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| Christ Thanks the Father for Revealing to Babes What He Had Concealed from the Wise. This Concealment Judiciously Effected by the Creator. Other Points in St. Luke's Chap. X. Shown to Be Only Possible to the Creator's Christ. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XXV.—Christ Thanks the Father for Revealing to Babes What He Had
Concealed from the Wise. This Concealment Judiciously Effected by the
Creator. Other Points in St. Luke’s Chap. X. Shown to Be Only
Possible to the Creator’s Christ.
Who shall be invoked as the Lord of heaven, that
does not first show Himself4465 to have been the
maker thereof? For He says, “I thank thee, (O Father,) and own
Thee, Lord of heaven, because those things which had been hidden from
the wise and prudent, Thou has revealed unto babes.”4466 What things are these? And whose? And
by whom hidden? And by whom revealed? If it was by Marcion’s god
that they were hidden and revealed, it was an extremely iniquitous
proceeding;4467 for nothing at all
had he ever produced4468 in which anything
could have been hidden—no prophecies, no parables, no visions, no
evidences4469 of things, or
words, or names, obscured by allegories and figures, or cloudy enigmas,
but he had concealed the greatness even of himself, which he was with
all his might revealing by his Christ. Now in what respect had
the wise and prudent done wrong,4470 that God
should be hidden from them, when their wisdom and prudence had been
insufficient to come to the knowledge of Him? No way had been
provided by himself,4471
4471 On the Marcionite
hypothesis. | by any declaration
of his works, or any vestiges whereby they might become4472 wise and prudent. However, if they had even
failed in any duty towards a god whom they knew not, suppose him now at
last to be known still they ought not to have found a jealous god in
him who is introduced as unlike the Creator. Therefore, since he
had neither provided any materials in which he could have hidden
anything, nor had any offenders from whom he could have hidden himself:
since, again, even if he had had any, he ought not to have hidden
himself from them, he will not now be himself the revealer, who was not
previously the concealer; so neither will any be the Lord of heaven nor
the Father of Christ but He in whom all these attributes consistently
meet.4473
4473 In quem competunt
omnia. | For He conceals by His preparatory apparatus
of prophetic obscurity, the understanding of which is open to faith
(for “if ye will not believe, ye shall not
understand”4474 ); and He had
offenders in those wise and prudent ones who would not seek after God,
although He was to be discovered in His so many and mighty
works,4475 or who rashly
philosophized about Him, and thereby furnished to heretics their
arts;4476 and lastly, He is a jealous God.
Accordingly,4477 that which Christ
thanks God for doing, He long ago4478 announced by
Isaiah: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the
understanding of the prudent will I hide.”4479 So in another passage He intimates both that
He has concealed, and that He will also reveal: “I will
give unto them treasures that have been hidden, and secret ones will I
discover to them.”4480 And again:
“Who else shall scatter the tokens of ventriloquists,4481
4481 Ventriloquorum, Greek
ἐγγαστριμύθων. | and the devices of those who divine out of
their own heart; turning wise men backward, and making their counsels
foolish?”4482 Now, if He has
designated His Christ as an enlightener of the Gentiles, saying,
“I have set thee for a light of the Gentiles;”4483
4483 Isa. xlii.
6 and xlix. 6. | and if we understand these to be meant in
the word babes4484 —as having
been once dwarfs in knowledge and infants in prudence, and even now
also babes in their lowliness of faith—we shall of course more
easily understand how He who had once hidden “these
things,” and promised a revelation of them through Christ, was
the same God as He who had now revealed them unto babes. Else, if it
was Marcion’s god who revealed the things which had been formerly
hidden by the Creator, it follows4485 that he did
the Creator’s work by setting forth His deeds.4486
4486 Res ejus
edisserens. | But he did it, say you, for His destruction,
that he might refute them.4487 Therefore he ought
to have refuted them to those from whom the Creator had hidden them,
even the wise and prudent. For if he had a kind intention in what he
did, the gift of knowledge was due to those from whom the Creator had
detained it, instead of the babes, to whom the Creator had
grudged no gift. But after all, it is, I presume, the
edification4488 rather than the demolition4489 of the law and the prophets which we have
thus far found effected in Christ. “All things,” He says,
“are delivered unto me of my Father.”4490 You may believe Him, if He is the Christ of
the Creator to whom all things belong; because the Creator has not
delivered to a Son who is less than Himself all things, which He
created by4491 Him, that is to
say, by His Word. If, on the contrary, he is the notorious
stranger,4492
4492 ἐπερχόμενος
ille; on which see above, chap. xxiii. p. 385. | what are the
“all things” which have been delivered to him by the
Father? Are they the Creator’s? Then the things which the Father
delivered to the Son are good, and the Creator is therefore good, since
all His “things” are good; whereas he4493 is no longer good who has invaded
another’s good (domains) to deliver it to his son, thus teaching
robbery4494 of another’s
goods. Surely he must be a most mendacious being, who had no other
means of enriching his son than by helping himself to another’s
property! Or else,4495 if nothing of the
Creator’s has been delivered to him by the Father, by what
right4496 does he claim for himself (authority over)
man? Or again, if man has been delivered to him, and man alone,
then man is not “all things.” But Scripture clearly says
that a transfer of all things has been made to the Son. If,
however, you should interpret this “all” of the
whole human race, that is, all nations, then the delivery of
even these to the Son is within the purpose of the
Creator:4497 “I will give
Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the
earth for Thy possession.”4498 If, indeed, he
has some things of his own, the whole of which he might give to his
son, along with the man of the Creator, then show some one thing
of them all, as a sample, that I may believe; lest I should have as
much reason not to believe that all things belong to him, of whom I see
nothing, as I have ground for believing that even the things which I
see not are His, to whom belongs the universe, which I see. But
“no man knoweth who the Father is, but the Son; and who the Son
is, but the Father, and he to whom the Son will reveal
Him.”4499 And so it was an
unknown god that Christ preached! And other heretics, too, prop
themselves up by this passage; alleging in opposition to it that the
Creator was known to all, both to Israel by familiar intercourse, and
to the Gentiles by nature. Well, how is it He Himself testifies that He
was not known to Israel? “But Israel doth not know me, and
my people doth not consider me;”4500
nor to the Gentiles: “For, behold,” says He, “of the
nations I have no man.”4501
4501 This passage it is not
easy to identify. [See Is.
lxiii. 3.] The books point to
Isa. lxv. 5, but there is there no
trace of it. | Therefore He
reckoned them “as the drop of a bucket,”4502 while “Sion He left as a
look-out4503 in a
vineyard.”4504
4504 When the vintage was
gathered, Isa. i.
8. | See, then, whether
there be not here a confirmation of the prophet’s word, when he
rebukes that ignorance of man toward God which continued to the days of
the Son of man. For it was on this account that he inserted the clause
that the Father is known by him to whom the Son has revealed Him,
because it was even He who was announced as set by the Father to be a
light to the Gentiles, who of course required to be enlightened
concerning God, as well as to Israel, even by imparting to it a fuller
knowledge of God. Arguments, therefore, will be of no use for belief in
the rival god which may be suitable4505
4505 Quæ competere
possunt. | for the
Creator, because it is only such as are unfit for the Creator which
will be able to advance belief in His rival. If you look also
into the next words, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things
which ye see, for I tell you that prophets have not seen the things
which ye see,”4506 you will find that
they follow from the sense above, that no man indeed had come to the
knowledge of God as he ought to have done,4507
since even the prophets had not seen the things which were being seen
under Christ. Now if He had not been my Christ, He would not have made
any mention of the prophets in this passage. For what was there to
wonder at, if they had not seen the things of a god who had been
unknown to them, and was only revealed a long time after them? What
blessedness, however, could theirs have been, who were then seeing what
others were naturally4508 unable to see,
since it was of things which they had never predicted that they had not
obtained the sight;4509 if it were not
because they might justly4510 have seen the
things pertaining to their God, which they had even predicted, but
which they at the same time4511 had not seen? This,
however, will be the blessedness of others, even of such as were seeing
the things which others had only foretold. We shall by and
by show, nay, we have already shown, that in Christ those things were
seen which had been foretold, but yet had been hidden from the very
prophets who foretold them, in order that they might be hidden also
from the wise and the prudent. In the true Gospel, a certain doctor of
the law comes to the Lord and asks, “What shall I do to inherit
eternal life?” In the heretical gospel life only is
mentioned, without the attribute eternal; so that the lawyer
seems to have consulted Christ simply about the life which the Creator
in the law promises to prolong,4512
4512 Ex.
xx. 12 and Deut. vi. 2. | and the Lord
to have therefore answered him according to the law, “Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy strength,”4513 since the question
was concerning the conditions of mere life. But the lawyer of
course knew very well in what way the life which the law meant4514 was to be obtained, so that his question
could have had no relation to the life whose rules he was himself in
the habit of teaching. But seeing that even the dead were now raised by
Christ, and being himself excited to the hope of an eternal life by
these examples of a restored4515 one, he would lose
no more time in merely looking on (at the wonderful things which had
made him) so high in hope.4516
4516 This is perhaps the
meaning of “ne plus aliquid observationis exigeret sublimior
spe.” | He therefore
consulted him about the attainment of eternal life. Accordingly, the
Lord, being Himself the same,4517 and introducing no
new precept other than that which relates above all others4518 to (man’s) entire salvation, even
including the present and the future life,4519
places before him4520 the very
essence4521 of the
law—that he should in every possible way love the Lord his God.
If, indeed, it were only about a lengthened life, such as is at the
Creator’s disposal, that he inquired and Christ answered, and not
about the eternal life, which is at the disposal of Marcion’s
god, how is he to obtain the eternal one? Surely not in the same
manner as the prolonged life. For in proportion to the difference of
the reward must be supposed to be also the diversity of the services.
Therefore your disciple, Marcion,4522
4522 Dei
tui…Marcionites. | will not
obtain his eternal life in consequence of loving your God, in the same
way as the man who loves the Creator will secure the lengthened life.
But how happens it that, if He is to be loved who promises the
prolonged life, He is not much more to be loved who offers the eternal
life? Therefore both one and the other life will be at the disposal of
one and the same Lord; because one and the same discipline is to be
followed4523 for one and the
other life. What the Creator teaches to be loved, that must He
necessarily maintain4524 also by
Christ,4525
4525 i.e., he must needs
have it taught and recommended by Christ. | for that rule holds
good here, which prescribes that greater things ought to be believed of
Him who has first lesser proofs to show, than of him for whom no
preceding smaller presumptions have secured a claim to be believed in
things of higher import. It matters not4526
then, whether the word eternal has been interpolated by
us.4527
4527 As Marcion
pretended. | It is enough for me, that the Christ who
invited men to the eternal—not the lengthened—life, when
consulted about the temporal life which he was destroying, did not
choose to exhort the man rather to that eternal life which he was
introducing. Pray, what would the Creator’s Christ have
done, if He who had made man for loving the Creator did not belong to
the Creator? I suppose He would have said that the Creator was not to
be loved!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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