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| Christ's Connection with the Creator Shown. Many Quotations Out of the Old Testament Prophetically Bear on Certain Events of the Life of Jesus--Such as His Ascent to Praying on the Mountain; His Selection of Twelve Apostles; His Changing Simon's Name to Peter, and Gentiles from Tyre and Sidon Resorting to Him.
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Chapter
XIII.—Christ’s Connection with the Creator Shown. Many
Quotations Out of the Old Testament Prophetically Bear on Certain
Events of the Life of Jesus—Such as His Ascent to Praying on the
Mountain; His Selection of Twelve Apostles; His Changing Simon’s
Name to Peter, and Gentiles from Tyre and Sidon Resorting to
Him.
Surely to Sion He brings good tidings, and to
Jerusalem peace and all blessings; He goes up into a mountain, and
there spends a night in prayer,3904
and He is
indeed heard by the Father. Accordingly turn over the prophets,
and learn therefrom His entire course.3905
“Into the high mountain,” says Isaiah, “get Thee up,
who bringest good tidings to Sion; lift up Thy voice with strength, who
bringest good tidings to Jerusalem.”3906
“They were mightily3907
| 3907 In vigore. Or
this phrase may qualify the noun thus: “They were astonished at
His doctrine, in its might.” | astonished at His
doctrine; for He was teaching as one who had power.”3908
And again: “Therefore, my people
shall know my name in that day.” What name does the prophet
mean, but Christ’s? “That I am He that doth
speak—even I.”3909
For it was He who
used to speak in the prophets—the Word, the Creator’s Son.
“I am present, while it is the hour, upon the mountains, as one
that bringeth glad tidings of peace, as one that publisheth good
tidings of good.”3910
So one of the
twelve (minor prophets), Nahum: “For behold upon the mountain the
swift feet of Him that bringeth glad tidings of peace.”3911
Moreover, concerning the voice of His prayer
to the Father by night, the psalm manifestly says: “O my God, I
will cry in the day-time, and Thou shalt hear; and in the night season,
and it shall not be in vain to me.”3912
In
another passage touching the same voice and place, the psalm says:
“I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and He heard me out of His
holy mountain.”3913
You have a
representation of the name; you have the action of the Evangelizer; you
have a mountain for the site; and the night as the time; and the sound
of a voice; and the audience of the Father: you have, (in short,) the
Christ of the prophets. But why was it that He chose twelve
apostles,3914
and not some other
number? In truth,3915
I might from this
very point conclude3916
of my Christ, that
He was foretold not only by the words of prophets, but by the
indications of facts. For of this number I find figurative hints up and
down the Creator’s dispensation3917
in
the twelve springs of Elim;3918
in the twelve gems
of Aaron’s priestly vestment;3919
and in the
twelve stones appointed by Joshua to be taken out of the Jordan, and
set up for the ark of the covenant. Now, the same number of apostles
was thus portended, as if they were to be fountains and rivers which
should water the Gentile world, which was formerly dry and destitute of
knowledge (as He says by Isaiah: “I will put streams in the
unwatered ground”3920
); as if they were
to be gems to shed lustre upon the church’s sacred
robe, which Christ, the High
Priest of the Father, puts on; as if, also, they were to be stones
massive in their faith, which the true Joshua took out of the laver of
the Jordan, and placed in the sanctuary of His covenant. What
equally good defence of such a number has Marcion’s Christ to
show? It is impossible that anything can be shown to have been done by
him unconnectedly,3921
| 3921 Simpliciter:
i.e., simply or without relation to any types or
prophecies. | which cannot be
shown to have been done by my Christ in connection (with preceding
types).3922
To him will
appertain the event3923
in whom is
discovered the preparation for the same.3924
Again, He changes the name of Simon to Peter,3925
inasmuch as the Creator also altered the names of Abram, and Sarai, and
Oshea, by calling the latter Joshua, and adding a syllable to each of
the former. But why Peter? If it was because of the vigour of
his faith, there were many solid materials which might lend a name from
their strength. Was it because Christ was both a rock and a stone? For
we read of His being placed “for a stone of stumbling and for a
rock of offence.”3926
| 3926 Isa. viii. 14; Rom. ix. 33; 1 Pet. ii.
8. | I omit the rest of
the passage.3927
Therefore He would
fain3928
impart to the dearest of His disciples a
name which was suggested by one of His own especial designations in
figure; because it was, I suppose, more peculiarly fit than a name
which might have been derived from no figurative description of
Himself.3929
| 3929 De non suis; opposed
to the de figuris suis peculiariter. [St. Peter was not
the dearest of the Apostles though he was the
foremost.] | There come to Him
from Tyre, and from other districts even, a transmarine
multitude. This fact the psalm had in view: “And
behold tribes of foreign people, and Tyre, and the people of the
Ethiopians; they were there. Sion is my mother, shall a man say; and in
her was born a man” (forasmuch as the God-man was born), and He
built her by the Father’s will; that you may know how Gentiles
then flocked to Him, because He was born the God-man who was to build
the church according to the Father’s will—even of other
races also.3930
So says Isaiah too:
“Behold, these come from far; and these from the north and from
the west;3931
and these from the
land of the Persians.”3932
Concerning whom He
says again: “Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold, all
these have gathered themselves together.”3933
And yet again: “Thou seest these unknown and strange ones; and
thou wilt say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these? But who hath
brought me up these? And these, where have they been?”3934
Will such a Christ not be (the Christ) of
the prophets? And what will be the Christ of the Marcionites? Since
perversion of truth is their pleasure, he could not be (the Christ) of
the prophets.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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