Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of the Three Men or Angels, in Whom the Lord is Related to Have Appeared to Abraham at the Oak of Mamre.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 29.—Of the Three Men or
Angels, in Whom the Lord is Related to Have Appeared to Abraham at
the Oak of Mamre.
God appeared again to Abraham at
the oak of Mamre in three men, who it is not to be doubted were
angels, although some think that one of them was Christ, and assert
that He was visible before He put on flesh. Now it belongs to the
divine power, and invisible, incorporeal, and incommutable nature,
without changing itself at all, to appear even to mortal men, not
by what it is, but by what is subject to it. And what is not
subject to it? Yet if they try to establish that one of these
three was Christ by the fact that, although he saw three, he
addressed the Lord in the singular, as it is written, “And, lo,
three men stood by him: and, when he saw them, he ran
to
meet them from the tent-door, and worshipped toward the ground, and
said, Lord, if I have found favor before thee,”931
etc.; why do they not advert to
this also, that when two of them came to destroy the Sodomites,
while Abraham still spoke to one, calling him Lord, and interceding
that he would not destroy the righteous along with the wicked in
Sodom, Lot received these two in such a way that he too in his
conversation with them addressed the Lord in the singular? For
after saying to them in the plural, “Behold, my lords, turn aside
into your servant’s house,”932
etc., yet it is afterwards said,
“And the angels laid hold upon his hand, and the hand of his
wife, and the hands of his two daughters, because the Lord was
merciful unto him. And it came to pass, whenever they had led him
forth abroad, that they said, Save thy life; look not behind thee,
neither stay thou in all this region: save thyself in the
mountain, lest thou be caught. And Lot said unto them, I pray
thee, Lord, since thy servant hath found grace in thy sight,”933
etc. And
then after these words the Lord also answered him in the singular,
although He was in two angels, saying, “See, I have accepted thy
face,”934
etc. This
makes it much more credible that both Abraham in the three men and
Lot in the two recognized the Lord, addressing Him in the singular
number, even when they were addressing men; for they received them
as they did for no other reason than that they might minister human
refection to them as men who needed it. Yet there was about them
something so excellent, that those who showed them hospitality as
men could not doubt that God was in them as He was wont to be in
the prophets, and therefore sometimes addressed them in the plural,
and sometimes God in them in the singular. But that they were
angels the Scripture testifies, not only in this book of Genesis,
in which these transactions are related, but also in the Epistle to
the Hebrews, where in praising hospitality it is said, “For
thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”935
By these three men, then, when a
son Isaac was again promised to Abraham by Sarah, such a divine
oracle was also given that it was said, “Abraham shall become a
great and numerous nation, and all the nations of the earth shall
be blessed in him.”936
And here these two things, are
promised with the utmost brevity and fullness,—the nation of
Israel according to the flesh, and all nations according to
faith.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
