Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| And Indeed that Christ Was Not Only Man, But God Also; That Even as He Was the Son of Man, So Also He Was the Son of God.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XI.—And Indeed
that Christ Was Not Only Man, But God Also; That Even as He Was the Son
of Man, So Also He Was the Son of God.
But lest, from the fact of asserting that our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Creator, was manifested in the
substance of the true body, we should seem either to have given assent
to other heretics, who in this place maintain that He is man only and
alone, and therefore desire to prove that He was a man bare and
solitary; and lest we should seem to have afforded them any ground for
objecting, we do not so express doctrine concerning the
substance of His body, as to say that He is only and alone man, but so
as to maintain, by the association of the divinity of the Word in that
very materiality, that He was also God according to the
Scriptures. For there is a great risk of saying that the Saviour
of the human race was only man; that the Lord of all, and the
Chief of the world, to whom all things were delivered, and all things
were granted by His Father, by whom all things were ordained, all
things were created, all things were arranged, the King of all ages and
times, the Prince of all the angels, before whom there is none but the
Father, was only man, and denying to Him divine authority in these
things. For this contempt of the heretics will recoil also upon
God the Father, if God the Father could not beget God the Son.
But, moreover, no blindness of the heretics shall prescribe to the
truth. Nor, because they maintain one thing in Christ and, do not
maintain another, they see one side of Christ and do not see another,
shall there be taken away from us that which they do not see for the
sake of that which they do. For they regard the weaknesses in Him
as if they were a man’s weaknesses, but they do not count the
powers as if they were a God’s powers. They keep in mind
the infirmities of the flesh, they exclude the powers of the divinity;
when if this argument from the infirmities of Christ is of avail to the
result of proving Him to be man from His infirmities, the argument of
divinity in Him gathered from His powers avails to the result also of
asserting Him to be God from His works. For if His sufferings
show in Him human frailty, why may not His works assert in Him divine
power? For if this should not avail to assert Him to be God from
His powers, neither can His sufferings avail to show Him to be man also
from them. For whatever principle be adopted on one or the other
side, will be found to be maintained.5085
| 5085
Scil. in its alternative. | For there will be a risk that
He should not be shown to be man from His sufferings, if He could not
also be approved as God by His powers. We must not then lean to
one side and evade the other side, because any one who should exclude
one portion of the truth will never hold the perfect truth. For
Scripture as much announces Christ as also God, as it announces God
Himself as man. It has as much described Jesus Christ to be man,
as moreover it has also described Christ the Lord to be God.
Because it does not set forth Him to be the Son of God only, but also
the Son of man; nor does it only say, the Son of man, but it has also
been accustomed to speak of Him as the Son of God. So that being
of both, He is both, lest if He should be one only, He could not be the
other. For as nature itself has prescribed that he must be
believed to be a man who is of man, so the same nature prescribes also
that He must be believed to be God who is of God; but if he should not
also be God when he is of God, no more should he be man although he
should be of man. And thus both doctrines would be endangered in
one and the other way, by one being convicted to have lost belief in
the other. Let them, therefore, who read that Jesus Christ the
Son of man is man, read also that this same Jesus is called also God
and the Son of God. For in the manner that as man He is of
Abraham, so also as God He is before Abraham himself. And in the
same manner as He is as man the “Son of David,”5086
so as God He
is proclaimed David’s Lord. And in the same manner as He
was made as man “under the law,”5087
so as God He is declared to be
“Lord of the Sabbath.”5088
And in the same manner as He suffers, as man,
the condemnation, so as God He is found to have all judgment of the
quick and dead. And in the same manner as He is born as man
subsequent to the world, so as God He is manifested to have been before
the world. And in the same way as He was begotten as man of the
seed of David, so also the world is said to have been ordained by Him
as God. And in the same way as He was as man after many, so as
God He was before all. And in the same manner as He was as man
inferior to others, so as God He was greater than all. And in the
same manner as He ascended as man into heaven, so as God He had first
descended thence. And in the same manner as He goes as man to the
Father, so as the Son in obedience to the Father He shall descend
thence. So if imperfections in Him prove human frailty, majesties
in Him affirm divine power. For the risk is, in reading of both,
to believe not both, but one of the two. Wherefore as both are
read of in Christ, let both be believed; that so finally the faith may
be true, being also complete. For if of two principles one gives
way in the faith, and the other, and that indeed which is of least
importance, be taken up for belief, the rule of truth is thrown into
confusion; and that boldness will not confer salvation, but instead of
salvation will effect a great risk of death from the overthrow of the
faith.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
