence from the seventh of our God; on the contrary, it
is our Saviour who, after the pattern of His own rest, caused us to be
made in the likeness of His death, and hence also of His resurrection.
[4759]
Footnotes
[4759] Origen appears to be pointing to the fact that the Christian
rest which is connected in its origin with the resurrection of Christ
is not held as the Jewish Sabbath rest on the seventh but on the first
day of the week. John marking the end of the old period is the son of
Elisabeth the oath, or seventh, of God, and is thus connected with the
seventh day; but not so Jesus.
28. The Prophets Bore Witness to Christ and Foretold Many Things
Concerning Him.
"He came for a witness that He might bear witness of the light, that
all through Him might believe." [4760]Some of the dissenters from
the Church's doctrine, men who profess to believe in Christ, have
desired another being, as indeed their system requires, besides the
Creator, and hence cannot allow His coming to the world to have been
foretold by the prophets. [4761]They therefore endeavour to get rid
of the testimonies of the prophets about Christ, and say that the Son
of God has no need of witnesses, but that He brings with Him His own
evidence, partly in the sound words full of power which He proclaimed
and partly in the wonderful works He did, which were sufficient at
once to convince any one whatever. Then they say: If Moses is
believed on account of his word and his works, and has no need of any
witnesses to announce him beforehand, and if the prophets were
received, every one of them, by these people, as messengers from God,
how should not one who is much greater than Moses and the prophets
accomplish His mission and benefit the human race, without prophets to
bear witness about Him? They regard it as superfluous that He should
have been foretold by the prophets, since the prophets were concerned,
as these opponents would say, that those who believed in Christ should
not receive Him as a new God, and therefore did what they could to
bring them to that same God whom Moses and the prophets taught before
Jesus. To this we must say that as there are many causes which may
lead men to believe, since men who are not moved by one argument may
be by another, so God is able to provide for men a number of
occasions, any of which may cause their minds to open to the truth
that God, who is over all, has taken on Himself human nature. It is
manifest to all, how some are brought by the prophetic writings to the
admiration of Christ. They are astounded at the voices of so many
prophets before Him, which establish the place of His birth, the
country of His upbringing, the power of His teaching, His working of
wonderful works, and His human passion brought to a close by His
resurrection. We must notice, too, that Christ's stupendous acts of
power were able to bring to the faith those of Christ's own time, but
that they lost their demonstrative force with the lapse of years and
began to be regarded as mythical. Greater evidential value than that
of the miracles then performed attaches to the comparison which we now
make between these miracles and the prophecy of them; this makes it
impossible for the student to cast any doubt on the former. The
prophetic testimonies do not declare merely the advent of the Messiah;
it is by no means the case that they teach this and nothing else.
They teach a great deal of theology. The relation of the Father to
the Son and of the Son to the Father may be learned not less from what
the prophets announce about Christ, than from the Apostles narrating
the splendours of the Son of God. A parallel case, which we may
venture to adduce, is that of the martyrs, who were honoured by the
witness they bore Him, and by no means conferred any favour on Him by
their witnessing for the Son of God. And how is it if, as many of
Christ's true disciples were honoured by having thus to witness for
Him, so the prophets received from God as their special gift that of
understanding about Christ and announcing Him before, and that they
taught not only those living after Christ's advent how they should
regard the Son of God, but those also who lived in the generations
before Him? As he who in these times does not know the Son has not
the Father either, [4762] so also we are to understand it was in these
earlier times. Hence "Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ, and
he saw it and was glad." [4763]He, therefore, who declares that
they are not to testify about Christ is seeking to deprive the chorus
of the prophets of the greatest gift they have; for what office of
equal importance would be left to prophecy, inspired as it is by the
Holy Spirit, if all connection with the economy of our Lord and Master
were taken away from it? For as these have their faith well ordered
who approach the God of the universe through Mediator and High-Priest
and Paraclete, and as his religion is a halting one who does not go in
through the door to the Father, so also in the case of men of old
time. Their religion was sanctified and made acceptable to God by
their knowledge and faith and expectation of Christ. For we have
observed that God declares Himself to be a witness and exhorts them
all to declare the same about Christ, and to be imitators of Him,
bearing witness of Him to all who require it. For he says, [4764] "Be
witnesses for Me, and I am witness, saith the Lord God, and My servant
whom I have chosen." Now every one who bears witness to the truth,
whether he support it by words or deeds, or in whatever way, may
properly be called a witness (martyr); but it has come to be the
custom of the brotherhood, since they are struck with admiration of
those who have contended to the death for truth and valour, to keep
the name of martyr more properly for those who have borne witness to
the mystery of godliness by shedding their blood for it. The Saviour
gives the name of martyr to every one who bears witness to the truth
He declares; thus at the Ascension He says to His disciples: [4765]
"You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judæa and in Samaria
and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." The leper who was
cleansed [4766] had still to bring the gift which Moses commanded for
a testimony to those who did not believe in the Christ. In the same
way the martyrs bear witness for a testimony to the unbelieving, and
so do all the saints whose deeds shine before men. They spend their
life rejoicing in the cross of Christ and bearing witness to the true
light.
Footnotes
[4760] John i. 7.
[4761] The Old Testament belongs to the Creator, the Demiurge.
[4762] 1 John ii. 23.
[4763] John viii. 56.
[4764] Isa. xliii. 10.
[4765] Acts i. 8.
[4766] Matt. viii. 4.
29. The Six Testimonies of the Baptist Enumerated. Jesus' "Come and
See." Significance of the Tenth Hour.
Accordingly John came to bear witness of the light, and in his
witness-bearing he cried, saying, [4767] "He that cometh after me
exists before me; for He was before me; for of His fulness we have all
received and grace for grace, for the law was given by Moses, but
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one hath seen God at
any time; the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He
hath declared Him." This whole speech is from the mouth of the
Baptist bearing witness to the Christ. Some take it otherwise, and
consider that the words from "for of His fulness" to "He hath declared
Him" are from the writer, John the Apostle. The true state of the
case is that John's first testimony begins, as we said before, "He
that cometh after me," and ends, "He hath declared Him," and his
second testimony is that spoken to the priests and levites sent from
Jerusalem, whom the Jews had sent. To them he confesses and does not
deny the truth, namely, that he is not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the
prophet, but "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight
the way of the Lord, as saith Isaiah the prophet." [4768]After this
there is another testimony of the same Baptist to Christ, still
teaching His superior nature, which goes forth into the whole world
and enters into reasonable souls. He says, [4769] "There standeth One
among you whom you know not, even He that cometh after me, the latchet
of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose." Consider if, since the
heart is in the middle of the whole body, and the ruling principle in
the heart, the saying, "There standeth One among you whom you know
not," can be understood of [4770] the reason which is in every man.
John's fourth testimony of Christ after these points to His human
sufferings. He says, [4771] "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world. This is He of whom I said, After me cometh
a man who exists before me, for He was before me. And I knew Him not,
but that He should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come
baptizing with water." And the fifth testimony is recorded in the
words, [4772] "I beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven,
and it abode upon Him, and I knew Him not, but He that sent me to
baptize with water, He said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see
the Spirit descending and abiding upon Him, the same is He that
baptizeth with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and borne witness
that this is the Son of God." In the sixth place John witnesses of
Christ to the two disciples: [4773]"He looked on Jesus as He walked
and saith, Behold the Lamb of God." After this testimony the two
disciples who heard it followed Jesus; and Jesus turned and beheld
them following, and saith unto them, "What seek ye?" Perhaps it is
not without significance that after six testimonies John ceases from
his witness-bearing and Jesus brings forward in the seventh place His
"What seek ye?" Very becoming in those who have been helped by John's
testimony is the speech in which they address Christ as their Master,
and declare their wish to see the dwelling of the Son of God; for they
say to Him, "Rabbi," which answers to "Master," in our language,
"where dwellest Thou?" And since every one that seeketh findeth, when
John's disciples seek Jesus' dwelling, Jesus shows it to them, saying,
"Come and see." By the word "Come" He exhorts them perhaps to the
practical part of life, while the "see" is to suggest to them that
that speculation which comes in the train of right conduct will be
vouchsafed to those who desire it; in Jesus' dwelling they will have
it. After they had asked where Jesus dwells, and had followed the
Master and had seen, they desired to stay with Him and to spend that
day with the Son of God. Now the number ten is a sacred one, not a
few mysteries being indicated by it; and so we are to understand that
the mention of the tenth hour as that at which these disciples turned
in with Jesus, is not without significance. Of these disciples,
Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, is one; and he having profited by
this day with Jesus and having found his own brother Simon (perhaps he
had not found him before), told him that he had found the Messiah,
which is, being interpreted, Christ. It is written that "he that
seeketh findeth." Now he had sought where Jesus dwelt, and had
followed Him and looked upon His dwelling; he stays with the Lord "at
the tenth hour," and finds the Son of God, the Word, and Wisdom, and
is ruled by Him as King. That is why he says, "We have found the
Messiah," and this a thing which every one can say who has found this
Word of God and is ruled as by a king, by His Divinity. As a fruit he
at once brings his brother to Christ, and Christ deigned to look upon
Simon, that is to say, by looking at him to visit and enlighten his
ruling principle; and Simon by Jesus' looking at him was enabled to
grow strong, so as to earn a new name from that work of firmness and
strength, and to be called Peter.
Footnotes
[4767] i. 7, 15-18.
[4768] i. 23.
[4769] i. 26.
[4770] Reading katha for khai.
[4771] i. 29-31.
[4772] i. 32-34.
[4773] i. 35-38.
30. How John Was a Witness of Christ, and Specially of "The Light."
It may be asked why we should have gone through all this when the
verse before us is, "He came for witness, that he might bear witness
of the light." But it was necessary to give John's testimonies to the
light, and to show the order in which they took place, and also, in
order to show how effective John's testimony proved, to set forth the
help it afforded afterwards to those to whom he bore it. But before
all these testimonies there was an earlier one when the Baptist leaped
in the womb of Elisabeth at the greeting of Mary. That was a
testimony to Christ and attested His divine conception and birth. And
what more need I say? John is everywhere a witness and forerunner of
Christ. He anticipates His birth and dies a little before the death
of the Son of God, and thus witnesses not only for those at the time
of the birth, but to those who were expecting the freedom which was to
come for man through the death of Christ. Thus, in all his life, he
is a little before Christ, and everywhere makes ready for the Lord a
people prepared for Him. And John's testimony precedes also the
second and diviner coming of Christ, for we read, [4774] "If ye will
receive it, this is Elijah which is to come. He that hath ears to
hear let him hear." Now, there was a beginning, in which the Word
was,--and we saw from Proverbs that that beginning was wisdom,--and
the Word was in existence, and in the Word life was made, and the life
was the light of men; and all this being so, I ask why the man who
came, sent from God, whose name was John, why he came for witness to
bear witness especially of the light? Why did he not come to bear
witness of the life, or of the Word, or about the beginning, or about
any other of the many aspects in which Christ appears? Consider here
the texts, "The people which sat in darkness saw a great light," and
"The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness overtook it not," and
consider how those who are in darkness, that is, men, have need of
light. For if the light of men shines in darkness, and there is no
active power in darkness to attain to it, then we must partake of
other aspects of Christ; at present we have no real share of Him at
all. For what share have we of life, we who are still in the body of
death, and whose life is hid with Christ in God? [4775]"For when
Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with
Him in glory." It was not possible, therefore, that he who came
should bear witness about a life which is still hid with Christ in
God. Nor did he come for witness to bear witness of the Word, for we
know the Word who was in the beginning with God and who is God the
Word; for the Word was made flesh on the earth. And though the
witness had been, at least apparently, about the Word, it would in
fact have been about the Word made flesh and not about the word of
God. He did not come, therefore, to bear witness of the Word. And
how could there be any witness-bearing about wisdom, to those who,
even if they appear to know something, cannot understand pure truth,
but behold it through a glass and in an enigma? It is likely,
however, that before the second and diviner advent of Christ, John or
Elias will come to bear witness about life a little before Christ our
life is made manifest, and that then they will bear witness about the
Word, and offer also their testimony about wisdom. Some inquiry is
necessary whether a testimony such as that of John is to precede each
of the aspects of Christ. So much for the words, "He came for
witness, to bear witness of the light." What we are to understand by
the further words, "That all might believe through Him," may be
considered later.
Footnotes
[4774] Matt. xi. 14, 15.
[4775] Coloss. iii. 3, 4.
.
Fragments of the Fourth Book. [4776]
(Three Leaves from the Beginning.)
1. He who distinguishes in himself voice and meaning and things for
which the meaning stands, will not be offended at rudeness of language
if, on enquiry, he finds the things spoken of to be sound. The more
may this be so when we remember how the holy men acknowledge their
speech and their preaching to be not in persuasion of the wisdom of
words, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power....
[Then, after speaking of the rudeness of style of the Gospel, he
proceeds: ]
2. The Apostles are not unaware that in some things they give
offence, and that in some respects their culture is defective, and
they confess themselves [4777] accordingly to be rude in speech but
not in knowledge; for we must consider that the other Apostles would
have said this, too, as well as Paul. As for the text, [4778] "But we
have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the
power may be of God and not of us," we interpret it in this way. By
"treasures" we understand here, as in other passages, the treasure of
knowledge (gnosis) and of hidden wisdom. By "earthen vessels" we
understand the humble diction of the Scriptures, which the Greek might
so readily be led to despise, and in which the excellency of God's
power appears so clearly. The mystery of the truth and the power of
the things said were not hindered by the humble diction from
travelling to the ends of the earth, nor from subduing to the word of
Christ, not only the foolish things of the world, but sometimes its
wise things, too. For we see our calling, [4779] not that no wise man
according to the flesh, but that not many wise according to the
flesh. But Paul, in his preaching of the Gospel, is a debtor [4780]
to deliver the word not to Barbarians only, but also to Greeks, and
not only to the unwise, who would easily agree with him, but also to
the wise. For he was made sufficient [4781] by God to be a minister
of the New Covenant, wielding the demonstration of the spirit and of
power, so that when the believers agreed with him their belief should
not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. For, perhaps,
if the Scripture possessed, like the works the Greeks admire, elegance
and command of diction, then it would be open to suppose that not the
truth of them had laid hold of men, but that the apparent sequence and
splendour of language had carried off the hearers, and had carried
them off by guile.
Footnotes
[4776] From the Philocalia.
[4777] 2 Cor. xi. 6.
[4778] 2 Cor. iv. 7.
[4779] 1 Cor. i. 26, 27.
[4780] Rom. i. 14.
[4781] 2 Cor. iii. 6.
.
From the Fifth Book.
From the Preface. [4782]
You are not content to fulfil the office, when I am present with you,
of a taskmaster to drive me to labour at theology; even when I am
absent you demand that I should spend most of my time on you and on
the task I have to do for you. [4783]I, for my part, am inclined to
shrink from toil, and to avoid that danger which threatens from God
those who give themselves to writing on divinity; thus I would take
shelter in Scripture in refraining from making many books. For
Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, [4784] "My son, beware of making many
books; there is no end of it, and much study is a weariness of the
flesh." For we, except that text have some hidden meaning which we do
not yet perceive, have directly transgressed the injunction, we have
not guarded ourselves against making many books.
[Then, after saying that this discussion of but a few sentences of the
Gospel have run to four volumes, he goes on:]
Footnotes
[4782] From the Philocalia.
[4783] This is addressed to Ambrose, who was at the time absent from
Alexandria. Cf. book i. chap. 6, p. 299.
[4784] xii. 12.
2. How Scripture Warns Us Against Making Many Books.
For, to judge by the words of the phrase, "My son, beware of making
many books," two things appear to be indicated by it: first, that we
ought not to possess many books, and then that we ought not to compose
many books. If the first is not the meaning the second must be, and
if the second is the meaning the first does not necessarily follow.
In either case we appear to be told that we ought not to make many
books. I might take my stand on this dictum which now confronts us,
and send you the text as an excuse, and I might appeal in support of
this position to the fact that not even the saints found leisure to
compose many books; and thus I might cry off from the bargain we made
with each other, and give up writing what I was to send to you. You,
on your side, would no doubt feel the force of the text I have cited,
and might, for the future, excuse me. But we must treat Scripture
conscientiously, and must not congratulate ourselves because we see
the primary meaning of a text, that we understand it altogether. I do
not, therefore, shrink from bringing forward what excuse I think I am
able to offer for myself, and to point out the arguments, which you
would certainly use against me, if I acted contrary to our agreement.
And in the first place, the Sacred History seems to agree with the
text in question, inasmuch as none of the saints composed several
works, or set forth his views in a number of books. I will take up
this point: when I proceed to write a number of books, the critic
will remind me that even such a one as Moses left behind him only five
books.
3. The Apostles Wrote Little. [4785]
But he who was made fit to be a minister of the New Covenant, not of
the letter, but of the spirit, Paul, who fulfilled the Gospel from
Jerusalem round about to Illyricum, [4786] did not write epistles to
all the churches he taught, and to those to whom he did write he sent
no more than a few lines. And Peter, on whom the Church of Christ is
built, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail [4787] left
only one epistle of acknowledged genuineness. Suppose we allow that
he left a second; for this is doubtful. What are we to say of him who
leaned on Jesus' breast, namely, John, who left one Gospel, though
confessing [4788] that he could make so many that the world would not
contain them? But he wrote also the Apocalypse, being commanded to be
silent and not to write the voices of the seven thunders. [4789]But
he also left an epistle of very few lines. Suppose also a second and
a third, since not all pronounce these to be genuine; but the two
together do not amount to a hundred lines.
[Then, after enumerating the prophets and Apostles, and showing how
each wrote only a little, or not even a little, he goes on:] [4790]
Footnotes
[4785] From Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 25.
[4786] Rom. xv. 19.
[4787] Matt. xvi. 18.
[4788] John i. 20, 25.
[4789] Apoc. x. 4.
[4790] The following fragments is found in Philocalia, pp. 27-30.
4. I feel myself growing dizzy with all this, and wonder whether, in
obeying you, I have not been obeying God, nor walking in the footsteps
of the saints, unless it be that my too great love to you, and my
unwillingness to cause you any pain, has led me astray and caused me
to think of all these excuses. We started from the words of the
preacher, where he says: "My son, beware of making many books." With
this I compare a saying from the Proverbs of the same Solomon, [4791]
"In the multitude of words thou shalt not escape sin; but in sparing
thy lips thou shalt be wise." Here I ask whether speaking many words
of whatever kind is a multitude of words (in the sense of the
preacher), even if the many words a man speaks are sacred and
connected with salvation. If this be the case, and if he who makes
use of many salutary words is guilty of "multitude of words," then
Solomon himself did not escape this sin, for "he spoke [4792] three
thousand proverbs, and five thousand songs, and he spoke of trees from
the cedar that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out
of the wall, he spoke also of beasts and of fowl, and of creeping
things and of fishes." How, I may ask, can any one give any course of
instruction, without a multitude of words, using the phrase in its
simplest sense? Does not Wisdom herself say to those who are
perishing, [4793] "I stretched out my words, and ye heeded not"? Do
we not find Paul, too, extending his discourse from morning to
midnight, [4794] when Eutychus was borne down with sleep and fell
down, to the dismay of the hearers, who thought he was killed? If,
then, the words are true, "In much speaking thou wilt not escape sin,"
and if Solomon was yet not guilty of great sin when he discoursed on
the subjects above mentioned, nor Paul when he prolonged his discourse
till midnight, then the question arises, What is that much speaking
which is referred to? and then we may pass on to consider what are the
many books. Now the entire Word of God, who was in the beginning with
God, is not much speaking, is not words; for the Word is one, being
composed of the many speculations (theoremata), each of which is a
part of the Word in its entirety. Whatever words there be outside of
this one, which promise to give any description and exposition, even
though they be words about truth, none of these, to put it in a
somewhat paradoxical way, is Word or Reason, they are all words or
reasons. They are not the monad, far from it; they are not that which
agrees and is one in itself, by their inner divisions and conflicts
unity has departed from them, they have become numbers, perhaps
infinite numbers. We are obliged, therefore, to say that whoever
speaks that which is foreign to religion is using many words, while he
who speaks the words of truth, even should he go over the whole field
and omit nothing, is always speaking the one word. Nor are the saints
guilty of much speaking, since they always have the aim in view which
is connected with the one word. It appears, then, that the much
speaking which is condemned is judged to be so rather from the nature
of the views propounded, than from the number of the words
pronounced. Let us see if we cannot conclude in the same way that all
the sacred books are one book, but that those outside are the "many
books" of the preacher. The proof of this must be drawn from Holy
Scripture, and it will be most satisfactorily established if I am able
to show that it is not only one book, taking the word now in its
commoner meaning, that we find to be written about Christ. Christ is
written about even in the Pentateuch; He is spoken of in each of the
Prophets, and in the Psalms, and, in a word, as the Saviour Himself
says, in all the Scriptures. He refers us to them all, when He says:
[4795]"Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal
life, and these are they which testify of Me." And if He refers us to
the Scriptures as testifying of Him, it is not to one that He sends
us, to the exclusion of another, but to all that speak of Him, those
which, in the Psalms, He calls the chapter of the book, saying, [4796]
"In the chapter of the book it is written of Me." If any one proposes
to take these words, "In the chapter of the book it is written of Me,"
literally, and to apply them to this or that special passage where
Christ is spoken of, let him tell us on what principle he warrants his
preference for one book over another. If any one supposes that we are
doing something of this kind ourselves, and applying the words in
question to the book of Psalms, we deny that we do so, and we would
urge that in that case the words should have been, "In this book it is
written of Me." But He speaks of all the books as one chapter, thus
summing up in one all that is spoken of Christ for our instruction.
In fact the book was seen by John, [4797] "written within and without,
and sealed; and no one could open it to read it, and to loose the
seals thereof, but the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David,
who has the key of David, [4798] he that openeth and none shall shut,
and that shutteth and none shall open." For the book here spoken of
means the whole of Scripture; and it is written within (lit. in
front), on account of the meaning which is obvious, and on the back,
on account of its remoter and spiritual sense. Observe, in addition
to this, if a proof that the sacred writings are one book, and those
of an opposite character many, may not be found in the fact that there
is one book of the living from which those who have proved unworthy to
be in it are blotted out, as it is written: [4799]"Let them be
blotted out of the book of the living," while of those who are to
undergo the judgment, there are books in the plural, as Daniel says:
[4800]"The judgment was set, and the books were opened." But Moses
also bears witness to the unity of the sacred book, when he says:
[4801]"If Thou forgive the people their sins, forgive, but if not,
then wipe me out of the book which Thou hast written." The passage in
Isaiah, [4802] too, I read in the same way. It is not peculiar to his
prophecy that the words of the book should be sealed, and should
neither be read by him who does not know letters, because he is
ignorant of letters, nor by him who is learned, because the book is
sealed. This is true of every writing, for every written work needs
the reason (Logos) which closed it to open it. "He shall shut, and
none shall open," [4803] and when He opens no one can cast doubt on
the interpretation He brings. Hence it is said that He shall open and
no man shall shut. I infer a similar lesson from the book spoken of
in Ezekiel, [4804] in which was written lamentation, and a song, and
woe. For the whole book is full of the woe of the lost, and the song
of the saved, and the lamentation of those between these two. And
John, too, when he speaks of his eating the one roll, [4805] in which
both front and back were written on, means the whole of Scripture, one
book which is, at first, most sweet when one begins, as it were, to
chew it, but bitter in the revelation of himself which it makes to the
conscience of each one who knows it. I will add to the proof of this
an apostolic saying which has been quite misunderstood by the
disciples of Marcion, who, therefore, set the Gospels at naught. The
Apostle says: [4806]"According to my Gospel in Christ Jesus;" he
does not speak of Gospels in the plural, and, hence, they argue that
as the Apostle only speaks of one Gospel in the singular, there was
only one in existence. But they fail to see that, as He is one of
whom all the evangelists write, so the Gospel, though written by
several hands, is, in effect, one. And, in fact, the Gospel, though
written by four, is one. From these considerations, then, we learn
what the one book is, and what the many books, and what I am now
concerned about is, not the quantity I may write, but the effect of
what I say, lest, if I fail in this point, and set forth anything
against the truth itself, even in one of my writings, I should prove
to have transgressed the commandment, and to be a writer of "many
books." Yet I see the heterodox assailing the holy Church of God in
these days, under the pretence of higher wisdom, and bringing forward
works in many volumes in which they offer expositions of the
evangelical and apostolic writings, and I fear that if I should be
silent and should not put before our members the saving and true
doctrines, these teachers might get a hold of curious souls, which, in
the absence of wholesome nourishment, might go after food that is
forbidden, and, in fact, unclean and horrible. It appears to me,
therefore, to be necessary that one who is able to represent in a
genuine manner the doctrine of the Church, and to refute those dealers
in knowledge, falsely so-called, should take his stand against
historical fictions, and oppose to them the true and lofty evangelical
message in which the agreement of the doctrines, found both in the
so-called Old Testament and in the so-called New, appears so plainly
and fully. You yourself felt at one time the lack of good
representatives of the better cause, and were impatient of a faith
which was at issue with reason and absurd, and you then, for the love
you bore to the Lord, gave yourself to composition from which,
however, in the exercise of the judgment with which you are endowed,
you afterwards desisted. This is the defence which I think admits of
being made for those who have the faculty of speaking and writing.
But I am also pleading my own cause, as I now devote myself with what
boldness I may to the work of exposition; for it may be that I am not
endowed with that habit and disposition which he ought to have who is
fitted by God to be a minister of the New Covenant, not of the letter
but of the spirit.
Footnotes
[4791] x. 19.
[4792] 1 Kings iv. 32.
[4793] Prov. i. 24.
[4794] Acts xx. 7-9.
[4795] John v. 39.
[4796] xl. 7.
[4797] Apoc. v. 1-5.
[4798] Apoc. iii. 7.
[4799] Ps. lxix. 28.
[4800] Dan. vii. 10.
[4801] Exod. xxxii. 32.
[4802] xxix. 11, 12.
[4803] Isa. xxii. 22.
[4804] ii. 10.
[4805] Apoc. x. 9, 10.
[4806] Rom. ii. 16.
.
Sixth Book.
1. The Work is Taken Up After a Violent Interruption, Which Has
Driven the Writer from Alexandria. He Addresses Himself to It Again,
with Thanks for His Deliverance, and Prayer for Guidance.
When a house is being built which is to be made as strong as possible,
the building takes place in fine weather and in calm, so that nothing
may hinder the structure from acquiring the needed solidity. And thus
it turns out so strong and stable that it is able to withstand the
rush of the flood, and the dashing of the river, and all the agencies
accompanying a storm which are apt to find out what is rotten in a
building and to show what parts of it have been properly put
together. And more particularly should that house which is capable of
sheltering the speculations of truth, the house of reason, as it were,
in promise or in letters, be built at a time when God can add His free
co-operation to the projector of so noble a work, when the soul is
quiet and in the enjoyment of that peace which passes all
understanding, when she is turned away from all disturbance and not
buffeted by any billows. This, it appears to me, was well understood
by the servants of the prophetic spirit and the ministers of the
Gospel message; they made themselves worthy to receive that peace
which is in secret from Him who ever gives it to them that are worthy
and who said, [4807] "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto
you; not as the world giveth give I unto you." And look if some
similar lesson is not taught under the surface with regard to David
and Solomon in the narrative about the temple. David, who fought the
wars of the Lord and stood firm against many enemies, his own and
those of Israel, desired to build a temple for God. But God, through
Nathan, prevents him from doing so, and Nathan says to him, [4808]
"Thou shalt not build me an house, because thou art a man of blood."
But Solomon, on the other hand, saw God in a dream, and in a dream
received wisdom, for the reality of the vision was kept for him who
said, "Behold a greater than Solomon is here." The time was one of
the profoundest peace, so that it was possible for every man to rest
under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and Solomon's very name was
significant of the peace which was in his days, for Solomon means
peaceful; and so he was at liberty to build the famous temple of God.
About the time of Ezra, also, when "truth conquers wine and the
hostile king and women," [4809] the temple of God is restored again.
All this is said by way of apology to you, reverend Ambrosius. It is
at your sacred encouragement that I have made up my mind to build up
in writing the tower of the Gospel; and I have therefore sate down to
count the cost, [4810] if I have sufficient to finish it, lest I
should be mocked by the beholders, because I laid the foundation but
was not able to finish the work. The result of my counting, it is
true, has been that I do not possess what is required to finish it;
yet I have put my trust in God, who enriches us [4811] with all wisdom
and all knowledge. If we strive to keep His spiritual laws we believe
that He does enrich us; He will supply what is necessary so that we
shall get on with our building, and shall even come to the parapet of
the structure. That parapet it is which keeps from falling those who
go up on the house of the Word; for people only fall off those houses
which have no parapet, so that the buildings themselves are to blame
for their fall and for their death. We proceeded as far as the fifth
volume in spite of the obstacles presented by the storm in Alexandria,
and spoke what was given us to speak, for Jesus rebuked the winds and
the waves of the sea. We emerged from the storm, we were brought out
of Egypt, that God delivering us who led His people forth from there.
Then, when the enemy assailed us with all bitterness by his new
writings, so directly hostile to the Gospel, and stirred up against us
all the winds of wickedness in Egypt, I felt that reason called me
rather to stand fast for the conflict, and to save the higher part in
me, lest evil counsels should succeed in directing the storm so as to
overwhelm my soul, rather to do this than to finish my work at an
unsuitable season, before my mind had recovered its calm. Indeed, the
ready writers who usually attended me brought my work to a stand by
failing to appear to take down my words. But now that the many fiery
darts directed against me have lost their edge, for God extinguished
them, and my soul has grown accustomed to the dispensation sent me for
the sake of the heavenly word, and has learned from necessity to
disregard the snares of my enemies, it is as if a great calm had
settled on me, and I defer no longer the continuation of this work. I
pray that God will be with me, and will speak as a teacher in the
porch of my soul, so that the building I have begun of the exposition
of the Gospel of John may arrive at completion. May God hear my
prayer and grant that the body of the whole work may now be brought
together, and that no interruption may intervene which might prevent
me from following the sequence of Scripture. And be assured that it
is with great readiness that I now make this second beginning and
enter on my sixth volume, because what I wrote before at Alexandria
has not, I know not by what chance, been brought with me. I feared I
might neglect this work, if I were not engaged on it at once, and
therefore thought it better to make use of this present time and begin
without delay the part which remains. I am not certain if the part
formerly written will come to light, and would be very unwilling to
waste time in waiting to see if it does. Enough of preamble, let us
now attend to our text.
Footnotes
[4807] John xiv. 27.
[4808] 1 Chron. xxii. 8, 9.
[4809] 3 Esdras iv. 37, 41, 47.
[4810] Luke xiv. 28.
[4811] 1 Cor. i. 5.
2. How the Prophets and Holy Men of the Old Testament Knew the Things
of Christ.
"And this is the witness of John." [4812]This is the second
recorded testimony of John the Baptist to Christ. The first begins
with "This was He of whom I said, He that cometh after me," and goes
down to "The only-begotten Son of God who is in the bosom of the
Father, He hath declared him." Heracleon supposes the words, "No one
has seen God at any time," etc., to have been spoken, not by the
Baptist, but by the disciple. But in this he is not sound. He
himself allows the words, "Of his fulness we all received, and grace
for grace; for the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by
Jesus Christ," to have been spoken by the Baptist. And does it not
follow that the person who received of the fulness of Christ, and a
second grace in addition to that he had before, and who declared the
law to have been given by Moses, but grace and truth to have come
through Jesus Christ, is it not clear that this is the person who
understood, from what he received from the fulness of Christ, how "no
one hath seen God at any time," and how "the only-begotten who is in
the bosom of the Father" had delivered the declaration about God to
him and to all those who had received of His fulness? He was not
declaring here for the first time Him that is in the bosom of the
Father, as if there had never before been any one fit to receive what
he told His Apostles. Does he not teach us that he was before
Abraham, and that Abraham rejoiced and was glad to see his day? The
words "Of his fulness all we received," and "Grace for grace," show,
as we have already made clear, that the prophets also received their
gift from the fulness of Christ and received a second grace in place
of that they had before; for they also, led by the Spirit, advanced
from the introduction they had in types to the vision of truth. Hence
not all the prophets, but many of them, [4813] desired to see the
things, which the Apostles saw. For if there was a difference among
the prophets, those who were perfect and more distinguished of them
did not desire to see what the Apostles saw, but actually beheld them,
while those who rose less fully than these to the height of the Word
were filled with longing for the things which the Apostles knew
through Christ. The word "saw" we have not taken in a physical sense,
and the word "heard" we have taken to refer to a spiritual
communication; only he who has ears is prepared to hear the words of
Jesus--a thing which does not happen too frequently. There is the
further point, that the saints before the bodily advent of Jesus had
an advantage over most believers in their insight into the mysteries
of divinity, since the Word of God was their teacher before He became
flesh, for He was always working , in imitation of His Father, of whom
He says, "My father worketh hitherto." On this point we may adduce
the words He addresses to the Sadducees, who do not believe the
doctrine of the resurrection. "Have you not read," He says, [4814]
"what is said by God at the Bush, I am the God of Abraham, and the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; He is not the God of the dead but of
the living." If, then, God is not ashamed to be called the God of
these men, and if they are counted by Christ among the living, and if
all believers are sons of Abraham, [4815] since all the Gentiles are
blessed with faithful Abraham, who is appointed by God to be a father
of the Gentiles, can we hesitate to admit that those living persons
made acquaintance with the learning of living men, and were taught by
Christ who was born before the daystar, [4816] before He became
flesh? And for this cause they lived, because they had part in Him
who said, "I am the life," and as the heirs of so great promises
received the vision, not only of angels, but of God in Christ. For
they saw, it may be, the image of the invisible God, [4817] since he
who hath seen the Son hath seen the Father, and so they are recorded
to have known God, and to have heard God's words worthily, and,
therefore, to have seen God and heard Him. Now, I consider that those
who are fully and really sons of Abraham are sons of his actions,
spiritually understood, and of the knowledge which was made manifest
to him. What he knew and what he did appears again in those who are
his sons, as the Scripture teaches those who have ears to hear, [4818]
"If ye were the children of Abraham, ye would do the works of
Abraham." And if it is a true proverb [4819] which says, "A wise man
will understand that which proceeds from his own mouth, and on his
lips he will bear prudence," then we must at once repudiate some
things which have been said about the prophets, as if they were not
wise men, and did not understand what proceeded from their own
mouths. We must believe what is good and true about the prophets,
that they were sages, that they did understand what proceeded from
their mouths, and that they bore prudence on their lips. It is clear
indeed that Moses understood in his mind the truth (real meaning) of
the law, and the higher interpretations of the stories recorded in his
books. Joshua, too, understood the meaning of the allotment of the
land after the destruction of the nine and twenty kings, and could see
better than we can the realities of which his achievements were the
shadows. It is clear, too, that Isaiah saw the mystery of Him who sat
upon the throne, and of the two seraphim, and of the veiling of their
faces and their feet, and of their wings, and of the altar and of the
tongs. Ezekiel, too, understood the true significance of the cherubim
and of their goings, and of the firmament that was above them, and of
Him that sat on the throne, than all which what could be loftier or
more splendid? I need not enter into more particulars; the point I
aim at establishing is clear enough already, namely, that those who
were made perfect in earlier generations knew not less than the
Apostles did of what Christ revealed to them, since the same teacher
was with them as He who revealed to the Apostles the unspeakable
mysteries of godliness. I will add but a few points, and then leave
it to the reader to judge and to form what views he pleases on this
subject. Paul says in his Epistle to the Romans, [4820] "Now, to him
who is able to establish you according to my Gospel, according to the
revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence through
times eternal, but is now made manifest by the prophetic Scriptures
and the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ." For if the mystery
concealed of old is made manifest to the Apostles through the
prophetic writings, and if the prophets, being wise men, understood
what proceeded from their own mouths, then the prophets knew what was
made manifest to the Apostles. But to many it was not revealed, as
Paul says, [4821] "In other generations it was not made known to the
sons of men as it hath now been revealed unto His holy Apostles and
prophets by the Spirit, that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs and members
of the same body." Here an objection may be raised by those who do
not share the view we have propounded; and it becomes of importance to
define what is meant by the word "revealed." It is capable of two
meanings: firstly, that the thing in question is understood, but
secondly, if a prophecy is spoken of, that it is accomplished. Now,
the fact that the Gentiles were to be fellow-heirs and members of the
same body, and partakers of the promise, was known to the prophets to
this extent, that they knew the Gentiles were to fellow-heirs and
members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ.
When this should be, and why, and what Gentiles were spoken of, and
how, though strangers from the covenants, and aliens to the promises,
they were yet to be members of one body and sharers of the blessings;
all this was known to the prophets, being revealed to them. But the
things prophesied belong to the future, and are not revealed to those
who know them, but do not witness their fulfilment, as they are to
those who have the event before their eyes. And this was the position
of the Apostles. Thus, I conceive, they knew the events no more than
the fathers and the prophets did; and yet it is truly said of them
that "what to other generations was not revealed was now revealed to
the Apostles and prophets, that the Gentiles were fellow-heirs and
members of the same body, and partakers in the promise of Christ."
For, in addition to knowing these mysteries, they saw the power at
work in the accomplished fact. The passage, "Many prophets and
righteous men desired to see the things ye see and did not see them;
and to hear the things ye hear and did not hear them," may be
interpreted in the same way. They also desired to see the mystery of
the incarnation of the Son of God, and of His coming down to carry out
the design of His suffering for the salvation of many, actually put in
operation. This may be illustrated from another quarter. Suppose one
of the Apostles to have understood the "unspeakable words which it is
not lawful for a man to utter," [4822] but not to witness the glorious
bodily appearing of Jesus to the faithful. which is promised, although
He desired to see it and suppose another had not only not [4823]
marked and seen what that Apostle marked and saw, but had a much
feebler grasp of the divine hope, and yet is present at the second
coming of our Saviour, which the Apostle, as in the parallel above,
had desired, but had not seen. We shall not err from the truth if we
say that both of these have seen what the Apostle, or indeed the
Apostles, desired to see, and yet that they are not on that account to
be deemed wiser or more blessed than the Apostles. In the same way,
also, the Apostles are not to be deemed wiser than the fathers, or
than Moses and the prophets, than those in fact who, for their virtue,
were found worthy of epiphanies and of divine manifestations and of
revelations of mysteries.
Footnotes
[4812] John i. 19.
[4813] Matt. xiii. 17.
[4814] Mark xii. 20.
[4815] Rom. iv. 11.
[4816] Ps. cv. 3.
[4817] Coloss. i. 15; John xiv. 19.
[4818] John viii. 39.
[4819] Prov. xvi. 23.
[4820] xvi. 25.
[4821] Ephes. iii. 5.
[4822] 2 Cor. xii. 4.
[4823] Lommatzsch omits ou before ekribokota, but it is necessary to
the sense.
3. "Grace and Truth Came Through Jesus Christ." These Words Belong
to the Baptist, Not the Evangelist. What the Baptist Testifies by
Them.
We have lingered rather long over these discussions, but there is a
reason for it. There are many who, under the pretence of glorifying
the advent of Christ, declare the Apostles to be wiser than the
fathers or the prophets; and of these teachers some have invented a
greater God for the later period, while some, not venturing so far,
but moved, according to their own account of the matter, by the
difficulty connected with doctrine, cancel the whole of the gift
conferred by God on the fathers and the prophets, through Christ,
through whom all things were made. If all things were made through
Him, clearly so must the splendid revelations have been which were
made to the fathers and prophets, and became to them the symbols of
the sacred mysteries of religion. Now the true soldiers of Christ
must always be prepared to do battle for the truth, and must never, so
far as lies with them, allow false convictions to creep in. We must
not, therefore, neglect this matter. It may be said that John's
earlier testimony to Christ is to be found in the words, "He who
cometh after me exists before me, for He was before me," and that the
words, "For of His fulness we all received, and grace for grace," are
in the mouth of John the disciple. Now, we must show this exposition
to be a forced one, and one which does violence to the context; it is
rather a strong proceeding to suppose the speech of the Baptist to be
so suddenly and, as it were, inopportunely interrupted by that of the
disciple, and it is quite apparent to any one who can judge, in
whatever small degree, of a context, that the speech goes on
continuously after the words, "This is He of whom I spoke, He that
cometh after me exists before me, for He was before me." The Baptist
brings a proof that Jesus existed before him because He was before
him, since He is the first-born of all creation; he says, "For of His
fulness all we received." That is the reason why he says, "He exists
before me, for He was before me." That is how I know that He is first
and in higher honour with the Father, since of His fulness both I and
the prophets before me received the more divine prophetic grace
instead of the grace we received at His hands before in respect of our
election. That is why I say, "He exists before me, for He was before
me," because we know what we have received from His fulness; namely,
that the law was given through Moses, not by Moses, while grace and
truth not only were given but came into existence [4824] through Jesus
Christ. For His God and Father both gave the law through Moses, and
made grace and truth through Jesus Christ, that grace and truth which
came to man. If we give a reasonable interpretation to the words,
"Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ," we shall not be alarmed
at the possible discrepancy with them of that other saying, "I am the
way and the truth and the life." If it is Jesus who says, "I am the
truth," then how does the truth come through Jesus Christ, since no
one comes into existence through himself? We must recognize that this
very truth, the essential truth, which is prototypal, so to speak, of
that truth which exists in souls endowed with reason, that truth from
which, as it were, images are impressed on those who care for truth,
was not made through Jesus Christ, nor indeed through any one, but by
God;--just as the Word was not made through any one which was in the
beginning with the Father;--and as wisdom which God created the
beginning of His ways was not made through any one, so the truth also
was not made through any one. That truth, however, which is with men
came through Jesus Christ, as the truth in Paul and the Apostles came
through Jesus Christ. And it is no wonder, since truth is one, that
many truths should flow from that one. The prophet David certainly
knew many truths, as he says, [4825] "The Lord searcheth out truths,"
for the Father of truth searches out not the one truth but the many
through which those are saved who possess them. And as with the one
truth and many truths, so also with righteousness and
righteousnesses. For the very essential righteousness is Christ, "Who
was made to us of God wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and
redemption." But from that righteousness is formed the righteousness
which is in each individual, so that there are in the saved many
righteousnesses, whence also it is written, [4826] "For the Lord is
righteous, and He loved righteousnesses." This is the reading in the
exact copies, and in the other versions besides the Septuagint, and in
the Hebrew. Consider if the other things which Christ is said to be
in a unity admit of being multiplied in the same way and spoken of in
the plural. For example, Christ is our life as the Saviour Himself
says, [4827] "I am the way and the truth and the life." The Apostle,
too, says, [4828] "When Christ our life shall appear, then shall ye
also appear with Him in glory." And in the Psalms again we find,
[4829] "Thy mercy is better than life;" for it is on account of Christ
who is life in every one that there are many lives. This, perhaps, is
also the key to the passage, [4830] "If ye seek a proof of the Christ
that speaketh in me." For Christ is found in every saint, and so from
the one Christ there come to be many Christs, imitators of Him and
formed after Him who is the image of God; whence God says through the
prophet, [4831] "Touch not my Christs." Thus we have explained in
passing the passage which we appeared to have omitted from our
exposition, viz.: "Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ;" and we
have also shown that the words belong to John the Baptist and form
part of his testimony to the Son of God.
Footnotes
[4824] egeneto
[4825] Ps. xxxi. 24.
[4826] Ps. xi. 7.
[4827] John xiv. 6.
[4828] Coloss. iii. 4.
[4829] Ps. lxiii. 3.
[4830] 2 Cor. xiii. 3.
[4831] Ps. cv. 15.
4. John Denies that He is Elijah or "The" Prophet. Yet He Was "A"
Prophet.
Now let us consider John's second testimony. Jews from Jerusalem,
[4832] kindred to John the Baptist, since he also belonged to a
priestly race, send priests and levites to ask John who he is. In
saying, "I am not the Christ," he made a confession of the truth. The
words are not, as one might suppose, a negation; for it is no negation
to say, in the honour of Christ, that one is not Christ. The priests
and levites sent from Jerusalem, having there heard in the first place
that he is not the expected Messiah, put a question about the second
great personage whom they expected, namely, Elijah, whether John were
he, and he says he is not Elijah, and by his "I am not" makes a second
confession of the truth. And, as many prophets had appeared in
Israel, and one in particular was looked for according to the prophecy
of Moses, who said, [4833] "A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up
to you of your brethren, like unto me, him shall ye hear; and it shall
come to pass that every soul that shall not hear that prophet shall be
destroyed from among the people," they, therefore, ask a third
question, not whether he is a prophet, but whether he is the prophet.
Now, they did not apply this name to the Christ, but supposed the
prophet to be a second figure beside the Christ. But John, on the
contrary, who knew that He whose forerunner he was was both the Christ
and the prophet thus foretold, answered "No;" whereas, if they had
asked if he was a prophet, he would have answered "Yes;" [4834] for he
was not unconscious that he was a prophet. In all these answers
John's second testimony to Christ was not yet completed; he had still
to give his questioners the answer they were to take back to those who
sent them, and to declare himself in the terms of the prophecy of
Isaiah, which says, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord."
Footnotes
[4832] John i. 19-21.
[4833] Deut. xviii. 15.
[4834] John i. 25.
5. There Were Two Embassies to John the Baptist; The Different
Characters of These.
Here the enquiry suggests itself whether the second testimony is
concluded, and whether there is a third, addressed to those who were
sent from the Pharisees. They wished to know why he baptized, if he
was neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet; and he said:
[4835]"I baptize with water; but there standeth one among you whom
you know not, He that cometh after me, the latchet of whose shoe I am
not worthy to unloose." Is this a third testimony, or is this which
they were to report to the Pharisees a part of the second? As far as
the words allow me to conjecture I should say that the word to the
emissaries of the Pharisees was a third testimony. It is to be
observed, however, that the first testimony asserts the divinity of
the Saviour, while the second disposes of the suspicion of those who
were in doubt whether John could be the Christ, and the third declares
one who was already present with men although they saw Him not, and
whose coming was no longer in the future. Before going on to the
subsequent testimonies in which he points out Christ and witnesses to
Him, let us look at the second and third, word for word, and let us,
in the first place, observe that there are two embassies to the
Baptist, one "from Jerusalem" from the Jews, who send priests and
levites, to ask him, "Who art thou?" the second sent by the Pharisees,
[4836] who were in doubt about the answer which had been made to the
priests and levites. Observe how what is said by the first envoys is
in keeping with the character of priests and levites, and shows
gentleness and a willingness to learn. "Who art thou?" they say, and
"What then? art thou Elijah?" and "Art thou that prophet?" and then,
"Who art thou, that we may give an answer to them that sent us? What
sayest thou of thyself?" There is nothing harsh or arrogant in the
enquiries of these men; everything agrees well with the character of
true and careful servants of God; and they raise no difficulties about
the replies made to them. Those, on the contrary, who are sent from
the Pharisees assail the Baptist, as it were, with arrogant and
unsympathetic words: "Why then baptizest thou if thou be not the
Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet?" This mission is sent scarcely for
the sake of information, as in the former case of the priests and
levites, but rather to debar the Baptist from baptizing, as if it were
thought that no one was entitled to baptize but Christ and Elijah and
the prophet. The student who desires to understand the Scripture must
always proceed in this careful way; he must ask with regard to each
speech, who is the speaker and on what occasion it was spoken. Thus
only can we discern how speech harmonizes with the character of the
speaker, as it does all through the sacred books.
Footnotes
[4835] John i. 25 sqq.
[4836] Ver. 24.
6. Messianic Discussion with John the Baptist.
Then the Jews sent priests and levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who
art thou? And he confessed and denied not; and he confessed, I am not
the Christ. [4837]What legates should have been sent from the Jews
to John, and where should they have been sent from? Should they not
have been men held to stand by the election of God above their
fellows, and should they not have come from that place which was
chosen out of the whole of the earth, though it is all called good,
from Jerusalem where was the temple of God? With such honour, then,
do they enquire of John. In the case of Christ nothing of this sort
is reported to have been done by the Jews; but what the Jews do to
John, John does to Christ, sending his own disciples to ask him,
[4838] "Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?"
John confesses to those sent to him, and denies not, and he afterwards
declares, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness;" but
Christ, as having a greater testimony than John the Baptist, makes His
answer by words and deeds, saying, "Go and tell John those things
which ye do hear and see; the blind receive their sight, and the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the poor have the
Gospel preached to them." On this passage I shall, if God permit,
enlarge in its proper place. Here, however, it might be asked
reasonably enough why John gives such an answer to the question put to
him. The priests and levites do not ask him, "Art thou the Christ?"
but "Who art thou?" and the Baptist's reply to this question should
have been, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness." The
proper reply to the question, "Art thou the Christ?" is, "I am not the
Christ;" and to the question, "Who art thou?"--"The voice of one
crying in the wilderness." To this we may say that he probably
discerned in the question of the priests and levites a cautious
reverence, which led them to hint the idea in their minds that he who
was baptizing might be the Christ, but withheld them from openly
saying so, which might have been presumptuous. He quite naturally,
therefore, proceeds in the first place to remove any false impressions
they might have taken up about him, and declares publicly the true
state of the matter, "I am not the Christ." Their second question,
and also their third, show that they had conceived some such surmise
about him. They supposed that he might be that second in honour to
whom their hopes pointed, namely, Elijah, who held with them the next
position after Christ; and so when John had answered, "I am not the
Christ," they asked, "What then? Art thou Elijah?" And he said, "I
am not." They wish to know, in the third place, if he is the prophet,
and on his answer, "No," they have no longer any name to give the
personage whose advent they expected, and they say, "Who art thou,
then, that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest
thou of thyself?" Their meaning is: "You are not, you say, any of
those personages whose advent Israel hopes and expects, and who you
are, to baptize as you do, we do not know; tell us, therefore, so that
we may report to those who sent us to get light upon this point." We
add, as it has some bearing on the context, that the people were moved
by the thought that the period of Christ's advent was near. It was in
a manner imminent in the years from the birth of Jesus and a little
before, down to the publication of the preaching. Hence it was, in
all likelihood, that as the scribes and lawyers had deduced the time
from Holy Scripture and were expecting the Coming One, the idea was
taken up by Theudas, who came forward as the Messiah and brought
together a considerable multitude, and after him by the famous Judas
of Galilee in the days of the taxing. [4839]Thus the coming of the
Messiah was more warmly expected and discussed, and it was natural
enough for the Jews to send priests and levites from Jerusalem to
John, to ask him, "Who art thou?" and learn if he professed to be the
Christ.
Footnotes
[4837] John i. 19, 20.
[4838] Matt. xi. 3.
[4839] Acts v. 36, 37.
7. Of the Birth of John, and of His Alleged Identity with Elijah. Of
the Doctrine of Transcorporation.
"And [4840] they asked him, What then? Art thou Elijah? and he said,
I am not." No one can fail to remember in this connection what Jesus
says of John, [4841] "If ye will receive it, this is Elijah which is
to come." How, then, does John come to say to those who ask him, "Art
thou Elijah?"--"I am not." And how can it be true at the same time
that John is Elijah who is to come, according to the words of Malachi,
[4842] "And behold I send unto you Elijah the Tishbite, before the
great and notable day of the Lord come, who shall restore the heart of
the father to the son, and the heart of a man to his neighbour, lest I
come, and utterly smite the earth." The words of the angel of the
Lord, too, who appeared to Zacharias, as he stood at the right hand of
the altar of incense, are somewhat to the same effect as the prophecy
of Malachi: "And [4843] thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and
thou shalt call his name John." And a little further on: [4844]
"And he shall go before His face in the spirit and power of Elijah to
turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to
the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared
for Him." As for the first point, one might say that John did not
know that he was Elijah. This will be the explanation of those who
find in our passage a support for their doctrine of transcorporation,
as if the soul clothed itself in a fresh body and did not quite
remember its former lives. These thinkers will also point out that
some of the Jews assented to this doctrine when they spoke about the
Saviour as if He was one of the old prophets, and had risen not from
the tomb but from His birth. His mother Mary was well known, and
Joseph the carpenter was supposed to be His father, and it could
readily be supposed that He was one of the old prophets risen from the
dead. The same person will adduce the text in Genesis, [4845] "I will
destroy the whole resurrection," and will thereby reduce those who
give themselves to finding in Scripture solutions of false
probabilities to a great difficulty in respect of this doctrine.
Another, however, a churchman, who repudiates the doctrine of
transcorporation as a false one, and does not admit that the soul of
John ever was Elijah, may appeal to the above-quoted words of the
angel, and point out that it is not the soul of Elijah that is spoken
of at John's birth, but the spirit and power of Elijah. "He shall go
before him," it is said, "in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn
the hearts of the fathers to the children." Now it can be shown from
thousands of texts that the spirit is a different thing from the soul,
and that what is called the power is a different thing from both the
soul and the spirit. On these points I cannot now enlarge; this work
must not be unduly expanded. To establish the fact that power is
different from spirit, it will be enough to cite the text, [4846] "The
Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall
overshadow thee." As for the spirits of the prophets, these are given
to them by God, and are spoken of as being in a manner their property
(slaves), as "The spirits of the prophets are subject to the
prophets," [4847] and "The spirit of Elijah rested upon Elisha."
[4848]Thus, it is said, there is nothing absurd in supposing that
John, "in the spirit and power of Elijah," turned the hearts of the
fathers to the children, and that it was on account of this spirit
that he was called "Elijah who was to come." And to reinforce this
view it may be argued that if the God of the universe identified
Himself with His saints to such an extent as to be called the God of
Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, much more might the
Holy Spirit so identify Himself with the prophets as to be called
their spirit, so that when the spirit is spoken of it might be the
spirit of Elijah or the spirit of Isaiah. Our churchman, to go on
with his views, may further say that those who supposed Jesus to be
one of the prophets risen from the dead were probably misled, partly
by the doctrine above mentioned, and partly by supposing Him to be one
of the prophets, and that as for this misconception that He was one of
the prophets, these persons probably fell into their error from not
knowing about Jesus' supposed father and actual mother, and
considering that He had risen from the tombs. As for the text in
Genesis about the resurrection, the churchman will rejoin with a text
to an opposite effect, "God hath raised up for me another seed in
place of Abel whom Cain slew;" [4849] showing that the resurrection
occurs in Genesis. As for the first difficulty which was raised, our
churchman will meet the view of the believers in transcorporation by
saying that John is no doubt, in a certain sense, as he has already
shown, Elijah who is to come; and that the reason why he met the
enquiry of the priests and levites with "I am not," was that he
divined the object they had in view in making it. For the enquiry
laid before John by the priests and levites was not intended to bring
out whether the same spirit was in both, but whether John was that
very Elijah who was taken up, and who now appeared according to the
expectation of the Jews without being born (for the emissaries,
perhaps, did not know about John's birth); and to such all enquiry he
naturally answered, "I am not;" for he who was called John was not
Elijah who was taken up, and had not changed his body for his present
appearance. Our first scholar, whose view of transcorporation we have
seen based upon our passage, may go on with a close examination of the
text, and urge against his antagonist, that if John was the son of
such a man as the priest Zacharias, and if he was born when his
parents were both aged, contrary to all human expectation, then it is
not likely that so many Jews at Jerusalem would be so ignorant about
him, or that the priests and levites whom they sent would not be
acquainted with the facts of his birth. Does not Luke declare [4850]
that "fear came upon all those who lived round about,"--clearly round
about Zacharias and Elisabeth--and that "all these things were noised
abroad throughout the whole hill country of Judæa"? And if John's
birth from Zacharias was a matter of common knowledge, and the Jews of
Jerusalem yet sent priests and levites to ask, "Art thou Elijah?" then
it is clear that in saying this they assumed the doctrine of
transcorporation to be true, and that it was a current doctrine of
their country, and not foreign to their secret teaching. John
therefore says, I am not Elijah, because he does not know about his
own former life. These thinkers, accordingly, entertain an opinion
which is by no means to be despised. Our churchman, however, may
return to the charge, and ask if it is worthy of a prophet, who is
enlightened by the Holy Spirit, who is predicted by Isaiah, and whose
birth was foretold before it took place by so great an angel, one who
has received of the fulness of Christ, who shares in such a grace, who
knows truth to have come through Jesus Christ, and has taught such
deep things about God and about the only-begotten, who is in the bosom
of the Father, is it worthy of such a one to lie, or even to hesitate,
out of ignorance of what he was. For with respect to what was
obscure, he ought to have refrained from confessing, and to have
neither affirmed nor denied the proposition put before him. If the
doctrine in question really was widely current, ought not John to have
hesitated to pronounce upon it, lest his soul had actually been in
Elijah? And here our churchman will appeal to history, and will bid
his antagonists ask experts of the secret doctrines of the Hebrews, if
they do really entertain such a belief. For if it should appear that
they do not, then the argument based on that supposition is shown to
be quite baseless. Our churchman, however, is still free to have
recourse to the solution given before, and to insist that attention be
paid to the meaning with which the question was put. For if, as I
showed, the senders knew John to be the child of Zacharias and
Elisabeth, and if the messengers still more, being men of priestly
race, could not possibly be ignorant of the remarkable manner in which
their kinsman Zacharias had received his son, then what could be the
meaning of their question, "Art thou Elijah?" Had they not read that
Elijah had been taken up into heaven, and did they not expect him to
appear? Then, as they expect Elijah to come at the consummation
before Christ, and Christ to follow him, perhaps their question was
meant less in a literal than in a tropical sense: Are you he who
announces beforehand the word which is to come before Christ, at the
consummation? To this he very properly answers, "I am not." The
adversary, however, tries to show that the priests could not be
ignorant that the birth of John had taken place in so remarkable a
manner, because "all these things had been much spoken of in the hill
country of Judæa;" and the churchman has to meet this. He does so by
showing that a similar mistake was widely current about the Saviour
Himself; for "some said that He was John the Baptist, others Elijah,
others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." [4851]So the disciples
told the Lord when He was in the parts of Cæsarea Philippi, and
questioned them on that subject. And Herod, too, said, [4852] "John
whom I beheaded, he is risen from the dead;" so that he appears not to
have known what was said about Christ, as reported in the Gospel,
[4853] "Is not this the son of the carpenter, is not His mother called
Mary, and His brothers James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? And
His sisters, are they not all with us?" Thus in the case of the
Saviour, while many knew of His birth from Mary, others were under a
mistake about Him; and so in the case of John, there is no wonder if,
while some knew of his birth from Zacharias, others were in doubt
whether the expected Elijah had appeared in him or not. There was not
more room for doubt about John, whether he was Elijah, than about the
Saviour, whether He was John. Of the two, the question of the outward
form of Elijah could be disposed of from the words of Scripture,
though not from actual observation, for we read, [4854] "He was a
hairy man, and girt with a leather girdle about his loins." John's
outward appearance, on the contrary, was well known, and was not like
that of Jesus; and yet there were those who surmised that John had
risen from the dead, and taken the name of Jesus. As for the change
of name, a thing which reminds us of mysteries, I do not know how the
Hebrews came to tell about Phinehas, son of Eleazar, who admittedly
prolonged his life to the time of many of the judges, as we read in
the Book of Judges, [4855] to tell about him what I now mention. They
say that he was Elijah, because he had been promised immortality (in
Numbers [4856] ), on account of the covenant of peace granted to him
because he was jealous with a divine jealousy, and in a passion of
anger pierced the Midianitish woman and the Israelite, and stayed the
wrath of God as it is called, as it is written, "Phinehas, the son of
Eleazar, the son of Aaron, hath turned my wrath away from the children
of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them." No
wonder, then, if those who conceived Phinehas and Elijah to be the
same person, whether they judged soundly in this or not, for that is
not now the question, considered John and Jesus also to be the same.
This, then, they doubted, and desired to know if John and Elijah were
the same. At another time than this, the point would certainly call
for a careful enquiry, and the argument would have to be well weighed
as to the essence of the soul, as to the principle of her composition,
and as to her entering into this body of earth. We should also have
to enquire into the distributions of the life of each soul, and as to
her departure from this life, and whether it is possible for her to
enter into a second life in a body or not, and whether that takes
place at the same period, and after the same arrangement in each case,
or not; and whether she enters the same body, or a different one, and
if the same, whether the subject remains the same while the qualities
are changed, or if both subject and qualities remain the same, and if
the soul will always make use of the same body or will change it.
Along with these questions, it would also be necessary to ask what
transcorporation is, and how it differs from incorporation, and if he
who holds transcorporation must necessarily hold the world to be
eternal. The views of these scholars must also be taken into account,
who consider that, according to the Scriptures, the soul is sown along
with the body, and the consequences of such a view must also be looked
at. In fact the subject of the soul is a wide one, and hard to be
unravelled, and it has to be picked out of scattered expressions of
Scripture. It requires, therefore, separate treatment. The brief
consideration we have been led to give to the problem in connection
with Elijah and John may now suffice; we go on to what follows in the
Gospel.
Footnotes
[4840] John i. 21.
[4841] Matt. xi. 14.
[4842] Mal. iv. 5, 6.
[4843] Luke i. 13.
[4844] Luke i. 17.
[4845] vii. 4.
[4846] Luke i. 35.
[4847] 1 Cor. xiv. 32.
[4848] 2 Kings ii. 15.
[4849] Gen. iv. 25.
[4850] Luke i. 65.
[4851] Matt. xvi. 13, 14.
[4852] Mark vi. 16.
[4853] Matt. xiii. 55.
[4854] 2 Kings i. 8.
[4855] Judg. xx. 28.
[4856] Numb. xxv. 12.
8. John is a Prophet, But Not the Prophet.
"Art thou that prophet? And he answered No." [4857]If the law and
the prophets were until John, [4858] what can we say that John was but
a prophet? His father Zacharias, indeed, says, filled with the Holy
Ghost and prophesying, [4859] "And thou, child, shalt be called the
prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the Lord to prepare
His ways." (One might indeed get past this passage by laying stress
on the word called: he is to be called, he is not said to be, a
prophet.) And still more weighty is it that the Saviour said to those
who considered John to be a prophet, [4860] "But what went ye out to
see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet." The
words, Yea, I say unto you, manifestly affirm that John is a prophet,
and that is nowhere denied afterwards. If, then, he is said by the
Saviour to be not only a prophet but "more than a prophet," how is it
that when the priests and levites come and ask him, "Art thou the
Prophet?" he answers No! On this we must remark that it is not the
same thing to say, "Art thou the Prophet?" and "Art thou a prophet?"
The distinction between the two expressions has already been observed,
when we asked what was the difference between the God and God, and
between the Logos and Logos. [4861]Now it is written in
Deuteronomy, [4862] "A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto
you, like me; Him shall ye hear, and it shall be that every soul that
will not hear that prophet shall be cut off from among His people."
There was, therefore, an expectation of one particular prophet having
a resemblance to Moses in mediating between God and the people and
receiving a new covenant from God to give to those who accepted his
teaching; and in the case of each of the prophets, the people of
Israel recognized that he was not the person of whom Moses spoke. As,
then, they doubted about John, whether he were not the Christ, [4863]
so they doubted whether he could not be the prophet. And there is no
wonder that those who doubted about John whether he were the Christ,
did not understand that the Christ and the prophet are the same
person; their doubt as to John necessarily implied that they were not
clear on this point. Now the difference between "the prophet" and "a
prophet" has escaped the observation of most students; this is the
case with Heracleon, who says, in these very words: "As, then, John
confessed that he was not the Christ, and not even a prophet, nor
Elijah." If he interpreted the words before us in such a way, he
ought to have examined the various passages to see whether in saying
that he is not a prophet nor Elijah he is or is not saying what is
true. He devotes no attention, however, to these passages, and in his
remaining commentaries he passes over such points without any
enquiry. In the sequel, too, his remarks, of which we shall have to
speak directly, are very scanty, and do not testify to careful study.
Footnotes
[4857] John i. 21.
[4858] Luke xvi. 16.
[4859] Luke i. 76.
[4860] Matt. xi. 9.
[4861] P. 321.
[4862] xviii. 15 sq.
[4863] Luke iii. 15.
9. John I. 22.
"They said therefore unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an
answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself?" This
speech of the emissaries amounts to the following: We had a surmise
what you were and came to learn if it was so, but now we know that you
are not that. It remains for us, therefore, to hear your account of
yourself, so that we may report your answer to those who sent us.
10. Of the Voice John the Baptist is.
"He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make
straight the way of the Lord, as said Isaiah the prophet." As He who
is peculiarly the Son of God, being no other than the Logos, yet makes
use of Logos (reason)--for He was the Logos in the beginning, and was
with God, the Logos of God--so John, the servant of that Logos, being,
if we take the Scripture to mean what it says, no other than a voice,
yet uses his voice to point to the Logos. He, then, understanding in
this way the prophecy about himself spoken by Isaiah the prophet, says
he is a voice, not crying in the wilderness, but "of one crying in the
wilderness," of Him, namely, who stood and cried, [4864] "If any man
thirst, let him come unto Me and drink." He it was, too, who said,
[4865] "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be
brought low; and all the crooked shall be made straight." For as we
read in Exodus that God said to Moses, [4866] "Behold I have given
thee for a God to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy
prophet;" so we are to understand--the cases are at least analogous if
not altogether similar--it is with the Word in the beginning, who is
God, and with John. For John's voice points to that word and
demonstrates it. It is therefore a very appropriate punishment that
falls on Zacharias on his saying to the angel, [4867] "Whereby shall I
know this? For I am an old man and my wife well stricken in years."
For his want of faith with regard to the birth of the voice, he is
himself deprived of his voice, as the angel Gabriel says to him,
"Behold, thou shalt be silent and not able to speak until the day that
these things shall come to pass, because thou hast not believed my
words, which shall be fulfilled in their season." And afterwards when
he had "asked for a writing tablet and written, His name is John; and
they all marvelled," he recovered his voice; for "his mouth was opened
immediately and his tongue, and he spake, blessing God." We discussed
above how it is to be understood that the Logos is the Son of God, and
went over the ideas connected with that; and a similar sequence of
ideas is to be observed at this point. John came for a witness; he
was a man sent from God to bear witness of the light, that all men
through him might believe; he was that voice, then, we are to
understand, which alone was fitted worthily to announce the Logos. We
shall understand this aright if we call to mind what was adduced in
our exposition of the texts: "That all might believe through Him,"
and "This is he of whom it is written, Behold I send My messenger
before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee." [4868]
There is fitness, too, in his being said to be the voice, not of one
saying in the wilderness, but of one crying in the wilderness. He who
cries, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," also says it; but he might
say it without crying it. But he cries and shouts it, that even those
may hear who are at a distance from the speaker, and that even the
deaf may understand the greatness of the tidings, since it is
announced in a great voice; and he thus brings help, both to those who
have departed from God and to those who have lost the acuteness of
their hearing. This, too, was the reason why "Jesus stood and cried,
saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink." Hence,
too, [4869] "John beareth witness of Him, and cried, saying," "Hence
also God commands Isaiah to cry, with the voice of one saying, Cry.
And I said, What shall I cry?" The physical voice we use in prayer
need not be great nor startling; even should we not lift up any great
cry or shout, God will yet hear us. He says to Moses, [4870] "Why
criest thou unto Me?" when Moses had not cried audibly at all. It is
not recorded in Exodus that he did so; but Moses had cried mightily to
God in prayer with that voice which is heard by God alone. Hence
David also says, [4871] "With my voice I cried unto the Lord, and He
heard me." And one who cries in the desert has need of a voice, that
the soul which is deprived of God and deserted of truth--and what more
dreadful desert is there than a soul deserted of God and of all
virtue, since it still goes crookedly and needs instruction--may be
exhorted to make straight the way of the Lord. And that way is made
straight by the man who, far from copying the serpent's crooked
journey; while he who is of the contrary disposition perverts his
way. Hence the rebuke directed to a man of this kind and to all who
resemble him, "Why pervert ye the right ways of the Lord?" [4872]
Footnotes
[4864] John vii. 37.
[4865] Luke iii. 4.
[4866] vii. 1.
[4867] Luke i. 18.
[4868] Matt. xi. 10.
[4869] John i. 15.
[4870] Exod. xiv. 15.
[4871] Ps. lxxvii. 7.
[4872] Acts xiii. 10.
11. Of the Way of the Lord, How It is Narrow, and How Jesus is the
Way.
Now the way of the Lord is made straight in two fashions. First, in
the way of contemplation, when thought is made clear in truth without
any mixture of falsehood; and then in the way of conduct, after the
sound contemplation of what ought to be done, when action is produced
which harmonizes with sound theory of conduct. And that we may the
more clearly understand the text, "Make straight the way of the Lord,"
it will be well to compare with it what is said in the Proverbs,
[4873] "Depart not, either to the right hand or to the left." For he
who deviates in either direction has given up keeping his path
straight, and is no longer worthy of regard, since he has gone apart
from the straightness of the journey, for "the Lord [4874] is
righteous, and loves righteousness, and His face beholds
straightness." Hence he who is the object of regard, and receives the
benefit that comes from this oversight, says, [4875] "The light of Thy
countenance was shown upon us, O Lord." Let us stand, then, as
Jeremiah [4876] exhorts, upon the ways, and let us see and ask after
the ancient ways of the Lord, and let us see which is the good way,
and walk in it. Thus did the Apostles stand and ask for the ancient
ways of the Lord; they asked the Patriarchs and the Prophets,
enquiring into their writings, and when they came to understand these
writings they saw the good way, namely, Jesus Christ, who said, "I am
the way," and they walked in it. For it is a good way that leads the
good man to the good father, the man who, from the good treasure of
his heart, brings forth good things, and who is a good and faithful
servant. This way is narrow, indeed, for the many cannot bear to walk
in it and are lovers of their flesh; but it is also hard-pressed
[4877] by those who use violence [4878] to walk in it, for it is not
called afflicting, but afflicted. [4879]For that way which is a
living way, and feels the qualities of those who tread it, is pressed
and afflicted, when he travels on it who has not taken off his shoes
from off his feet, [4880] nor truly realized that the place on which
he stands. or indeed treads, is holy ground. And it will lead to Him
who is the life, and who says, "I am the life." For the Saviour, in
whom all virtues are combined, has many aspects. To him who, though
by no means near the end, is yet advancing, He is the way; to him who
has put off all that is dead He is the life. He who travels on this
way is told to take nothing with him on it, since it provides bread
and all that is necessary for life, enemies are powerless on it, and
he needs no staff, and since it is holy, he needs no shoes.
Footnotes
[4873] iv. 27.
[4874] Ps. xi. 7.
[4875] Ps. iv. 7.
[4876] Jer. iv. 16.
[4877] tethlimmene, the word translated "narrow" in Matt. vii. 14.
[4878] Matt. xi. 12.
[4879] tethlimmene, the word translated "narrow" in Matt. vii. 14.
[4880] Exod. iii. 5.
12. Heracleon's View of the Voice, and of John the Baptist.
The words, however, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,"
etc., may be taken as equivalent to "I am He of whom the `voice in the
wilderness' is written." Then John would be the person crying, and
his voice would be that crying in the wilderness, "Make straight the
way of the Lord." Heracleon, discussing John and the prophets, says,
somewhat slanderously, that "the Word is the Saviour; the voice, that
in the wilderness which John interpreted; the sound is the whole
prophetic order." To this we may reply by reminding him of the text,
[4881] "If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare
himself for the battle," and that which says that though a man have
knowledge of mysteries, or have prophecy but wants love, he is a
sounding or a tinkling cymbal. [4882]If the prophetic voice be
nothing but sound, how does our Lord come to refer us to it as where
He says, [4883] "Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have
eternal life, and these are they which bear witness," and [4884] "If
ye believed Moses, ye would believe Me," and [4885] "Well did Isaiah
prophesy concerning you, saying, This people honours me with their
lips"? I do not know if any one can reasonably admit that the Saviour
thus spoke in praise of an uncertain sound, or that there is any
preparation to be had from the Scriptures to which we are referred as
from the voice of a trumpet, for our war against opposing powers,
should their sound give an uncertain voice. If the prophets had not
love, and if that is why they were sounding brass or a tinkling
cymbal, then how does the Lord send us to their sound, as these
writers will have it, as if we could get help from that? He asserts,
indeed, that a voice, when well fitted to speech, becomes speech, as
if one should say that a woman is turned into a man; and the assertion
is not supported by argument. And, as if he were in a position to put
forth a dogma on the subject and to get on in this way, he declares
that sound can be changed in a similar way into voice, and the voice,
which is changed into speech, he says, is in the position of a
disciple, while sound passing into voice is in that of a slave. If he
had taken any kind of trouble to establish these points we should have
had to devote some attention to refuting them; but as it is, the bare
denial is sufficient refutation. There was a point some way back
which we deferred taking up, that, namely, of the motive of John's
speeches. We may now take it up. The Saviour, according to
Heracleon, calls him both a prophet and Elijah, but he himself denies
that he is either of these. When the Saviour, Heracleon says, calls
him a prophet and Elijah, He is speaking not of John himself, but of
his surroundings; but when He calls him greater than the prophets and
than those who are born of women, then He is describing the character
of John himself. When John, on the other hand, is asked about
himself, his answers relate to himself, not to his surroundings. This
we have examined as carefully as possible, comparing each of the terms
in question with the statements of Heracleon, lest he should not have
expressed himself quite accurately. For how it comes that the
statements that he is Elijah and that he is a prophet apply to those
about him, but the statement that he is the voice of one crying in the
wilderness, to himself, no attempt whatever is made to show.
Heracleon only gives an illustration, namely, this: His surroundings
were, so to speak, his clothes, and other than himself, and when he
was asked about his clothes, if he were his clothes, he could not
answer "Yes." Now that his being Elijah, who was to come, was his
clothes, is scarcely consistent, so far as I can see, with Heracleon's
views; it might consist, perhaps, with the exposition we ourselves
gave of the words, "In the spirit and power of Elijah;" it might, in a
sense, be said that this spirit of Elijah is equivalent to the soul of
John. He then goes on to try to determine why those who were sent by
the Jews to question John were priests and levites, and he answers by
no means badly, that it was incumbent on such persons, being devoted
to the service of God, to busy themselves and to make enquiries about
such matters. When he goes on, however, to say that it was "because
John was of the levitical tribe," this is less well considered. We
raised the question ourselves above, and saw that if the Jews who were
sent knew John's birth, it was not open to them to ask if he was
Elijah. Then, again, in dealing with the question, "Art thou the
prophet?" Heracleon does not regard the addition of the article as
having any special force, and says, "They asked him if he were a
prophet, wishing to know this more general fact." Again, not
Heracleon alone, but, so far as I am informed, all those who diverge
from our views, as if they had not been able to deal with a trifling
ambiguity and to draw the proper distinction, suppose John to be
greater than Elijah and than all the prophets. The words are, "Of
those born of women there is none greater than John;" but this admits
of two meanings, that John is greater than they all, or again, that
some of them are equal to him. For though many of the prophets were
equal to him, still it might be true in respect of the grace bestowed
on him, that none of them was greater than he. He regards it as
confirming the view that John was greater, that "he is predicted by
Isaiah;" for no other of all those who uttered prophecies was held
worthy by God of this distinction. This, however, is a venturesome
statement and implies some disrespect of what is called the Old
Testament, and total disregard of the fact that Elijah himself was the
subject of prophecy. For Elijah is prophesied by Malachi, who says,
[4886] "Behold, I send unto you Elijah, the Tishbite, who shall
restore the heart of the father to the son." Josiah, too, as we read
in third Kings, [4887] was predicted by name by the prophet who came
out of Judah; for he said, Jeroboam also being present at the altar,
"Thus saith the Lord, Behold a son is born to David, his name is
Josiah." There are some also who say that Samson was predicted by
Jacob, when he said, [4888] "Dan shall judge his own people, he is as
one tribe in Israel," for Samson who judged Israel was of the tribe of
Dan. So much by way of evidence of the rashness of the statement that
John alone was the subject of prophecy, made by Heracleon in his
attempted explanation of the words, "I am the voice of one crying in
the wilderness."
Footnotes
[4881] 1 Cor. xiv. 8.
[4882] 1 Cor. xiii. 1.
[4883] John v. 39.
[4884] John v. 46.
[4885] Matt. xv. 7; Isa. xxix. 13.
[4886] iv. 5, 6.
[4887] 1 Kings xiii. 2.
[4888] Gen. xlix. 16.
13. John I. 24, 25. Of the Baptism of John, that of Elijah, and that
of Christ.
And they that were sent were of the Pharisees. And they asked him,
and said unto him, [4889] "Why baptizest thou then, if thou art not
the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?" Those who sent from
Jerusalem the priests and levites who asked John these questions,
having learned who John was not, and who he was, preserve a decent
silence, as if tacitly assenting and indicating that they accepted
what was said, and saw that baptism was suited to a voice crying in
the wilderness for the preparing of the way of the Lord. But the
Pharisees being, as their name indicates, a divided and seditious set
of people, show that they do not agree with the Jews of the metropolis
and with the ministers of the service of God, the priests and
levites. They send envoys who deal in rebukes, and so far as their
power extends debar him from baptizing; their envoys ask, Why
baptizest thou, then, if thou art not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the
prophet? And if we were to stitch together into one statement what is
written in the various Gospels, we should say that at this time they
spoke as is here reported, but that at a later time, when they wished
to received baptism, they heard the address of John: [4890]
"Generations of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to
come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance." This is
what the Baptist says in Matthew, when he sees many of the Pharisees
and Sadducees coming to his baptism, without, it is clear, having the
fruits of repentance, and pharisaically boasting in themselves that
they had Abraham for their father. For this they are rebuked by John,
who has the zeal of Elijah according to the communication of the Holy
Spirit. For that is a rebuking word, "Think not to say within
yourselves, We have Abraham for our father," and that is the word of a
teacher, when he speaks of those who for their stony hearts are called
unbelieving stones, and says that by the power of God these stones may
be changed into children of Abraham; for they were present to the eyes
of the prophet and did not shrink from his divine glance. Hence his
words: "I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up
children to Abraham." And since they came to his baptism without
having done fruits meet for repentance, he says to them most
appropriately, "Already is the axe laid to the root of the tree; every
tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the
fire." This is as much as to say to them: Since you have come to
baptism without having done fruits meet for repentance, you are a tree
that does not bring forth good fruit and which has to be cut down by
the most sharp and piercing axe of the Word which is living and
powerful and sharper than every two-edged sword. The estimation in
which the Pharisees held themselves is also set forth by Luke in the
passage: [4891]"Two men went up to the temple to pray, the one a
Pharisee and the other a publican. And the Pharisee stood and prayed
thus with himself: God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are,
extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican." The
result of this speech is that the publican goes down to his house
justified rather than the Pharisee, and the lesson is drawn, that
every one who exalts himself is abased. They came, then, in the
character in which the Saviour's reproving words described them, as
hypocrites to John's baptism, nor does it escape the Baptist's
observation that they have the poison of vipers under their tongue and
the poison of asps, for "the poison of asps is under their tongue."
[4892]The figure of serpents rightly indicates their temper, and it
is plainly revealed in their better question: "Why baptizest thou
then, if thou art not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?" To
these I would fain reply, if it be the case that the Christ and Elijah
and the prophet baptize, but that the voice crying in the wilderness
has no authority to do so, "Most harshly, my friends, do you question
the messenger sent before the face of Christ to prepare His way before
Him. The mysteries which belong to this point are all hidden to you;
for Jesus being, whether you will or not, the Christ, did not Himself
baptize but His disciples, He who was Himself the prophet. And how
have you come to believe that Elijah who is to come will baptize?" He
did not baptize the logs upon the altar in the times of Ahab, [4893]
though they needed such a bath to be burned up, what time the Lord
appeared in fire. No, he commands the priests to do this for him, and
that not only once; for he says, "Do it a second time," upon which
they did it a second time, and "Do it a third time," and they did it a
third time. If, then, he did not at that time himself baptize but
left the work to others, how was he to baptize at the time spoken of
by Malachi? Christ, then, does not baptize with water, but His
disciples. He reserves for Himself to baptize with the Holy Spirit
and with fire. Now Heracleon accepts the speech of the Pharisees as
distinctly implying that the office of baptizing belonged to the
Christ and Elijah and to every prophet, for he uses these words,
"Whose office alone it is to baptize." He is refuted by what we have
just said, and especially by the consideration that he takes the word
"prophet" in a general sense; [4894] for he cannot show that any of
the prophets baptized. He adds, not incorrectly, that the Pharisees
put the question from malice, and not from a desire to learn.
Footnotes
[4889] John i. 24, 25.
[4890] Matt. iii. 7, 8.
[4891] Luke xviii. 10, 11.
[4892] Ps. xiv. 3.
[4893] 1 Kings xviii. 33 sq.
[4894] By not noticing the difference between "a prophet" and "the
prophet." Vide supra, p. 356.
14. Comparison of the Statements of the Four Evangelists Respecting
John the Baptist, the Prophecies Regarding Him, His Addresses to the
Multitude and to the Pharisees, Etc.
We deem it necessary to compare with the expression of the passage we
are considering the similar expressions found elsewhere in the
Gospels. This we shall continue to do point by point to the end of
this work, so that terms which appear to disagree may be shown to be
in harmony, and that the peculiar meanings present in each may be
explained. This we shall do in the present passage. The words, "The
voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the
Lord," are placed by John, who was a disciple, in the mouth of the
Baptist. In Mark, on the other hand, the same words are recorded at
the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in accordance with the
Scripture of Isaiah, as thus: "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold, I send My
messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee. The
voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make His paths straight." Now the words, "Make straight the way of
the Lord," added by John, are not found in the prophet. Perhaps John
was seeking to compress the "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make
straight the paths of our God," and so wrote, "Make straight the way
of the Lord;" while Mark combined two prophecies spoken by two
different prophets in different places, and made one prophecy out of
them, "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold I send My
messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way. The voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His
paths straight." The words, "The voice of one crying in the
wilderness," are written immediately after the narrative of Hezekiah's
recovery from his sickness, [4895] while the words, "Behold I send My
messenger before thy face," are written by Malachi. [4896]What John
does here, abbreviating the text he quotes, we find done by Mark also
at another point. For while the words of the prophet are, "Prepare ye
the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God," Mark writes,
"Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." And John
practises a similar abbreviation in the text, "Behold I send My
messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee,"
when he does not add the words "before thee," as in the original.
Coming now to the statement, "They were sent from the Pharisees and
they asked Him," [4897] we have been led by our examination of the
passage to prefix the enquiry of the Pharisees--which Matthew does not
mention--to the occurrence recorded in Matthew, when John saw many of
the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, and said to them,
"Ye generations of vipers," etc. For the natural sequence is that
they should first enquire and then come. And we have to observe how,
when Matthew reports that there went out to John Jerusalem and all
Judæa, and all the region round about Jordan, to be baptized by him in
Jordan, confessing their sins, it was not these people who heard from
the Baptist any word of rebuke or refutation, but only those many
Pharisees and Sadducees whom he saw coming. They it was who were
greeted with the address, "Ye offspring of vipers," etc. [4898]
Mark, again, does not record any words of reproof as having been used
by John to those who came to him, being all the country of Judæa and
all of them of Jerusalem, who were baptized by him in the Jordan and
confessed their sins. This is because Mark does not mention the
Pharisees and Sadducees as having come to John. A further
circumstance which we must mention is that both Matthew and Mark state
that, in the one case, all Jerusalem and all Judæa, and the whole
region round about Jordan, in the other, the whole land of Judæa and
all they of Jerusalem, were baptized, confessing their sins; but when
Matthew introduces the Pharisees and Sadducees as coming to the
baptism, he does not say that they confessed their sins, and this
might very likely and very naturally be the reason why they were
addressed as "offspring of vipers." Do not suppose, reader, that
there is anything improper in our adducing in our discussion of the
question of those who were sent from the Pharisees and put questions
to John, the parallel passages from the other Gospels too. For if we
have indicated the proper connection between the enquiry of the
Pharisees, recorded by the disciple John, and their baptism which is
found in Matthew, we could scarcely avoid inquiring into the passages
in question, nor recording the observations made on them. Luke, like
Mark, remembers the passage, "The voice of one crying in the
wilderness," but he for his part treats it as follows: [4899]"The
word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.
And he came into all the region round about Jordan preaching the
baptism of repentance unto remission of sins; as it is written in the
book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, The voice of one crying in
the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths
straight." Luke, however, added the continuation of the prophecy:
"Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be
brought low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways
smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." He writes,
like Mark, "Make His ways straight;" curtailing, as we saw before, the
text, "Make straight the ways of our God." In the phrase, "And all
the crooked shall become straight," he leaves out the "all," and the
word "straight" he converts from a plural into a singular. Instead of
the phrase, moreover, "The rough land into a plain," he gives, "The
rough ways into smooth ways," and he leaves out "And the glory of the
Lord shall be revealed," and gives what follows, "And all flesh shall
see the salvation of God." These observations are of use as showing
how the evangelists are accustomed to abbreviate the sayings of the
prophets. It has also to be observed that the speech, "Offspring of
vipers," etc., is said by Matthew to have been spoken to the Pharisees
and Sadducees when coming to baptism, they being a different set of
people from those who confessed their sins, and to whom no words of
this kind were spoken. With Luke, on the contrary, these words were
addressed to the multitudes who came out to be baptized by John, and
there were not two divisions of those who were baptized, as we found
in Matthew. But Matthew, as the careful observer will see, does not
speak of the multitudes in the way of praise, and he probably means
the Baptist's address, Offspring of vipers, etc., to be understood as
addressed to them also. Another point is, that to the Pharisees and
Sadducees he says, "Bring forth a fruit," in the singular, "worthy of
repentance," but to the multitudes he uses the plural, "Bring forth
fruits worthy of repentance." Perhaps the Pharisees are required to
yield the special fruit of repentance, which is no other than the Son
and faith in Him, while the multitudes, who have not even a beginning
of good things, are asked for all the fruits of repentance, and so the
plural is used to them. Further, it is said to the Pharisees, "Think
not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham for our father." For
the multitudes now have a beginning, appearing as they do to be
introduced into the divine Word, and to approach the truth; and thus
they begin to say within themselves, "We have Abraham for our
father." The Pharisees, on the contrary, are not beginning to this,
but have long held it to be so. But both classes see John point to
the stones aforesaid and declare that even from these children can be
raised up to Abraham, rising up out of unconsciousness and deadness.
And observe how it is said to the Pharisees, [4900] according to the
word of the prophet, [4901] "Ye have eaten false fruit," and they have
false fruit,--"Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn
down and cast into the fire," while to the multitudes which do not
bear fruit at all, [4902] "Every tree which bringeth not forth fruit
is hewn down." For that which has no fruit at all has not good fruit,
and, therefore, it is worthy to be hewn down. But that which bears
fruit has by no means good fruit, whence it also calls for the axe to
lay it low. But, if we look more closely into this about the fruit,
we shall find that it is impossible that that which has just begun to
be cultivated, even should it not prove fruitless, should bear the
first good fruits. The husbandman is content that the tree just
coming into cultivation should bear him at first such fruits as it
may; afterwards, when he has pruned and trained it according to his
art, he will receive, not the fruits it chanced to bear at first, but
good fruits. The law itself favours this interpretation, for it says
[4903] that the planter is to wait for three years, having the trees
pruned and not eating the fruit of them. "Three years," it says, "the
fruit shall be unpurified to you, and shall not be eaten, but in the
fourth year all the fruit shall be holy, for giving praise unto the
Lord." This explains how the word "good" is omitted from the address
to the multitudes, "Every tree, therefore, which bears not fruit is
hewn down and cast into the fire." The tree which goes on bearing
such fruit as it did at first, is a tree which does not bear good
fruit, and is, therefore, cut down, and cast into the fire, since,
when the three years have passed and the fourth comes round, it does
not bear good fruit, for praise unto the Lord. In thus adducing the
passages from the other Gospels I may appear to be digressing, but I
cannot think it useless, or without bearing on our present subject.
For the Pharisees send to John, after the priests and levites who came
from Jerusalem, men who came to ask him who he was, and enquire, Why
baptizest thou then, if thou be not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the
prophet? After making this enquiry they straightway come for baptism,
as Matthew records, and then they hear words suited to their quackery
and hypocrisy. But the words addressed to them were very similar to
those spoken to the multitudes, and hence the necessity to look
carefully at both speeches, and to compare them together. It was
while we were so engaged that various points arose in the sequence of
the matter, which we had to consider. To what has been said we must
add the following. We find mention made in John of two orders of
persons sending: the one, that of the Jews from Jerusalem sending
priests and levites; the other, that of the Pharisees who want to know
why he baptizes. And we found that, after the enquiry, the Pharisees
present themselves for baptism. May it not be that the Jews, who had
sent the earlier mission from Jerusalem, received John's words before
those who sent the second mission, namely, the Pharisees, and hence
arrived before them? For Jerusalem and all Judæa, and, in
consequence, the whole region round about Jordan, were being baptized
by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins; or, as Mark says,
"There went out to him the whole land of Judæa, and all they of
Jerusalem, and were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing
their sins." Now, neither does Matthew introduce the Pharisees and
Sadducees, to whom the words, "Offspring of vipers," etc., are
addressed; nor does Luke introduce the multitudes who meet with the
same rebuke, as confessing their sins. And the question may be raised
how, if the whole city of Jerusalem, and the whole of Judæa, and the
whole region round about Jordan, were baptized of John in Jordan, the
Saviour could say, [4904] "John the Baptist came neither eating nor
drinking, and ye say he hath a devil;" and how could He say to those
who asked Him, [4905] "By what authority doest thou these things? I
also will ask you one word, which if ye tell me, I also will tell you
by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was
it? from heaven or of men? And they reason, and say, If we shall say,
From heaven, He will say, Why did ye not believe him?" The solution
of the difficulty is this. The Pharisees, addressed by John, as we
saw before, with his "Offspring of vipers," etc., came to the baptism,
without believing in him, probably because they feared the multitudes,
and, with their accustomed hypocrisy towards them, deemed it right to
undergo the washing, so as not to appear hostile to those who did so.
Their belief was, then, that he derived his baptism from men, and not
from heaven, but, on account of the multitude, lest they should be
stoned, they are afraid to say what they think. Thus there is no
contradiction between the Saviour's speech to the Pharisees and the
narratives in the Gospels about the multitudes who frequented John's
baptism. It was part of the effrontery of the Pharisees that they
declared John to have a devil, as, also, that they declared Jesus to
have performed His wonderful works by Beelzebub, the prince of the
devils.
Footnotes
[4895] Isa. xl. 3.
[4896] iii. 1.
[4897] John i. 24.
[4898] Matt. iii. 7.
[4899] Luke iii. 2.
[4900] Matt. iii. 10.
[4901] Hos. x. 13.
[4902] Luke iii. 9.
[4903] Deut. xix. 23.
[4904] Matt. xi. 13.
[4905] Matt. xxi. 23.
15. How the Baptist Answers the Question of the Pharisees and Exalts
the Nature of Christ. Of the Shoe-Latchet Which He is Unable to
Untie.
John [4906] answered them, saying, "I baptize with water, but in the
midst of you standeth one whom ye know not, even He who cometh after
me, the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose." Heracleon
considers that John's answers to those sent by the Pharisees refer not
to what they asked, but to what he wished, not observing that he
accuses the prophet of a want of manners, by making him, when asked
about one thing, answer about another; for this is a fault to be
guarded against in conversation. We assert, on the contrary, that the
reply accurately takes up the question. It is asked, "Why baptizest
thou then, if thou art not the Christ?" And what other answer could
be given to this than to show that his baptism was in its nature a
bodily thing? I, he says, "baptize with water;" this is his answer
to, "Why baptizest thou." And to the second part of their question,
"If thou art not the Christ," he answers by exalting the superior
nature of Christ, that He has such virtue as to be invisible in His
deity, though present to every man and extending over the whole
universe. This is what is indicated in the words, "There standeth one
among you." The Pharisees, moreover, though expecting the advent of
Christ, saw nothing in Him of such a nature as John speaks of; they
believed Him to be simply a perfect and holy man. John, therefore,
rebukes their ignorance of His superiority, and adds to the words,
"There standeth one among you," the clause, "whom ye know not." And,
lest any one should suppose the invisible One who extends to every
man, or, indeed, to the whole world, to be a different person from Him
who became man, and appeared upon the earth and conversed with men, he
adds to the words, "There standeth one among you whom you know not,"
the further words, "Who cometh after me," that is, He who is to be
manifested after me. By whose surpassing excellence he well
understood that his own nature was far surpassed, though some doubted
whether he might be the Christ; and, therefore, desiring to show how
far he is from attaining to the greatness of the Christ, that no one
should think of him beyond what he sees or hears of him, he goes on:
"The latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose." By which he
conveys, as in a riddle, that he is not fit to solve and to explain
the argument about Christ's assuming a human body, an argument tied up
and hidden (like a shoe-tie) to those who do not understand it,--so as
to say anything worthy of such an advent, compressed, as it was, into
so short a space.
Footnotes
[4906] John i. 26.
16. Comparison of John's Testimony to Jesus in the Different Gospels.
It may not be out of place, as we are examining the text, "I baptize
with water," to compare the parallel utterances of the evangelists
with this of John. Matthew reports that the Baptist, when he saw many
of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, after the words
of rebuke which we have already studied, went on: [4907]"I indeed
baptize you with water unto repentance; but He that cometh after me is
mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; He shall baptize
you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire." This agrees with the words
in John, in which the Baptist declares himself to those sent by the
Pharisees, on the subject of his baptizing with water. Mark, again,
says, [4908] "John preached, saying, There cometh after me He that is
mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop
down and unloose. I baptized you with water, but He shall baptize you
with the Holy Ghost." And Luke says [4909] that, as the people were
in expectation, and all were reasoning in their hearts concerning
John, whether haply he were the Christ, John answered them all,
saying, "I indeed baptize you with water; but there cometh one
mightier than I, whose shoe-latchet I am not worthy to unloose; He
shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire."
Footnotes
[4907] Matt. iii. 11.
[4908] Mark i. 6, 7.
[4909] Luke iii. 16.
17. Of the Testimony of John to Jesus in Matthew's Gospel,
These, then, are the parallel passages of the four; let us try to see
as clearly as we can what is the purport of each and wherein they
differ from each other. And we will begin with Matthew, who is
reported by tradition to have published his Gospel before the others,
to the Hebrews, those, namely, of the circumcision who believed. I,
he says, baptize you with water unto repentance, purifying you, as it
were, and turning you away from evil courses and calling you to
repentance; for I am come to make ready for the Lord a people prepared
for Him, and by my baptism of repentance to prepare the ground for Him
who is to come after me, and who will thus benefit you much more
effectively and powerfully than my strength could. For His baptism is
not that of the body only; He fills the penitent with the Holy Ghost,
and His diviner fire does away with everything material and consumes
everything that is earthy, not only from him who admits it to his
life, but even from him who hears of it from those who have it. So
much stronger than I is He who is coming after me, that I am not able
to bear even the outskirts of the powers round Him which are furthest
from Him (they are not open and exposed, so that any one could see
them), nor even to bear those who support them. I know not of which I
should speak. Should I speak of my own great weakness, which is not
able to bear even these things about Christ which in comparison with
the greater things in Him are least, or should I speak of His
transcendent Deity, greater than all the world? If I who have
received such grace, as to be thought worthy of prophecy predicting my
arrival in this human life, in the words, "The voice of one crying in
the wilderness," and "Behold I send my messenger before thy face;" if
I whose birth Gabriel who stands before God announced to my father so
advanced in years, so much against his expectation, I at whose name
Zacharias recovered his voice and was enabled to use it to prophesy, I
to whom my Lord bears witness that among them that are born of women
there is none greater than I, I am not able so much as to bear His
shoes! And if not His shoes, what can be said about His garments?
Who is so great as to be able to guard His coat? Who can suppose that
He can understand the meaning contained in His tunic which is without
seam from the top because it is woven throughout? It is to be
observed that while the four represent John as declaring himself to
have come to baptize with water, Matthew alone adds the words "to
repentance," teaching that the benefit of baptism is connected with
the intention of the baptized person; to him who repents it is
salutary, but to him who comes to it without repentance it will turn
to greater condemnation. And here we must note that as the wonderful
works done by the Saviour in the cures He wrought, which are
symbolical of those who at any time are set free by the word of God
from any sickness or disease, though they were done to the body and
brought a bodily relief, yet also called those who were benefited by
them to an exercise of faith, so the washing with water which is
symbolic of the soul cleansing herself from every stain of wickedness,
is no less in itself to him who yields himself to the divine power of
the invocation of the Adorable Trinity, the beginning and source of
divine gifts; for "there are diversities of gifts." This view
receives confirmation from the narrative recorded in the Acts of the
Apostles, which shows the Spirit to have descended so manifestly on
those who receive baptism, after the water had prepared the way for
him in those who properly approached the rite. Simon Magus,
astonished at what he saw, desired to receive from Peter this gift,
but though it was a good thing he desired, he thought to attain it by
the mammon of unrighteousness. We next remark in passing that the
baptism of John was inferior to the baptism of Jesus which was given
through His disciples. Those persons in the Acts [4910] who were
baptized to John's baptism and who had not heard if there was any Holy
Ghost are baptized over again by the Apostle. Regeneration did not
take place with John, but with Jesus through His disciples it does so,
and what is called the laver of regeneration takes place with renewal
of the Spirit; for the Spirit now comes in addition since it comes
from God and is over and above the water and does not come to all
after the water. So far, then, our examination of the statements in
the Gospel according to Matthew.
Footnotes
[4910] Acts xix. 2.
18. Of the Testimony in Mark. What is Meant by the Saviour's Shoes
and by Untying His Shoe-Latchets.
Now let us consider what is stated by Mark. Mark's account of John's
preaching agrees with the other. The words are, "There cometh after
me He that is mightier than I," which amounts to the same thing as "He
that cometh after me is mightier than I." There is a difference,
however, in what follows, "The latchets of His shoes I am not worthy
to stoop down and untie." For it is one thing to bear a person's
shoes,--they must, it is evident, have been untied already from the
feet of the wearer,--and it is another thing to stoop down and untie
the latchet of his shoes. And it follows, since believers cannot
think that either of the Evangelists made any mistake or
misrepresentation, that the Baptist must have made these two
utterances at different times and have meant them to express different
things. It is not the case, as some suppose. that the reports refer
to the same incident and turned out differently because of a looseness
of memory as to some of the facts or words. Now it is a great thing
to bear the shoes of Jesus, a great thing to stoop down to the bodily
features of His mission, to that which took place in some lower
region, so as to contemplate His image in the lower sphere, and to
untie each difficulty connected with the mystery of His incarnation,
such being as it were His shoe-latchets. For the fetter of obscurity
is one as the key of knowledge also is one; not even He who is
greatest among those born of women is sufficient of Himself to loose
such things or to open them, for He who tied and locked at first, He
also grants to whom He will to loose His shoe-latchet and to unlock
what He has shut. If the passage about the shoes has a mystic meaning
we ought not to scorn to consider it. Now I consider that the
inhumanisation when the Son of God assumes flesh and bones is one of
His shoes, and that the other is the descent to Hades, whatever that
Hades be, and the journey with the Spirit to the prison. As to the
descent into Hades, we read in the sixteenth Psalm, "Thou wilt not
leave my soul in Hades," and as for the journey in prison with the
Spirit we read in Peter in his Catholic Epistle, [4911] "Put to
death," he says, "in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit; in which
also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which at one
time were disobedient, when the long-suffering of God once waited in
the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing." He, then, who is
able worthily to set forth the meaning of these two journeys is able
to untie the latchet of the shoes of Jesus; he, bending down in his
mind and going with Jesus as He goes down into Hades, and descending
from heaven and the mysteries of Christ's deity to the advent He of
necessity made with us when He took on man (as His shoes). Now He who
put on man also put on the dead, for [4912] "for this end Jesus both
died and revived, that He might be Lord both of dead and living."
This is why He put on both living and dead, that is, the inhabitants
of the earth and those of Hades, that He might be the Lord of both
dead and living. Who, then, is able to stoop down and untie the
latchet of such shoes, and having untied them not to let them drop,
but by the second faculty he has received to take them up and bear
them, by bearing the meaning of them in his memory?
Footnotes
[4911] 1 Peter iii. 18-20.
[4912] Rom. xiv. 9.
19. Luke and John Suggest that One May Loose the Shoe-Latchets of the
Logos Without Stooping Down.
We must not, however, omit to ask how it comes that Luke and John give
the speech without the phrase "to stoop down." He, perhaps, who
stoops down may be held to unloose in the sense which we have stated.
On the other hand, it may be that one who fixes his eyes on the height
of the exaltation of the Logos, may find the loosing of those shoes
which when one is seeking them seem to be bound, so that He also
looses those shoes which are separable from the Logos, and beholds the
Logos divested of inferior things, as He is, the Son of God.
20. The Difference Between Not Being "Sufficient" And Not Being
"Worthy."
John records that the Baptist said he was not worthy, Mark that he was
not sufficient, and these two are not the same. One who was not
worthy might yet be sufficient, and one who was worthy might not be
sufficient. For even if it be the case that gifts are bestowed to
profit withal and not merely according to the proportion of faith, yet
it would seem to be the part of a God who loves men and who sees
before what harm must come from the rise of self-opinion or conceit,
not to bestow sufficiency even on the worthy. But it belongs to the
goodness of God by conferring bounties to conquer the object of His
bounty, taking in advance him who is destined to be worthy, and
adorning him even before he becomes worthy with sufficiency, so that
after his sufficiency he may come to be worthy; he is not first to be
worthy and then to anticipate the giver and take His gifts before the
time and so arrive at being sufficient. Now with the three the
Baptist says he is not sufficient, while in John he says he is not
worthy. But it may be that he who formerly declared that he was not
sufficient became sufficient afterwards, even though perhaps he was
not worthy, or again that while he was saying he was not worthy, and
was in fact not worthy, he arrived at being worthy, unless one should
say that human nature can never come to perform worthily this loosing
or this bearing, and that John, therefore, says truly that he never
became sufficient to loose the latchets of the Saviour's shoes, nor
worthy of it either. However much we take into our minds there are
still left things not yet understood; for, as we read in the wisdom of
Jesus, son of Sirach, [4913] "When a man hath done, then he beginneth,
and when he leaveth off, then he shall be doubtful."
Footnotes
[4913] Ecclus. xviii. 7.
21. The Fourth Gospel Speaks of Only One Shoe, the Others of Both.
The Significance of This.
As to the shoes, too, which are spoken of in the three Gospels, we
have a question to consider; we must compare them with the single shoe
named by the disciple John. "I am not worthy," we read there, "to
untie the latchet of His shoe." Perhaps he was conquered by the grace
of God, and received the gift of doing that which of himself he would
not have been worthy to do, of untying, namely, the latchet of one of
the shoes, namely, after he had seen the Saviour's sojourn among men,
of which he bears witness. But he did not know the things which were
to follow, namely, whether Jesus was to come to that place also, to
which he was to go after being beheaded in prison, or whether he was
to look for another; and hence he alludes enigmatically to that doubt
which was afterwards cleared up to us, and says, "I am not worthy to
untie His shoe-latchet." If any one considers this to be a
superfluous speculation, he can combine in one the speech about the
shoes and that about the shoe, as if John said, I am by no means
worthy to loose His shoestring, not even at the beginning, the string
of one of His shoes. Or the following may be a way to combine what is
said in the Four. If John understands about Jesus' sojourn here, but
is in doubt about the future, then he says with perfect truth that he
is not worthy to loose the latchet of His shoes; for though he loosed
that of one shoe, he did not loose both. And on the other hand, what
he says about the latchet of the shoe is quite true also; since as we
saw he is still in doubt whether Jesus is He that was to come, or
whether another is to be looked for, in that other region.
22. How the Word Stands in the Midst of Men Without Being Known of
Them.
As for the saying, "There standeth one among you whom you know not,"
we are led by it to consider the Son of God, the Word, by whom all
things were made, since He exists in substance throughout the
underlying nature of things, being the same as wisdom. For He
permeated, from the beginning, all creation, so that what is made at
any time should be made through Him, and that it might be always true
of anything soever, that "All things were made by Him, and without Him
was not anything made that was made;" and this saying also, "By wisdom
didst thou make them all." Now, if He permeates all creation, then He
is also in those questioners who ask, "Why baptizest thou, if thou art
not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?" In the midst of them
stands the Word, who is the same and steadfast, being everywhere
established by the Father. Or the words, "There standeth among you,"
may be understood to say, In the midst of you men, because you are
reasonable beings, stands He who is proved by Scripture to be the
sovereign principle in the midst of every body, and so to be present
in your heart. Those, therefore, who have the Word in the midst of
them, but who do not consider His nature, nor from what spring and
principle He came, nor how He gave them the nature they have, [4914]
these, while having Him in the midst of them, know Him not. But John
knew Him: for the words, "Whom you know not," used in reproach to the
Pharisees, show that he well knew the Word whom they did not know.
And the Baptist, therefore, knowing Him, saw Him coming after himself,
who was now in the midst of them, that is to say, dwelling after him
and the teaching he gave in his baptism, in those who, according to
reason (or the Word), submitted to that purifying rite. The word
"after," however, has not the same meaning here as it has when Jesus
commands us to come "after" Him; for in this case we are bidden to go
after Him, so that, treading in His steps, we may come to the Father;
but in the other case, the meaning is that after the teachings of John
(since "He came in order that all men through Him might believe"), the
Word dwells with those who have prepared themselves, purified as they
are by the lesser words for the perfect Word. Firstly, then, stands
the Father, being without any turning or change; and then stands also
His Word, always carrying on His work of salvation, and even when He
is in the midst of men, not comprehended, and not even seen. He
stands, also, teaching, and inviting all to drink from His abundant
spring, for [4915] "Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst,
let him come unto Me and drink."
Footnotes
[4914] Reading autous.
[4915] John vii. 37.
23. Heracleon's View of This Utterance of John the Baptist, and
Interpretation of the Shoe of Jesus.
But Heracleon declares the words, "There standeth one among you," to
be equivalent to "He is already here, and He is in the world and in
men, and He is already manifest to you all." By this He does away
with the meaning which is also present in the words, that the Word had
permeated the whole world. For we must say to him, When is He not
present, and when is He not in the world? Does not this Gospel say,
"He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world
knew Him not." And this is why those to whom the Logos is He "whom
you know not," do not know Him: they have never gone out of the
world, but the world does not know Him. But at what time did He cease
to be among men? Was He not in Isaiah, when He said, [4916] "The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me," and
[4917] "I became manifest to those who sought me not." Let them say,
too, if He was not in David when he said, not from himself, [4918]
"But I was established by Him a king in Zion His holy hill," and the
other words spoken in the Psalms in the person of Christ. And why
should I go over the details of this proof, truly they are hard to be
numbered, when I can show quite clearly that He was always in men?
And that is enough to show Heracleon's interpretation of "There
standeth in the midst of you," to be unsound, when he says it is
equivalent to "He is already here, and He is in the world and in
men." We are disposed to agree with him when he says that the words,
"Who cometh after me," show John to be the forerunner of Christ, for
he is in fact a kind of servant running before his master. The words,
however, "Whose shoe-latchet I am not worthy to unloose," receive much
too simple an interpretation when it is said that "in these words the
Baptist confesses that he is not worthy even of the least honourable
ministration to Christ." After this interpretation he adds, not
without sense, "I am not worthy that for my sake He should come down
from His greatness and should take flesh as His footgear, concerning
which I am not able to give any explanation or description, nor to
unloose the arrangement of it." In understanding the world by his
shoe, Heracleon shows some largeness of mind, but immediately after he
verges on impiety in declaring that all this is to be understood of
that person whom John here has in his mind. For he considers that it
is the demiurge of the world who confesses by these words that he is a
lesser person than the Christ; and this is the height of impiety. For
the Father who sent Him, He who is the God of the living as Jesus
Himself testifies, of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, and He who is
greater than heaven and earth for the reason that He is the Maker of
them, He also alone is good and is greater than He who was sent by
Him. And even if, as we said, Heracleon's idea was a lofty one, that
the whole world was the shoe of Jesus, yet I think we ought not to
agree with him. For how can it be harmonized with such a view, that
"Heaven is My throne and the earth My footstool," a testimony which
Jesus accepts as said of the Father? [4919]"Swear not by heaven,"
He says, "for it is God's throne, nor by the earth, for it is the
footstool of His feet." How, if he takes the whole world to be the
shoe of Jesus, can he also accept the text, [4920] "Do not I fill
heaven and earth?" saith the Lord. It is also worth while to enquire,
whether as the Word and wisdom permeated the whole world, and as the
Father was in the Son, the words are to be understood as above or in
this way, that He who first of all was girded about with the whole
creation, in addition to the Son's being in Him, granted to the
Saviour, as being second after Him and being God the Word, to pervade
the whole creation. To those who have it in them to take note of the
uninterrupted movement of the great heaven, how it carries with it
from East to West so great a multitude of stars, to them most of all
it will seem needful to enquire what that force is, how great and of
what nature, which is present in the whole world. For to pronounce
that force to be other than the Father and the Son, that perhaps might
be inconsistent with piety.
Footnotes
[4916] Isa. lxi. 1.
[4917] Isa. lxv. 1.
[4918] Ps. ii. 6.
[4919] Matt. v. 34, 35.
[4920] Jer. xxiii. 24.
24. The Name of the Place Where John Baptized is Not Bethany, as in
Most Copies, But Bethabara. Proof of This. Similarly "Gergesa"
Should Be Read for "Gerasa," In the Story of the Swine. Attention is
to Be Paid to the Proper Names in Scripture, Which are Often Written
Inaccurately, and are of Importance for Interpretation.
"These things were done in Bethabara, beyond Jordan, where John was
baptizing." [4921]We are aware of the reading which is found in
almost all the copies, "These things were done in Bethany." This
appears, moreover, to have been the reading at an earlier time; and in
Heracleon we read "Bethany." We are convinced, however, that we
should not read "Bethany," but "Bethabara." We have visited the
places to enquire as to the footsteps of Jesus and His disciples, and
of the prophets. Now, Bethany, as the same evangelist tells us,
[4922] was the town of Lazarus, and of Martha and Mary; it is fifteen
stadia from Jerusalem, and the river Jordan is about a hundred and
eighty stadia distant from it. Nor is there any other place of the
same name in the neighbourhood of the Jordan, but they say that
Bethabara is pointed out on the banks of the Jordan, and that John is
said to have baptized there. The etymology of the name, too,
corresponds with the baptism of him who made ready for the Lord a
people prepared for Him; for it yields the meaning "House of
preparation," while Bethany means "House of obedience." Where else
was it fitting that he should baptize, who was sent as a messenger
before the face of the Christ, to prepare His way before Him, but at
the House of preparation? And what more fitting home for Mary, who
chose the good part, [4923] which was not taken away from her, and for
Martha, who was cumbered for the reception of Jesus, and for their
brother, who is called the friend of the Saviour, than Bethany, the
House of obedience? Thus we see that he who aims at a complete
understanding of the Holy Scriptures must not neglect the careful
examination of the proper names in it. In the matter of proper names
the Greek copies are often incorrect, and in the Gospels one might be
misled by their authority. The transaction about the swine, which
were driven down a steep place by the demons and drowned in the sea,
is said to have taken place in the country of the Gerasenes. [4924]
Now, Gerasa is a town of Arabia, and has near it neither sea nor
lake. And the Evangelists would not have made a statement so
obviously and demonstrably false; for they were men who informed
themselves carefully of all matters connected with Judæa. But in a
few copies we have found, "into the country of the Gadarenes;" and, on
this reading, it is to be stated that Gadara is a town of Judæa, in
the neighbourhood of which are the well-known hot springs, and that
there is no lake there with overhanging banks, nor any sea. But
Gergesa, from which the name Gergesenes is taken, is an old town in
the neighbourhood of the lake now called Tiberias, and on the edge of
it there is a steep place abutting on the lake, from which it is
pointed out that the swine were cast down by the demons. Now, the
meaning of Gergesa is "dwelling of the casters-out," and it contains a
prophetic reference to the conduct towards the Saviour of the citizens
of those places, who "besought Him to depart out of their coasts."
The same inaccuracy with regard to proper names is also to be observed
in many passages of the law and the prophets, as we have been at pains
to learn from the Hebrews, comparing our own copies with theirs which
have the confirmation of the versions, never subjected to corruption,
of Aquila and Theodotion and Symmachus. We add a few instances to
encourage students to pay more attention to such points. One of the
sons of Levi, [4925] the first, is called Geson in most copies,
instead of Gerson. His name is the same as that of the first-born of
Moses; [4926] it was given appropriately in each case, both children
being born, because of the sojourn in Egypt, in a strange land. The
second son of Juda, [4927] again, has with us the name Annan, but with
the Hebrews Onan, "their labour." Once more, in the departures of the
children of Israel in Numbers, [4928] we find, "They departed from
Sochoth and pitched in Buthan;" but the Hebrew, instead of Buthan,
reads Aiman. And why should I add more points like these, when any
one who desires it can examine into the proper names and find out for
himself how they stand? The place-names of Scripture are specially to
be suspected where many of them occur in a catalogue, as in the
account of the partition of the country in Joshua, and in the first
Book of Chronicles from the beginning down to, say, the passage about
Dan, [4929] and similarly in Ezra. Names are not to be neglected,
since indications may be gathered from them which help in the
interpretation of the passages where they occur. We cannot, however,
leave our proper subject to examine in this place into the philosophy
of names.
Footnotes
[4921] John i. 28.
[4922] John xi. 1, 18.
[4923] Luke x. 41, 43.
[4924] Matt. viii. 28, 32; Mark v. 1, 13; Luke viii. 26-37.
[4925] Gen. xlvi. 11; Ex. vi. 16.
[4926] Ex. ii. 22.
[4927] Gen. xxxviii. 4.
[4928] xxxiii. 6.
[4929] The name "Saul" or "David" should probably stand here. 1
Chron. x., where the genealogies give place to narrative.
25. Jordan Means "Their Going Down." Spiritual Meanings and
Application of This.
Let us look at the words of the Gospel now before us. "Jordan" means
"their going down." The name "Jared" is etymologically akin to it, if
I may say so; it also yields the meaning "going down;" for Jared was
born to Maleleel, as it is written in the Book of Enoch--if any one
cares to accept that book as sacred--in the days when the sons of God
came down to the daughters of men. Under this descent some have
supposed that there is an enigmatical reference to the descent of
souls into bodies, taking the phrase "daughters of men" as a tropical
expression for this earthly tabernacle. Should this be so, what river
will "their going down" be, to which one must come to be purified, a
river going down, not with its own descent, but "theirs," that,
namely, of men, what but our Saviour who separates those who received
their lots from Moses from those who obtained their own portions
through Jesus (Joshua)? His current, flowing in the descending
stream, makes glad, as we find in the Psalms, [4930] the city of God,
not the visible Jerusalem--for it has no river beside it--but the
blameless Church of God, built on the foundation of the Apostles and
Prophets, Christ Jesus our Lord being the chief corner-stone. Under
the Jordan, accordingly, we have to understand the Word of God who
became flesh and tabernacled among us, Jesus who gives us as our
inheritance the humanity which He assumed, for that is the head
corner-stone, which being taken up into the deity of the Son of God,
is washed by being so assumed, and then receives into itself the pure
and guileless dove of the Spirit, bound to it and no longer able to
fly away from it. For "Upon whomsoever," we read, "thou shalt see the
Spirit descending and abiding upon Him, the same is He that baptizeth
with the Holy Spirit." Hence, he who receives the Spirit abiding on
Jesus Himself is able to baptize those who come to him in that abiding
Spirit. But John baptizes beyond Jordan, in the regions verging on
the outside of Judæa, in Bethabara, being the forerunner of Him who
came to call not the righteous but sinners, and who taught that the
whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. For it is
for forgiveness of sins that this washing is given.
Footnotes
[4930] xlvi. 4.
26. The Story of Israel Crossing Jordan Under Joshua is Typical of
Christian Things, and is Written for Our Instruction.
Now, it may very well be that some one not versed in the various
aspects of the Saviour may stumble at the interpretation given above
of the Jordan; because John says, "I baptize with water, but He that
cometh after me is stronger than I; He shall baptize you with the Holy
Spirit." To this we reply that, as the Word of God in His character
as something to be drunk is to one set of men water, and to another
wine, making glad the heart of man, and to others blood, since it is
said, [4931] "Except ye drink My blood, ye have no life in you," and
as in His character as food He is variously conceived as living bread
or as flesh, so also He, the same person, is baptism of water, and
baptism of Holy Spirit and of fire, and to some, also, of blood. It
is of His last baptism, as some hold, that He speaks in the words,
[4932] "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened
till it be accomplished?" And it agrees with this that the disciple
John speaks in his Epistle [4933] of the Spirit, and the water, and
the blood, as being one. And again He declares Himself to be the way
and the door, but clearly He is not the door to those to whom He is
the way, and He is no longer the way to those to whom He is the door.
All those, then, who are being initiated in the beginning of the
oracles of God, and come to the voice of him who cries in the
wilderness, "Make straight the way of the Lord," the voice which
sounds beyond Jordan at the house of preparation, let them prepare
themselves so that they may be in a state to receive the spiritual
word, brought home to them by the enlightenment of the Spirit. As we
are now, as our subject requires, bringing together all that relates
to the Jordan, let us look at the "river." God, by Moses, carried the
people through the Red Sea, making the water a wall for them on the
right hand and on the left, and by Joshua He carried them through
Jordan. Now, Paul deals with this Scripture, and his warfare is not
according to the flesh of it, for he knew that the law is spiritual in
a spiritual sense. And he shows us that he understood what is said
about the passage of the Red Sea; for he says in his first Epistle to
the Corinthians, [4934] "I would not, brethren, have you ignorant, how
that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the
sea, and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and
did all eat the same spiritual meat, and drink the same spiritual
drink; for they drank of the spiritual rock which followed them, and
the rock was Christ." In the spirit of this passage let us also pray
that we may receive from God to understand the spiritual meaning of
Joshua's passage through Jordan. Of it, also, Paul would have said,
"I would not, brethren, have you ignorant, that all our fathers went
through Jordan, and were all baptized into Jesus in the spirit and in
the river." And Joshua, who succeeded Moses, was a type of Jesus
Christ, who succeeds the dispensation through the law, and replaces it
by the preaching of the Gospel. And even if those Paul speaks of were
baptized in the cloud and in the sea, there is something harsh and
salt in their baptism. They are still in fear of their enemies, and
crying to the Lord and to Moses, saying, [4935] "Because there were no
graves in Egypt, hast thou brought us forth to slay us in the
wilderness? Why hast thou dealt thus with us, to bring us forth out
of Egypt?" But the baptism to Joshua, which takes place in quite
sweet and drinkable water, is in many ways superior to that earlier
one, religion having by this time grown clearer and assuming a
becoming order. For the ark of the covenant of the Lord our God is
carried in procession by the priests and levites, the people following
the ministers of God, it, also, accepting the law of holiness. For
Joshua says to the people, [4936] "Sanctify yourselves against
tomorrow; the Lord will do wonders among you." And he commands the
priests to go before the people with the ark of the covenant, wherein
is plainly showed forth the mystery of the Father's economy about the
Son, which is highly exalted by Him who gave the Son this office;
"That at the name of Jesus [4937] every knee should bow, of things in
heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father." This is pointed out by what we find in the book called
Joshua, [4938] "In that day I will begin to exalt thee before the
children of Israel." And we hear our Lord Jesus saying to the
children of Israel, [4939] "Come hither and hear the words of the Lord
your God. Hereby ye shall know that the living God is in (among)
you;" for when we are baptized to Jesus, we know that the living God
is in us. And, in the former case, they kept the passover in Egypt,
and then began their journey, but with Joshua, after crossing Jordan
on the tenth day of the first month they pitched their camp in
Galgala; for a sheep had to be procured before invitations could be
issued to the banquet after Joshua's baptism. Then the children of
Israel, since the children of those who came out of Egypt had not
received circumcision, were circumcised by Joshua with a very sharp
stone; the Lord declares that He takes away the reproach of Egypt on
the day of Joshua's baptism, when Joshua purified the children of
Israel. For it is written: [4940]"And the Lord said to Joshua, the
son of Nun, This day have I taken away the reproach of Egypt from off
you." Then the children of Israel kept the passover on the fourteenth
day of the month, with much greater gladness than in Egypt, for they
ate unleavened bread of the corn of the holy land, and fresh food
better than manna. For when they received the land of promise God did
not entertain them with scantier food, nor when such a one as Joshua
was their leader do they get inferior bread. This will be plain to
him who thinks of the true holy land and of the Jerusalem above.
Hence it is written in this same Gospel: [4941]Your fathers did eat
bread in the wilderness, and are dead; he that eateth of this bread
shall live for ever. For the manna, though it was given by God, yet
was bread of travel, bread supplied to those still under discipline,
well fitted for those who were under tutors and governors. And the
new bread Joshua managed to get from corn they cut in the country, in
the land of promise, others having laboured and his disciples
reaping,--that was bread more full of life, distributed as it was to
those who, for their perfection, were able to receive the inheritance
of their fathers. Hence, he who is still under discipline to that
bread may receive death as far as it is concerned, but he who has
attained to the bread that follows that, eating it, shall live for
ever. All this has been added, not, I conceive, without
appropriateness, to our study of the baptism at the Jordan,
administered by John at Bethabara.
Footnotes
[4931] John vi. 53.
[4932] Luke xii. 50.
[4933] 1 John v. 8.
[4934] x. 1-4.
[4935] Exod. xiv. 11.
[4936] Josh. iii. 5.
[4937] Philipp. ii. 9-11.
[4938] iii. 7.
[4939] Josh. iii. 9, 10.
[4940] Josh. v. 9.
[4941] vi. 49.
27. Of Elijah and Elisha Crossing the Jordan.
Another point which we must not fail to notice is that when Elijah was
about to be taken up in a whirlwind, as if to heaven, [4942] he took
his mantle and wrapped it together and smote the water, which was
divided hither and thither, and they went over both of them, that is,
he and Elisha. His baptism in the Jordan made him fitter to be taken
up, for, as we showed before, Paul gives the name of baptism to such a
remarkable passage through the water. And through this same Jordan
Elisha receives, through Elijah, the gift he desired, saying, "Let a
double portion of thy spirit be upon me." What enabled him to receive
this gift of the spirit of Elijah was, perhaps, that he had passed
through Jordan twice, once with Elijah, and the second time, when,
after receiving the mantle of Elijah, he smote the water and said,
"Where is the God of Elijah, even He? And he smote the waters, and
they were divided hither and thither."
Footnotes
[4942] 2 Kings ii. 8, 11.
28. Naaman the Syrian and the Jordan. No Other Stream Has the Same
Healing Power.
Should any one object to the expression "He smote the water," on
account of the conclusion we arrived at above with respect to the
Jordan, that it is a type of the Word who descended for us our
descending, we rejoin that with the Apostle the rock is plainly said
to be Christ, and that it is smitten twice with the rod, so that the
people may drink of the spiritual rock which follows them. The
"smiting" in this new difficulty is that of those who are fond of
suggesting something that contradicts the conclusion even before they
have learned what the question is which is in hand. From such God
sets us free, since, on the one hand, He gives us to drink when we are
thirsty, and on the other He prepares for us, in the immense and
trackless deep, a road to pass over, namely, by the dividing of His
Word, since it is by the reason which distinguishes (divides) that
most things are made plain to us. But that we may receive the right
interpretation about this Jordan, so good to drink, so full of grace,
it may be of use to compare the cleansing of Naaman the Syrian from
his leprosy, and what is said of the rivers of religion of the enemies
of Israel. It is recorded of Naaman [4943] that he came with horse
and chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha
sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash seven times in the Jordan,
and thy flesh shall come again unto thee, and thou shalt be
cleansed." Then Naaman is angry; he does not see that our Jordan is
the cleanser of those who are impure from leprosy, from that impurity,
and their restorer to health; it is the Jordan that does this, and not
the prophet; the office of the prophet is to direct to the healing
agency. Naaman then says, not understanding the great mystery of the
Jordan, "Behold, I said that he will certainly come out to me, and
will call upon the name of the Lord his God, and lay his hand upon the
place, and restore the leper." For to put his hand on the leprosy
[4944] and cleanse it is a work belonging to our Lord Jesus only; for
when the leper appealed to Him with faith, saying, "If Thou wilt Thou
canst make me clean," He not only said, "I will, be thou clean," but
in addition to the word He touched him, and he was cleansed from his
leprosy. Naaman, then, is still in error, and does not see how far
inferior other rivers are to the Jordan for the cure of the suffering;
he extols the rivers of Damascus, Arbana, and Pharpha, saying, "Are
not Arbana and Pharpha, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters
of Israel? Shall I not wash in them and be clean?" For as none is
good [4945] but one, God the Father, so among rivers none is good but
the Jordan, nor able to cleanse from his leprosy him who with faith
washes his soul in Jesus. And this, I suppose, is the reason why the
Israelites are recorded to have wept when they sat by the rivers of
Babylon and remembered Zion; those who are carried captive, on account
of their wickedness, when they taste other waters after sacred Jordan,
are led to remember with longing their own river of salvation.
Therefore it is said of the rivers of Babylon, "There we sat down,"
clearly because they were unable to stand, "and wept." And Jeremiah
rebukes those who wish to drink the waters of Egypt, and desert the
water which comes down from heaven, and is named from its so coming
down--namely, the Jordan. He says, [4946] "What hast thou to do with
the way of Egypt, to drink the water of Geon, and to drink the water
of the river," or, as it is in the Hebrew, "to drink the water of
Sion." Of which water we have now to speak.
Footnotes
[4943] 2 Kings v. 9, 10.
[4944] Matt. viii. 2, 3.
[4945] Matt. xix. 17; Mark x. 18; Luke xviii. 19.
[4946] ii. 18.
29. The River of Egypt and Its Dragon, Contrasted with the Jordan.
But that the Spirit in the inspired Scriptures is not speaking mainly
of rivers to be seen with the eyes, may be gathered from Ezekiel's
prophecies against Pharaoh, king of Egypt: [4947]"Behold I am
against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon, seated in the
midst of rivers, who sayest, Mine are the rivers, and I made them.
And I will put traps in thy jaws, and I will make the fishes of the
river to stick to thy fins, and I will bring thee up from the midst of
thy river, and all the fish of the river, and I will cast thee down
quickly and all the fish of the river; thou shalt fall upon the face
of thy land, and thou shalt not be gathered together, and thou shalt
not be adorned." For what real bodily dragon has ever been reported
as having been seen in the material river of Egypt? But consider if
the river of Egypt be not the dwelling of the dragon who is our enemy,
who was not even able to kill the child Moses. But as the dragon is
in the river of Egypt, so is God in the river which makes glad the
city of God; for the Father is in the Son. Hence those who come to
wash themselves in Him put away the reproach of Egypt, and become more
fit to be restored. They are cleansed from that foulest leprosy,
receive a double portion of spiritual gifts, and are made ready to
receive the Holy Spirit, since the spiritual dove does not light on
any other stream. Thus we have considered in a way more worthy of the
sacred subject the Jordan and the purification that is in it, and
Jesus being washed in it, and the house of preparation. Let us, then,
draw from the river as much help as we require.
Footnotes
[4947] xxix. 3-5.
30. Of What John Learned from Jesus When Mary Visited Elisabeth in
the Hill Country.
"The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him." [4948]The mother
of Jesus had formerly, as soon as she conceived, stayed with the
mother of John, also at that time with child, and the Former then
communicated to the Formed with some exactness His own image, and
caused him to be conformed to His glory. And from this outward
similarity it came that with those who did not distinguish between the
image itself and that which was according to the image, John was
thought to be Christ [4949] and Jesus was supposed [4950] to be John
risen from the dead. So now Jesus, after the testimonies of John to
Him which we have examined, is Himself seen by the Baptist coming to
him. It is to be noticed that on the former occasion, when the voice
of Mary's salutation came to the ears of Elisabeth, the babe John
leaped in the womb of his mother, who then received the Holy Spirit,
as it were, from the ground. For it came to pass, we read, [4951]
"when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her
womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she lifted up
her voice with a loud cry and said," etc. On this occasion,
similarly, John sees Jesus coming to him and says, "Behold the Lamb of
God which taketh away the sin of the world." For with regard to
matters of great moment one is first instructed by hearing and
afterwards one sees them with one's own eyes. That John was helped to
the shape he was to wear by the Lord who, still in the process of
formation and in His mother's womb, approached Elisabeth, will be
clear to any one who has grasped our proof that John is a voice but
that Jesus is the Word, for when Elisabeth was filled with the Holy
Spirit at the salutation of Mary there was a great voice in her, as
the words themselves bear; for they say, "And she spake out with a
loud voice." Elisabeth, it is plain, did this, "and she spake." For
the voice of Mary's salutation coming to the ears of Elisabeth filled
John with itself; hence John leaps, and his mother becomes, as it
were, the mouth of her son and a prophetess, crying out with a loud
voice and saying, "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the
fruit of thy womb." Now we see clearly how it was with Mary's hasty
journey to the hill country, and her entrance into the house of
Zacharias, and the greeting with which she salutes Elisabeth; it was
that she might communicate some of the power she derived from Him she
had conceived, to John, yet in his mother's womb, and that John too
might communicate to his mother some of the prophetic grace which had
come to him, that all these things were done. And most rightly was it
in the hill country that these transactions took place, since no great
thing can be entertained by those who are low and may be thence called
valleys. Here, then, after the testimonies of John,--the first, when
he cried and spoke about His deity; the second, addressed to the
priests and levites who were sent by the Jews from Jerusalem; and the
third, in answer to the sharper questions of those from the
Pharisees,--Jesus is seen by the witness-bearer coming to him while he
is still advancing and growing better. This advance and improvement
is symbolically indicated in the phrase, "On the morrow." For Jesus
came in the consequent illumination, as it were, and on the day after
what had preceded, not only known as standing in the midst even of
those who knew Him not, but now plainly seen advancing to him who had
formerly made such declarations about Him. On the first day the
testimonies take place, and on the second Jesus comes to John. On the
third John, standing with two of his disciples and looking upon Jesus
as He walked, said, "Behold the Lamb of God," thus urging those who
were there to follow the Son of God. On the fourth day, too, He was
minded to go forth into Galilee, and He who came forth to seek that
which was lost finds Philip and says to him, "Follow Me." And on that
day, after the fourth, which is the sixth from the beginning of those
we have enumerated, the marriage takes place in Cana of Galilee, which
we shall have to consider when we get to the passage. Note this, too,
that Mary being the greater comes to Elisabeth, who is the less, and
the Son of God comes to the Baptist; which should encourage us to
render help without delay to those who are in a lower position, and to
cultivate for ourselves a moderate station.
Footnotes
[4948] John i. 29.
[4949] Luke iii. 14.
[4950] Matt. xiv. 2.
[4951] Luke i. 41, 42.
31. Of the Conversation Between John and Jesus at the Baptism,
Recorded by Matthew Only.
John the disciple does not tell us where the Saviour comes from to
John the Baptist, but we learn this from Matthew, who writes: [4952]
"Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan to John, to be baptized of
him." And Mark adds the place in Galilee; he says, [4953] "And it
came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee
and was baptized by John in Jordan." Luke does not mention the place
Jesus came from, but on the other hand he tells us what we do not
learn from the others, that immediately after the baptism, as He was
coming up, heaven was opened to Him, and the Holy Spirit descended on
Him in bodily form like a dove. Again, it is Matthew alone who tells
us of John's preventing the Lord, saying to the Saviour, "I have need
to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?" None of the others
added this after Matthew, so that they might not be saying just the
same as he. And what the Lord rejoined, "Suffer it now, for thus it
becometh us to fulfil all righteousness," this also Matthew alone
recorded.
Footnotes
[4952] iii. 13.
[4953] i. 9.
32. John Calls Jesus a "Lamb." Why Does He Name This Animal
Specially? Of the Typology of the Sacrifices, Generally.
"And he sayeth, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of
the world." [4954]There were five animals which were brought to the
altar, three that walk and two that fly; and it seems to be worth
asking why John calls the Saviour a lamb and not any of these other
creatures, and why, when each of the animals that walk is offered of
three kinds he used for the sheep-kind the term "lamb." The five
animals are as follows: the bullock, the sheep, the goat, the
turtle-dove, the pigeon. And of the walking animals these are the
three kinds--bullock, ox, calf; ram, sheep, lamb; he-goat, goat, kid.
Of the flying animals, of pigeons we only hear of two young ones; of
turtle doves only of a pair. He, then, who would accurately
understand the spiritual rationale of the sacrifices must enquire of
what heavenly things these were the pattern and the shadow, and also
for what end the sacrifice of each victim is prescribed, and he must
specially collect the points connected with the lamb. Now that the
principle of the sacrifice must be apprehended with reference to
certain heavenly mysteries, appears from the words of the Apostle, who
somewhere [4955] says, "Who serve a pattern and shadow of heavenly
things," and again, "It was necessary that the patterns of the things
in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things
themselves with better sacrifices than these." Now to find out all
the particulars of these and to state in its relation to them that
sacrifice of the spiritual law which took place in Jesus Christ (a
truth greater than human nature can comprehend)--to do this belongs to
no other than the perfect man, [4956] who, by reason of use, has his
senses exercised to discern good and evil, and who is able to say,
from a truth-loving disposition, [4957] "We speak wisdom among them
that are perfect." Of these things truly and things like these, we
can say, [4958] "Which none of the rulers of this world knew."
Footnotes
[4954] John i. 29.
[4955] Heb. viii. 5; ix. 23.
[4956] Heb. v. 14.
[4957] 1 Cor. ii. 6.
[4958] Exod. xxix. 38-44.
33. A Lamb Was Offered at the Morning and Evening Sacrifice.
Significance of This.
Now we find the lamb offered in the continual (daily) sacrifice. Thus
it is written, [4959] "This is that which thou shalt offer upon the
altar; two lambs of the first year day by day continually, for a
continual sacrifice. The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning,
and the other lamb thou shalt offer at even, and a tenth part of fine
flour mingled with beaten oil, the fourth part of a hin; and for a
drink-offering the fourth part of a bin of wine to the first lamb.
And the other lamb thou shalt offer in the evening, according to the
first sacrifice and according to its drink-offering. Thou shalt offer
a sweet savour, an offering to the Lord, a continual burnt offering
throughout your generations at the door of tent of witness before the
Lord, where I will make myself known to thee, to speak unto thee. And
I will appoint thee for the children of Israel, and I will be
sanctified in my glory, and with sanctification I will sanctify the
tent of witness." But what other continual sacrifice can there be to
the man of reason in the world of mind, but the Word growing to
maturity, the Word who is symbolically called a lamb and who is
offered as soon as the soul receives illumination. This would be the
continual sacrifice of the morning, and it is offered again when the
sojourn of the mind with divine things comes to an end. For it cannot
maintain for ever its intercourse with higher things, seeing that the
soul is appointed to be yoked together with the body which is of earth
and heavy.
Footnotes
[4959] Exod. xxix. 38-44.
34. The Morning and Evening Sacrifices of the Saint in His Life of
Thought.
But if any one asks what the saint is to do in the time between
morning and evening, let him follow what takes place in the cultus and
infer from it the principle he asks for. In that case the priests
begin their offerings with the continual sacrifice, and before they
come to the continuous one of the evening they offer the other
sacrifices which the law prescribes, as, for example, that for
transgression, or that for involuntary offences, or that connected
with a prayer for salvation, or that of jealousy, or that of the
Sabbath, or of the new moon, and so on, which it would take too long
to mention. So we, beginning our oblation with the discourse of that
type which is Christ, can go on to discourse about many other most
useful things. And drawing to a close still in the things of Christ,
we come, as it were, to evening and night, when we arrive at the
bodily features of His manifestation.
35. Jesus is a Lamb in Respect of His Human Nature.
If we enquire further into the significance of Jesus being pointed out
by John, when he says, "This is the Lamb of God which taketh away the
sin of the world," we may take our stand at the dispensation of the
bodily advent of the Son of God in human life, and in that case we
shall conceive the lamb to be no other than the man. For the man "was
led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb, dumb before his
shearers," [4960] saying, "I was as like a gentle lamb led to the
slaughter." [4961]Hence, too, in the Apocalypse [4962] a lamb is
seen, standing as if slain. This slain lamb has been made, according
to certain hidden reasons, a purification of the whole world, for
which, according to the Father's love to man, He submitted to death,
purchasing us back by His own blood from him who had got us into his
power, sold under sin. And He who led this lamb to the slaughter was
God in man, the great High-Priest, as he shows by the words: [4963]
"No one taketh My life away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I
have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again."
Footnotes
[4960] Isa. liii. 7.
[4961] Jer. xi. 19.
[4962] v. 6.
[4963] John x. 18.
36. Of the Death of the Martyrs Considered as a Sacrifice, and in
What Way It Operates to the Benefit of Others.
Akin to this sacrifice are the others of which the sacrifices of the
law are symbols, and another kind of sacrifice also appears to me to
be of the same nature; namely, the shedding of the blood of the noble
martyrs, whom the disciple John saw, for this is not without
significance, standing beside the heavenly altar. "Who is wise,
[4964] and he shall understand these things, prudent, and he shall
know them?" It is a matter of higher speculation to consider even
slightly the rationale of those sacrifices which cleanse those for
whom they are offered. Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter should
receive attention; it was by vowing it that he conquered the children
of Ammon, and the victim approved his vow, for when her father said,
[4965] "I have opened my mouth unto the Lord against thee," she
answered, "If thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord against me, do
that which thou hast vowed." The story suggests that the being must
be a very cruel one to whom such sacrifices are offered for the
salvation of men; and we require some breadth of mind and some ability
to solve the difficulties raised against Providence, to be able to
account for such things and to see that they are mysteries and exceed
our human nature. Then we shall say, [4966] "Great are the judgments
of God, and hard to be described; for this cause untutored souls have
gone astray." Among the Gentiles, too, it is recorded that many a
one, when pestilential disease broke out in his country, offered
himself a victim for the public good. That this was the case the
faithful Clement assumes, [4967] on the faith of the narratives, to
whom Paul bears witness when he says, [4968] "With Clement also, and
the others, my fellow-labourers, whose names are in the book of
life." If there is anything in these narratives that appears
incongruous to one who is minded to carp at mysteries revealed to few,
the same difficulty attaches to the office that was laid on the
martyrs, for it was God's will that we should rather endure all the
dreadful reproaches connected with confessing Him as God, than escape
for a short time from such sufferings (which men count evil) by
allowing ourselves by our words to conform to the will of the enemies
of the truth. We are, therefore, led to believe that the powers of
evil do suffer defeat by the death of the holy martyrs; as if their
patience, their confession, even unto death, and their zeal for piety
blunted the edge of the onset of evil powers against the sufferer, and
their might being thus dulled and exhausted, many others of those whom
they had conquered raised their heads and were set free from the
weight with which the evil powers formerly oppressed and injured
them. And even the martyrs themselves are no longer involved in
suffering, even though those agents which formerly wrought ill to
others are not exhausted; for he who has offered such a sacrifice
overcomes the power which opposed him, as I may show by an
illustration which is suited to this subject. He who destroys a
poisonous animal, or lulls it to sleep with charms, or by any means
deprives it of its venom, he does good to many who would otherwise
have suffered from that animal had it not been destroyed, or charmed,
or emptied of its venom. Moreover, if one of those who were formerly
bitten should come to know of this, and should be cured of his malady
and look upon the death of that which injured him, or tread on it, or
touch it when dead, or taste a part of it, then he, who was formerly a
sufferer, would owe cure and benefit to the destroyer of the poisonous
animal. In some such way must we suppose the death of the most holy
martyrs to operate, many receiving benefit from it by an influence we
cannot describe.
Footnotes
[4964] Hosea xiv. 10.
[4965] Judges xi. 35.
[4966] Wisdom xvii. 1.
[4967] 1 Clement, 55.
[4968] Philipp. iv. 3.
37. Of the Effects of the Death of Christ, of His Triumph After It,
and of the Removal by His Death of the Sins of Men.
We have lingered over this subject of the martyrs and over the record
of those who died on account of pestilence, because this lets us see
the excellence of Him who was led as a sheep to the slaughter and was
dumb as a lamb before the shearer. For if there is any point in these
stories of the Greeks, and if what we have said of the martyrs is well
founded,--the Apostles, too, were for the same reason the filth of the
world and the offscouring of all things, [4969] --what and how great
things must be said of the Lamb of God, who was sacrificed for this
very reason, that He might take away the sin not of a few but of the
whole world, for the sake of which also He suffered? If any one sin,
we read, [4970] "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours
only, but for those of the whole world," since He is the Saviour of
all men, [4971] especially of them that believe, who [4972] blotted
out the written bond that was against us by His own blood, and took it
out of the way, so that not even a trace, not even of our blotted-out
sins, might still be found, and nailed it to His cross; who having put
off from Himself the principalities and powers, made a show of them
openly, triumphing over them by His cross. And we are taught to
rejoice when we suffer afflictions in the world, knowing the ground of
our rejoicing to be this, that the world has been conquered and has
manifestly been subjected to its conqueror. Hence all the nations,
released from their former rulers, serve Him, because He [4973] saved
the poor from his tyrant by His own passion, and the needy who had no
helper. This Saviour, then, having humbled the calumniator by
humbling Himself, abides with the visible sun before His illustrious
church, tropically called the moon, from generation to generation.
And having by His passion destroyed His enemies, He who is strong in
battle and a mighty Lord [4974] required after His mighty deeds a
purification which could only be given Him by His Father alone; and
this is why He forbids Mary to touch Him, saying, [4975] "Touch Me
not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father; but go and tell My
disciples, I go to My Father and your Father, to My God and your
God." And when He comes, loaded with victory and with trophies, with
His body which has risen from the dead,--for what other meaning can we
see in the words, "I am not yet ascended to My Father," and "I go unto
My Father,"--then there are certain powers which say, Who is this that
cometh from Edom, red garments from Bosor; this that is beautiful?
[4976]Then those who escort Him say to those that are upon the
heavenly gates, [4977] "Lift up your gates, ye rulers, and be ye
lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come
in." But they ask again, seeing as it were His right hand red with
blood and His whole person covered with the marks of His valour, "Why
are Thy garments red, and Thy clothes like the treading of the full
winefat when it is trodden?" And to this He answers, "I have crushed
them." For this cause He had need to wash "His robe in wine, and His
garment in the blood of the grape." [4978]For when He had taken up
our infirmities and carried our diseases, and had borne the sin of the
whole world, and had conferred blessings on so many, then, perhaps, He
received that baptism which is greater than any that could ever be
conceived among men, and of which I think He speaks when He says,
[4979] "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened
till it be accomplished?" I enquire here with boldness and I
challenge the ideas put forward by most writers. They say that the
greatest baptism, beyond which no greater can be conceived, is His
passion. But if this be so, why should He say to Mary after it,
"Touch Me not"? He should rather have offered Himself to her touch,
when by His passion He had received His perfect baptism. But if it
was the case, as we said before, that after all His deeds of valour
done against His enemies, He had need to wash "His robe in wine, His
garment in the blood of the grape," then He was on His way up to the
husbandman of the true vine, the Father, so that having washed there
and after having gone up on high, He might lead captivity captive and
come down bearing manifold gifts--the tongues, as of fire, which were
divided to the Apostles, and the holy angels which are to be present
with them in each action and to deliver them. For before these
economies they were not yet cleansed and angels could not dwell with
them, for they too perhaps do not desire to be with those who have not
prepared themselves nor been cleansed by Jesus. For it was of Jesus'
benignity alone that He ate and drank with publicans and sinners, and
suffered the penitent woman who was a sinner to wash His feet with her
tears, and went down even to death for the ungodly, counting it not
robbery to be equal with God, and emptied Himself, assuming the form
of a servant. And in accomplishing all this He fulfils rather the
will of the Father who gave Him up for sinners than His own. For the
Father is good, but the Saviour is the image of His goodness; and
doing good to the world in all things, since God was in Christ
reconciling the world to Himself, which formerly for its wickedness
was all enemy to Him, He accomplishes His good deeds in order and
succession, and does not all at once take all His enemies for His
footstool. For the Father says to Him, to the Lord of us all, [4980]
"Sit Thou on My right hand, until I make Thy enemies the footstool of
Thy feet." And this goes on till the last enemy, Death, is overcome
by Him. And if we consider what is meant by this subjection to Christ
and find an explanation of this mainly from the saying, [4981] "When
all things shall have been put under Him, then shall the Son Himself
be subjected to Him who put all things under Him," then we shall see
how the conception agrees with the goodness of the God of all, since
it is that of the Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world. Not
all men's sin, however, is taken away by the Lamb of God, not the sin
of those who do not grieve and suffer affliction till it be taken
away. For thorns are not only fixed but deeply rooted in the hand of
every one who is intoxicated by wickedness and has parted with
sobriety, as it is said in the Proverbs, [4982] "Thorns grow in the
hand of the drunkard," and what pain they must cause him who has
admitted such growth in the substance of his soul, it is hard even to
tell. Who has allowed wickedness to establish itself so deeply in his
soul as to be a ground full of thorns, he must be cut down by the
quick and powerful word of God, which is sharper than a two-edged
sword, and which is more caustic than any fire. To such a soul that
fire must be sent which finds out thorns, and by its divine virtue
stands where they are and does not also burn up the threshing-floors
or standing corn. But of the Lamb which takes away the sin of the
world and begins to do so by His own death there are several ways,
some of which are capable of being clearly understood by most, but
others are concealed from most, and are known to those only who are
worthy of divine wisdom. Why should we count up all the ways by which
we come to believe among men? That is a thing which every one living
in the body is able to see for himself. And in the ways in which we
believe in these also, sin is taken away; by afflictions and evil
spirits and dangerous diseases and grievous sicknesses. And who knows
what follows after this? So much as we have said was not
unnecessary--we could not neglect the thought which is so clearly
connected with that of the words, "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh
away the sin of the world," and had therefore to attend somewhat
closely to this part of our subject. This has brought us to see that
God convicts some by His wrath and chastens them by His anger, since
His love to men is so great that He will not leave any without
conviction and chastening; so that we should do what in us lies to be
spared such conviction and such chastening by the sorest trials.
Footnotes
[4969] 1 Cor. iv. 13.
[4970] 1 John ii. 1, 2.
[4971] 1 Tim. iv. 10.
[4972] Coloss. ii. 14, 15.
[4973] Ps. lxxii. 12.
[4974] Ps. xxiv. 8.
[4975] John xx. 17.
[4976] Isa. lxiii. 1.
[4977] Ps. xxiv. 7, 9.
[4978] Gen. xlix. 2.
[4979] Luke xii. 50.
[4980] Ps. cx. 1.
[4981] 1 Cor. xv. 26.
[4982] xxvi. 9.
38. The World, of Which the Sin is Taken Away, is Said to Be the
Church. Reasons for Not Agreeing with This Opinion.
The reader will do well to consider what was said above and
illustrated from various quarters on the question what is meant in
Scripture by the word "world"; and I think it proper to repeat this.
I am aware that a certain scholar understands by the world the Church
alone, since the Church is the adornment of the world, [4983] and is
said to be the light of the world. "You," he says, [4984] "are the
light of the world." Now, the adornment of the world is the Church,
Christ being her adornment, who is the first light of the world. We
must consider if Christ is said to be the light of the same world as
His disciples. When Christ is the light of the world, perhaps it is
meant that He is the light of the Church, but when His disciples are
the light of the world, perhaps they are the light of others who call
on the Lord, others in addition to the Church, as Paul says on this
point in the beginning of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, where
he writes, "To the Church of God, with all who call on the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ." Should any one consider that the Church is called
the light of the world, meaning thereby of the rest of the race of
men, including unbelievers, this may be true if the assertion is taken
prophetically and theologically; but if it is to be taken of the
present, we remind him that the light of a thing illuminates that
thing, and would ask him to show how the remainder of the race is
illuminated by the Church's presence in the world. If those who hold
the view in question cannot show this, then let them consider if our
interpretation is not a sound one, that the light is the Church, and
the world those others who call on the Name. The words which follow
the above in Matthew will point out to the careful enquirer the proper
interpretation. "You," it is said, "are the salt of the earth," the
rest of mankind being conceived as the earth, and believers are their
salt; it is because they believe that the earth is preserved. For the
end will come if the salt loses its savour, and ceases to salt and
preserve the earth, since it is clear that if iniquity is multiplied
and love waxes cold upon the earth, [4985] as the Saviour Himself
uttered an expression of doubt as to those who would witness His
coming, saying, [4986] "When the Son of man cometh, shall He find
faith upon the earth?" then the end of the age will come. Supposing,
then, the Church to be called the world, since the Saviour's light
shines on it--we have to ask in connection with the text, "Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," whether the
world here is to be taken intellectually of the Church, and the taking
away of sin is limited to the Church. In that case what are we to
make of the saying of the same disciple with regard to the Saviour, as
the propitiation for sin? "If any man sin," we read, "we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the
propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but for the sins
of the whole world?" Paul's dictum appears to me to be to the same
effect, when he says, [4987] "Who is the Saviour of all men,
especially of the faithful." Again, Heracleon, dealing with our
passage, declares, without any proof or any citation of witnesses to
that effect, that the words, "Lamb of God," are spoken by John as a
prophet, but the words, "who taketh away the sin of the world," by
John as more than a prophet. The former expression he considers to be
used of His body, but the latter of Him who was in that body, because
the lamb is an imperfect member of the genus sheep; the same being
true of the body as compared with the dweller in it. Had he meant to
attribute perfection to the body he would have spoken of a ram as
about to be sacrificed. After the careful discussions given above, I
do not think it necessary to enter into repetitions on this passage,
or to controvert Heracleon's careless utterances. One point only may
be noted, that as the world was scarcely able to contain Him who had
emptied Himself, it required a lamb and not a ram, that its sin might
be taken away.
Footnotes
[4983] kosmos means both "ornament" and "world."
[4984] Matt. v. 14.
[4985] Matt. xxiv. 12.
[4986] Luke xviii. 8.
[4987] 1 Tim. iv. 10.
.
Tenth Book.
1. Jesus Comes to Capernaum. Statements of the Four Evangelists
Regarding This.
"After this [4988] He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother and
His brothers and His disciples; and there they abode not many days.
And the passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to
Jerusalem, and He found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep
and doves, and the changers of money sitting, and He made a sort of
scourge of cords, and cast them all out of the temple, and the sheep
and the oxen, and He poured out the small money of the changers and
overthrew their tables, and to those that sold the doves He said, Take
these things hence; make not My Father's house a house of
merchandize. Then His disciples remembered that it was written, that
the zeal of thy house shall eat me up. The Jews therefore answered
and said unto Him, What sign showest Thou unto us, that Thou doest
such things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple,
and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews therefore answered,
Forty-six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou raise it up
in three days? But He spoke of the temple of His body. When
therefore He rose from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said
this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus said.
Now when He was at Jerusalem at the passover at the feast, many
believed in His name, beholding His signs which He did. But Jesus
Himself did not trust Himself to them, for that He knew all men, and
because He had no need that any should bear witness concerning man.
For He Himself knew what was in man."
The numbers which are recorded in the book of that name [4989]
obtained a place in Scripture in accordance with some principle which
determines their proportion to each thing. We ought therefore to
enquire whether the book of Moses which is called Numbers teaches us,
should we be able to trace it out, in some special way, the principle
with regard to this matter. This remark I make to you at the outset
of my tenth book, for in many passages of Scripture I have observed
the number ten to have a peculiar privilege, and you may consider
carefully whether the hope is justified that this volume will bring
you from God some special benefit. That this may prove to be the
case, we will seek to yield ourselves as fully as we can to God, who
loves to bestow His choicest gifts. The book begins at the words:
"After this He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother and His
brothers and His disciples, and there they abode not many days." The
other three Evangelists say that the Lord, after His conflict with the
devil, departed into Galilee. Matthew and Luke represent that he was
first at Nazara, [4990] and then left them and came and dwelt in
Capernaum. Matthew and Mark also state a certain reason why He
departed thither, namely, that He had heard that John was cast into
prison. The words are as follows: Matthew says, [4991] "Then the
devil leaveth Him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto Him.
But when He heard that John was delivered up, He departed into
Galilee, and leaving Nazareth He came and dwelt at Capernaum on the
seashore in the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, The land of
Zebulun and the land of Naphtali;" and after the quotation from
Isaiah: "From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, Repent ye;
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Mark has the following: [4992]
"And He was in the desert forty days and forty nights tempted by
Satan, and He was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto
Him. But after John was delivered up Jesus came into Galilee,
preaching the Gospel of God, that the time is fulfilled and the
kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe in the Gospel."
Then after the narrative about Andrew and Peter and James and John,
Mark writes: "And He entered into Capernaum, and straightway on the
Sabbath He was teaching in the synagogue." Luke has, [4993] "And
having finished the temptation the devil departed from Him for a
season. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee,
and a fame went out concerning Him into all the region round about,
and He taught in their synagogues being glorified of all. And He came
to Nazara, where He had been brought up, and He entered as His custom
was into the synagogue on the Sabbath day." Then Luke [4994] gives
what He said at Nazara, and how those in the synagogue were enraged at
Him and cast Him out of the city and brought Him to the brow of the
hill on which their cities were built, to cast Him down headlong, and
how going through the midst of them the Lord went His way; and with
this he connects the statement, "And He came down to Capernaum, a city
of Galilee, and He was teaching them on the Sabbath day."
Footnotes
[4988] John ii. 12-25.
[4989] The text is doubtful here, but the above seems to be the
meaning.
[4990] Nazara is with Origen a neuter plural.
[4991] iv. 11-15, 17.
[4992] i. 13, 14, 21.
[4993] iv. 13-16.
[4994] iv. 21 sqq.
2. The Discrepancy Between John and the First Three Gospels at This
Part of the Narrative, Literally Read, the Narratives Cannot Be
Harmonized: They Must Be Interpreted Spiritually.
The truth of these matters must lie in that which is seen by the
mind. If the discrepancy between the Gospels is not solved, we must
give up our trust in the Gospels, as being true and written by a
divine spirit, or as records worthy of credence, for both these
characters are held to belong to these works. Those who accept the
four Gospels, and who do not consider that their apparent discrepancy
is to be solved anagogically (by mystical interpretation), will have
to clear up the difficulty, raised above, about the forty days of the
temptation, a period for which no room can be found in any way in
John's narrative; and they will also have to tell us when it was that
the Lord came to Capernaum. If it was after the six days of the
period of His baptism, the sixth being that of the marriage at Cana of
Galilee, then it is clear that the temptation never took place, and
that He never was at Nazara, and that John was not yet delivered up.
Now, after Capernaum, where He abode not many days, the passover of
the Jews was at hand, and He went up to Jerusalem, where He cast the
sheep and oxen out of the temple, and poured out the small change of
the bankers. In Jerusalem, too, it appears that Nicodemus, the ruler
and Pharisee, first came to Him by night, and heard what we may read
in the Gospel. "After these things, [4995] Jesus came, and His
disciples, into the land of Judæa, and there He tarried with them and
baptized, at the same time at which John also was baptizing in Ænon
near Salim, because there were many waters there, and they came and
were baptized; for John was not yet cast into prison." On this
occasion, too, there was a questioning on the part of John's disciples
with the Jews about purification, and they came to John, saying of the
Saviour, "Behold, He baptizeth, and all come to Him." They had heard
words from the Baptist, the exact tenor of which it is better to take
from Scripture itself. Now, if we ask when Christ was first in
Capernaum, our respondents, if they follow the words of Matthew, and
of the other two, will say, After the temptation, when, "leaving
Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum by the sea." But how can
they show both the statements to be true, that of Matthew and Mark,
that it was because He heard that John was delivered up that He
departed into Galilee, and that of John, [4996] found there, after a
number of other transactions, subsequent to His stay at Capernaum,
after His going to Jerusalem, and His journey from there to Judæa,
that John was not yet cast into prison, but was baptizing in Ænon near
Salim? There are many other points on which the careful student of
the Gospels will find that their narratives do not agree; and these we
shall place before the reader, according to our power, as they occur.
The student, staggered at the consideration of these things, will
either renounce the attempt to find all the Gospels true, and not
venturing to conclude that all our information about our Lord is
untrustworthy, will choose at random one of them to be his guide; or
he will accept the four, and will consider that their truth is not to
be sought for in the outward and material letter.
Footnotes
[4995] John iii. 23-26.
[4996] iii. 24.
3. What We are to Think of the Discrepancies Between the Different
Gospels.
We must, however, try to obtain some notion of the intention of the
Evangelists in such matters, and we direct ourselves to this. Suppose
there are several men who, by the spirit, see God, and know His words
addressed to His saints, and His presence which He vouchsafes to them,
appearing to them at chosen times for their advancement. There are
several such men, and they are in different places, and the benefits
they receive from above vary in shape and character. And let these
men report, each of them separately, what he sees in spirit about God
and His words, and His appearances to His saints, so that one of them
speaks of God's appearances and words and acts to one righteous man in
such a place, and another about other oracles and great works of the
Lord, and a third of something else than what the former two have
dealt with. And let there be a fourth, doing with regard to some
particular matter something of the same kind as these three. And let
the four agree with each other about something the Spirit has
suggested to them all, and let them also make brief reports of other
matters besides that one; then their narratives will fall out
something on this wise: God appeared to such a one at such a time and
in such a place, and did to him thus and thus; as if He had appeared
to him in such a form, and had led him by the hand to such a place,
and then done to him thus and thus. The second will report that God
appeared at the very time of the foresaid occurrences, in a certain
town, to a person who is named, a second person, and in a place far
removed from that of the former account, and he will report a
different set of words spoken at the same time to this second person.
And let the same be supposed to be the case with the third and with
the fourth. And let them, as we said, agree, these witnesses who
report true things about God, and about His benefits conferred on
certain men, let them agree with each other in some of the narratives
they report. He, then, who takes the writings of these men for
history, or for a representation of real things by a historical image,
and who supposes God to be within certain limits in space, and to be
unable to present to several persons in different places several
visions of Himself at the same time, or to be making several speeches
at the same moment, he will deem it impossible that our four writers
are all speaking truth. To him it is impossible that God, who is in
certain limits in space, could at the same set time be saying one
thing to one man and another to another, and that He should be doing a
thing and the opposite thing as well, and, to put it bluntly, that He
should be both sitting and standing, should one of the writers
represent Him as standing at the time, and making a certain speech in
such a place to such a man, while a second writer speaks of Him as
sitting.
4. Scripture Contains Many Contradictions, and Many Statements Which
are Not Literally True, But Must Be Read Spiritually and Mystically.
In the case I have supposed where the historians desire to teach us by
an image what they have seen in their mind, their meaning would be
found, if the four were wise, to exhibit no disagreement; and we must
understand that with the four Evangelists it is not otherwise. They
made full use for their purpose of things done by Jesus in the
exercise of His wonderful and extraordinary power; they use in the
same way His sayings, and in some places they tack on to their
writing, with language apparently implying things of sense, things
made manifest to them in a purely intellectual way. I do not condemn
them if they even sometimes dealt freely with things which to the eye
of history happened differently, and changed them so as to subserve
the mystical aims they had in view; so as to speak of a thing which
happened in a certain place, as if it had happened in another, or of
what took place at a certain time, as if it had taken place at another
time, and to introduce into what was spoken in a certain way some
changes of their own. They proposed to speak the truth where it was
possible both materially and spiritually, and where this was not
possible it was their intention to prefer the spiritual to the
material. The spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say,
in the material falsehood. As, for example, we might judge of the
story of Jacob and Esau. [4997]Jacob says to Isaac, "I am Esau thy
firstborn son," and spiritually he spoke the truth, for he already
partook of the rights of the first-born, which were perishing in his
brother, and clothing himself with the goatskins he assumed the
outward semblance of Esau, and was Esau all but the voice praising
God, so that Esau might afterward find a place to receive a blessing.
For if Jacob had not been blessed as Esau, neither would Esau perhaps
have been able to receive a blessing of his own. And Jesus too is
many things, according to the conceptions of Him, of which it is quite
likely that the Evangelists took up different notions; while yet they
were in agreement with each other in the different things they wrote.
Statements which are verbally contrary to each other, are made about
our Lord, namely, that He was descended from David and that He was not
descended from David. The statement is true, "He was descended from
David," as the Apostle says, [4998] "born of the seed of David
according to the flesh," if we apply this to the bodily part of Him;
but the self-same statement is untrue if we understand His being born
of the seed of David of His diviner power; for He was declared to be
the Son of God with power. And for this reason too, perhaps, the
sacred prophecies speak of Him now as a servant, and now as a Son.
They call Him a servant on account of the form of a servant which he
wore, and because He was of the seed of David, but they call Him the
Son of God according to His character as first-born. Thus it is true
to call Him man and to call Him not man; man, because He was capable
of death; not man, on account of His being diviner than man. Marcion,
I suppose, took sound words in a wrong sense, when he rejected His
birth from Mary, and declared that as to His divine nature He was not
born of Mary, and hence made bold to delete from the Gospel the
passages which have this effect. And a like fate seems to have
overtaken those who make away with His humanity and receive His deity
alone; and also those opposites of these who cancel His deity and
confess Him as a man to be a holy man, and the most righteous of all
men. And those who hold the doctrine of Dokesis, not remembering that
He humbled Himself even unto death [4999] and became obedient even to
the cross, but only imagining in Him the absence of suffering, the
superiority to all such accidents, they do what they can to deprive us
of the man who is more just than all men, and are left with a figure
which cannot save them, for as by one man came death, so also by one
man is the justification of life. We could not have received such
benefit as we have from the Logos had He not assumed the man, had He
remained such as He was from the beginning with God the Father, and
had He not taken up man, the first man of all, the man more precious
than all others, purer than all others and capable of receiving Him.
But after that man we also shall be able to receive Him, to receive
Him so great and of such nature as He was, if we prepare a place in
proportion to Him in our soul. So much I have said of the apparent
discrepancies in the Gospels, and of my desire to have them treated in
the way of spiritual interpretation.
Footnotes
[4997] Gen. xxvii.
[4998] Rom. i. 3.
[4999] Philipp. ii. 8.
5. Paul Also Makes Contradictory Statements About Himself, and Acts
in Opposite Ways at Different Times.
On the same passage one may also make use of such an example as that
of Paul, who at one place [5000] says that he is carnal, sold under
sin, and thus was not able to judge anything, while in another place
he is the spiritual man who is able to judge all things and himself to
be judged by no man. Of the carnal one are the words, "Not what I
would that do I practise, but what I hate that do I." And he too who
was caught up to the third heaven and heard unspeakable words [5001]
is a different Paul from him who says, Of such an one I will glory,
but of myself I will not glory. If he becomes [5002] to the Jews as a
Jew that he may gain the Jews, and to those under the law as under the
law that he may gain those under the law, and to them that are without
law as without law, not being without law to God, but under law to
Christ, that he may gain those without law, and if to the weak he
becomes weak that he may gain the weak, it is clear that these
statements must be examined each by itself, that he becomes a Jew, and
that sometimes he is under the law and at another time without law,
and that sometimes he is weak. Where, for example, he says something
by way of permission [5003] and not by commandment, there we may
recognize that he is weak; for who, he says, [5004] is weak, and I am
not weak? When he shaves his head and makes an offering, [5005] or
when he circumcises Timothy, [5006] he is a Jew; but when he says to
the Athenians, [5007] "I found an altar with the inscription, To the
unknown God. That, then, which ye worship not knowing it, that
declare I unto you," and, "As also some of your own poets have said,
For we also are His offspring," then he becomes to those without the
law as without the law, adjuring the least religious of men to espouse
religion, and turning to his own purpose the saying of the poet, "From
Love do we begin; his race are we." [5008]And instances might
perhaps be found where, to men not Jews and yet under the law, he is
under the law.
Footnotes
[5000] Rom. vii. 14.
[5001] 2 Cor. xii. 3, 4, 5.
[5002] 1 Cor. ix. 20-22.
[5003] 1 Cor. vii. 6.
[5004] 2 Cor. xi. 29.
[5005] Acts xxi. 24, 26.
[5006] Acts xvi. 3.
[5007] Acts xvii. 23.
[5008] Aratus phenom. 5.
6. Different Accounts of the Call of Peter, and of the Imprisonment
of the Baptist. The Meaning of "Capernaum."
These examples may be serviceable to illustrate statements not only
about the Saviour, but about the disciples too, for here also there is
some discrepancy of statement. For there is a difference in thought
perhaps between Simon who is found by his own brother Andrew, and who
is addressed "Thou shalt be called Cephas," [5009] and him who is seen
by Jesus when walking by the sea of Galilee, [5010] along with his
brother, and addressed conjointly with that brother, "Come after Me,
and I will make you fishers of men." There was some fitness in the
fact that the writer who goes more to the root of the matter and tells
of the Word becoming flesh, and hence does not record the human
generation of the Word who was in the beginning with God, should not
tell us of Simon's being found at the seashore and called away from
there, but of his being found by his brother who had been staying with
Jesus at the tenth hour, and of his receiving the name Cephas in
connection with his being thus found out. If he was seen by Jesus
when walking by the sea of Galilee, it would scarcely be on a later
occasion that he was addressed, "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I
will build My church." With John again the Pharisees know Jesus to be
baptizing with His disciples, [5011] adding this to His other great
activities; but the Jesus of the three does not baptize at all. John
the Baptist, too, with the Evangelist of the same name, goes on a long
time without being cast into prison. With Matthew, on the contrary,
he is put in prison almost at the time of the temptation of Jesus, and
this is the occasion of Jesus retiring to Galilee, to avoid being put
in prison. But in John there is nothing at all about John's being put
in prison. Who is so wise and so able as to learn all the things that
are recorded about Jesus in the four Evangelists, and both to
understand each incident by itself, and have a connected view of all
His sojournings and words and acts at each place? As for the passage
presently before us, it gives in the order of events that on the sixth
day the Saviour, after the business of the marriage at Cana of
Galilee, went down with His mother and His brothers and His disciples
to Capernaum, which means "field of consolation." For after the
feasting and the wine it was fitting that the Saviour should come to
the field of consolation with His mother and His disciples, to console
those whom He was training for disciples and the soul which had
conceived Him by the Holy Ghost, with the fruits which were to stand
in that full field.
Footnotes
[5009] John i. 41.
[5010] Matt. iv. 18. Cf. Mark i. 16.
[5011] iv. 1, 2.
7. Why His Brothers are Not Called to the Wedding; And Why He Abides
at Capernaum Not Many Days.
But we must ask why His brothers are not called to the wedding: they
were not there, for it is not said they were; but they go down to
Capernaum with Him and His mother and His disciples. We must also
examine why on this occasion they do not "go in to" Capernaum, nor "go
up to," but "go down to" it. Consider if we must not understand by
His brothers here the powers which went down along with Him, not
called to the wedding according to the explanations given above, since
it is in lower and humbler places than those who are called disciples
of Christ, and in another way, that these brothers receive
assistance. For if His mother is called, then there are some bearing
fruit, and even to these the Lord goes down with the servants and
disciples of the Word, to help such persons, His mother also being
with Him. Those indeed who are called Capernaum appear not to be able
to allow Jesus and those who went down with Him to make a longer stay
with them: hence they remain with them not many days. For the lower
field of consolation does not admit the illumination of many
doctrines, but is only capable of a few. To get a clear view of the
difference between those who receive Jesus for longer and for shorter
time, we may compare with this, "They abode there not many days," the
words recorded in Matthew as spoken by Christ when risen from the dead
to His disciples who were being sent out to teach all nations, [5012]
"Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the world." To
those who are to know all that human nature can know while it still is
here, is said with emphasis, "I am with you;" and as the rise of each
new day upon the field of contemplation brings more days before the
eyes of the blessed, therefore He says, "All the days till the end of
the world." As for those in Capernaum, on the contrary, to whom they
go down as to the more needy, not only Jesus, but also His mother and
His brothers and His disciples "abode there not many days."
Footnotes
[5012] xxviii. 20.
8. How Christ Abides with Believers to the End of the Age, and
Whether He Abides with Them After that Consummation.
Some may very likely and not unreasonably ask, whether, when all the
days of this age are over, there will no longer be any one to say,
"Lo, I am with you," with those, namely, who received Him till the
fulfilment of the age, for the "until" seems to indicate a certain
limit of time. To this we must say that the phrase, "I am with you,"
is not the same as "I am in you." We might say more properly that the
Saviour was not in His disciples but with them, so long as they had
not arrived in their minds at the consummation of the age. But when
they see to be at hand, as far as their effort is concerned, the
consummation of the world which is crucified to them, then Jesus will
be no longer with them, but in them, and they will say, "It is no
longer I that live but Christ that lives in me," [5013] and "If ye
seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me." [5014]In saying this
we are keeping for our part also to the ordinary interpretation which
makes the "always" the time down to the consummation of the age, and
are not asking more than is attainable to human nature as it is here.
That interpretation may be adhered to and justice yet be done to the
"I." He who is with His disciples who are sent out to teach all the
nations, until the consummation, may be He who emptied Himself and
took the form of a servant, and yet afterwards may be another in point
of state; afterwards He may be such as He was before He emptied
Himself, until all His enemies are made by His Father the footstool of
His feet; and after this, when the Son has delivered up the kingdom to
God and the Father, it may be the Father who says to them, "Behold, I
am with you." But whether it is "all the days" up to that time, or
simply "all the days," or not "all days" but "every day," any one may
consider that likes. Our plan does not allow us at present to digress
so far.
Footnotes
[5013] Gal. ii. 20.
[5014] 2 Cor. xiii. 3.
9. Heracleon Says that Jesus is Not Stated to Have Done Anything at
Capernaum. But in the Other Gospels He Does Many Things There.
But Heracleon, dealing with the words, "After this He went down to
Capernaum," declares that they indicate the introduction of another
transaction, and that the word "went down" is not without
significance. "Capernaum," he says, "means these farthest-out parts
of the world, these districts of matter, into which He descended, and
because the place was not suitable, he says, He is not reported either
to have done anything or said anything in it." Now if the Lord had
not been reported in the other Gospels either as having done or said
anything at Capernaum, we might perhaps have hesitated whether this
view ought or ought not to be received. But that is far from being
the case. Matthew says our Lord left Nazareth and came and dwelt at
Capernaum on the seaside, and that from that time He began to preach,
saying, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." And Mark,
starting in his narrative [5015] from the temptation by the devil,
relates that after John was cast into prison, Jesus came into Galilee,
proclaiming the Gospel of God, and after the call of the four
fishermen to the Apostleship, "they enter into Capernaum; and
straightway on the Sabbath day He taught in the synagogue, and they
were astonished at His doctrine." And Mark records an action of Jesus
also which took place at Capernaum, for he goes on to say, "In their
synagogue there was a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out,
saying, Ah! what have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art
Thou come to destroy us? We know Thee who Thou art, the Son of God.
And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace and come out of him; and
the unclean spirit, tearing him and crying with a loud voice, came out
of him. And they were all amazed." And at Capernaum Simon's
mother-in-law is cured of her fever. And Mark adds that when evening
was come all those were cured who were sick and who were possessed
with demons. Luke's report is very like Mark's about Capernaum.
[5016]He says, "And He came to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and He
was teaching them on the Sabbath day, and they were astonished at His
teachings, for His word was with power. And in the synagogue there
was a man having a spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a
loud voice, Ah! what have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth?
Hast Thou come to destroy us? I know Thee who Thou art, the holy one
of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace and come out of
him. Then the demon having thrown him down in the midst, went out of
him, doing him no harm." And then Luke reports how the Lord rose up
from the synagogue and went into the house of Simon, and rebuked the
fever in his mother-in-law, and cured her of her disease; and after
this cure, "when the sun was setting," he says, "all, as many as had
persons sick with divers diseases, brought them to Him, and He laid
his hands on each one of them and cured them. And demons also went
out from many, crying and saying, Thou art the Son of God, and He
rebuked them and suffered them not to speak because they knew that He
was the Christ." We have presented all these statements as to the
Saviour's sayings and doings at Capernaum in order to refute
Heracleon's interpretation of our passage, "Hence He is not said to
have done or to have spoken anything there." He must either give two
meanings to Capernaum, and show us his reasons for them, or if he
cannot do this he must give up saying that the Saviour visited any
place to no purpose. We, for our part, should we come to passages
where even a comparison of the other Gospels fails to show that Jesus'
visit to this place or that was not accompanied by any results, will
seek with the divine assistance to make it clear that His coming was
not in vain.
Footnotes
[5015] i. 14-27.
[5016] iv. 31-41.
10. Significance of Capernaum.
Matthew for his part adds, [5017] that when the Lord had entered into
Capernaum the centurion came to him, saying, "My boy is lying in my
house sick of the palsy, grievously tormented," and after telling the
Lord some more about him, received the reply, "Go, and as thou hast
believed, so be it unto thee." And Matthew then gives us the story of
Peter's mother-in-law, in close agreement with the other two. I
conceive it to be a creditable piece of work and becoming to one who
is anxious to hear about Christ, to collect from the four Gospels all
that is related about Capernaum, and the discourses spoken, and the
works done there, and how many visits the Lord paid to the place, and
how, at one time, He is said to have gone down to it, and at another
to have entered into it, and where He came from when He did so. If we
compare all these points together, we shall not go astray in the
meaning we ascribe to Capernaum. On the one hand, the sick are
healed, and other works of power are done there, and on the other, the
preaching, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, begins
there, and this appears to be a sign, as we showed when entering on
this subject, of some more needy place of consolation, made so perhaps
by Jesus, who comforted men by what He taught and by what He did
there, in that place of consolation. For we know that the names of
places agree in their meaning with the things connected with Jesus; as
Gergesa, where the citizens of these parts besought Him to depart out
of their coasts, means, "The dwelling of the casters-out." And this,
also, we have noticed about Capernaum, that not only did the
preaching, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," begin
there, but that according to the three Evangelists Jesus performed
there His first miracles. None of the three, however, added to the
first wonders which he records as done in Capernaum, that note
attached by John the disciple to the first work of Jesus, "This
beginning of His signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee." For that which
was done in Capernaum was not the beginning of the signs, since the
leading sign of the Son of God was good cheer, and in the light of
human experience it is also the most representative of Him. For the
Word of God does not show forth His own beauty so much in healing the
sick, as in His tendering the temperate draught to make glad those who
are in good health and are able to join in the banquet.
Footnotes
[5017] viii. 5 sqq.
11. Why the Passover is Said to Be that of the "Jews." Its
Institution: and the Distinction Between "Feasts of the Lord" And
Feasts Not So Spoken of.
"And the passover of the Jews was at hand." [5018]Inquiring into
the accuracy of the most wise John (on this passage), I put myself the
question, What is indicated by the addition "of the Jews"? Of what
other nation was the passover a festival? Would it not have been
enough to say, "And the passover was at hand"? It may, however, be
the case that the human passover is one thing when kept by men not as
Scripture intended, and that the divine passover is another thing, the
true passover, observed in spirit and truth by those who worship God
in spirit and in truth; and then the distinction indicated in the text
may be that between the divine passover and that said to be of the
Jews. We should attend to the passover law and observe what the Lord
says of it when it is first mentioned in Scripture. [5019]"And the
Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This
month is to you the beginning of months, it is the first for you among
the months of the year. Speak thou to all the congregation of the
children of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month shall every man
take a sheep, according to the houses of your families;" then after
some directions in which the word passover does not occur again, he
adds, [5020] "Thus shall ye eat it, your loins girt and your shoes on
your feet, and your staves in your hands, and ye shall eat it with
haste. It is the passover of the Lord." He does not say, "It is your
passover." And a little further on He names the festival again in the
same way, [5021] "And it shall come to pass, when your sons say to
you, What is this service? And ye shall say to them, It is the
sacrifice, the passover of the Lord, how He guarded the houses of the
children of Israel." And again, a little further on, [5022] "And the
Lord spake to Moses and Aaron, saying, This is the law of the
passover. No alien shall eat of it." And again in a little, [5023]
"But if a proselyte come to you, and keep the passover of the Lord,
every male of him shall be circumcised." Observe that in the law we
never find it said, "Your passover;" but in all the passages quoted
the phrase occurs once without any adjunct, while we have three times
"The passover of the Lord." To make sure that there is such a
distinction between the passover of the Lord and the passover of the
Jews, we may consider the way in which Isaiah speaks of the matter:
[5024]"Your new moons and your Sabbaths and your great day I cannot
bear; your fast and your holiday and your new moons and your feasts my
soul hateth." The Lord does not call them His own, these observances
of sinners (they are hated of His soul, if such there be); neither the
new moons, nor the Sabbaths, nor the great day, nor the fast, nor the
festivals. And in the legislation about the Sabbath in Exodus, we
read, [5025] "And Moses said unto them, This is the word which the
Lord spake, The Sabbath is a holy rest unto the Lord." And a little
further on, "And Moses said, Eat ye; for to-day is a Sabbath unto the
Lord." And in Numbers, [5026] before the sacrifices which are offered
at each festival, as if all the festivals came under the law of the
continuous and daily sacrifice, we find it written, "And the Lord
spake unto Moses, Announce to the children of Israel, and thus shalt
thou say unto them, My gifts, My offerings, My fruits for a smell of
sweet savour, ye shall observe to offer unto Me at My festivals. And
thou shalt say unto them, These are the offerings which ye shall offer
unto the Lord." The festival set forth in Scripture He calls His own,
not those of the people receiving the law, He speaks of His gifts, His
offerings. A similar way of speaking is that in Exodus with regard to
the people; it is said by God to be His own people, when it does not
sin; but in the section about the calf He abjures it and calls it the
people of Moses. [5027]On the one hand, "Thou shalt say to Pharaoh,
Thus saith the Lord, Let My people go, that they may serve Me in the
wilderness. But if thou wilt not let My people go, behold, I will
send against thee and against thy servants, and against thy people and
against thy houses, the dog-fly; and the houses of the Egyptians shall
be full of the dog-fly, and on the land on which they are, against it
will I send them. And I will glorify on that day the land of Gesem,
on which My people are; on it there shall be no dog-fly, that thou
mayest know that I am the Lord, the Lord of all the earth. And I will
make a distinction between My people and thy people." To Moses, on
the other hand, He says, [5028] "Go, descend quickly, for thy people
hath transgressed, which thou leddest out of the land of Egypt." As,
then, the people when it does not sin is the people of God, but when
it sins is no longer spoken of as His, thus, also, the feasts when
they are hated by the Lord's soul are said to be feasts of sinners,
but when the law is given regarding them, they are called feasts of
the Lord. Now of these feasts passover is one, which in the passage
before us is said to be that not of the Lord, but of the Jews. In
another passage, too, [5029] we find it said, "These are the feasts of
the Lord, which ye shall call chosen, holy." From the mouth of the
Lord Himself, then, we see that there is no gainsaying our statement
on this point. Some one, no doubt, will ask about the words of the
Apostle, where he writes to the Corinthians: [5030]"For our
Passover also was sacrificed for us, namely, Christ;" he does not say,
"The Passover of the Lord was sacrificed, even Christ." To this we
must say, either that the Apostle simply calls the passover our
passover because it was sacrificed for us, or that every sacrifice
which is really the Lord's, and the passover is one of these, awaits
its consummation not in this age nor upon earth, but in the coming age
and in heaven when the kingdom of heaven appears. As for those
feasts, one of the twelve prophets says, [5031] "What will ye do in
the days of assembly, and in the days of the feast of the Lord?" But
Paul says in the Epistle to the Hebrews: [5032]"But ye are come
unto Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem, and to ten thousands of angels, the assembly and church of
the firstborn, who are written in heaven." And in the Epistle to the
Colossians: [5033]"Let no one judge you in meat and in drink, or in
respect of a feast-day or a new moon, or a sabbath-day; which are a
shadow of the things to come."
Footnotes
[5018] John ii. 13.
[5019] Exod. xii. 1-3.
[5020] Ver. 11.
[5021] Ver. 26.
[5022] Ver. 43-48.
[5023] Ver. 48.
[5024] Isa. i. 13.
[5025] xvi. 23.
[5026] xxviii. 1.
[5027] Exod. viii. 21-23.
[5028] Exod. xxxii. 7.
[5029] Levit. xxiii. 2.
[5030] 1 Cor. v. 7.
[5031] Hosea ix. 5.
[5032] xii. 22, 23.
[5033] ii. 16.
12. Of the Heavenly Festivals, of Which Those on Earth are Typical.
Now in what manner, in those heavenly things of which the shadow was
present to the Jews on earth, those will celebrate festivals who have
first been trained by tutors and governors under the true law, until
the fulness of the time should come, namely, above, when we shall be
able to receive into ourselves the perfect measure of the Son of God,
this it is the work of that wisdom to make plain which has been hidden
in a mystery; and it also may show to our thought how the laws about
meats are symbols of those things which will there nourish and
strengthen our soul. But it is vain to think that one desiring to
work out in his fancy the great sea of such ideas, even if he wished
to show how local worship is still a pattern and shadow of heavenly
things, and that the sacrifices and the sheep are full of meaning,
that he should advance further than the Apostle, who seeks indeed to
lift our minds above earthly views of the law, but who does not show
us to any extent how these things are to be. Even if we look at the
festivals, of which passover is one, from the point of view of the age
to come, we have still to ask how it is that our passover is now
sacrificed, namely, Christ, and not only so, but is to be sacrificed
hereafter.
13. Spiritual Meaning of the Passover.
A few points may be added in connection with the doctrines now under
consideration, though it would require a special discussion in many
volumes to treat of all the mystical statements about the law, and
specially of those connected with the festivals, and more particularly
still with the passover. The passover of the Jews consists of a sheep
which is sacrificed, each taking a sheep according to his father's
house; and the passover is accompanied by the slaughter of thousands
of rams and goats, in proportion to the number of the houses of the
people. But our Passover is sacrificed for us, namely, Christ.
Another feature of the Jewish festival is unleavened bread; all leaven
is made to disappear out of their houses; but "we keep the feast
[5034] not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and
wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."
Whether there be any passover and any feast of leaven beyond the two
we have mentioned, is a point we must examine more carefully, since
these serve for a pattern and a shadow of the heavenly ones we spoke
of, and not only such things as food and drink and new moons and
sabbaths, but the festivals also, are a shadow of the things to come.
In the first place, when the Apostle says, "Our passover is
sacrificed, Christ," one may feel with regard to this such doubts as
these. If the sheep with the Jews is a type of the sacrifice of
Christ, then one should have been offered and not a multitude, as
Christ is one; or if many sheep were offered it is to follow out the
type, as if many Christs were sacrificed. But not to dwell on this,
we may ask how the sheep, which was the victim, contains an image of
Christ, when the sheep was sacrificed by men who were observing the
law, but Christ was put to death by transgressors of the law, and what
application can be found in Christ of the direction, [5035] "They
shall eat the flesh this night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread
on bitter herbs shall they eat," and "Eat not of it raw, nor sodden
with water, but roast with fire; the head with the feet and the
entrails; ye shall not set any of it apart till the morning, and a
bone thereof ye shall not break. But that which is left thereof till
the morning ye shall burn." The sentence, "A bone of it ye shall not
break," John appears to have made use of in his Gospel, as applying to
the transactions connected with Christ, and connecting with them the
occasion spoken of in the law when those eating the sheep are bidden
not to break a bone of it. He writes as follows: [5036]"The
soldiers therefore came and brake the legs of the first, and of the
other who was crucified with him; but when they came to Jesus and saw
that He was already dead, they brake not His legs, but one of the
soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and straightway there came out
blood and water. And he that hath seen hath borne witness and his
witness is true, and he knoweth that he sayeth truth that ye also may
believe. And these things took place that the Scripture might be
fulfilled, "A bone of Him ye shall not break." There are a myriad
other points besides this in the Apostle's language which would call
for inquiry, both about the passover and the unleavened bread, but
they would have to be dealt with, as we said above, in a special work
of great length. At present we can only give an epitome of them as
they bear on the text presently before us, and aim at a short solution
of the principal problem. We call to mind the words, "This is the
Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," for it is said of
the passover, [5037] "Ye shall take it of the lambs or of the goats."
The Evangelist here agrees with Paul, and both are involved in the
difficulties we spoke of above. But on the other hand we have to say
that if the Word became flesh, and the Lord says, [5038] "Unless ye
eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life
in you. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, hath eternal
life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is meat
indeed and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh and
drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in him,"--then the flesh thus
spoken of is that of the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world;
and this is the blood, some of which was to be put on the two side
posts of the door, and on the lintels in the houses, in which we eat
the passover. Of the flesh of this Lamb it is necessary that we
should eat in the time of the world, which is night, and the flesh is
to be roast with fire, and eaten with unleavened bread; for the Word
of God is not flesh and flesh only. He says, in fact, Himself, [5039]
"I am the bread of life," and "This is the bread of life which came
down from heaven, that a man should eat of it, and not die. I am the
bread of life that came down from heaven; if a man eat of this bread,
he shall live for ever." We must not overlook, however, that by a
loose use of words, any food is called bread, as we read in Moses in
Deuteronomy, [5040] "Forty days He ate no bread and drank no water,"
instead of, He took no food, either wet or dry. I am led to this
observation by John's saying, "And the bread which I will give is My
flesh, for the life of the world." Again, we eat the flesh of the
Lamb, with bitter herbs, and unleavened bread, when we repent of our
sins and grieve with the sorrow which is according to God, a
repentance which operates for our salvation, and is not to be repented
of; or when, on account of our trials, we turn to the speculations
which are found to be those of truth, and are nourished by them. We
are not, however, to eat the flesh of the Lamb raw, as those do who
are slaves of the letter, like irrational animals, and those who are
enraged at men truly reasonable, because they desire to understand
spiritual things; truly, they share the nature of savage beasts. But
we must strive to convert the rawness of Scripture into well-cooked
food, not letting what is written grow flabby and wet and thin, as
those do who have itching ears, [5041] and turn away their ears from
the truth; their methods tend to a loose and flabby conduct of life.
But let us be of a fervent spirit and keep hold of the fiery words
given to us of God, such as Jeremiah received from Him who spoke to
him, [5042] "Behold, I have made My words in thy mouth like fire," and
let us see that the flesh of the Lamb be well cooked, so that those
who partake of it may say, as Christ speaks in us, "Our heart burned
by the way, as He opened to us the Scriptures." [5043]Further, if
it is our duty to enquire into such a point as the roasting of the
flesh of the Lamb with fire, we must not forget the parallel of what
Jeremiah suffered on account of the words of God, as he says: [5044]
"And it was as a glowing fire, burning in my bones, and I am without
any strength, and I cannot bear it." But, in this eating, we must
begin at the head, that is to say, at the principal and the most
essential doctrines about heavenly things, and we must end at the
feet, the last branches of learning which enquire as to the final
nature in things, or about more material things, or about things under
the earth, or about wicked spirits and unclean demons. For it may be
that the account of these things is not obvious, like themselves, but
is laid away among the mysteries of Scripture, so that it may be
called, tropically, the feet of the Lamb. Nor must we fail to deal
with the entrails, which are within and hidden from us; we must
approach the whole of Scripture as one body, we must not lacerate nor
break through the strong and well-knit connections which exist in the
harmony of its whole composition, as those do who lacerate, so far as
they can, the unity of the Spirit that is in all the Scriptures. But
this aforesaid prophecy of the Lamb is to be our nourishment only
during the night of this dark life of ours; what comes after this life
is, as it were, the dawn of day, and why should we leave over till
then the food which can only be useful to us now? But when the night
is passed, and the day which succeeds it is at hand, then we shall
have bread to eat which has nothing to do with the leavened bread of
the older and lower state of things, but is unleavened, and that will
serve our turn until that which comes after the unleavened bread is
given us, the manna, which is food for angels rather than men. Every
one of us, then, may sacrifice his lamb in every house of our fathers;
and while one breaks the law, not sacrificing the lamb at all, another
may keep the commandment entirely, offering his sacrifice, and cooking
it aright, and not breaking a bone of it. This, then, in brief, is
the interpretation of the Passover sacrificed for us, which is Christ,
in accordance with the view taken of it by the Apostles, and with the
Lamb in the Gospel. For we ought not to suppose that historical
things are types of historical things, and material things of
material, but that material things are typical of spiritual things,
and historical things of intellectual. It is not necessary that our
discourse should now ascend to that third passover which is to be
celebrated with myriads of angels in the most perfect and most blessed
exodus; we have already spoken of these things to a greater extent
than the passage demands.
Footnotes
[5034] 1 Cor. v. 8.
[5035] Exod. xii. 8.
[5036] xix. 32.
[5037] Exod. xii. 5.
[5038] John vi. 53.
[5039] John vi. 48-50.
[5040] ix. 9.
[5041] 2 Tim. iv. 3, 4.
[5042] Jer. v. 14.
[5043] Luke xxiv. 32.
[5044] xx. 9.
14. In the First Three Gospels the Passover is Spoken of Only at the
Close of the Ministry; In John at the Beginning. Remarks on This.
Heracleon on the Passover.
We must not, however, fail to enquire into the statement that the
passover of the Jews was at hand, when the Lord was at Capernaum with
His mother and His brothers and His disciples. In the Gospel
according to Matthew, [5045] after being left by the devil, and after
the angels came and ministered to Him, when He heard that John was
delivered up He withdrew into Galilee, and leaving Nazara He came and
dwelt in Capernaum. Then He began to preach, and chose the four
fishermen for His Apostles, and taught in the synagogues of the whole
of Galilee and healed those who were brought to Him. Then He goes up
into the mountain and speaks the beatitudes and what follows them; and
after finishing that instruction He comes down from the mountain and
enters Capernaum a second time. [5046]Then He embarked in a ship
and crossed over to the other side to the country of the Gergesenes.
On their beseeching Him to depart out of their coasts He embarked
[5047] in a ship and crossed over and came to His own city. Then He
wrought certain cures and went about all the cities and the villages,
teaching in their synagogues; after this most of the events of the
Gospels take place, before Matthew indicates the approach of the time
of passover. [5048]With the other Evangelists also, after the stay
at Capernaum it is long till we come to any mention of the passover;
which may confirm in their opinion those who take the view about
Capernaum which was set forth above. That stay, in the neighbourhood
of the passover of the Jews, is set in a brighter light by that
nearness, both because it was better in itself, and still more because
at the passover of the Jews there are found in the temple those who
sell oxen and sheep and doves. This adds emphasis to the statement
that the passover was not that of the Lord but that of the Jews; the
Father's house was made, in the eyes of those who did not hallow it, a
house of merchandise, and the passover of the Lord became for those
who took a low and material view of it a Jewish passover. A fitter
occasion than the present will occur for enquiring as to the time of
the passover, which took place about the spring equinox, and for any
other enquiry which may arise in connection with it. As for
Heracleon, he says, "This is the great festival; for it was a type of
the passion of the Saviour; not only was the lamb put to death, the
eating of it afforded relaxation, the killing it pointed to what of
the passion of the Saviour was in this world, and the eating it to the
rest at the marriage." We have given his words, that it may be seen
with what a want of caution and how loosely he proceeds, and with what
an absence of constructive skill even on such a theme as this; and how
little regard in consequence is to be paid to him.
Footnotes
[5045] iv. 11 sqq.
[5046] Matt. viii.
[5047] viii. 23.
[5048] xxvi. 2.
15. Discrepancy of the Gospel Narratives Connected with the Cleansing
of the Temple.
"And Jesus went up to Jerusalem. [5049]And He found in the temple
those that sold oxen and sheep and doves and the changers of money
sitting; and He made a scourge of cords, and cast out of the temple
the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the small coin of the changers,
and overturned their tables, and to those who sold the doves He said,
Take these things hence; make not My Father's house a house of
merchandise. Then His disciples remembered that it was written, The
zeal of thy house shall eat me up." It is to be noted that John makes
this transaction of Jesus with those He found selling oxen and sheep
and doves in the temple His second work; while the other Evangelists
narrate a similar incident almost at the end and in connection with
the story of the passion. Matthew has it thus: [5050]"At Jesus'
entry into Jerusalem the whole city was stirred, saying, Who is this?
And the multitudes said, This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth of
Galilee. And Jesus went into the temple and cast out all them that
sold and bought in the temple, and He overturned the tables of the
money-changers and the seats of them that sold doves. And He says to
them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but
you make it a den of robbers." Mark has the following: "And they
came to Jerusalem. And having entered into the temple He began to
cast out those that sold and bought in the temple, and the tables of
the money-changers He overthrew and the seats of them that sold
doves. And He suffered not that any should carry a vessel through the
temple; and He taught and said unto them, Is it not written that My
house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you
have made it a den of robbers." And Luke: [5051]"And when he came
near, He beheld the city and wept over it, saying that, if thou hadst
known in this day, even thou, the things that belong to peace; but now
they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, when
they shall surround thee and shut thee in on every side, and shall
dash thee to the ground and thy children, and they shall not leave in
thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy
visitation. And He entered into the temple and began to cast out
those that sold, saying to them, It is written, My house shall be a
house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of robbers." It is further
to be observed that what is recorded by the three as having taken
place in connection with the Lord's going up to Jerusalem, when He did
these things in the temple, is narrated in a very similar manner by
John as taking place long after this, after another visit to Jerusalem
different from this one. We must consider the statements, and in the
first place that of Matthew, where we read: [5052]"When He drew
nigh to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage over against the Mount of
Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying unto them, Go ye into
the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass
tied and a colt with her; loose them and bring them to Me. And if any
man say unto you, What are you doing? you shall say, The Lord hath
need of them, and straightway he will send them. But this was done
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying,
Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy king cometh, meek and
seated upon an ass and upon the colt of an ass. And the disciples
went and did as Jesus commanded them; they brought the ass and the
foal, and they placed on them their garments, and He sat thereon. And
the most part of the multitude spread their garments on the road, but
the multitudes that went before Him, and they that followed, cried,
Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is He that cometh in the name of
the Lord. Hosanna in the highest." After this comes, "And when He
had entered into Jerusalem the whole city was stirred," which we cited
above. Then we have Mark's account: [5053]"And when they drew nigh
unto Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, to the Mount of Olives, He
sends two of His disciples and says to them, Go ye into the village
over against you. And straightway as ye enter into it ye shall find a
colt tied, on which no man hath ever sat, loose it and bring it. And
if any one say to you, Why do ye this? say, Because the Lord hath need
of him, and straightway he will send him back hither. And they went
and found the colt tied at the door outside on the road, and they
loose him. And some of them that stood there said to them, What do
ye, loosing the colt? And they said to them as Jesus told them, and
they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast on it
their garments. But others cut down branches from the field and
spread them in the way. And they that went before and they that
followed cried, Hosanna, blessed is He that cometh in the name of the
Lord; blessed be the kingdom that cometh, of our father David!
Hosanna in the highest! And He went into Jerusalem to the temple, and
looked round about on all things, and as it was already evening, He
went out to Bethany with the twelve. And on the morrow when they were
come forth from Bethany He was hungry." Then, after the affair of the
withered fig tree, "They came to Jerusalem. And He went into the
temple and began to cast out them that sold." Luke narrates as
follows: [5054] "And it came to pass, when He drew near to
Bethphage and Bethany at the mount that is called the Mount of Olives,
He sent two of his disciples, saying, Go ye into the village over
against you, in which when ye enter, ye shall find a colt tied, on
which no man ever hath sate; loose him and bring him. And if any man
asks you, Why do ye loose him? Ye shall say thus, The Lord hath need
of him. And the disciples went and found as He said to them. And
when they were loosing the colt its owners said to them, Why loose ye
the colt? and they said, Because the Lord hath need of him. And they
brought him to Jesus, and they threw their garments on the colt, and
set Jesus thereon. And as He went, they strewed their garments in the
way. And when He was drawing near, being now at the descent of the
Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice
and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works which they
had seen, saying, Blessed is the King in the name of the Lord; peace
in heaven and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees from
the multitude said unto Him, Master, rebuke Thy disciples. And He
answered and said, I say unto you, If these shall hold their peace,
the stones will cry out. And when He drew near He beheld the city and
wept over it," and so on, as we cited above. John, on the contrary,
after giving an account nearly identical with this, as far as, "And
Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and He found in the temple those who were
selling oxen and sheep," gives a second account of an ascent of the
Lord to Jerusalem, and then goes on to tell of the supper in Bethany
six days before the passover, at which Martha served and Lazarus was
at table. "On the morrow, [5055] a great multitude that had come to
the feast, having heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took
branches of palm trees and went forth to meet Him; and they cried,
Hosanna, blessed be the King of Israel in the name of the Lord. And
Jesus, having found a young ass, sat thereon, as it is written, Fear
not, daughter of Zion; behold thy King cometh, sitting on the foal of
an ass." I have written out long sections from the Gospels, but I
have thought it necessary to do so, in order to exhibit the
discrepancy at this part of our Gospel. Three of the Gospels place
these incidents, which we supposed to be the same as those narrated by
John, in connection with one visit of the Lord to Jerusalem. While
John, on the other hand, places them in connection with two visits
which are widely separated from each other and between which were
various journeys of the Lord to other places. I conceive it to be
impossible for those who admit nothing more than the history in their
interpretation to show that these discrepant statements are in harmony
with each other. If any one considers that we have not given a sound
exposition, let him write a reasoned rejoinder to this declaration of
ours.
Footnotes
[5049] John ii. 13-17.
[5050] Matt. xxi. 10-13.
[5051] Luke xix. 41, 42.
[5052] Matt. xxi. 1.
[5053] Mark xi. 1-12.
[5054] Luke xix. 29.
[5055] John xii. 12-15.
16. The Story of the Purging of the Temple Spiritualized. Taken
Literally, It Presents Some Very Difficult and Unlikely Features.
We shall, however, expound according to the strength that is given to
us the reasons which move us to recognize here a harmony; and in doing
so we entreat Him who gives to every one that asks and strives acutely
to enquire, and we knock that by the keys of higher knowledge the
hidden things of Scripture may be opened to us. And first, let us fix
our attention on the words of John, beginning, "And Jesus went up to
Jerusalem." [5056]Now Jerusalem, as the Lord Himself teaches in the
Gospel according to Matthew, [5057] "is the city of the great King."
It does not lie in a depression, or in a low situation, but is built
on a high mountain, and there are mountains round about it, [5058] and
the participation of it is to the same place, [5059] and thither the
tribes of the Lord went up, a testimony for Israel. But that city
also is called Jerusalem, to which none of those upon the earth
ascends, nor goes in; but every soul that possesses by nature some
elevation and some acuteness to perceive the things of the mind is a
citizen of that city. And it is possible even for a dweller in
Jerusalem to be in sin (for it is possible for even the acutest minds
to sin), should they not turn round quickly after their sin, when they
have lost their power of mind and are on the point not only of
dwelling in one of those strange cities of Judæa, but even of being
inscribed as its citizens. Jesus goes up to Jerusalem, after bringing
help to those in Cana of Galilee, and then going down to Capernaum,
that He may do in Jerusalem the things which are written. He found in
the temple, certainly, which is said to be the house of the Father of
the Saviour, that is, in the church or in the preaching of the
ecclesiastical and sound word, some who were making His Father's house
a house of merchandise. And at all times Jesus finds some of this
sort in the temple. For in that which is called the church, which is
the house of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth,
[5060] when are there not some money-changers sitting who need the
strokes of the scourge Jesus made of small cords, and dealers in small
coin who require to have their money poured out and their tables
overturned? When are there not those who are inclined to merchandise,
but need to be held to the plough and the oxen, that having put their
hand to it and not turning round to the things behind them, they may
be fit for the kingdom of God? When are there not those who prefer
the mammon of unrighteousness to the sheep which give them the
material for their true adornment? And there are always many who look
down on what is sincere and pure and unmixed with any bitterness or
gall, and who, for the sake of miserable gain, betray the care of
those tropically called doves. When, therefore, the Saviour finds in
the temple, the house of His Father, those who are selling oxen and
sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting, He drives them
out, using the scourge of small cords which He has made, along with
the sheep and oxen of their trade, and pours out their stock of coin,
as not deserving to be kept together, so little is it worth. He also
overturns the tables in the souls of such as love money, saying even
to those who sell doves, "Take these things hence," that they may no
longer traffic in the house of God. But I believe that in these words
He indicated also a deeper truth, and that we may regard these
occurrences as a symbol of the fact that the service of that temple
was not any longer to be carried on by the priests in the way of
material sacrifices, and that the time was coming when the law could
no longer be observed, however much the Jews according to the flesh
desired it. For when Jesus casts out the oxen and sheep, and orders
the doves to be taken away, it was because oxen and sheep and doves
were not much longer to be sacrificed there in accordance with Jewish
practices. And possibly the coins which bore the stamp of material
things and not of God were poured out by way of type; because the law
which appears so venerable, with its letter that kills, was, now that
Jesus had come and had used His scourge to the people, to be dissolved
and poured out, the sacred office (episcopate) being transferred to
those from the Gentiles who believed, and the kingdom of God being
taken away from the Jews [5061] and given to a nation bringing forth
the fruits of it. But it may also be the case that the natural temple
is the soul skilled in reason, which, because of its inborn reason, is
higher than the body; to which Jesus ascends from Capernaum, the
lower-lying place of less dignity, and in which, before Jesus'
discipline is applied to it, are found tendencies which are earthly
and senseless and dangerous, and things which have the name but not
the reality of beauty, and which are driven away by Jesus with His
word plaited out of doctrines of demonstration and of rebuke, to the
end that His Father's house may no longer be a house of merchandize
but may receive, for its own salvation and that of others, that
service of God which is performed in accordance with heavenly and
spiritual laws. The ox is symbolic of earthly things, for he is a
husbandman. The sheep, of senseless and brutal things, because it is
more servile than most of the creatures without reason. Of empty and
unstable thoughts, the dove. Of things that are thought good but are
not, the small change. If any one objects to this interpretation of
the passage and says that it is only pure animals that are mentioned
in it, we must say that the passage would otherwise have an unlikely
air. The occurence is necessarily related according to the
possibilities of the story. It could not have been narrated that a
herd of any other animals than pure ones had found access to the
temple, nor could any have been sold there but those used for
sacrifice. The Evangelist makes use of the known practice of the
merchants at the times of the Jewish feasts; they did bring in such
animals to the outer court; this practice, with a real occurrence He
knew of, were His materials. Any one, however, who cares to do so may
enquire whether it is in agreement with the position held by Jesus in
this world, since He was reputed to be the Son of a carpenter, to
venture upon such an act as to drive out a crowd of merchants from the
temple? They had come up to the feast to sell to a great number of
the people, the sheep, several myriads in number, which they were to
sacrifice according to their fathers' houses. To the richer Jews they
had oxen to sell, and there were doves for those who had vowed such
animals, and many no doubt bought these with a view to their good
cheer at the festival. And did not Jesus do an unwarrantable thing
when He poured out the money of the money-changers, which was their
own, and overthrew their tables? And who that received a blow from
the scourge of small cords at the hands of One held in but slight
esteem, was driven out of the temple, would not have attacked Him and
raised a cry and avenged himself with his own hand, especially when
there was such a multitude present who might all feel themselves
insulted by Jesus in the same way? To think, moreover, of the Son of
God taking the small cords in His hands and plaiting a scourge out of
them for this driving out from the temple, does it not bespeak
audacity and temerity and even some measure of lawlessness? One
refuge remains for the writer who wishes to defend these things and is
minded to treat the occurrence as real history, namely, to appeal to
the divine nature of Jesus, who was able to quench, when He desired to
do so, the rising anger of His foes, by divine grace to get the better
of myriads, and to scatter the devices of tumultuous men; for "the
Lord scatters the counsels of the nations [5062] and brings to naught
devices of the peoples, but the counsel of the Lord abideth for
ever." Thus the occurrence in our passage, if it really took place,
was not second in point of the power it exhibits to any even of the
most marvellous works Christ wrought, and claimed no less by its
divine character the faith of the beholders. One may show it to be a
greater work than that done at Cana of Galilee in the turning of water
into wine; for in that case it was only soulless matter that was
changed, but here it was the soul and will of thousands of men. It
is, however, to be observed that at the marriage the mother of Jesus
is said to be there, and Jesus to have been invited and His disciples,
but that no one but Jesus is said to have descended to Capernaum. His
disciples, however, appear afterwards as present with Him; they
remembered that "the zeal of thine house shall devour me." And
perhaps Jesus was in each of the disciples as He ascended to
Jerusalem, whence it is not said, Jesus went up to "Jerusalem and His
disciples," but He went down to Capernaum, "He and His mother and His
brothers and His disciples."
Footnotes
[5056] John ii. 13.
[5057] Matt. v. 35.
[5058] Ps. cxxv. 2.
[5059] Ps. cxxii. 2, 3, 4.
[5060] 1 Tim. iii. 15.
[5061] Matt. xxi. 43.
[5062] Ps. xxxiii. 10.
17. Matthew's Story of the Entry into Jerusalem. Difficulties
Involved in It for Those Who Take It Literally.
We have now to take into consideration the statements of the other
Gospels on the expulsion from the temple of those who made it a house
of merchandise. Take in the first place what we find in Matthew. On
the Lord's entering Jerusalem, he says, [5063] "All the city was
stirred, saying, Who is this?" But before this he has the story of
the ass and the foal which were taken by command of the Lord and found
by the two disciples whom he sent from Bethphage into the village over
against them. These two disciples loose the ass which was tied, and
they have orders, if any one says anything to them, to answer that
"the Lord has need of them; and immediately he will send them." By
these incidents Matthew declares that the prophecy was fulfilled which
says, "Behold, the King cometh, meek and sitting on an ass and a colt
the foal of an ass," which we find in Zechariah. [5064]When, then,
the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them, they brought the
ass and the colt, and placed on them, he says, their own garments, and
the Lord sat upon them, clearly on the ass and the colt. Then "the
most part of the multitude spread their garments in the way, and
others cut down branches from the trees and strewed them in the way,
and the multitudes that went before and that followed cried, Hosanna
to the Son of David, blessed is He that cometh in the name of the
Lord. Hosanna in the highest." Hence it was that when He entered
Jerusalem, the whole city was moved, saying, Who is this? "and the
multitudes said," those obviously who went before Him and who followed
Him, to those who were asking who He was, "This is the prophet Jesus
of Nazareth of Galilee. And Jesus entered into the temple and cast
out all those that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the
tables of the money-changers and the seats of them that sold doves:
and He saith unto them, It is written, My house shall be called a
house of prayer; but ye make it a den of robbers." Let us ask those
who consider that Matthew had nothing but the history in his mind when
he wrote his Gospel, what necessity there was for two of the disciples
to be sent to the village over against Bethphage, to find an ass tied
and its colt with it and to loose them and bring them? And how did it
deserve to be recorded that He sat upon the ass and the foal and
entered into the city? And how does Zechariah prophesy about Christ
when he says, [5065] "Rejoice greatly, thou daughter of Zion, proclaim
it, thou daughter of Jerusalem. Behold thy king cometh unto thee,
just is He and bringing salvation, meek and sitting on an ass and a
young foal"? If it be the case that this prophecy predicts simply the
material incident described by the Evangelists, how can those who
stand on the letter maintain that this is so with regard to the
following part also of the prophecy, which runs: "And He shall
destroy chariots from Ephraim and horse from Jerusalem, and the bow of
the warrior shall be destroyed, and a multitude and peace from the
Gentiles, and He shall rule over the waters as far as the sea, and the
rivers to the ends of the earth," etc. It is to be noted, too, that
Matthew does not give the words as they are found in the prophet, for
instead of "Rejoice greatly, thou daughter of Zion, proclaim it, thou
daughter of Jerusalem," he makes it, "Tell ye the daughter of Zion."
He curtails the prophetic utterance by omitting the words, "Just is He
and bringing salvation," then he gives, "meek and sitting," as in the
original, but instead of "on an ass and a young colt," he gives, "on
an ass and a colt the foal of an ass." The Jews, examining into the
application of the prophecy to what is recorded about Jesus, press us
in a way we cannot overlook with the enquiry how Jesus destroyed
chariots out of Ephraim and horse from Jerusalem, and how He destroyed
the bow of the enemy and did the other deeds mentioned in the
passage. So much with regard to the prophecy. Our literal
interpreters, however, if there is nothing worthy of the appearance of
the Son of God in the ass and the foal, may perhaps point to the
length of the road for an explanation. But, in the first place,
fifteen stades are not a great distance and afford no reasonable
explanation of the matter, and, in the second place, they would have
to tell us how two beasts of burden were needed for so short a
journey; "He sat," it is said, "on them." And then the words: "If
any man say aught unto you, say ye that the Lord hath need of them,
and straightway he will send them." It does not appear to me to be
worthy of the greatness of the Son's divinity to say that such a
nature as His confessed that it had need of an ass to be loosed from
its bonds and of a foal to come with it; for everything the Son of God
has need of should be great and worthy of His goodness. And then the
very great multitude strewing their garments in the way, while Jesus
allows them to do so and does not rebuke them, as is clear from the
words used in another passage, [5066] "If these should hold their
peace, the stones will cry out." I do not know if it does not
indicate a certain degree of stupidity on the part of the writer to
take delight in such things, if nothing more is meant by them than
what lies on the surface. And the branches being cut down from the
trees and strewn on the road where the asses go by, surely they are
rather a hindrance to Him who is the centre of the throng than a
well-devised reception of Him. The difficulties which met us on the
part of those who were cast out of the temple by Jesus meet us here in
a still greater degree. In the Gospel of John He casts out those who
bought, but Matthew says that He cast out those who sold and those who
bought in the temple. And the buyers would naturally be more numerous
than the sellers. We have to consider if the casting out of buyers
and sellers in the temple was not out of keeping with the reputation
of one who was thought to be the Son of a carpenter, unless, as we
said before, it was by a divine power that He subjected them. The
words addressed to them, too, are harsher in the other Evangelists
than in John. For John says that Jesus said to them, "Make not My
Father's house a house of merchandise," while in the others they are
rebuked for making the house of prayer a den of robbers. Now the
house of His Father did not admit of being turned into a den of
robbers, though by the acts of sinful men it was brought to be a house
of merchandise. It was not only the house of prayer, but in fact the
house of God, and by force of human neglect it harboured robbers, and
was turned not only into their house but their den--a thing which no
skill, either of architecture or of reason, could make it.
Footnotes
[5063] xxi. 10.
[5064] Zech. ix. 9.
[5065] Zech. ix. 9.
[5066] Luke xix. 40.
18. The Ass and the Colt are the Old and the New Testament.
Spiritual Meaning of the Various Features of the Story. Differences
Between John's Narrative and that of the Other Evangelists.
Now to see into the real truth of these matters is the part of that
true intelligence which is given to those who can say, [5067] "But we
have the mind of Christ that we may see those things which are freely
given to us of God;" and doubtless it is beyond our powers. For
neither is the ruling principle in our soul free from agitation, nor
are our eyes such as those of the fair bride of Christ should be, of
which the bridegroom says, [5068] "Thy eyes are doves," signifying,
perhaps, in a riddle, the observant power which dwells in the
spiritual, because the Holy Spirit came like a dove to our Lord and to
the lord in every one. Such as we are, however, we will not delay,
but will feel about the words of life which have been spoken to us and
strive to lay hold of that power in them which flows to him who
touches them in faith. Now Jesus is the word of God which goes into
the soul that is called Jerusalem, riding on the ass freed by the
disciples from its bonds. That is to say, on the simple language of
the Old Testament, interpreted by the two disciples who loose it: in
the first place him who applies what is written to the service of the
soul and shows the allegorical sense of it with reference to her, and
in the second place him who brings to light by the things which lie in
shadow the good and true things of the future. But He also rides on
the young colt, the New Testament; for in both alike we find the word
of truth which purifies us and drives away all those thoughts in us
which incline to selling and buying. But He does not come alone to
Jerusalem, the soul, nor only with a few companions; for many things
have to enter into us before the word of God which makes us perfect,
and as many things have to come after Him, all, however, hymning and
glorifying Him and placing under Him their ornaments and vestures, so
that the beasts He rides on may not touch the ground, when He who
descended out of heaven is seated on them. But that His bearers, the
old and the new words of Scripture, may be raised yet higher above the
ground, branches have to be cut down from the trees that they may
tread on reasonable expositions. But the multitudes which go before
and follow Him may also signify the angelic ministrations, some of
which prepare the way for Him in our souls, and help in their
adorning, while some come after His presence in us, of which we have
often spoken, so that we need not now adduce testimonies about it.
And perhaps it is not without reason that I have likened to an ass the
surrounding voices which conduct the Word Himself to the soul; for it
is a beast of burden, and many are the burdens, heavy the loads, which
are brought into view from the text, especially of the Old Testament,
as he can clearly see who observes what is done in this connection on
the part of the Jews. But the foal is not a beast of burden in the
same way as the ass. For though every lead of the latter be heavy to
those who have not in themselves the upbearing and most lightening
power of the Spirit, yet the new word is less heavy than the old. I
know some who interpret the tied-up ass as being believers from the
circumcision, who are freed from many bonds by those who are truly and
spiritually instructed in the word; and the foal they take to be those
from the Gentiles, who before they receive the word of Jesus are free
from any control and subject to no yoke in their unbridled and
pleasure-loving existence. The writers I am speaking of do not say
who those are that go before and who those follow after; but there
would be no absurdity in saying that those who went before were like
Moses and the prophets, and those who followed after the holy
Apostles. To what Jerusalem all these go in it is now our business to
enquire, and what is the house which has many sellers and buyers to be
driven out by the Son of God. And perhaps the Jerusalem above to
which the Lord is to ascend driving like a charioteer those of the
circumcision and the believers of the Gentiles, while prophets and
Apostles go before Him and follow after Him (or is it the angels who
minister to Him, for they too may be meant by those who go before and
those who follow), perhaps it is that city which before He ascended to
it contained the so-called [5069] "spiritual hosts of wickedness in
heavenly places," or the Canaanites and Hittites and Amorites and the
other enemies of the people of God, and in a word, the foreigners.
For in that region, too, it was possible for the prophecy to be
fulfilled which says, [5070] "Your country is desolate, your cities
are burned with fire, your land, strangers devour it in your
presence." For these are they who defile and turn into a den of
robbers, that is, of themselves the heavenly house of the Father, the
holy Jerusalem, the house of prayer; having spurious money, and giving
pence and small change, cheap worthless coinage, to all who come to
them. These are they who, contending with the souls, take from them
what is most precious, robbing them of their better part to return to
them what is worth nothing. But the disciples go and find the ass
tied and loose it, for it cannot have Jesus on account of the covering
that is laid upon it by the law. [5071]And the colt is found with
it, both having been lost till Jesus came; I mean, namely, those of
the circumcision and those of the Gentiles who afterwards believed.
But how these are sent back again after Jesus has ascended to
Jerusalem seated upon them, it is somewhat dangerous to say; for there
is something mystical about it, in connection with the change of
saints into angels. After that change they will be sent back, in the
age succeeding this one, like the ministering spirits, [5072] who are
sent to do service for the sake of them who will thereby inherit
salvation. But if the ass and the foal are the old and the new
Scriptures, on which the Word of God rides, it is easy to see how,
after the Word has appeared in them, they are sent back and do not
wait after the Word has entered Jerusalem among those who have cast
out all the thoughts of selling and buying. I consider, too, that it
is not without significance that the place where the ass was found
tied, and the foal, was a village, and a village without a name. For
in comparison with the great world in heaven, the whole earth is a
village where the ass is found tied and the colt, and it is simply
called "the village" without any other designation being added to it.
From Bethphage Matthew says the disciples are sent out who are to
fetch the ass and the colt; and Bethphage is a priestly place, the
name of which means "House of Jaw-bones." So much we have said, as
our power allowed, on the text of Matthew, reserving for a further
opportunity, when we may be permitted to take up the Gospel of Matthew
by itself, a more complete and accurate discussion of his statements.
Mark and Luke say that the two disciples, acting on their Master's
instructions, found a foal tied, on which no one had ever sat, and
that they loosed it and brought it to the Lord. Mark adds that they
found the foal tied at the door, outside on the road. But who is
outside? Those of the Gentiles who were strangers [5073] from the
covenants, and aliens to the promise of God; they are on the road, not
resting under a roof or a house, bound by their own sins, and to be
loosed by the twofold knowledge spoken of above, of the friends of
Jesus. And the bonds with which the foal was tied, and the sins
committed against the wholesome law and reproved by it,--for it is the
gate of life,--in respect of it, I say, they were not inside but
outside the door, for perhaps inside the door there cannot be any such
bond of wickedness. But there were some persons standing beside the
tied-up foal, as Mark says; those, I suppose, who had tied it; as Luke
records, it was the masters of the foal who said to the disciples, Why
loose ye the foal? For those lords who subjected and bound the sinner
are illegal masters and cannot look the true master in the face when
he frees the foal from its bonds. Thus when the disciples say, "The
Lord hath need of him," these wicked masters have nothing to say in
reply. The disciples then bring the foal to Jesus naked, and put
their own dress on it, so that the Lord may sit on the disciples'
garments which are on it, at His ease. What is said further will not,
in the light of Matthew's statements, present any difficulty; how
[5074] "They come to Jerusalem, and entering into the temple He began
to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple," or how [5075]
"When He drew nigh and beheld the city He wept over it; and entering
into the temple He began to cast out them that sold." For in some of
those who have the temple in themselves He casts out all that sell and
buy in the temple; but in others who do not quite obey the word of
God, He only makes a beginning of casting out the sellers and buyers.
There is a third class also besides these, in which He began to cast
out the sellers only, and not also the buyers. With John, on the
contrary, they are all cast out by the scourge woven of small cords,
along with the sheep and the oxen. It should be carefully considered
whether it is possible that the changes of the things described and
the discrepancies found in them can be satisfactorily solved by the
anagogic method. Each of the Evangelists ascribes to the Word
different modes of action, which produce in souls of different tempers
not the same effects but yet similar ones. The discrepancy we noticed
in respect of Jesus' journeys to Jerusalem, which the Gospel now in
hand reports quite differently from the other three, as we have
expounded their words, cannot be made good in any other way. John
gives statements which are similar to those of the other three but not
the same; instead of branches cut from the trees or stubble brought
from the fields and strewed on the road he says they took branches of
palm trees. He says that much people had come to the feast, and that
these went out to meet Him, crying, "Blessed is He that cometh in the
name of the Lord," and "Blessed is the King of Israel." He also says
that it was Jesus Himself who found the young ass on which Christ sat,
and the phrase, young ass, doubtless conveys some additional meaning,
as the small animal afforded a benefit not of men, nor through men,
but through Jesus Christ. John moreover does not, any more than the
others, reproduce the prophetic words exactly; instead of them he
gives us "Fear not, O daughter of Zion; behold thy King cometh
sitting" (instead of "mounted") "on the foal of an ass" (for "on an
ass and a young foal"). The words "Fear not, daughter of Zion," are
not in the prophet at all. But as the prophetic utterance has been
applied by all in this way, let us see if there was not a necessity
that the daughter of Zion should rejoice greatly and that the greater
than she, the daughter of Jerusalem, should not only rejoice greatly
but should also proclaim it when her king was coming to her, just and
bringing salvation, and meek, having mounted an ass and a young colt.
Whoever, then, receives Him will no longer be afraid of those who are
armed with the specious discourses of the heterodox, those chariots of
Ephraim said to be destroyed by the Lord, [5076] nor the horse, the
vain thing for safety, [5077] that is the mad desire which has
accustomed itself to the things of sense and which is injurious to
many of those who desire to dwell in Jerusalem and to attend to the
sound word. It is also fitting to rejoice at the destruction by Him
who rides on the ass and the young foal of every hostile dart, since
the fiery darts of the enemy are no longer to prevail over him who has
received Jesus to his own temple. And there will also be a multitude
from the Gentiles with peace [5078] at the Saviour's coming to
Jerusalem, when He rules over the waters that He may bruise the head
of the dragon on the water, [5079] and we shall tread upon the waves
of the sea and to the mouths of all the rivers on the earth. Mark,
however, writing about the foal, [5080] reports the Lord to have said,
"On which never man sat;" and he seems to me to hint at the
circumstance that those who afterwards believed had never submitted to
the Word before Jesus' coming to them. For of men, perhaps, no one
had ever sate on the foal, but of hearts or of powers alien to the
Word some had sate on it, since in the prophet Isaiah the wealth of
opposing powers is said to be borne on asses and camels. [5081]"In
the distress and the affliction," he writes, "the lion and the lion's
whelp, whence also the offspring of flying asps, who carried their
riches on asses and camels." The question occurs again, for those who
have no mind but for the bare words, if according to their view the
words, "on which never man sat," are not quite meaningless. For who
but a man ever sits on a foal? So much of our views.
Footnotes
[5067] 1 Cor. ii. 16.
[5068] Song of Sol. i. 15.
[5069] Ephes. vi. 12.
[5070] Isa. i. 7.
[5071] 2 Cor. iii. 14.
[5072] Heb. i. 11.
[5073] Ephes. ii. 12.
[5074] Mark xi. 15.
[5075] Luke xix. 41.
[5076] Zech. ix. 10.
[5077] Ps. xxxiii. 17.
[5078] Zech. ix. 9, 10.
[5079] Ps. lxxiv. 13.
[5080] xi. 2.
[5081] Isa. xxx. 6.
19. Various Views of Heracleon on Purging of the Temple.
Let us see what Heracleon makes of this. He says that the ascent to
Jerusalem signifies the Lord's going up from material things to the
spiritual place, which is a likeness of Jerusalem. And he considers
that the words are, "He found in the temple," and not "in the
sanctuary," [5082] because the Lord is not to be understood as
instrumental in that call only, which takes place where the spirit is
not. He considers the temple to be the Holy of Holies, into which
none but the High-Priest enters, and there I believe he says that the
spiritual go; while the court of the temple, where the levites also
enter, is a symbol of these psychical ones who are saved, but outside
the Pleroma. Then those who are found in the temple selling oxen and
sheep and doves, and the money-changers sitting, he took to represent
those who attribute nothing to grace, but regard the entrance of
strangers to the temple as a matter of merchandise and gain, and who
minister the sacrifices for the worship of God, with a view to their
own gain and love of money. And the scourge which Jesus made of small
cords and did not receive from another, he expounds in a way of his
own, saying that the scourge is an image of the power and energy of
the Holy Spirit, driving out by His breath those who are bad. And he
declares that the scourge and the linen and the napkin and other
things of such a kind are symbolic of the power and energy of the Holy
Spirit. Then he assumes what is not written, as that the scourge was
tied to a piece of wood, and this wood he takes to be a type of the
cross; on this wood the gamblers, merchants, and all evil was nailed
up and done away. In searching into the act of Jesus, and discussing
the composition of the scourge out of two substances, he romances in
an extraordinary way; He did not make it, he says, of dead leather.
He wished to make the Church no longer a den of robbers, but the house
of His Father. We must here say what is most necessary on the
divinity, as referred to in Heracleon's text. If Jesus calls the
temple at Jerusalem the house of His Father, and that temple was made
in honour of Him who made heaven and earth, why are we not at once
told that He is the Son of no one else than the Maker of heaven and
earth, that He is the Son of God? To this house of the Father of
Jesus, as being the house of prayer, the Apostles of Christ also, as
we find in their "Acts," are told [5083] by the angel to go and to
stand there and preach all the words of this life. But they came to
the house of prayer, through the Beautiful Gate, to pray there, a
thing they would not have done had they not known Him to be the same
with the God worshipped by those who had dedicated that temple.
Hence, too, they say, those who obeyed God rather than men, Peter and
the Apostles, "The God [5084] of our Fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye
slew, hanging Him on a tree;" for they know that by no other God was
Jesus raised from the dead but the God of the fathers, whom Jesus also
extols as the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, who are not dead but
living. How, too, could the disciples, if the house was not that of
the same God with the God of Christ, have remembered the saying in the
sixty-ninth Psalm, "The zeal of thy house shall devour Me;" for thus
it is found in the prophet, and not "hath devoured Me." Now Christ is
zealous principally for that house of God which is in each of us; He
does not wish that it should be a house of merchandise, nor that the
house of prayer should be a den of robbers; for He is the Son of a
jealous God. We ought to give a liberal interpretation to such
utterances of Scripture; they speak of human things, but in the way of
metaphor, to show that God desires that nothing foreign should be
mixed up with His will in the soul of all men, indeed, but principally
of those who are minded to accept the message of our most divine
faith. But we must remember that the sixty-ninth Psalm, which
contains the words, "The zeal of thy house shall devour me," and a
little further on, "They gave Me gall for My drink and for My thirst
they gave Me vinegar," both texts being recorded in the Gospels, that
that Psalm is spoken in the person of the Christ, and nowhere shows
any change of person. It shows a great want of observation on
Heracleon's part that he considers the words, "The zeal of thy house
shall devour Me," to be spoken in the person of those powers which
were cast out and destroyed by the Saviour; he fails to see the
connection of the prophecy in the Psalm. For if these words are
understood as spoken by the expelled and destroyed powers, it follows
that he must take the words, "They gave Me vinegar to drink," which
are a part of the same psalm, to be also spoken by those powers. What
misled him was probably that he could not understand how the "shall
devour Me" could be spoken by Christ, since He did not appreciate the
way in which anthropopathic statements are applied to God and to
Christ.
Footnotes
[5082] en to hiero, not to nao. The latter is Neander's correction
for ton ano, "the things above." Heracleon's point is that the ieron,
the Holy of Holies, represents the spiritual realm; and that Jesus
entered it as being, as well as the naos, in need of His saving work.
[5083] Acts v. 20.
[5084] Acts v. 29, 30.
20. The Temple Which Christ Says He Will Raise Up is the Church. How
the Dry Bones Will Be Made to Live Again.
"The Jews then answered and said unto Him, What sign showest Thou unto
us, seeing that Thou doest these things? [5085]Jesus answered and
said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it
up." Those of the body, and those who incline to material things,
seem to me to be meant by the Jews, who, after Jesus has driven out
those who make God's house a house of merchandise, are angry at Him
for treating these matters in such a way, and demand a sign, a sign
which will show that the Word, whom they do not receive, has a right
to do such things. The Saviour joins on to His statement about the
temple a statement which is really one with the former, about His own
body, and to the question, What sign doest Thou, seeing that Thou
doest such things? answers, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I
will raise it up." He could have exhibited a thousand other signs,
but to the question, "Seeing that Thou doest such things," He could
not answer anything else; He fittingly gave the answer about the sign
connected with the temple, and not about signs unconnected with the
temple. Now, both of these two things, the temple and the body of
Jesus, appear to me, in one interpretation at least, to be types of
the Church, and to signify that it is built of living stones, [5086] a
spiritual house for a holy priesthood, built [5087] on the foundation
of the Apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the head
corner-stone; and it is, therefore, called a temple. Now, from the
text, [5088] "Ye are the body of Christ, and members each in his
part," we see that even though the harmonious fitting of the stones of
the temple appear to be dissolved and scattered, as it is written in
the twenty-second Psalm [5089] that all the bones of Christ are, by
the plots made against it in persecutions and afflictions, on the part
of those who war against the unity of the temple in persecutions, yet
the temple will be raised again, and the body will rise again on the
third day after the day of evil which threatens it, [5090] and the day
of consummation which follows. For the third day will rise on the new
heaven and the new earth, when these bones, the whole house of Israel,
[5091] will rise in the great Lord's day, death having been overcome.
And thus the resurrection of the Saviour from the passion of the cross
contains the mystery of the resurrection of the whole body of Christ.
But as that material body of Jesus was sacrificed for Christ, and was
buried, and was afterwards raised, so the whole body of Christ's
saints is crucified along with Him, and now lives no longer; for each
of them, like Paul, glories [5092] in nothing but the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ, through which He is crucified to the world, and the
world to Him. Not only, therefore, is it crucified with Christ, and
crucified to the world; it is also buried with Christ, for we were
buried with Christ, Paul says. [5093]And then he says, as if
enjoying some earnest of the resurrection, "We rose with Him," [5094]
because He walks in a certain newness of life, though not yet risen in
that blessed and perfect resurrection which is hoped for. Either,
then, he is now crucified, and afterwards is buried, or he is now
buried and taken down from the cross, and, being now buried, is to
rise at some future time. But to most of us the mystery of the
resurrection is a great one, and difficult of contemplation; it is
spoken of in many other passages of Scripture, and is specially
announced in the following passage of Ezekiel: [5095]"And the hand
of the Lord was upon me, and He led me out in the Spirit of the Lord,
and set me in the midst of the plain, and it was full of human bones.
And He led me round about them in a circle, and behold there were very
many on the face of the plain, and behold they were very dry. And He
said to me, Son of man, shall these bones live? And I said, Lord,
Lord, Thou knowest. And He said to me, Prophesy to these bones, and
thou shalt say to them, Hear the word of the Lord, ye dry bones;" and
a little further on, "And the Lord spake to me, saying, Son of man,
these bones are the house of Israel. And they say, Our bones are
become dry, our hope is lost, we have breathed our last." For what
bones are these which are addressed, "Hear ye the word of the Lord,"
as if they heard the word of the Lord? They belong to the house of
Israel, or to the body of Christ, of which the Lord says, [5096] "All
My bones are scattered," although the bones of His body were not
scattered, and not even one of them was broken. But when the
resurrection itself takes place of the true and more perfect body of
Christ, then those who are now the members of Christ, for they will
then be dry bones, will be brought together, bone to bone, and fitting
to fitting (for none of those who are destitute of fitting (harmonia)
will come to the perfect man), to the measure [5097] of the stature of
the fulness of the body of Christ. And then the many members [5098]
will be the one body, all of them, though many, becoming members of
one body. But it belongs to God alone to make the distinction of foot
and hand and eye and hearing and smelling, which in one sense fill up
the head, but in another the feet and the rest of the members, and the
weaker and humbler ones, the more and the less honourable. God will
temper the body together, and then, rather than now, He will give to
that which lacks the more abundant honour, that there may be, by no
means, any schism in the body, but that the members may have the same
care for one another, and, if any member be well off, all the members
may share in its good things, or if any member be glorified, all the
members may rejoice with it.
Footnotes
[5085] John ii. 18, 19.
[5086] 1 Pet. ii. 5.
[5087] Ephes. ii. 20.
[5088] 1 Cor. xii. 27.
[5089] Ver. 14.
[5090] 2 Peter iii. 3, 10, 13.
[5091] Ezek. xxxvii. 11.
[5092] Gal. vi. 14.
[5093] Rom. vi. 4.
[5094] These words do not occur in Rom. vi. 4.
[5095] xxxvii. 1-4.
[5096] Ps. xxii. 13.
[5097] Ephes. iv. 13.
[5098] 1 Cor. xii. 12 sq.
21. That the Son Was Raised Up by the Father. The Charge Brought
Against Jesus at His Trial Was Based on the Incident Now Before Us.
What I have said is not alien to the passage now engaging us, dealing
as it does with the temple and those cast out from it, of which the
Saviour says, "The zeal of thy house shall devour Me;" and with the
Jews who asked that a sign should be showed them, and the Saviour's
answer to them, in which He combines the discourse on the temple with
that on His own body, and says, "Destroy this temple and in three days
I will raise it up." For from this temple, which is the body of
Christ, everything that is irrational and savours of merchandise must
be driven away, that it may no longer be a house of merchandise. And
this temple must be destroyed by those who plot against the Word of
God, and after its destruction be raised again on that third day which
we discussed above; when the disciples also will remember what He, the
Word, said before the temple of God was destroyed, and will believe,
not only their knowledge but their faith also being then made perfect,
and that by the word which Jesus spoke. And every one who is of this
nature, Jesus purifying him, [5099] puts away things that are
irrational and things that savour of selling, to be destroyed on
account of the zeal of the Logos that is in Him. But they are
destroyed to be raised again by Jesus, not on the third day, if we
attend to the exact words before us, but "in three days." For the
rising again of the temple takes place on the first day after it has
been destroyed and on the second day, and its resurrection is
accomplished in all the three days. Hence a resurrection both has
been and is to be, if indeed we were buried with Christ, and rose with
Him. And since the word, "We rose with Him," does not cover the whole
of the resurrection, "in Christ shall all be made alive, [5100] but
every one in his own order, Christ the first fruits, then they that
are Christ's at His coming, and then the end." It belongs to the
resurrection that one should be on the first day in the paradise of
God, [5101] and it belongs to the resurrection when Jesus appears and
says, "Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father," [5102]
but the perfection of the resurrection was when He came to the
Father. Now there are some who fall into confusion on this head of
the Father and the Son, and we must devote a few words to them. They
quote the text, [5103] "Yea, and we are found false witnesses for God,
because we testified against God that He raised up Christ, whom He
raised not up," and other similar texts which show the raiser-up to be
another person than He who was raised up; and the text, "Destroy this
temple and in three days I will raise it up," as if it resulted from
these that the Son did not differ in number from the Father, but that
both were one, not only in point of substance but in point of subject,
and that the Father and the Son were said to be different in some of
their aspects but not in their hypostases. Against such views we must
in the first place adduce the leading texts which prove the Son to be
another than the Father, and that the Son must of necessity be the son
of a Father, and the Father, the father of a Son. Then we may very
properly refer to Christ's declaration that He cannot do anything but
what He sees the Father doing and saying, [5104] because whatever the
Father does that the Son also does in like manner, and that He had
raised the dead, i.e., the body, the Father granting Him this, who
must be said to have been the principal agent in raising up Christ
from the dead. But Heracleon says, "In three days," instead of "On
the third day," not having examined the point (and yet having noted
the words "in three"), that the resurrection is brought about in three
days. But he also calls the third the spiritual day, in which they
consider the resurrection of the Church to be indicated. It follows
from this that the first day is to be called the "earthly" day, and
the second the psychical, the resurrection of the Church not having
taken place on them. Now the statements of the false witnesses,
recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew and Mark [5105] towards
the end of the Gospel, and the accusation they brought against our
Lord Jesus Christ, appear to have reference to this utterance of His,
"Destroy this temple, and I will build it up in three days." For He
was speaking of the temple of His body, but they supposed His words to
refer to the temple of stone, and so they said when accusing Him,
"This man said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it
up in three days," or, as Mark has it, "We heard Him say, that I will
destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build up
another temple not made with hands." Here the high-priest stood up
and said to Him, "Answerest Thou nothing? What do these witness
against Thee? But Jesus held His peace." Or, as Mark says, "And the
high-priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus saying, Answerest
Thou nothing? What do these witness against Thee? But He held His
peace and answered nothing." These words must, I think, necessarily
have reference to the text now before us.
Footnotes
[5099] John xv. 3.
[5100] 1 Cor. xv. 22-24.
[5101] Luke xxiii. 43.
[5102] John xx. 17.
[5103] 1 Cor. xv. 15.
[5104] John v. 19.
[5105] Matt. xxvi. 61; Mark xiv. 58.
22. The Temple of Solomon Did Not Take Forty-Six Years to Build.
With Regard to that of Ezra We Cannot Tell How Long It Took.
Significance of the Number Forty-Six.
The Jews therefore said, "Forty and six years was this temple in
building, [5106] and wilt thou raise it up in three days?" How the
Jews said that the temple had been forty-six years building, we cannot
tell, if we adhere to the history. For it is written in the third
Book of Kings, [5107] that they prepared the stones and the wood three
years, and in the fourth year, in the second month, [5108] when
Solomon was king over Israel, the king commanded, and they brought
great precious stones for the foundation of the house, and unhewn
stones. And the sons of Solomon and the sons of Hiram hewed the
stones and laid them in the fourth year, and they founded the house of
the Lord in the month Nisan and the second month: in the tenth year
in the month Baal, which was the eighth month, the house was finished
according to the whole count and the whole plan of it. Thus comparing
the time of its completion with the period of building, the building
of it occupies less than eleven years. How, then, do the Jews come to
say that the temple was forty-six years in building? One might,
indeed, do violence to the words and make out the period of forty-six
years at all costs, by counting from the time when David, after
planning about the building of the temple, said to Nathan the prophet,
[5109] "Behold I dwell in a house of cedar, and the ark of God
dwelleth in the midst of the tent," for though it is true that he was
prevented, as being a man of blood, [5110] from carrying out the
building, he seems to have busied himself in collecting materials for
it. In the first Book of Chronicles, [5111] certainly, David the king
says to all the congregation, "Solomon my son, whom the Lord hath
chosen, is young and tender, and the work is great, because he is not
to build for man but for the Lord God. According to my whole power I
have prepared for the house of my God, gold, silver, brass, and iron,
wood, stones of Soom, and stones for filling up, and precious stones
of many kinds, and all sorts of precious wood, and a large quantity of
Parian marble. And besides this, for the pleasure I have taken in the
house of my God, the gold and the silver I possess, lo, I have given
it for the house of my Lord, to the full; from such supplies [5112] I
prepared for the house of the saints, three thousand talents of gold
from Suphir, and seven thousand talents of stamped silver. that the
houses of God may be overlaid with them by the hands of artificers."
For David reigned seven years in Hebron and thirty-three years in
Jerusalem; [5113] so that if it could be shown that the beginning of
the preparations for the temple and of David's collecting the
necessary material, was in the fifth year of his reign, then, with
some forcing, the statement about forty-six years might stand. But
some one else will say that the temple spoken of was not that built by
Solomon, for that it was destroyed at the period of the captivity, but
the temple built at the time of Ezra, [5114] with regard to which the
forty-six years can be shown to be quite accurate. But in this
Maccabean period things were very unsettled with regard to the people
and the temple, and I do not know if the temple was really built in
that number of years. Heracleon pays no attention to the history, but
says that in that he was forty-six years preparing the temple, Solomon
was an image of the Saviour. The number six he connects with matter,
that is, the image, and the number forty, which he says is the tetrad,
not admitting of combination, he connects with the inspiration and the
seed in the inspiration. Consider if the forty cannot be taken as due
to the four elements of the world arranged in the building of the
temple at the points at issue, [5115] and the six to the fact that man
was created on the sixth day.
Footnotes
[5106] John ii. 20.
[5107] 1 Kings v. 18.
[5108] 1 Kings vi. 1.
[5109] 2 Sam. vii. 2.
[5110] 1 Chron. xxii. 8; xxvii. 3.
[5111] 1 Chron. xxix. 1-5.
[5112] LXX. reads "besides what;" neither reading yields a good sense.
[5113] 1 Kings ii. 11.
[5114] Ezra vi. 1.
[5115] Reading egonismenois. Another suggested reading is
gegoniomenois, which might give the sense "at the corners." Neither
is satisfactory.
23. The Temple Spoken of by Christ is the Church. Application to the
Church of the Statements Regarding the Building of Solomon's Temple,
and the Numbers Stated in that Narrative.
"But He spake of the temple of His body. [5116]When, therefore, He
was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this,
and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said."
This refers to the statement that the body of the Son is His temple.
It may be asked whether this is to be taken in its plain sense, or
whether we should try to connect each statement that is recorded about
the temple, with the view we take about the body of Jesus, whether the
body which He received from the Virgin, or that body of Christ which
the Church is said to be, as we are said by the Apostle [5117] to be
all members of His body. One may, on the one hand, suppose it to be
hopeless to get everything that is said about the temple properly
connected with the body, in whatever sense the body be taken, and one
may have recourse to a simpler explanation, and say that the body (in
either of these senses) is called the temple, because as the temple
had the glory of God dwelling in it, so He who was the image and glory
of God, the first-born of every creature, could rightly be called, in
respect of His body or the Church, the temple containing the image.
We, for our part, see it to be a hard task to expound every particular
of what is said about the temple in the third Book of Kings, and far
beyond our powers of language, and we defer it in the meantime, as a
thing beyond the scale of the present work. We also have a strong
conviction that in such matters, which transcend human nature, it must
be the work of divine wisdom to make plain the meaning of inspired
Scripture, of that wisdom which is hidden in a mystery, which none of
the rulers of this world knew. We are well aware, too, that we need
the assistance of that excellent Spirit of wisdom, in order to
understand such matters, as they should be understood by ministers of
sacred things; and in this connection we will attempt to describe, as
shortly as we may, our view of what belongs to this subject. The body
is the Church, and we learn from Peter [5118] that it is a house of
God, built of living stones, a spiritual house for a holy priesthood.
Thus the son of David, who builds this house, is a type of Christ. He
builds it when his wars are at an end, [5119] and a period of profound
peace has arrived; he builds the temple for the glory of God in the
Jerusalem on earth, so that worship may no longer be celebrated in a
moveable erection like the tabernacle. Let us seek to find in the
Church the truth of each statement made about the temple. If all
Christ's enemies are made the footstool of His feet, [5120] and Death,
the last enemy, is destroyed, then there will be the most perfect
peace. Christ will be Solomon, which means "Peaceful," [5121] and the
prophecy will find its fulfilment in Him, which says, [5122] "With
those who hated peace I was peaceful." And then each of the living
stones will be, according to the work of his life here, a stone of
that temple, one, at the foundation, an apostle or a prophet, bearing
those placed upon him, and another, after those in the foundation, and
supported by the Apostles, will himself, with the Apostles, help to
bear those in more need. One will be a stone of the inmost parts,
where the ark is, and the cherubim, and the mercy-seat; another will
be on the outer wall, and another even outside the outer wall of the
levites and priests, a stone of the altar of whole burnt offerings.
And the management and service of these things will be entrusted to
holy powers, angels of God, being, respectively, lordships, thrones,
dominions, or powers; and there will be others subject to these,
typified by three thousand six hundred [5123] chief officers, who were
appointed over the works of Solomon, and the seventy thousand of those
who bore burdens, and the eighty thousand stone-cutters in the
mountain, who wrought in the work, and prepared the stones and the
wood. It is to be remarked that those reported as bearing burdens are
related to the Hebdomad. The quarrymen and stone-cutters, who make
the stones fitted for the temple, have some kinship to the ogdoad.
And the officers, who are six hundred in number, are connected with
the perfect number six multiplied into itself. The preparation of the
stones, as they are taken out and fitted for the building, extends
over three years; this appears to me to point solely to the time of
the eternal interval which is akin to the triad. This will come to
pass when peace is consummated after the number of years of the
transaction of the matters connected with the exodus from Egypt,
namely, three hundred and forty, and of what took place in Egypt four
hundred and thirty years after the covenant made by God with Abraham.
Thus, from Abraham to the beginning of the building of the temple,
there are two sabbatic numbers, the 700 and the 70; and at that time,
too, our King Christ will command the seventy thousand burden-bearers
not to take any chance stones for the foundation of the temple, but
great stones, precious, unhewn, that they may be hewn, not by any
chance workmen, but by the sons of Solomon; for so we find it written
in the third Book of Kings. Then, too, on account of the profound
peace, Hiram, king of Tyre, cooperates in the building of the temple,
and gives his own sons to the sons of Solomon, to hew, in company with
them, the great and precious stones for the holy place, which, in the
fourth year, are placed in the foundation of the house of the Lord.
But in an ogdoad of years the house is finished in the eighth month of
the eighth year after its foundation.
Footnotes
[5116] John ii. 21.
[5117] 1 Cor. xii. 27.
[5118] 1 Pet. ii. 5.
[5119] 1 Kings v. 3-5.
[5120] 1 Cor. xv. 25.
[5121] 1 Chron. xxii. 9.
[5122] Ps. cxx. 7.
[5123] 1 Kings v. 15-18.
24. The Account of the Building of Solomon's Temple Contains Serious
Difficulties and is to Be Interpreted Spiritually.
For the sake of those, however, who consider that nothing further than
the narrative itself is meant to be indicated in these words, it may
not be unfitting to introduce at this point some considerations which
they can scarcely withstand, to show that the words ought to be
regarded as those of the Spirit, and that the mind of the Spirit
should be sought for in them. Did the sons of the kings really spend
their time in hewing the great and precious stones, and practise a
craft so little in keeping with royal birth? And the number of the
burden-bearers and of the stone-cutters and of the officers, the
duration, too, of the period of preparing the stones and marking them,
is all this recorded as it really was? The holy house, too, was got
ready in peace and was to be built for God without hammer or axe or
any iron tool, that there might be no disturbance in the house of
God. And again I would ask those who are in bondage to the letter how
it is possible that there should be eighty thousand stone-cutters and
that the house of God should be built out of hard white stones without
the noise of hammer or axe or any iron tool being heard in His house
while the building was going on? Is it not living stones that are
hewn without any noise or tumult somewhere outside the temple, so that
they are brought ready prepared to the place which awaits them in the
building? And there is some sort of an ascent about the temple of
God, not with angles, but with bends of straight lines. For it is
written, [5124] "And there was a winding staircase to the middle, and
from the middle to the third floor;" for the staircase in the house of
God had to be spiral, thus imitating in its ascent the circle, which
is the most perfect figure. But that this house might be secure five
ties are built in it, [5125] as fair as possible, a cubit high, that
on looking up one might see it to be suggested how we rise from
sensible things to the so-called divine perceptions, and so be brought
to perceive those things which are seen only by the mind. But the
place of the happier stones appears to be that called Dabir, [5126]
where the ark of the covenant of the Lord was, and, as I may say, the
handwriting of God, the tables written with His own finger. And the
whole house is overlaid with gold; "the whole house," we read, [5127]
"he overlaid with gold until all the house was finished." But there
were two cherubim in Dabir, a word which the translators of the Hebrew
Bible into Greek failed to render satisfactorily. Some, failing to do
justice to the language, render it the temple; but it is more sacred
than the temple. Now everything about the house was made golden, for
a sign that the mind which is quite made perfect estimates accurately
the things perceived by the intellect. But it is not given to all to
approach and know them; and hence the veil of the court is erected,
since to most of the priests and levites the things in the inmost part
of the temple are not revealed.
Footnotes
[5124] 1 Kings vi. 8.
[5125] 1 Kings vi. 10.
[5126] 1 Kings vi. 16, 19, the "oracle."
[5127] 1 Kings vi. 21.
25. Further Spiritualizing of Solomon's Temple-Building.
It is worth while to enquire how, on the one hand, Solomon the king is
said to have built the temple, and on the other the master-builder
whom Solomon sent and fetched, [5128] "Hiram of Tyre, the son of a
woman who was a widow; and he was of the tribe of Naphtali, and his
father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass, and filled with wisdom
and understanding, to work all works in brass; and he was brought in
to King Solomon and wrought all his works." Here I ask whether
Solomon can be taken for the first-born of all creation, [5129] and
Hiram for the man whom he assumed, from the constraint of men--for the
word Tyrians means "constrainers"--the man who derived his birth from
nature, and being filled with all manner of art and wisdom and
understanding, was brought in to cooperate with the first-born of all
creation, and to build the temple. In this temple there are also
windows, [5130] placed obliquely and out of sight, so that the
illumination of the divine light may enter for salvation, and--why
should I go into particulars?--that the body of Christ, the Church,
may be found having the plan of the spiritual house and temple of
God. As I said before, we require that wisdom which is hidden in a
mystery, and which he alone can apprehend who is able to say, "But we
have the mind of Christ,"--we require that wisdom to interpret
spiritually each detail of what is said in accordance with the will of
Him who caused it to be written. To enter into these details is not
in accordance with our present subject. What has been said may
suffice to let us understand how "He spake about the temple of His
body."
Footnotes
[5128] 1 Kings vii. 13.
[5129] Coloss. i. 15.
[5130] 1 Kings vi. 4.
26. The Promises Addressed to Jerusalem in the Prophets Refer to the
Church, and are Still to Be Fulfilled.
After all this it is proper to ask whether what is narrated as having
taken place about the temple has ever taken place or ever will take
place about the spiritual house. The argument may seem to pinch in
whichever way we take it. If we say that it is possible that
something like what is told about the temple may take place with
regard to the spiritual house, or has already taken place in it, then
those who hear us will, with difficulty, be brought to admit that a
change can take place in such good things as these, firstly, because
they do not wish it, and secondly, because of the incongruity of
thinking that such things admit of change. If, on the other hand, We
seek to maintain the unchangeableness of the good things once given to
the saints, then we cannot apply to them what we find in the history,
and we shall seem to be doing what those of the heresies do, who fail
to maintain the unity of the narrative of Scripture from beginning to
end. If we are not to take the view proper to old wives or Jews, of
the promises recorded in the prophets, and especially in Isaiah, if,
that is to say, we are to look for their fulfilment in connection with
the Jerusalem on earth, then, as certain remarkable things connected
with the building of the temple and the restoration of the people from
the captivity are spoken of as happening after the captivity and the
destruction of the temple, we must say that we are now the temple and
the people which was carried captive, but is to come up again to Judæa
and Jerusalem, and to be built with the precious stones of Jerusalem.
But I cannot tell if it be possible that, at the revolution of long
periods of time, things of the same nature should take place again,
but in a worse way. The prophecies of Isaiah which we mentioned are
the following: [5131]"Behold I prepare for thy stone carbuncle and
for thy foundation sapphire; and I will make thy battlements jasper,
and thy gates stones of crystal, and thy outer wall choice stones; and
all thy sons shall be taught of the Lord, and in great peace shall thy
children be, and in righteousness shalt thou be built." And a little
further on, to the same Jerusalem: [5132]"And the glory of Lebanon
shall come to thee with cypress, and pine, and cedar, along with those
who will glorify My holy place. And the sons of them that humbled
thee and insulted thee shall come to thee in fear; and thou shalt be
called the city of the Lord, Sion of holy Israel, because thou wert
desolate and hated, and there was none to help thee. And I will make
thee an eternal delight, a joy of generations of generations. And
thou shalt suck the milk of the Gentiles and shall eat the riches of
kings, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord that saveth thee and the
God of Israel that chooseth thee. And instead of brass I will bring
thee gold, and instead of iron I will bring thee silver, and for wood
I will bring thee brass, and for stones iron. And I will establish
thy rulers in peace and thy overseers in righteousness. And
wickedness shall no more be heard in thy land, nor affliction and
distress in thy borders, but thy walls shall be called salvation and
thy gates sculpture. And the sun shall no longer be to thee for light
by day, nor shall the rising of the moon give light to thee by night,
but Christ shall be to thee an everlasting light and thy God thy
glory. For thy sun shall no more go down, and thy moon shall not
fail, for thy Lord shall be to thee an everlasting light, and the days
of thy mourning shall be fulfilled." These prophecies clearly refer
to the age still to come, and they are addressed to the children of
Israel in their captivity, to whom He was sent and came, who said, "I
am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." [5133]
Such things, though they are captives, they are to receive in their
own land; and proselytes also are to come to them at that time through
Christ, and are to fly to them, according to the saying, [5134]
"Behold, proselytes shall come to thee through Me, and shall flee to
thee for refuge." And if all this is to take place with the captives,
then it is plain that they must be about their temple, and that they
must go up there again to be built up, having become the most precious
of stones. For we find with John in his Apocalyse, [5135] the promise
made to him that overcomes, that he will be a pillar in the temple of
God, and will go no more out. All this I have said with a view to our
obtaining a cursory view at least of the matters pertaining to the
temple, and the house of God, and the Church and Jerusalem, which we
cannot now take up systematically. Those, however, who, in their
reading of the prophets, do not shrink from the labour of seeking
after their spiritual meaning, must enquire into these matters with
the greatest particularity, and must take account of every
possibility. So far of "the temple of His body."
Footnotes
[5131] Isa. liv. 11-14.
[5132] Isa. lx. 13-20.
[5133] Matt. xv. 24.
[5134] Isa. liv. 15.
[5135] Apoc. iii. 12.
27. Of the Belief the Disciples Afterwards Attained in the Words of
Jesus.
"When He was raised from the dead, [5136] His disciples remembered
that He spake this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which
Jesus had said." This tells us that after Jesus' resurrection from
the dead His disciples saw that what He had said about the temple had
a higher application to His passion and His resurrection; they
remembered that the words, "In three days I will raise it up," pointed
to the resurrection; "And they believed the Scripture and the word
which Jesus had said." We are not told that they believed the
Scripture or the word which Jesus said, before. For faith in its full
sense is the act of him who accepts with his whole soul what is
professed at baptism. As for the higher sense, as we have already
spoken of the resurrection from the dead of the whole body of the
Lord, we have now to note that the disciples were put in mind by the
fulfilment of the Scripture which when they were in life they had not
fully understood; its meaning was now brought under their eyes and
made quite clear to them, and they knew of what heavenly things it was
the pattern and shadow. Then they believed the Scripture who formerly
did not believe it, and believed the word of Jesus which, as the
speaker means to convey, they had not believed before the
resurrection. For how can any one be said in the full sense to
believe the Scripture when he does not see in it the mind of the Holy
Spirit, which God would have us to believe rather than the literal
meaning? From this point of view we must say that none of those who
walk according to the flesh believe the spiritual things of the law,
of the very beginnings of which they have no conception. But, they
say, those are more blessed who have not seen and yet believe, than
those who have seen and have believed, and for this they quote the
saying to Thomas at the end of the Gospel of John, [5137] "Blessed are
they that have not seen and yet have believed." But it is not said
here that those who have not seen and yet have believed are more
blessed than those who have seen and believed. According to their
view those after the Apostles are more blessed than the Apostles; than
which nothing can be more foolish. He who is to be blessed must see
in his mind the things which he believes, and must be able with the
Apostles to hear the words spoken to him, "Blessed are your eyes, for
they see, and your ears, for they hear," [5138] and "Many prophets and
righteous men have desired to see the things which ye see, and have
not seen them, and to hear the things which ye hear, and have not
heard them." Yet he may be content who only receives the inferior
beatitude, which says: [5139]"Blessed are they who have not seen
and yet have believed." But how much more blessed are those eyes
which Jesus calls blessed for the things which they have seen, than
those which have not attained to such a vision; Simeon is content to
take into his arms the salvation of God, and after seeing it, he says,
[5140] "Now, O Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,
according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." We
must strive, therefore, as Solomon says, to open our eyes that we may
be satisfied with bread; "Open thine eyes," he says, "and be satisfied
with bread." What I have said on the text, "They believe the
Scripture and the word which Jesus had said unto them," may lead us to
understand, after discussing the subject of faith, that the perfection
of our faith will be given us at the great resurrection from the dead
of the whole body of Jesus which is His Holy Church. For what is said
about knowledge, "Now I know in part," [5141] that, I think, may be
said in the same way of every other good; and one of these others is
faith. "Now I believe in part," we may say, "but when that which is
perfect is come, then the faith which is in part will be done away."
As with knowledge, so with faith, that which is through sight is far
better, if I may say so, than that which is through a glass and in an
enigma.
Footnotes
[5136] John ii. 22.
[5137] xx. 29.
[5138] Matt. xiii. 16.
[5139] John xx. 29.
[5140] Luke ii. 29, 30.
[5141] 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
28. The Difference Between Believing in the Name of Jesus and
Believing in Jesus Himself.
"Now, when He was in Jerusalem at the passover, during the feast, many
believed in His name, beholding His signs which He did. But He,
Jesus, did not trust Himself to them, because He knew all (men) and
because He needed not that any should testify of man, for he Himself
knew what was in man." [5142]One might ask how Jesus did not
Himself believe in those of whom we are told that they believed. To
this we must say it was not those who believed in Him that Jesus did
not trust, but those who believed in His name; for believing in His
name is a different thing from believing in Him. He who will not be
judged because of his faith is exempted from the judgment, not for
believing in His name, but for believing in Him; for the Lord says,
[5143] "He that believeth in Me is not judged," not, "He who believes
in My name is not judged;" the latter believes, and hence he is not
worthy to be condemned already, but he is inferior to the other who
believes in Him. Hence it is that Jesus does not trust Himself to him
who believes in His name. We must, therefore, cleave to Him rather
than to His name, lest after we have done wonders in His name, we
should hear these words addressed to us which He will speak to those
who boast of His name alone. [5144]With the Apostle Paul [5145] let
us seek joyfully to say, "I can do all things in Christ Jesus
strengthening me." We have also to notice that in a former passage
[5146] the Evangelist calls the passover that of the Jews, while here
he does not say that Jesus was at the passover of the Jews, but at the
passover at Jerusalem; and in the former case when the passover is
called that of the Jews, it is not said to be a feast; but here Jesus
is recorded to have been at the feast; when at Jerusalem He was at the
passover during the feast, and many believed, even though only in His
name. We ought to notice certainly that "many" are said to believe,
not in Him, but in His name. Now, those who believe in Him are those
who walk in the straight and narrow way, [5147] which leads to life,
and which is found by few. It may well be, however, that many of
those who believe in His name will sit down with Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, the Father's house, in which are many
mansions. And it is to be noted that the many who believe in His name
do not believe in the same way as Andrew does, and Peter, and
Nathanael, and Philip. These believe the testimony of John when he
says, "Behold the Lamb of God," or they believe in Christ as found by
Andrew, or Jesus saying to Philip, "Follow Me," or Philip saying, "We
have found Him of whom Moses and the prophets did write, Jesus the Son
of Joseph from Nazareth." Those, on the other hand, of whom we now
speak, "believed in His name, beholding His signs which He did." And
as they believe the signs and not in Him but in His name, Jesus "did
not trust Himself to them, because He knew all men, and needed not
that any should testify of man, because He knew what is in every man."
Footnotes
[5142] ii. 23-25.
[5143] John iii. 18.
[5144] Matt. vii. 21-23.
[5145] Philipp. iv. 13.
[5146] John ii. 13.
[5147] Matt. vii. 14.
29. About What Beings Jesus Needed Testimony.
The words, "He needed not that any should testify of man," may fitly
be used to show that the Son of God is able of Himself to see the
truth about each man and is in no need of such testimony as any other
could supply. The words, however, "He had no need that any should
testify of man," are not equivalent to "He had no need of testimony
about any being." If we take the word "man" to include every being
who is according to the image of God, or every reasonable creature,
then He will have no need that any should testify to Him of any
reasonable being whatever, since He Himself, by the power given Him by
the Father, knows them all. But if the term "man" be restricted to
mortal animated reasonable beings, then it might be said, on the one
hand, that He had need of testimony respecting the beings above man,
and while His knowledge was adequate with regard to man it did not
extend to those other beings. On the other hand, however, it might be
said that He who humbled Himself had no need that any should testify
to Him concerning man, but that He had such need in respect of beings
higher than men.
30. How Jesus Knew the Powers, Better or Worse, Which Reside in Man.
It may also be asked what signs those many saw Him do who believed on
Him, for it is not recorded that He did any signs at Jerusalem, though
some may have been done which are not recorded. One may, however,
consider if what He did may be called signs, when He made a scourge of
small cords, and cast them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and
the oxen, and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the
tables. As for those who suppose that it was only about men that He
had no need of witnesses, it has to be said that the Evangelist
attributes to Him two things, that He knew all beings, and that He had
no need that any one should testify of man. If He knew all beings,
then He knew not only men but the beings above men, all beings who are
without such bodies as ours; and He knew what was in man, since He was
greater than those who reproved and judged by prophesying, and who
brought to the light the secret things of the hearts of those whom the
Spirit suggested to them to be thus dealt with. The words, "He knew
what was in man," could also be taken as referring to the powers,
better or worse, which work in men. For if any one gives place to the
devil, Satan enters into him; thus did Judas give place, and thus did
the devil put it in his heart to betray Jesus, and "after the sop,"
therefore, "the devil entered into him." [5148]But if any one gives
place to God, he becomes blessed; for blessed is the man whose help is
from God, and the ascent is in his heart from God. [5149]Thou
knowest what is in man, Thou who knowest all things, O Son of God.
And now that our tenth book has come to be large enough we will here
pause in our theme.
Footnotes
[5148] John xiii. 2-27.
[5149] Ps. lxxxiv. 5.
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