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| The Doctrine of the Resurrection. The Body Will Rise Again. Christ's Judicial Character. Jewish Perversions of Prophecy Exposed and Confuted. Messianic Psalms Vindicated. Jewish and Rationalistic Interpretations on This Point Similar. Jesus--Not Hezekiah or Solomon--The Subject of These Prophecies in the Psalms. None But He is the Christ of the Old and the New Testaments.
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Chapter
IX.—The Doctrine of the Resurrection. The Body Will Rise Again.
Christ’s Judicial Character. Jewish Perversions of Prophecy
Exposed and Confuted. Messianic Psalms Vindicated. Jewish and
Rationalistic Interpretations on This Point Similar.
Jesus—Not Hezekiah or Solomon—The Subject of These
Prophecies in the Psalms. None But He is the Christ of the Old and the
New Testaments.
Meanwhile the Marcionite will exhibit nothing of
this kind; he is by this time afraid to say which side has the better
right to a Christ who is not yet revealed. Just as my Christ is to be
expected,5581
| 5581 He here argues, as it
will be readily observed, from the Marcionite theory alluded to, near
the end of the last chapter. | who was predicted
from the beginning, so his Christ therefore has no existence, as not
having been announced from the beginning. Ours is a better
faith, which believes in a future Christ, than the heretic’s,
which has none at all to believe in. Touching the resurrection of the
dead,5582
let us first inquire how some persons then
denied it. No doubt in the same way in which it is even now denied,
since the resurrection of the flesh has at all times men to deny it.
But many wise men claim for the soul a divine nature, and are confident
of its undying destiny, and even the multitude worship the
dead5583
| 5583 See his treatise,
De Resur. Carnis, chap. i. (Oehler). | in the presumption which they boldly
entertain that their souls survive. As for our bodies, however, it is
manifest that they perish either at once by fire or the wild
beasts,5584
| 5584 An allusion to the
deaths of martyrs. | or even when most
carefully kept by length of time. When, therefore, the apostle refutes
those who deny the resurrection of the flesh, he indeed defends, in
opposition to them, the precise matter of their denial, that is, the
resurrection of the body. You have the whole answer wrapped up in
this.5585
All the rest is superfluous. Now in this
very point, which is called the resurrection of the dead, it is
requisite that the proper force of the words should be accurately
maintained.5586
The word
dead expresses simply what has lost the vital
principle,5587
by means of which
it used to live. Now the body is that which loses life, and as the
result of losing it becomes dead. To the body, therefore, the
term dead is only suitable. Moreover, as resurrection accrues to what
is dead, and dead is a term applicable only to a body, therefore the
body alone has a resurrection incidental to it. So again the word
Resurrection, or (rising again), embraces only that which has
fallen down. “To rise,” indeed, can be predicated of that
which has never fallen down, but had already been always lying down.
But “to rise again” is predicable only of that which
has fallen down; because it is by rising again, in consequence
of its having fallen down, that it is said to have
re-risen.5588
| 5588 The reader will
readily see how the English fails to complete the illustration with the
ease of the Latin, “surgere,” “iterum
surgere,” “resurgere.” | For the syllable RE
always implies iteration (or happening again). We say,
therefore, that the body falls to the ground by death, as indeed facts
themselves show, in accordance with the law of God. For to the body it
was said, (“Till thou return to the ground, for out of it wast
thou taken; for) dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou
return.”5589
| 5589 Gen. iii. 19. [“Was not said unto the
Soul”—says our own Longfellow, in corresponding words.] | That, therefore,
which came from the ground shall return to the ground. Now that falls
down which returns to the ground; and that rises again which falls
down. “Since by man came death, by man came also the
resurrection.”5590
Here in the word
man, who consists of bodily substance, as we have often shown
already, is presented to me the body of Christ. But if we are all
so made alive in Christ, as we die in Adam, it follows of necessity
that we are made alive in Christ as a bodily substance, since we died
in Adam as a bodily substance. The similarity, indeed, is not complete,
unless our revival5591
in Christ concur in
identity of substance
with our mortality5592
in Adam. But at
this point5593
(the apostle) has
made a parenthetical statement5594
| 5594 Interposuit
aliquid. | concerning Christ,
which, bearing as it does on our present discussion, must not pass
unnoticed. For the resurrection of the body will receive all the better
proof, in proportion as I shall succeed in showing that Christ belongs
to that God who is believed to have provided this resurrection of the
flesh in His dispensation. When he says, “For He must reign, till
He hath put all enemies under His feet,”5595
we
can see at once5596
from this statement
that he speaks of a God of vengeance, and therefore of Him who made the
following promise to Christ: “Sit Thou at my right hand,
until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. The rod of Thy strength shall
the Lord send forth from Sion, and He shall rule along with Thee in the
midst of Thine enemies.”5597
It is necessary for
me to lay claim to those Scriptures which the Jews endeavour to deprive
us of, and to show that they sustain my view. Now they say that this
Psalm5598
was a chant in honour of Hezekiah,5599
| 5599 In Ezechiam
cecinisse. | because “he went up to the house of
the Lord,”5600
| 5600 2 Kings xix. 14; but the words are, “quia is
sederit ad dexteram templi,” a sentence which occurs neither in
the LXX. nor the original. | and God turned back
and removed his enemies. Therefore, (as they further hold,) those
other words, “Before the morning star did I beget thee from the
womb,”5601
| 5601 Tertullian, as usual,
argues from the Septuagint, which in the latter clause of Ps. cx. 3 has ἐκ
γαστρὸς πρὸ
ἑωσφόρου
ἐγέννησά
σε; and so the Vulgate version has it.
This Psalm has been variously applied by the Jews. Raschi (or Rabbi
Sol. Jarchi) thinks it is most suitable to Abraham, and possibly
to David, in which latter view D. Kimchi agrees with him.
Others find in Solomon the best application; but more frequently
is Hezekiah thought to be the subject of the Psalm, as
Tertullian observes. Justin Martyr (in Dial. cum
Tryph.) also notices this application of the Psalm. But
Tertullian in the next sentence appears to recognize the sounder
opinion of the older Jews, who saw in this Ps. cx. a prediction of Messiah. This opinion occurs in the Jerusalem Talmud,
in the tract Berachoth, 5. Amongst the more recent Jews
who also hold the sounder view, may be mentioned Rabbi Saadias Gaon,
on Dan. vii.
13, and R. Moses Hadarsan
[singularly enough quoted by Raschi in another part of his commentary
(Gen. xxxv. 8)], with others who are mentioned
by Wetstein, On the New Testament, Matt. xxii. 44. Modern Jews, such as Moses
Mendelsohn, reject the Messianic sense; and they are followed by the
commentators of the Rationalist school amongst ourselves and in
Germany. J. Olshausen, after Hitzig, comes down in his interpretation
of the Psalm as late as the Maccabees, and sees a suitable
accomplishment of its words in the honours heaped upon Jonathan
by Alexander son of Antiochus Epiphanes (see 1 Macc. x. 20). For the refutation of so
inadequate a commentary, the reader is referred to Delitzch on Ps. cx.
The variations of opinion, however, in this school, are as remarkable
as the fluctuations of the Jewish writers. The latest work on the
Psalms which has appeared amongst us (Psalms, chronologically
arranged, by four Friends), after Ewald, places the
accomplishment of Ps. cx. in what may be allowed to have
been its occasion—David’s victories over the
neighboring heathen. | are applicable to
Hezekiah, and to the birth of Hezekiah. We on our side5602
have published Gospels (to the credibility
of which we have to thank5603
them5604
| 5604 Istos: that is, the
Jews (Rigalt.). | for having given some confirmation, indeed,
already in so great a subject5605
| 5605 Utique jam in tanto
opere. | ); and these declare
that the Lord was born at night, that so it might be
“before the morning star,” as is evident both from the star
especially, and from the testimony of the angel, who at night announced
to the shepherds that Christ had at that moment been born,5606
| 5606 Natum esse quum
maxime. | and again from the place of the birth, for
it is towards night that persons arrive at the (eastern)
“inn.” Perhaps, too, there was a mystic purpose in
Christ’s being born at night, destined, as He was, to be the
light of the truth amidst the dark shadows of ignorance. Nor, again,
would God have said, “I have begotten Thee,” except to His
true Son. For although He says of all the people (Israel),
“I have begotten5607
| 5607 Generavi: Sept.
ἐγέννησα. |
children,”5608
yet He added not
“from the womb.” Now, why should He have added so
superfluously this phrase “from the womb” (as if there
could be any doubt about any one’s having been born from the
womb), unless the Holy Ghost had wished the words to be with especial
care5609
understood of Christ? “I have begotten
Thee from the womb,” that is to say, from a womb only,
without a man’s seed, making it a condition of a fleshly
body5610
| 5610 Deputans carni:
a note against Docetism. | that it should come out of a womb. What is
here added (in the Psalm), “Thou art a priest for
ever,”5611
relates to (Christ)
Himself. Hezekiah was no priest; and even if he had been one, he would
not have been a priest for ever. “After the order,”
says He, “of Melchizedek.” Now what had Hezekiah to do with
Melchizedek, the priest of the most high God, and him uncircumcised
too, who blessed the circumcised Abraham, after receiving from him the
offering of tithes? To Christ, however, “the order of
Melchizedek” will be very suitable; for Christ is the proper and
legitimate High Priest of God. He is the Pontiff of the priesthood of
the uncircumcision, constituted such, even then, for the Gentiles, by
whom He was to be more fully received, although at His last coming He
will favour with His acceptance and blessing the circumcision also,
even the race of Abraham, which by and by is to acknowledge Him. Well,
then, there is also another Psalm, which begins with these words:
“Give Thy judgments, O God, to the King,” that is, to
Christ who was to come as King, “and Thy righteousness unto the
King’s son,”5612
that is, to
Christ’s people; for His sons are they who are born again in Him.
But it will here be said that this Psalm has reference to
Solomon. However, will not those portions of the Psalm which
apply to Christ alone, be enough to teach us that all the rest, too,
relates to Christ, and not to Solomon? “He shall come
down,” says He, “like rain upon a fleece,5613
| 5613 Super vellus: so Sept.
ἐπὶ πόκον. | and like dropping showers upon the
earth,”5614
describing His
descent from heaven to the flesh as gentle and unobserved.5615
| 5615 Similarly the
Rabbis Saadias Gaon and Hadarsan, above mentioned in our note,
beautifully applied to Messiah’s placid birth,
“without a human father,” the figures of
Ps. cx. 3, “womb of the morning,”
“dew of thy birth.” | Solomon, however, if he had indeed any
descent at all, came not down like a shower, because he descended not
from heaven. But I will set before you more literal points.5616
“He shall have dominion,” says
the Psalmist, “from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends
of the earth.”5617
To Christ alone was
this given; whilst Solomon reigned over only the moderately-sized
kingdom of Judah. “Yea, all kings shall fall down before
Him.” Whom, indeed, shall they all thus worship, except Christ?
“All nations shall serve Him.”5618
To
whom shall all thus do homage, but Christ? “His name shall endure
for ever.” Whose name has this eternity of fame, but
Christ’s? “Longer than the sun shall His name
remain,” for longer than the sun shall be the Word of God, even
Christ. “And in Him shall all nations be blessed.”5619
In Solomon was no nation blessed; in
Christ every nation. And what if the Psalm proves Him to be even
God? “They shall call Him blessed.”5620
(On what ground?) Because blessed is
the Lord God of Israel, who only doeth wonderful
things.”5621
“Blessed also is His glorious name, and with His glory
shall all the earth be filled.”5622
On
the contrary, Solomon (as I make bold to affirm) lost even the glory
which he had from God, seduced by his love of women even into idolatry.
And thus, the statement which occurs in about the middle of this Psalm,
“His enemies shall lick the dust”5623
(of course, as having been, (to use the apostle’s phrase,)
“put under His feet”5624
), will bear
upon the very object which I had in view, when I both introduced the
Psalm, and insisted on my opinion of its sense,—namely, that I
might demonstrate both the glory of His kingdom and the subjection of
His enemies in pursuance of the Creator’s own plans, with the
view of laying down5625
this conclusion,
that none but He can be believed to be the Christ of the
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