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| Chapter XVII.—There is but one Lord and one God, the Father and Creator of all things, who has loved us in Christ, given us commandments, and remitted our sins; whose Son and Word Christ proved Himself to be, when He forgave our sins.
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Chapter XVII.—There is but one Lord
and one God, the Father and Creator of all things, who has loved us in Christ,
given us commandments, and remitted our sins; whose Son and Word Christ proved
Himself to be, when He forgave our sins.
1. Now this being is the Creator (Demiurgus), who
is, in respect of His love, the Father; but in respect of His power, He
is Lord; and in respect of His wisdom, our Maker and Fashioner; by
transgressing whose commandment we became His enemies. And therefore in
the last times the Lord has restored us into friendship through His
incarnation, having become “the Mediator between God and
men;”4590
propitiating indeed for us the Father
against whom we had sinned, and cancelling (consolatus) our
disobedience by His own obedience; conferring also upon us the gift of
communion with, and subjection to, our Maker. For this reason also He has taught us to say in
prayer, “And forgive us our debts;”4591
since indeed He is our Father, whose debtors we were, having
transgressed His commandments. But who is this Being? Is He some unknown
one, and a Father who gives no commandment
to any one? Or is
He the God who is proclaimed in the Scriptures, to whom we were debtors,
having transgressed His commandment? Now the commandment was given to man
by the Word. For Adam, it is said, “heard the voice of the Lord God.”4592
Rightly then does His Word say to man, “Thy sins are
forgiven thee;”4593
He, the same against whom we had sinned in the beginning, grants
forgiveness of sins in the end. But if indeed we had disobeyed the
command of any other, while it was a different being who said, “Thy
sins are forgiven thee;”4594
such an one is neither good, nor true, nor
just. For how can he be good, who does not give from what belongs to
himself? Or how can he be just, who snatches away the goods of another?
And in what way can sins be truly remitted, unless that He against whom
we have sinned has Himself granted remission “through the bowels of
mercy of our God,” in which “He has visited us”4595
through His Son?
2. And therefore, when He had healed the man sick of
the palsy, [the evangelist] says “The people upon seeing it
glorified God, who gave such power unto men.”4596
What God, then, did the bystanders glorify? Was it indeed that
unknown Father invented by the heretics? And how could they glorify him
who was altogether unknown to them? It is evident, therefore, that the
Israelites glorified Him who has been proclaimed as God by the law and
the prophets, who is also the Father of our Lord; and therefore He taught
men, by the evidence of their senses through those signs which He
accomplished, to give glory to God. If, however, He Himself had come from
another Father, and men glorified a different Father when they beheld His
miracles, He [in that case] rendered them ungrateful to that Father who
had sent the gift of healing. But as the only-begotten Son had come for
man’s salvation from Him who is God, He did both stir up the
incredulous by the miracles which He was in the habit of working, to give
glory to the Father; and to the Pharisees, who did not admit the advent
of His Son, and who consequently did not believe in the remission [of
sins] which was conferred by Him, He said, “That ye may know that
the Son of man hath power to forgive sins.”4597
And when He had said this, He commanded the paralytic man to take
up the pallet upon which he was lying, and go into his house. By this
work of His He confounded the unbelievers, and showed that He is Himself
the voice of God, by which man received commandments, which he broke, and
became a sinner; for the paralysis followed as a consequence of sins.
3. Therefore, by remitting sins, He did indeed heal
man, while He also manifested Himself who He was. For if no one can
forgive sins but God alone, while the Lord remitted them and healed men,
it is plain that He was Himself the Word of God made the Son of man,
receiving from the Father the power of remission of sins; since He was
man, and since He was God, in order that since as man He suffered for us,
so as God He might have compassion on us, and forgive us our debts, in
which we were made debtors to God our Creator. And therefore David said
beforehand, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and
whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed
sin;”4598
pointing out thus that
remission of sins which follows upon His advent, by which “He has
destroyed the handwriting” of our debt, and “fastened it to
the cross;”4599
so that as by means of a
tree we were made debtors to God, [so also] by means of a tree we may
obtain the remission of our debt.
4. This fact has been
strikingly set forth by many others, and especially through means of
Elisha the prophet. For when his fellow-prophets were hewing wood for the
construction of a tabernacle, and when the iron [head], shaken loose from
the axe, had fallen into the Jordan and could not be found by them, upon
Elisha’s coming to the place, and learning what had happened, he
threw some wood into the water. Then, when he had done this, the iron
part of the axe floated up, and they took up from the surface of the
water what they had previously lost.4600
By this
action the prophet pointed out that the sure word of God, which we had
negligently lost by means of a tree, and were not in the way of finding
again, we should receive anew by the dispensation of a tree, [viz., the
cross of Christ]. For that the word of God is likened to an axe, John the
Baptist declares [when he says] in reference to it, “But now also
is the axe laid to the root of the trees.”4601
Jeremiah also says to the same purport: “The word of God
cleaveth the rock as an axe.”4602
This
word, then, what was hidden from us, did the dispensation of the tree
make manifest, as I have already remarked. For as we lost it by means of
a tree, by means of a tree again was it made manifest to all, showing the
height, the length, the breadth, the depth in itself; and, as a certain
man among our predecessors observed, “Through the extension of the
hands of a divine person,4603
| 4603 The Greek is preserved here, and reads, διὰ τῆς θείας ἐκτάσεως
τῶν χειρῶν—
literally, “through the divine extension of hands.” The old
Latin merely reads, “per extensionem manuum.” |
gathering together the two peoples to one God.”
For
these were two hands, because there were two peoples scattered to the
ends of the earth; but there was one head in the middle, as there is but
one God, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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