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| The Case of Abraham, and Its Bearing on the Present Question.
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Chapter VI.—The Case
of Abraham, and Its Bearing on the Present Question.
But let us proceed with our inquiry into some
eminent chief fathers of our origin: for there are some to whom
our monogamist parents Adam and Noah are not pleasing, nor perhaps
Christ either. To Abraham, in fine, they appeal; prohibited
though they are to acknowledge any other father than God.606
Grant, now, that Abraham is our father;
grant, too, that Paul is. “In the Gospel,” says he,
“I have begotten you.”607
Show
yourself a son even of Abraham. For your origin in him, you must
know, is not referable to every period of his life: there is a
definite time at which he is your father. For if
“faith” is the source whence we are reckoned to Abraham as
his “sons” (as the apostle teaches, saying to the
Galatians, “You know, consequently, that (they) who are of faith,
these are sons of Abraham”608
), when
did Abraham “believe God and it was accounted to him for
righteousness?” I suppose when still in monogamy, since (he
was) not yet in circumcision. But if afterwards he changed to
either (opposite)—to digamy through cohabitation with his
handmaid, and to circumcision through the seal of the
testament—you cannot acknowledge him as your father except at
that time when he “believed God,” if it is true that it is
according to faith that you are his son, not according to
flesh. Else, if it be the later Abraham whom you follow as
your father—that is, the digamist (Abraham)—receive him
withal in his circumcision. If you reject his circumcision, it
follows that you will refuse his digamy too. Two characters of
his mutually diverse in two several ways, you will not be able to
blend. His digamy began with circumcision, his monogamy with
uncircumcision.609
| 609 This is an error.
Comp. Gen. xvi. with Gen. xvii. | You receive
digamy; admit circumcision too. You retain uncircumcision; you
are bound to monogamy too. Moreover, so true is it that it is of
the monogamist Abraham that you are the son, just as of the
uncircumcised, that if you be circumcised you immediately cease to be
his son, inasmuch as you will not be “of faith,” but of the
seal of a faith which had been justified in
uncircumcision. You have the apostle: learn (of him),
together with the Galatians.610
| 610 See Gal.
iii. iv. and comp. Rom. iv. | In like manner,
too, if you have involved yourself in digamy, you are not the son of
that Abraham whose “faith” preceded in monogamy. For
albeit it is subsequently that he is called “a father of many
nations,”611
still it is of
those (nations) who, as the fruit of the “faith”
which precedes digamy, had to be accounted “sons of
Abraham.”612
| 612 See Rom. iv. 11, 12, Gal. iii. 7; and comp. Matt.
iii. 9; John viii. 39. |
Thenceforward let matters see to themselves.
Figures are one thing; laws another. Images are one thing;
statutes another. Images pass away when fulfilled: statutes
remain permanently to be fulfilled. Images prophesy:
statutes govern. What that digamy of Abraham portends, the same
apostle fully teaches,613
the interpreter of
each testament, just as he likewise lays it down that our
“seed” is called in Isaac.614
If you are “of the free woman,” and belong to Isaac, he, at
all events, maintained unity of marriage to the last.
These accordingly, I suppose, are they in whom my
origin is counted. All others I ignore. And if I glance
around at their examples—(examples) of some David heaping up
marriages for himself even through sanguinary means, of some Solomon
rich in wives as well as in other riches—you are bidden to
“follow the better things;”615
| 615 See Ps. xxxvii. 27 (in LXX. xxxvi. 27); 1 Pet. iii. 11;
3 John 11. | and
you have withal Joseph but once wedded, and on this score I venture to
say better than his father; you have Moses, the intimate eye-witness of
God;616
you have Aaron the chief priest. The
second Moses, also, of the second People, who led our representatives
into the (possession of) the promise of God, in whom the Name (of
Jesus) was first inaugurated, was no digamist.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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