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| Comparison of Christ's Power Over Winds and Waves with Moses' Command of the Waters of the Red Sea and the Jordan. Christ's Power Over Unclean Spirits. The Case of the Legion. The Cure of the Issue of Blood. The Mosaic Uncleanness on This Point Explained.
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Chapter
XX.—Comparison of Christ’s Power Over Winds and Waves with
Moses’ Command of the Waters of the Red Sea and the Jordan.
Christ’s Power Over Unclean Spirits. The Case of the Legion. The
Cure of the Issue of Blood. The Mosaic Uncleanness on This Point
Explained.
But “what manner of man is this? for He
commandeth even the winds and water!”4216
Of
course He is the new master and proprietor of the elements, now that
the Creator is deposed, and excluded from their possession! Nothing of
the kind. But the elements own4217
their own Maker,
just as they had been accustomed to obey His servants also. Examine
well the Exodus, Marcion; look at the rod of Moses, as it waves His
command to the Red Sea, ampler than all the lakes of Judæa. How
the sea yawns from its very depths, then fixes itself in two solidified
masses, and so, out of the interval between them,4218
| 4218 Et pari utrinque
stupore discriminis fixum. | makes a way for the people to pass dry-shod
across; again does the same rod vibrate, the sea returns in its
strength, and in the concourse of its waters the chivalry of Egypt is
engulphed! To that consummation the very winds subserved! Read,
too, how that the Jordan was as a sword, to hinder the emigrant nation
in their passage across its stream; how that its waters from above
stood still, and its current below wholly ceased to run at the bidding
of Joshua,4219
when his priests
began to pass over!4220
| 4220 This obscure passage
is thus read by Oehler, from whom we have translated: “Lege
extorri familiæ dirimendæ in transitu ejus Jordanis
machæram fuisse, cujus impetum atque decursum plane et Jesus
docuerat prophetis transmeantibus stare.” The
machæram (“sword”) is a metaphor for the
river. Rigaltius refers to Virgil’s figure,
Æneid, viii. 62, 64, for a justification of the simile.
Oehler has altered the reading from the “ex
sortefamilæ,” etc., of the mss. to
“extorrifamiliæ,” etc. The former
reading would mean probably: “Read out of the story of the
nation how that Jordan was as a sword to hinder their passage across
its stream.” The sorte (or, as yet another
variation has it, “et sortes,” “the
accounts”) meant the national record, as we have it in the
beginning of the book of Joshua. But the passage is almost hopelessly
obscure. | What will you say to this? If it be your
Christ that is meant above, he will not be more potent than the
servants of the Creator. But I should have been content with the
examples I have adduced without addition,4221
if
a prediction of His present passage on the sea had not preceded
Christ’s coming. As psalm is, in fact, accomplished by
this4222
crossing over the lake. “The
Lord,” says the psalmist, “is upon many
waters.”4223
When He disperses
its waves, Habakkuk’s words are fulfilled, where he says,
“Scattering the waters in His passage.”4224
When at His rebuke the sea is calmed, Nahum
is also verified: He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it
dry,”4225
including the winds
indeed, whereby it was disquieted. With what evidence would you have my
Christ vindicated? Shall it come from the examples, or from the
prophecies, of the Creator? You suppose that He is predicted as a
military and armed warrior,4226
| 4226 See above, book iii.
chap. xiii. | instead of one who
in a figurative and allegorical sense was to wage a spiritual warfare
against spiritual enemies, in spiritual campaigns, and with spiritual
weapons: come now, when in one man alone you discover a multitude of
demons calling itself Legion,4227
of course
comprised of spirits, you should learn that Christ also must be
understood to be an exterminator of spiritual foes, who wields
spiritual arms and fights in spiritual strife; and that it was none
other than He,4228
| 4228 Atque ita ipsum
esse. | who now had to
contend with even a legion of demons. Therefore it is of such a war as
this that the Psalm may evidently have spoken: “The Lord is
strong, The Lord is mighty in battle.”4229
For with the last enemy death did He fight, and through the trophy of
the cross He triumphed. Now of what God did the Legion testify that
Jesus was the Son?4230
No doubt, of that
God whose torments and abyss they knew and dreaded. It seems impossible
for them to have remained up to this time in ignorance of what the
power of the recent and unknown god was working in the world, because
it is very unlikely that the Creator was ignorant thereof. For if He
had been at any time ignorant that there was another god above Himself,
He had by this time at all events discovered that there was one at
work4231
below His heaven. Now, what their Lord had
discovered had by this time become notorious to His entire family
within the same world and the same circuit of heaven, in which the
strange deity dwelt and acted.4232
As therefore both
the Creator and His creatures4233
| 4233 Substantiæ:
including these demons. | must have had
knowledge of him, if he had been in existence, so, inasmuch as he had
no existence, the demons really knew none other than the Christ of
their own God. They do not ask of the strange god, what they
recollected they must beg of the Creator—not to be plunged into
the Creator’s abyss. They at last had their request granted. On
what ground? Because they had lied? Because they had proclaimed Him to
be the Son of a ruthless God? And what sort of god will that be who
helped the lying, and upheld his detractors? However, no need of
this thought, for,4234
| 4234 Sed enim: the
ἀλλὰ γὰρ of the Greek. | inasmuch as they
had not lied, inasmuch as they had acknowledged that the God of the
abyss was also their God, so did He actually Himself affirm that He was
the same whom these demons acknowledged—Jesus, the Judge and Son
of the avenging God. Now, behold an inkling4235
of
the Creator’s failings4236
and infirmities in
Christ; for I on my side4237
mean to impute to
Him ignorance. Allow me some indulgence in my effort against the
heretic. Jesus is touched by the woman who had an issue of
blood,4238
He knew not by
whom. “Who touched me?” He asks, when His disciples alleged
an excuse. He even persists in His assertion of ignorance:
“Somebody hath touched me,” He says, and advances some
proof: “For I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.” What
says our heretic? Could Christ have known the person? And why
did He speak as if He were ignorant? Why? Surely it was to challenge
her faith, and to try her fear. Precisely as He had once questioned
Adam, as if in ignorance: Adam, where art thou?”4239
| 4239 See above, book iii.
chap. xxv. | Thus you have both the Creator excused in
the same way as Christ, and Christ acting similarly to4240
| 4240 Adæquatum: on a
par with. | the Creator. But in this case He acted as an
adversary of the law; and therefore, as the law forbids contact with a
woman with an issue,4241
He desired not only
that this woman should touch Him, but that He should heal her.4242
| 4242 A Marcionite
hypothesis. | Here, then, is a God who is not merciful by
nature, but in hostility! Yet, if we find that such was the merit
of this woman’s faith, that He said unto her, Thy faith hath
saved thee,”4243
what are you, that
you should detect an hostility to the law in that act, which the Lord
Himself shows us to have been done as a reward of faith? But will you
have it that this faith of the woman consisted in the contempt which
she had acquired for the law? Who can suppose, that a woman who had
been. hitherto unconscious of any God, uninitiated as yet in any new
law, should violently infringe that law by which she was up to this
time bound? On what faith, indeed, was such an infringement hazarded?
In what God believing? Whom despising? The Creator? Her touch at
least was an act of faith. And if of faith in the Creator, how
could she have violated His law,4244
| 4244 Ecquomodo legem ejus
irrupit. | when she was
ignorant of any other God? Whatever her infringement of the law
amounted to, it proceeded from and was proportionate to her faith in
the Creator. But how can these two things be compatible? That she
violated the law, and violated it in faith, which ought to have
restrained her from such violation? I will tell you how her faith was
this above all:4245
it made her believe
that her God preferred mercy even to sacrifice; she was certain that
her God was working in Christ; she touched Him, therefore, nor as a
holy man simply, nor as a prophet, whom she knew to be capable of
contamination by reason of his human nature, but as very God, whom she
assumed to be beyond all possibility of pollution by any
uncleanness.4246
She therefore, not
without reason,4247
interpreted for
herself the law, as meaning that such things as are susceptible of
defilement become defiled, but not so God, whom she knew for certain to
be in Christ. But she recollected this also, that what came under the
prohibition of the law4248
was that ordinary
and usual issue of blood which proceeds from natural functions every
month, and in childbirth, not that which was the result of disordered
health. Her case, however, was one of long abounding4249
| 4249 Illa autem
redundavit. | ill health, for which she knew that the
succour of God’s mercy was needed, and not the natural
relief of time. And thus she may evidently be regarded as having
discerned4250
the law, instead of
breaking it. This will prove to be the faith which was to confer
intelligence likewise. “If ye will not believe,” says (the
prophet), “ye shall not understand.”4251
When Christ approved of the faith of this
woman, which simply rested in the Creator, He declared by His answer to
her,4252
that He was Himself the divine object of the
faith of which He approved. Nor can I overlook the fact that His
garment, by being touched, demonstrated also the truth of His body; for
of course”4253
it was a body, and
not a phantom, which the garment clothed.4254
| 4254 Epiphanius, in
Hæres. xlii. Refut. 14, has the same
remark. |
This indeed is not our point now; but the remark has a natural bearing
on the question we are discussing. For if it were not a veritable body,
but only a fantastic one, it could not for certain have received
contamination, as being an unsubstantial thing.4255
He
therefore, who, by reason of this vacuity of his substance, was
incapable of contamination, how could he possibly have desired this
touch?4256
| 4256 In allusion to the
Marcionite hypothesis mentioned above. | As an adversary of
the law, his conduct was deceitful, for he was not susceptible of a
real pollution.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
