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| Chapter CXXVIII.—The Word is sent not as an inanimate power, but as a person begotten of the Father’s substance. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter CXXVIII.—The Word is sent not
as an inanimate power, but as a person begotten of the Father’s substance.
“And that Christ being Lord, and God the Son of
God, and appearing formerly in power as Man, and Angel, and in the glory
of fire as at the bush, so also was manifested at the judgment executed
on Sodom, has been demonstrated fully by what has been said.”
Then I repeated once more all that
I had previously quoted from Exodus, about the vision in the bush, and
the naming of Joshua (Jesus), and continued: “And do not suppose,
sirs, that I am speaking superfluously when I repeat these words
frequently: but it is because I know that some wish to anticipate these
remarks, and to say that the power sent from the Father of all which
appeared to Moses, or to Abraham, or to Jacob, is called an Angel because
He came to men (for by Him the commands of the Father have been
proclaimed to men); is called Glory, because He appears in a vision
sometimes that cannot be borne; is called a Man, and a human being,
because He appears arrayed in such forms as the Father pleases; and they call Him the
Word, because He carries tidings from the Father to men: but maintain
that this power is indivisible and inseparable from the Father, just as
they say that the light of the sun on earth is indivisible and
inseparable from the sun in the heavens; as when it sinks, the light
sinks along with it; so the Father, when He chooses, say they, causes His
power to spring forth, and when He chooses, He makes it return to
Himself. In this way, they teach, He made the angels. But it is proved
that there are angels who always exist, and are never reduced to that
form out of which they sprang. And that this power which the prophetic
word calls God, as has been also amply demonstrated, and Angel, is not
numbered [as different] in name only like the light of the sun but is
indeed something numerically distinct, I have discussed briefly in what
has gone before; when I asserted that this power was begotten from the
Father, by His power and will, but not by abscission, as if the essence
of the Father were divided; as all other things partitioned and divided
are not the same after as before they were divided: and, for the sake of
example, I took the case of fires kindled from a fire, which we see to be
distinct from it, and yet that from which many can be kindled is by no
means made less, but remains the same. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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