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| Other Objections Considered. God's Condescension in the Incarnation. Nothing Derogatory to the Divine Being in This Economy. The Divine Majesty Worthily Sustained by the Almighty Father, Never Visible to Man. Perverseness of the Marcionite Cavils.
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Chapter XXVII.—Other
Objections Considered. God’s Condescension in the
Incarnation. Nothing Derogatory to the Divine Being in This
Economy. The Divine Majesty Worthily Sustained by the Almighty Father,
Never Visible to Man. Perverseness of the Marcionite
Cavils.
And now, that I may briefly pass in
review3044
the other points
which you have thus far been engaged in collecting, as mean, weak, and
unworthy, for demolishing3045
the Creator, I will
propound them in a simple and definite statement:3046
that God would have been unable to hold any
intercourse with men, if He had not taken on Himself the emotions and
affections of man, by means of which He could temper the strength of
His majesty, which would no doubt have been incapable of endurance to
the moderate capacity of man, by such a humiliation as was indeed
degrading3047
to Himself, but
necessary for man, and such as on this very account became worthy of
God, because nothing is so worthy of God as the salvation of man. If I
were arguing with heathens, I should dwell more at length on this
point; although with heretics too the discussion does not stand on very
different grounds. Inasmuch as ye yourselves have now come to the
belief that God moved about3048
in the form and all
other circumstances of man’s nature,3049
you will of course no longer require to be convinced that God conformed
Himself to humanity, but feel yourselves bound by your own faith. For
if the God (in whom ye believe,) even from His higher condition,
prostrated the supreme dignity of His majesty to such a lowliness as to
undergo death, even the death of the cross, why can you not suppose
that some humiliations3050
are becoming to our
God also, only more tolerable than Jewish contumelies, and
crosses,3051
and sepulchres? Are
these the humiliations which henceforth are to raise a prejudice
against Christ (the subject as He is of human passions3052
| 3052 i.e., the sensations
of our emotional nature. | ) being a partaker of that Godhead3053
against which you make the participation in
human qualities a reproach? Now we believe that Christ did ever act in
the name of God the Father; that He actually3054
from the beginning held intercourse with (men); actually3055
communed with3056
patriarchs and prophets; was the Son of the Creator; was His Word; whom
God made His Son3057
| 3057 On this mode of the
eternal generation of the Son from the Father, as the Λόγος
προφορικός, the reader is referred for much patristic information to Bp.
Bull’s Defensio Fid. Nic. (trans. in Anglo-Cath.
Library by the translator of this work). | by emitting Him
from His own self,3058
| 3058 Proferendo ex semet
ipso. | and thenceforth set
Him over every dispensation and (administration of) His will,3059
making Him a little lower than the angels,
as is written in David.3060
In which lowering
of His condition He received from the Father a dispensation in those
very respects which you blame as human; from the very beginning
learning,3061
| 3061 Ediscens,
“practising” or “rehearsing.” | even then, (that
state of a) man which He was destined in the end to become.3062
| 3062 This doctrine of
theology is more fully expressed by our author in a fine passage in his
Treatise against Praxeas, xvi. (Oehler, vol. ii. p. 674), of
which the translator gave this version in Bp. Bull’s Def. Nic.
Creed, vol. i. p. 18: “The Son hath executed judgment from
the beginning, throwing down the haughty tower, and dividing the
tongues, punishing the whole world by the violence of waters, raining
upon Sodom and Gomorrha fire and brimstone ‘the Lord from the Lord.’
For he it was who at all times came down to hold converse with men,
from Adam on to the patriarchs and the prophets, in vision, in dream,
in mirror, in dark saying; ever from the beginning laying the
foundation of the course (of His dispensations), which He meant to
follow out unto the end. Thus was He ever learning (practising or
rehearsing); and the God who conversed with men upon earth could be no
other than the Word, which was to be made flesh. But He was thus
learning (or rehearsing, ediscebat) in order to level for
us the way of faith, that we might the more readily believe that the
Son of God had come down into the world, if we knew that in times past
also something similar had been done.” The original thus opens:
“Filius itaque est qui ab initio
judicavit.” This the author connects with
John iii. 35, Matt. xxviii.
18, John v. 22. The
“judgment” is dispensational from the first to the
last. Every judicial function of God’s providence
from Eden to the judgment day is administered by the Son of God. This
office of judge has been largely dealt with in its general view
by Tertullian, in this book ii. against Marcion (see chap.
xi.–xvii.). | It is He who descends, He who interrogates, He who
demands, He who swears. With regard, however, to the Father, the
very gospel which is common to us will testify that He was never
visible, according to the word of Christ: “No man knoweth the
Father, save the Son.”3063
For even in the Old
Testament He had declared, “No man shall see me, and
live.”3064
He means that the
Father is invisible, in whose authority and in whose name was He God
who appeared as the Son of God. But with us3065
| 3065 Penes nos. Christians,
not Marcionites. [Could our author have regarded himself as formally at
war with the church, at this time?] |
Christ is received in the person of Christ, because even in this manner
is He our God. Whatever attributes therefore you require as
worthy of God, must be found in the Father, who is invisible and
unapproachable, and placid, and (so to speak) the God of the
philosophers; whereas those qualities which you censure as unworthy
must be supposed to be in the Son, who has been seen, and heard, and
encountered, the Witness and Servant of the Father, uniting in Himself
man and God, God in mighty deeds, in weak ones man, in order that He
may give to man as much as He takes from God. What in your esteem is
the entire disgrace of my God, is in fact the sacrament of man’s
salvation. God held converse with man, that man might learn to act as
God. God dealt on equal terms3066
with man, that man
might be able to deal on equal terms with God. God was found little,
that man might become very great. You who disdain such a God, I hardly
know whether you ex fidebelieve that God was
crucified. How great, then, is your perversity in respect of the two
characters of the Creator! You designate Him as Judge, and
reprobate as cruelty that severity of the Judge which only acts in
accord with the merits of cases. You require God to be very
good, and yet despise as meanness that gentleness of His which
accorded with His kindness, (and) held lowly converse in proportion to
the mediocrity of man’s estate. He pleases you not, whether great
or little, neither as your judge nor as your friend! What if the same
features should be discovered in your God? That He too is a
judge, we have already shown in the proper section:3067
| 3067 In the 1st book, 25th
and following chapters. | that from being a judge He must needs be
severe; and from being severe He must also be cruel, if indeed
cruel.3068
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