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| Early Manifestations of the Son of God, as Recorded in the Old Testament; Rehearsals of His Subsequent Incarnation.
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Chapter XVI.—Early Manifestations of the Son of God, as
Recorded in the Old Testament; Rehearsals of His Subsequent
Incarnation.
But you must not suppose that only the works which
relate to the (creation of the) world were made by the Son, but also
whatsoever since that time has been done by God. For “the Father
who loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His
hand,”7961
| 7961 John iii. 35. Tertullian reads the last clause
(according to Oehler), “in sinu ejus,” q.d.
“to Him who is in His bosom.” | loves Him indeed
from the beginning, and from the very first has handed all things over
to Him. Whence it is written, “From the beginning the Word was
with God, and the Word was God;”7962
to
whom “is given by the Father all power in heaven and on
earth.”7963
“The Father
judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the
Son”7964
—from the very
beginning even. For when He speaks of all power and all judgment, and
says that all things were made by Him, and all things have been
delivered into His hand, He allows no exception (in respect) of time,
because they would not be all things unless they were the
things of all time. It is the Son, therefore, who has been from the
beginning administering judgment, throwing down the haughty tower, and
dividing the tongues, punishing the whole world by the violence of
waters, raining upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone, as the
Lord from the Lord. For He it was who at all times came down to
hold converse with men, from Adam on to the patriarchs and the
prophets, in vision, in dream, in mirror, in dark saying; ever from the
beginning laying the foundation of the course of His
dispensations, which He meant to follow out to the very last. Thus
was He ever learning even as God to converse with men upon earth, being
no other than the Word which was to be made flesh. But He was thus
learning (or rehearsing), in order to level for us the way of faith,
that we might the more readily believe that the Son of God had come
down into the world, if we knew that in times past also something
similar had been done.7965
| 7965 See our
Anti-Marcion, p. 112, note 10. Edin. | For as it was on
our account and for our learning that these events are described
in the Scriptures, so for our sakes also were they done—(even
ours, I say), “upon whom the ends of the world are
come.”7966
In this way it was
that even then He knew full well what human feelings and affections
were, intending as He always did to take upon Him man’s actual
component substances, body and soul, making inquiry of Adam (as if He
were ignorant),7967
| 7967 See the
treatise, Against Marcion. ii. 25, supra. | “Where art
thou, Adam?”7968
—repenting
that He had made man, as if He had lacked foresight;7969
tempting Abraham, as if ignorant of what was
in man; offended with persons, and then reconciled to them; and
whatever other (weaknesses and imperfections) the heretics lay hold of
(in their assumptions) as unworthy of God, in order to discredit the
Creator, not considering that these circumstances are suitable
enough for the Son, who was one day to experience even human
sufferings—hunger and thirst, and tears, and actual birth and
real death, and in respect of such a dispensation “made by the
Father a little less than the angels.”7970
But the heretics, you may be sure, will not allow that those things are
suitable even to the Son of God, which you are imputing to the very
Father Himself, when you pretend7971
that He made
Himself less (than the angels) on our account; whereas the Scripture
informs us that He who was made less was so affected by another, and
not Himself by Himself. What, again, if He was One who was
“crowned with glory and honour,” and He Another by
whom He was so crowned,7972
—the Son, in
fact, by the Father? Moreover, how comes it to pass, that the Almighty
Invisible God, “whom no man hath seen nor can see; He who
dwelleth in light unapproachable;”7973
“He who dwelleth not in temples made with
hands;”7974
“from before
whose sight the earth trembles, and the mountains melt like
wax;”7975
| 7975 Joel ii. 10; Ps. xcvii. 5. | who holdeth the
whole world in His hand “like a nest;”7976
“whose throne is heaven, and earth His
footstool;”7977
in whom is every
place, but Himself is in no place; who is the utmost bound of the
universe;—how happens it, I say, that He (who, though) the Most
High, should yet have walked in paradise towards the cool of the
evening, in quest of Adam; and should have shut up the ark after Noah
had entered it; and at Abraham’s tent should have refreshed
Himself under an oak; and have called to Moses out of the burning bush;
and have appeared as “the fourth” in the furnace of the
Babylonian monarch (although He is there called the Son of
man),—unless all these events had happened as an image, as a
mirror, as an enigma (of the future incarnation)? Surely even these
things could not have been believed even of the Son of God, unless they
had been given us in the Scriptures; possibly also they could not have
been believed of the Father, even if they had been given in the
Scriptures, since these men bring Him down into Mary’s
womb, and set Him before Pilate’s judgment-seat, and bury Him in
the sepulchre of Joseph. Hence, therefore, their error becomes
manifest; for, being ignorant that the entire order of the divine
administration has from the very first had its course through the
agency of the Son, they believe that the Father Himself was actually
seen, and held converse with men, and worked, and was athirst, and
suffered hunger (in spite of the prophet who says: “The
everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth,
shall never thirst at all, nor be hungry;”7978
much more, shall neither die at any time,
nor be buried!), and therefore that it was uniformly one God, even the
Father, who at all times did Himself the things which were really done
by Him through the agency of the Son.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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