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| The God of the Law and the Prophets, and the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, is the Same God.
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Chapter
IV.—The God of the Law and the Prophets, and the Father of Our
Lord Jesus Christ, is the Same God.
1. Having now briefly arranged these points
in order as we best could, it follows that, agreeably to our intention
from the first, we refute those who think that the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ is a different God from Him who gave the answers of the
law to Moses, or commissioned the prophets, who is the God of our
fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For in this article of faith,
first of all, we must be firmly grounded. We have to consider,
then, the expression of frequent recurrence in the Gospels, and
subjoined to all the acts of our Lord and Saviour, “that it might
be fulfilled which was spoken by this or that prophet,” it being
manifest that the prophets are the prophets of that God who made the
world. From this therefore we draw the conclusion, that He who
sent the prophets, Himself predicted what was to be foretold of
Christ. And there is no doubt that the Father Himself, and not
another different from Him, uttered these predictions. The
practice, moreover, of the Saviour or His apostles, frequently quoting
illustrations from the Old Testament, shows that they attribute
authority to the ancients. The injunction also of the Saviour,
when exhorting His disciples to the exercise of kindness, “Be ye
perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect; for He
commands His sun to rise upon the evil and the good, and sendeth rain
on the just and on the unjust,”2100
most evidently suggests even to a person of feeble understanding, that
He is proposing to the imitation of His disciples no other God than the
maker of heaven and the bestower of the rain. Again, what else
does the expression, which ought to be used by those who pray,
“Our Father who art in heaven,”2101
appear to indicate, save that God is to be sought in the better parts
of the world, i.e., of His creation? Further, do not those
admirable principles which He lays down respecting oaths, saying
that we ought not to “swear either by heaven, because it is the
throne of God; nor by the earth, because it is His
footstool,”2102
harmonize most
clearly with the words of the prophet, “Heaven is My throne, and
the earth is My footstool?”2103
And also
when casting out of the temple those who sold sheep, and oxen, and
doves, and pouring out the tables of the money-changers, and saying,
“Take these things, hence, and do not make My Father’s
house a house of merchandise,”2104
He undoubtedly
called Him His Father, to whose name Solomon had raised a magnificent
temple. The words, moreover, “Have you not read what was
spoken by God to Moses: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob; He is not a God of the dead, but of the
living,”2105
most clearly teach
us, that He called the God of the patriarchs (because they were holy,
and were alive) the God of the living, the same, viz., who had said in
the prophets, “I am God, and besides Me there is no
God.”2106
For if the
Saviour, knowing that He who is written in the law is the God of
Abraham, and that it is the same who says, “I am God, and besides
Me there is no God, acknowledges that very one to be His Father who is
ignorant of the existence of any other God above Himself, as the
heretics suppose, He absurdly declares Him to be His Father who does
not know of a greater God. But if it is not from ignorance, but
from deceit, that He says there is no other God than Himself, then it
is a much greater absurdity to confess that His Father is guilty of
falsehood. From all which this conclusion is arrived at, that He
knows of no other Father than God, the Founder and Creator of all
things.
2. It would be tedious to collect out of all
the passages in the Gospels the proofs by which the God of the law and
of the Gospels is shown to be one and the same. Let us touch
briefly upon the Acts of the Apostles,2107
where Stephen and the other apostles address their prayers to that God
who made heaven and earth, and who spoke by the mouth of His holy
prophets, calling Him the “God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of
Jacob;” the God who “brought forth His people out of the
land of Egypt.” Which expressions undoubtedly clearly
direct our understandings to faith in the Creator, and implant an
affection for Him in those who have learned piously and faithfully thus
to think of Him; according to the words of the Saviour Himself, who,
when He was asked which was the greatest commandment in the law,
replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. And the second is
like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
And to these He added: “On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets.”2108
| 2108 Matt. xxii. 37, 39, 40. | How is
it, then, that He commends to him whom He was instructing, and was
leading to enter on the office of a disciple, this commandment above
all others, by which undoubtedly love was to be kindled in him towards
the God of that law, inasmuch as such had been declared by the law in
these very words? But let it be granted, notwithstanding all
these most evident proofs, that it is of some other unknown God that
the Saviour says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart,” etc., etc. How, in that case, if the law and the
prophets are, as they say, from the Creator, i.e., from another God
than He whom He calls good, shall that appear to be logically said
which He subjoins, viz., that “on these two commandments hang the
law and the prophets?” For how shall that which is strange
and foreign to God depend upon Him? And when Paul says, “I
thank my God, whom I serve in my spirit from my forefathers with pure
conscience,”2109
he clearly shows
that he came not to some new God, but to Christ. For what other
forefathers of Paul can be intended, except those of whom he says,
“Are they Hebrews? so am I: are they Israelites? so am
I.”2110
Nay, will not
the very preface of his Epistle to the Romans clearly show the same
thing to those who know how to understand the letters of Paul, viz.,
what God he preaches? For his words are: “Paul, the
servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart to the
Gospel of God, which He had promised afore by His prophets in the holy
Scriptures concerning His Son, who was made of the seed of David
according to the flesh, and who was declared to be the Son of God with
power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from
the dead of Christ Jesus our Lord,”2111
etc. Moreover, also the following, “Thou shalt not muzzle
the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take
care for oxen? or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our
sakes, no doubt, this is written, that he that plougheth should plough
in hope, and he that thresheth in hope of partaking of the
fruits.”2112
By which he
manifestly shows that God, who gave the law on our account, i.e., on
account of the apostles, says, “Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth
of the ox that treadeth out the corn;” whose care was not for
oxen, but for the apostles, who were preaching the Gospel of
Christ. In other
passages also, Paul, embracing the promises of the law, says,
“Honour thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment
with promise; that it may be well with thee, and that thy days may be
long upon the land, the good land, which the Lord thy God will give
thee.”2113
By which he
undoubtedly makes known that the law, and the God of the law, and His
promises, are pleasing to him.
3. But as those who uphold this heresy are
sometimes accustomed to mislead the hearts of the simple by certain
deceptive sophisms, I do not consider it improper to bring forward the
assertions which they are in the habit of making, and to refute their
deceit and falsehood. The following, then, are their
declarations. It is written, that “no man hath seen God at
any time.”2114
But that God
whom Moses preaches was both seen by Moses himself, and by his fathers
before him; whereas He who is announced by the Saviour has never been
seen at all by any one. Let us therefore ask them and ourselves
whether they maintain that He whom they acknowledge to be God, and
allege to be a different God from the Creator, is visible or
invisible. And if they shall say that He is visible, besides
being proved to go against the declaration of Scripture, which says of
the Saviour, “He is the image of the invisible God, the
first-born of every creature,”2115
they will fall
also into the absurdity of asserting that God is corporeal. For
nothing can be seen except by help of form, and size, and colour, which
are special properties of bodies. And if God is declared to be a
body, then He will also be found to be material, since every body is
composed of matter. But if He be composed of matter, and matter
is undoubtedly corruptible, then, according to them, God is liable to
corruption! We shall put to them a second question. Is
matter made, or is it uncreated, i.e., not made? And if they
shall answer that it is not made, i.e., uncreated, we shall ask them if
one portion of matter is God, and the other part the world? But
if they shall say of matter that it is made, it will undoubtedly follow
that they confess Him whom they declare to be God to have been
made!—a result which certainly neither their reason nor ours can
admit. But they will say, God is invisible. And what will
you do? If you say that He is invisible by nature, then neither
ought He to be visible to the Saviour. Whereas, on the contrary,
God, the Father of Christ, is said to be seen, because “he who
sees the Son,” he says, “sees also the
Father.”2116
This
certainly would press us very hard, were the expression not understood
by us more correctly of understanding, and not of seeing. For he
who has understood the Son will understand the Father also. In
this way, then, Moses too must be supposed to have seen God, not
beholding Him with the bodily eye, but understanding Him with the
vision of the heart and the perception of the mind, and that only in
some degree. For it is manifest that He, viz., who gave answers
to Moses, said, “You shall not see My face, but My hinder
parts.”2117
These words
are, of course, to be understood in that mystical sense which is
befitting divine words, those old wives’ fables being rejected
and despised which are invented by ignorant persons respecting the
anterior and posterior parts of God. Let no one indeed suppose
that we have indulged any feeling of impiety in saying that even to the
Saviour the Father is not visible. Let him consider the
distinction which we employ in dealing with heretics. For we have
explained that it is one thing to see and to be seen, and another to
know and to be known, or to understand and to be understood.2118
| 2118 Aliud sit videre et
videri, et aliud nôsse et nosci, vel cognoscere atque
cognosci. | To see, then, and to be seen, is a
property of bodies, which certainly will not be appropriately applied
either to the Father, or to the Son, or to the Holy Spirit, in their
mutual relations with one another. For the nature of the Trinity
surpasses the measure of vision, granting to those who are in the body,
i.e., to all other creatures, the property of vision in reference to
one another. But to a nature that is incorporeal and for the most
part intellectual, no other attribute is appropriate save that of
knowing or being known, as the Saviour Himself declares when He says,
“No man knoweth the Son, save the Father; nor does any one know
the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal
Him.”2119
It is clear,
then, that He has not said, “No one has seen the Father, save the
Son;” but, “No one knoweth the Father, save the
Son.”
4. And now, if, on account of those expressions
which occur in the Old Testament, as when God is said to be angry or to
repent, or when any other human affection or passion is described, (our
opponents) think that they are furnished with grounds for refuting us,
who maintain that God is altogether impassible, and is to be regarded
as wholly free from all affections of that kind, we have to show them
that similar statements are found even in the parables of the Gospel;
as when it is said, that he who planted a vineyard, and let it out to
husbandmen, who slew the servants that were sent to them, and at last
put to death even the son, is
said in anger to have taken away the vineyard from them, and to have
delivered over the wicked husbandmen to destruction, and to have handed
over the vineyard to others, who would yield him the fruit in its
season. And so also with regard to those citizens who, when the
head of the household had set out to receive for himself a kingdom,
sent messengers after him, saying, “We will not have this man to
reign over us;”2120
for the head of the
household having obtained the kingdom, returned, and in anger commanded
them to be put to death before him, and burned their city with
fire. But when we read either in the Old Testament or in the New
of the anger of God, we do not take such expressions literally, but
seek in them a spiritual meaning, that we may think of God as He
deserves to be thought of. And on these points, when expounding
the verse in the second Psalm, “Then shall He speak to
them in His anger, and trouble them in His fury,”2121
we showed, to the best of our poor ability,
how such an expression ought to be understood.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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