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| Chapter I.—Christ alone is able to teach divine things, and to redeem us: He, the same, took flesh of the Virgin Mary, not merely in appearance, but actually, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, in order to renovate us. Strictures on the conceits of Valentinus and Ebion.
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Chapter I.—Christ alone is able to
teach divine things, and to redeem us: He, the same, took flesh of the Virgin
Mary, not merely in appearance, but actually, by the operation of the Holy
Spirit, in order to renovate us. Strictures on the conceits of Valentinus and
Ebion.
1. For in no other way could we have
learned the things of God, unless our Master, existing as the Word, had
become man. For no other being had the power of revealing to us the
things of the Father, except His own proper Word. For what other person
“knew the mind of the Lord,” or who else “has become
His counsellor?”4450
Again, we could have
learned in no other way than by seeing our Teacher, and hearing His voice
with our own ears, that, having become imitators of His works as well as
doers of His words, we may have communion with Him, receiving increase
from the perfect One, and from Him who is prior to all creation. We
—who were but lately created by the only best and good Being, by
Him also who has the gift of immortality, having been formed after
His likeness (predestinated, according to the prescience of the
Father, that we, who had as yet no existence, might come into being), and
made the first-fruits of creation4451
| 4451 “Initium facturæ,” which Grabe thinks
should be thus translated with reference to Jas. i.
18. | —have received, in the times known
beforehand, [the blessings of salvation] according to the ministration of
the Word, who is perfect in all things, as the mighty Word, and very man,
who, redeeming us by His own blood in a manner consonant to reason, gave
Himself as a redemption for those who had been led into captivity. And
since the apostasy tyrannized over us unjustly, and, though we were by
nature the property of the omnipotent God, alienated us contrary to
nature, rendering us its own disciples, the Word of God, powerful in all
things, and not defective with regard to His own justice, did righteously
turn against that apostasy, and redeem from it His own property, not by
violent means, as the [apostasy] had obtained dominion over us at the
beginning, when it insatiably snatched away what was not its own, but by
means of persuasion, as became a God of counsel, who does not use violent
means to obtain what He desires; so that neither should justice be
infringed upon, nor the ancient handiwork of God go to destruction.
Since the
Lord thus has redeemed us through His own blood, giving His soul for our
souls, and His flesh for our flesh,4452
| 4452 [Compare Clement, cap. 49, p. 18, this volume.]
| and has also poured out the Spirit of the Father for the union
and communion of God and man, imparting indeed God to men by means of the
Spirit, and, on the other hand, attaching man to God by His own
incarnation, and bestowing upon us at His coming immortality durably and
truly, by means of communion with God,—all the doctrines of the
heretics fall to ruin.
2. Vain indeed are those
who allege that He appeared in mere seeming. For these things were not
done in appearance only, but in actual reality. But if He did appear as a
man, when He was not a man, neither could the Holy Spirit have rested
upon Him,—an occurrence which did actually take place—as
the Spirit is invisible; nor, [in that case], was there any degree of
truth in Him, for He was not that which He seemed to be. But I have
already remarked that Abraham and the other prophets beheld Him after a
prophetical manner, foretelling in vision what should come to pass. If,
then, such a being has now appeared in outward semblance different from
what he was in reality, there has been a certain prophetical vision made
to men; and another advent of His must be looked forward to, in which He
shall be such as He has now been seen in a prophetic manner. And I have
proved already, that it is the same thing to say that He appeared merely
to outward seeming, and [to affirm] that He received nothing from Mary.
For He would not have been one truly possessing flesh and blood, by which
He redeemed us, unless He had summed up in Himself the ancient formation
of Adam. Vain therefore are the disciples of Valentinus who put forth
this opinion, in order that they my exclude the flesh from salvation, and
cast aside what God has fashioned.
3. Vain also are the Ebionites, who do not receive
by faith into their soul the union of God and man, but who remain in the
old leaven of [the natural] birth, and who do not choose to understand
that the Holy Ghost came upon Mary, and the power of the Most High did
overshadow her:4453
wherefore also what was
generated is a holy thing, and the Son of the Most High God the Father of
all, who effected the incarnation of this being, and showed forth a new
[kind of] generation; that as by the former generation we inherited
death, so by this new generation we might inherit life. Therefore do these
men reject the commixture of the heavenly wine,4454
| 4454 In allusion to the mixture of water in the
eucharistic cup, as practised in these primitive times. The Ebionites and
others used to consecrate the element of water alone. | and
wish it to be water of the world only, not receiving God so as to have
union with Him, but they remain in that Adam who had been conquered and
was expelled from Paradise: not considering that as, at the beginning of
our formation in Adam, that breath of life which proceeded from God,
having been united to what had been fashioned, animated the man, and
manifested him as a being endowed with reason; so also, in [the times of]
the end, the Word of the Father and the Spirit of God, having become
united with the ancient substance of Adam’s formation, rendered man
living and perfect, receptive of the perfect Father, in order that as in
the natural [Adam] we all were dead, so in the spiritual we may all be
made alive.4455
For never at any time did Adam escape
the hands4456
| 4456 Viz., the
Son and the Spirit. | of God, to whom the Father speaking,
said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” And
for this reason in the last times (fine), not by the will of the
flesh, nor by the will of man, but by the good pleasure of the
Father,4457
His hands formed a living man, in order that
Adam might be created [again] after the image and likeness of God.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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