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| Christ's Connection with the Creator Shown from Several Incidents in the Old Testament, Compared with St. Luke's Narrative of the Mission of the Disciples. The Feeding of the Multitude. The Confession of St. Peter. Being Ashamed of Christ. This Shame is Only Possible of the True Christ. Marcionite Pretensions Absurd.
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Chapter
XXI.—Christ’s Connection with the Creator Shown from
Several Incidents in the Old Testament, Compared with St. Luke’s
Narrative of the Mission of the Disciples. The Feeding of the
Multitude. The Confession of St. Peter. Being Ashamed of Christ. This
Shame is Only Possible of the True Christ. Marcionite Pretensions
Absurd.
He sends forth His disciples to preach the kingdom
of God.4257
Does He here say of
what God? He forbids their taking anything for their journey, by way of
either food or raiment. Who would have given such a commandment
as this, but He who feeds the ravens and clothes4258
the flowers of the field? Who anciently
enjoined for the treading ox an unmuzzled mouth,4259
that he might be at liberty to gather his
fodder from his labour, on the principle that the worker is worthy of
his hire?4260
Marcion may expunge
such precepts, but no matter, provided the sense of them
survives. But when He charges them to shake off the dust of their
feet against such as should refuse to receive them, He also bids that
this be done as a witness. Now no one bears witness except
in a case which is decided by judicial process; and whoever orders
inhuman conduct to be submitted to the trial by
testimony,4261
| 4261 In testationem
redigi. | does really threaten as a judge. Again, that
it was no new god which recommended4262
by Christ, was
clearly attested by the opinion of all men, because some maintained to
Herod that Jesus was the Christ; others, that He was John; some, that
He was Elias; and others, that He was one of the old prophets.4263
Now, whosoever of all these He might have
been, He certainly was not raised up for the purpose of announcing
another god after His resurrection. He feeds the multitude in the
desert place;4264
this, you must
know4265
was after the manner of the Old
Testament.4266
Or else,4267
if there was not the same grandeur, it
follows that He is now inferior to the Creator. For He, not for
one day, but during forty years, not on the inferior aliment of bread
and fish, but with the manna of heaven, supported the lives4268
of not five thousand, but of six hundred
thousand human beings. However, such was the greatness of His
miracle, that He willed the slender supply of food, not only to be
enough, but even to prove superabundant;4269
and herein He followed the ancient precedent. For in like manner,
during the famine in Elijah’s time, the scanty and final meal of
the widow of Sarepta was multiplied4270
by the
blessing of the prophet throughout the period of the famine. You have
the third book of the Kings.4271
If you also turn to
the fourth book, you will discover all this conduct4272
of Christ pursued by that man of God, who
ordered ten4273
| 4273 I have no doubt
that ten was the word written by our author; for some Greek
copies read δέκα, and Ambrose in his
Hexaëmeron, book vi. chap. ii., mentions the same number
(Fr. Junius). | barley loaves which
had been given him to be distributed among the people; and when his
servitor, after contrasting the large number of the persons with the
small supply of the food, answered, “What, shall I set this
before a hundred men?” he said again, “Give them, and they
shall eat: for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave
thereof, according to the word of the Lord.”4274
O Christ, even in Thy novelties Thou art
old! Accordingly, when Peter, who had been an eye-witness of the
miracle, and had compared it with the ancient precedents, and had
discovered in them prophetic intimations of what should one day come to
pass, answered (as the mouthpiece of them all) the Lord’s
inquiry, “Whom say ye that I am?”4275
in
the words, “Thou art the Christ,” he could not but have
perceived that He was that Christ, beside whom he knew of none else in
the Scriptures, and whom he was now surveying4276
in
His wonderful deeds. This conclusion He even Himself confirms by thus
far bearing with it, nay, even enjoining silence respecting
it.4277
For if Peter was unable to acknowledge Him
to be any other than the Creator’s Christ, while He
commanded them “to tell no man that saying,”
surely4278
He was unwilling to
have the conclusion promulged which Peter had drawn. No doubt of
that,4279
you say; but as Peter’s conclusion was
a wrong one, therefore He was unwilling to have a lie disseminated. It
was, however, a different reason which He assigned for the silence,
even because “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be
rejected of the elders, and scribes, and priests, and be slain, and be
raised again the third day.”4280
Now, inasmuch
as these sufferings were actually foretold for the
Creator’s Christ (as we shall fully show in the proper
place4281
| 4281 See below, chaps.
xl.–xliii. | ), so by this application of them to His own
case4282
does He prove that it is He Himself of whom
they were predicted. At all events, even if they had not been
predicted, the reason which He alleged for imposing silence (on the
disciples) was such as made it clear enough that Peter had made no
mistake, that reason being the necessity of His undergoing these
sufferings. “Whosoever,” says He, “will save his
life, shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the
same shall save it.”4283
Surely4284
it is the Son of man4285
| 4285 Compare above, chap.
x., towards the end. |
who uttered this sentence. Look carefully, then, along with the king of
Babylon, into his burning fiery furnace, and there you will discover
one “like the Son of man” (for He was not yet really Son of
man, because not yet born of man), even as early as then4286
appointing issues such as these. He saved
the lives of the three brethren,4287
who had agreed
to lose them for God’s sake; but He destroyed those of the
Chaldæans, when they had preferred to save them by the means of
their idolatry. Where is that novelty, which you pretend4288
in a doctrine which possesses these ancient
proofs? But all the predictions have been fulfilled4289
concerning martyrdoms which were to happen,
and were to receive the recompenses of their reward from God.
“See,” says Isaiah, “how the righteous perisheth, and
no man layeth it to heart; and just men are taken away, and no man
considereth.”4290
When does this more
frequently happen than in the persecution of His saints? This, indeed,
is no ordinary matter,4291
| 4291 We have, by
understanding res, treated these adjectives as nouns. Rigalt.
applies them to the doctrina of the sentence just previous.
Perhaps, however, “persecutione” is the noun. | no common casualty
of the law of nature; but it is that illustrious devotion, that
fighting for the faith, wherein whosoever loses his life for God saves
it, so that you may here again recognize the Judge who recompenses the
evil gain of life with its destruction, and the good loss thereof with
its salvation. It is, however, a jealous God whom He here presents to
me; one who returns evil for evil. “For whosoever,”
says He, “shall be ashamed of me, of him will I also be
ashamed.”4292
Now to none but my
Christ can be assigned the occasion4293
of such a
shame as this. His whole course4294
was so exposed
to shame as to open a way for even the taunts of heretics,
declaiming4295
with all the
bitterness in their power against the utter disgrace4296
of His birth and bringing-up, and the
unworthiness of His very flesh.4297
| 4297 Ipsius etiam carnis
indignitatem; because His flesh, being capable of suffering and subject
to death, seemed to them unworthy of God. So Adv. Judæos,
chap. xiv., he says: “Primo sordidis indutus est, id est carnis
passibilis et mortalis indignitate.” Or His
“indignity” may have been εἶδος οὐκ
ἄξιον
τυραννίδος, His “unkingly aspect” (as Origen expresses
it, Contra Celsum, 6); His “form of a
servant,” or slave, as St. Paul says. See also Tertullian’s
De Patientia, iii. (Rigalt.) | But how can
that Christ of yours be liable to a shame, which it is impossible for
him to experience? Since he was never condensed4298
into human flesh in the womb of a woman, although a virgin; never grew
from human seed, although only after the law of corporeal substance,
from the fluids4299
of a woman; was
never deemed flesh before shaped in the womb; never called
fœtus4300
| 4300 Pecus. Julius
Firmicus, iii. 1, uses the word in the same way: “Pecus
intra viscera matris artuatim concisum a medicis
proferetur.” [Jul. Firmicus Maternus, floruit circa,
a.d. 340.] | after such shaping;
was never delivered from a ten months’ writhing in the
womb;4301
| 4301 Such is probably the
meaning of “non decem mensium cruciatu deliberatus.” For
such is the situation of the infant in the womb, that it seems to
writhe (cruciari) all curved and contracted (Rigalt.). Latinius
read delibratus instead of deliberatus, which means,
“suspended or poised in the womb as in a scale.” This has
my approbation. I would compare De Carne Christi, chap. iv. (Fr.
Junius). Oehler reads deliberatus in the sense of
liberatus. | was never shed forth upon the ground, amidst
the sudden pains of parturition, with the unclean issue which flows at
such a time through the sewerage of the body, forthwith to inaugurate
the light4302
| 4302 Statim lucem lacrimis
auspicatus. | of life with tears,
and with that primal wound which severs the child from her who bears
him;4303
| 4303 Primo retinaculi sui
vulnere: the cutting of the umbilical nerve. [Contrast Jer.
Taylor, on the Nativity, Opp. I. p. 34.] | never received the copious ablution, nor the
meditation of salt and honey;4304
| 4304 Nec sale ac melle
medicatus. Of this application in the case of a recent childbirth we
know nothing; it seems to have been meant for the skin. See Pliny, in
his Hist. Nat. xxii. 25. | nor did he initiate
a shroud with swaddling clothes;4305
| 4305 Nec pannis jam
sepulturæ involucrum initiatus. | nor afterwards
did he ever wallow4306
| 4306 Volutatus per
immunditias. | in his own
uncleanness, in his mother’s lap; nibbling at her breast; long an
infant; gradually4307
a boy; by slow
degrees4308
a man.4309
But he was revealed4310
| 4310 i.e., he never passed
through stages like these. |
from heaven, full-grown at once, at once complete; immediately Christ;
simply spirit, and power, and god. But as withal he was not true,
because not visible; therefore he was no object to be ashamed of from
the curse of the cross, the real endurance4311
of
which he escaped, because wanting in bodily substance. Never,
therefore, could he have said, “Whosoever shall be ashamed of
me.” But as for our Christ, He could do no otherwise than make
such a declaration;4312
| 4312 Debuit
pronuntiasse. | “made”
by the Father “a little lower than the angels,”4313
“a worm and no man, a reproach of men,
and despised of the people;”4314
seeing that it
was His will that “with His stripes we should be
healed,”4315
that by His
humiliation our salvation should be established. And justly did He
humble Himself4316
for His own
creature man, for the image and likeness of Himself, and not of
another, in order that man, since he had not felt ashamed when bowing
down to a stone or a stock, might with similar courage give
satisfaction to God for the shamelessness of his idolatry, by
displaying an equal degree of shamelessness in his faith, in not being
ashamed of Christ. Now, Marcion, which of these courses is better
suited to your Christ, in respect of a meritorious shame?4317
| 4317 Ad meritum
confusionis. | Plainly, you ought yourself to blush with
shame for having given him a fictitious existence.4318
| 4318 Quod illum
finxisti. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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