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| The Essence of God Never Appeared in Itself. Divine Appearances to the Fathers Wrought by the Ministry of Angels. An Objection Drawn from the Mode of Speech Removed. That the Appearing of God to Abraham Himself, Just as that to Moses, Was Wrought by Angels. The Same Thing is Proved by the Law Being Given to Moses by Angels. What Has Been Said in This Book, and What Remains to Be Said in the Next.
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Chapter 11.—The Essence of
God Never Appeared in Itself. Divine Appearances to the Fathers
Wrought by the Ministry of Angels. An Objection Drawn from the Mode
of Speech Removed. That the Appearing of God to Abraham Himself,
Just as that to Moses, Was Wrought by Angels. The Same Thing is
Proved by the Law Being Given to Moses by Angels. What Has Been
Said in This Book, and What Remains to Be Said in the
Next.
Wherefore the substance, or, if it
is better so to say, the essence of God,412
| 412 [“Substance,” from sub
stans, is a passive term, denoting latent and potential being.
“Essence,” from esse, is an active term, denoting
energetic being. The schoolmen, as Augustin does here, preferred
the latter term to the former, though employing both to designate
the divine nature.—W.G.T.S.] | wherein we understand, in
proportion to our measure, in however small a degree, the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, since it is in no way changeable, can
in no way in its proper self be visible.
22. It is manifest, accordingly,
that all those appearances to the fathers, when God was presented
to them according to His own dispensation, suitable to the times,
were wrought through the creature. And if we cannot discern in what
manner He wrought them by ministry of angels, yet we say that they
were wrought by angels; but not from our own power of discernment,
lest we should seem to any one to be wise beyond our measure,
whereas we are wise so as to think soberly, as God hath dealt to us
the measure of faith;413
and we believe, and therefore
speak.414
For the
authority is extant of the divine Scriptures, from which our reason
ought not to turn aside; nor by leaving the solid support of the
divine utterance, to fall headlong over the precipice of its own
surmisings, in matters wherein neither the perceptions of the body
rule, nor the clear reason of the truth shines forth. Now,
certainly, it is written most clearly in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, when the dispensation of the New Testament was to be
distinguished from the dispensation of the Old, according to the
fitness of ages and of times, that not only those visible things,
but also the word itself, was wrought by angels. For it is said
thus: “But to which of the angels said He at any time, Sit on my
right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not
all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall
be heirs of salvation?”415
Whence it appears that all those
things were not only wrought by angels, but wrought also on our
account, that is, on account of the people of God, to whom is
promised the inheritance of eternal life. As it is written also to
the Corinthians, “Now all these things happened unto them in a
figure: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends
of the world are come.”416
And then, demonstrating by plain
consequence that as at that time the word was spoken by the angels,
so now by the Son; “Therefore,” he says, “we ought to give
the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at
any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels
was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a
just recompense of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so
great salvation?” And then, as though you asked, What
salvation?—in order to show that he is now speaking of the New
Testament, that is, of the word which was spoken not by angels, but
by the Lord, he says, “Which at the first began to be spoken by
the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him; God
also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with
divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own
will.”417
23. But some one may say, Why then
is it written, “The Lord said to Moses;” and not, rather, The
angel said to Moses? Because, when the crier proclaims the words of
the judge, it is not usually written in the record, so and so the
crier said, but so and so the judge. In like manner also, when the
holy prophet speaks, although we say, The prophet said, we mean
nothing else to be understood than that the Lord said; and if we
were to say, The Lord said, we should not put the prophet aside,
but only intimate who spake by him. And, indeed, these Scriptures
often reveal the angel to be the Lord, of whose speaking it is from
time to time said, “the Lord said,” as we have shown already.
But on account of those who, since the Scripture in that place
specifies an angel, will have the Son of God Himself and in
Himself
to be understood, because He is called an angel by the prophet, as
announcing the will of His Father and of Himself; I have therefore
thought fit to produce a plainer testimony from this epistle, where
it is not said by an angel, but “by angels.”
24. For Stephen, too, in the Acts
of the Apostles, relates these things in that manner in which they
are also written in the Old Testament: “Men, brethren, and
fathers, hearken,” he says; “The God of glory appeared unto our
father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia.”418
But lest any one should think that
the God of glory appeared then to the eyes of any mortal in that
which He is in Himself, he goes on to say that an angel appeared to
Moses. “Then fled Moses,” he says, “at that saying, and was a
stranger in the land of Midian, where he begat two sons. And when
forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness
of mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush.
When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight: and as he drew near to
behold it, the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying, I am the
God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob. Then Moses trembled, and durst not behold. Then
said the Lord to him, Put off thy shoes from thy feet,”419
etc. Here,
certainly, he speaks both of angel and of Lord; and of the same as
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; as
is written in Genesis.
25. Can there be any one who will
say that the Lord appeared to Moses by an angel, but to Abraham by
Himself? Let us not answer this question from Stephen, but from the
book itself, whence Stephen took his narrative. For, pray, because
it is written, “And the Lord God said unto Abraham;”420
and a little
after, “And the Lord God appeared unto Abraham;”421
were these
things, for this reason, not done by angels? Whereas it is said in
like manner in another place, “And the Lord appeared to him in
the plains of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the
day;” and yet it is added immediately, “And he lift up his eyes
and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him:”422
of whom we have already spoken. For
how will these people, who either will not rise from the words to
the meaning, or easily throw themselves down from the meaning to
the words,—how, I say, will they be able to explain that God was
seen in three men, except they confess that they were angels, as
that which follows also shows? Because it is not said an angel
spoke or appeared to him, will they therefore venture to say that
the vision and voice granted to Moses was wrought by an angel
because it is so written, but that God appeared and spake in His
own substance to Abraham because there is no mention made of an
angel? What of the fact, that even in respect to Abraham an angel
is not left unmentioned? For when his son was ordered to be offered
up as a sacrifice, we read thus: “And it came to pass after these
things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and
he said, Behold, here I am. And He said, Take now thy son, thine
only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of
Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the
mountains that I will tell thee of.” Certainly God is here
mentioned, not an angel. But a little afterwards Scripture hath it
thus: “And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife
to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of
heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he
said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything
unto him.” What can be answered to this? Will they say that God
commanded that Isaac should be slain, and that an angel forbade it?
and further, that the father himself, in opposition to the decree
of God, who had commanded that he should be slain, obeyed the
angel, who had bidden him spare him? Such an interpretation is to
be rejected as absurd. Yet not even for it, gross and abject as it
is, does Scripture leave any room, for it immediately adds: “For
now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy
son, thine only son, on account of me.”423
What is “on account of me,”
except on account of Him who had commanded him to be slain? Was
then the God of Abraham the same as the angel, or was it not rather
God by an angel? Consider what follows. Here, certainly, already an
angel has been most clearly spoken of; yet notice the context:
“And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind
him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and
took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead
of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place, The Lord
saw:424
as it is
said to this day, In the mount the Lord was seen.”425
Just as
that which a little before God said by an angel, “For now I
know that thou fearest God;” not because it was to be understood
that God then came to know, but that He brought it to pass that
through God Abraham himself came to know what strength of heart he
had to obey God, even to the sacrificing of his only son: after
that mode of speech in which the effect is signified by the
efficient,—as cold is said to be sluggish, because it makes men
sluggish; so that He was therefore said to know, because He had
made Abraham himself to know, who might well have not discerned the
firmness of his own faith, had it not been proved by such a trial.
So here, too, Abraham called the name of the place “The Lord
saw,” that is, caused Himself to be seen. For he goes on
immediately to say, “As it is said to this day, In the mount the
Lord was seen.” Here you see the same angel is called Lord:
wherefore, unless because the Lord spake by the angel? But if we
pass on to that which follows, the angel altogether speaks as a
prophet, and reveals expressly that God is speaking by the angel.
“And the angel of the Lord,” he says, “called unto Abraham
out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself I have sworn,
saith the Lord; for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not
withheld thy son, thine only son, on account of me,”426
etc.
Certainly these words, viz. that he by whom the Lord speaks
should say, “Thus saith the Lord,” are commonly used by the
prophets also. Does the Son of God say of the Father, “The Lord
saith,” while He Himself is that Angel of the Father? What then?
Do they not see how hard pressed they are about these three men who
appeared to Abraham, when it had been said before, “The Lord
appeared to him?” Were they not angels because they are called
men? Let them read Daniel, saying, “Behold the man Gabriel.”427
26. But why do we delay any longer
to stop their mouths by another most clear and most weighty proof,
where not an angel in the singular nor men in the plural are spoken
of, but simply angels; by whom not any particular word was wrought,
but the Law itself is most distinctly declared to be given; which
certainly none of the faithful doubts that God gave to Moses for
the control of the children of Israel, or yet, that it was given by
angels. So Stephen speaks: “Ye stiff-necked,” he says, “and
uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy
Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have
not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed
before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the
betrayers and murderers: who have received the Law by the
disposition of angels,428
and have not kept it.”429
What is more
evident than this? What more strong than such an authority? The
Law, indeed, was given to that people by the disposition of angels;
but the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ was by it prepared and
pre-announced; and He Himself, as the Word of God, was in some
wonderful and unspeakable manner in the angels, by whose
disposition the Law itself was given. And hence He said in the
Gospel, “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me;
for he wrote of me.”430
Therefore then the Lord was
speaking by the angels; and the son of God, who was to be the
Mediator of God and men, from the seed of Abraham, was preparing
His own advent by the angels, that He might find some by whom He
would be received, confessing themselves guilty, whom the Law
unfulfilled had made transgressors. And hence the apostle also says
to the Galatians, “Wherefore then serveth the Law? It was added
because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the
promise was made, which [seed] was ordered431
through angels in the hand of a
mediator;”432
that is,
ordered through angels in His own hand. For He was not born
in limitation, but in power. But you learn in another place that he
does not mean any one of the angels as a mediator, but the Lord
Jesus Christ Himself, in so far as He deigned to be made man:
“For there is one God,” he says, “and one Mediator between
God and man, the man Christ Jesus.”433
Hence that passover in the killing
of the lamb:434
hence all
those things which are figuratively spoken in the Law, of Christ to
come in the flesh, and to suffer, but also to rise again, which Law
was given by the disposition of angels; in which angels, were
certainly the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and in
which, sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Holy
Spirit, and sometimes God, without any distinction of person, was
figuratively signified by them, although appearing in visible and
sensible forms, yet by His own creature, not by His substance, in
order to the seeing of which, hearts are cleansed through all those
things which are seen by the eyes and heard by the ears.
27. But now, as I think, that which
we had undertaken to show in this book has been sufficiently
discussed and demonstrated, according to our capacity; and it has
been established, both by probable reason, so far as a man, or
rather, so far as I am able, and by strength of authority, so far
as the divine declarations from the Holy Scriptures have been made
clear, that those words and bodily appearances which were given to
these ancient fathers of ours before the incarnation of the
Saviour, when God was said to appear, were wrought by angels:
whether themselves speaking or doing something in the person of
God, as we have shown that the prophets also were wont to do, or
assuming from the creature that which they themselves were not,
wherein God might be shown in a figure to men; which manner of
showing also, Scripture teaches by many examples, that the
prophets, too, did not omit. It remains, therefore, now for us to
consider,—since both in the Lord as born of a virgin, and in the
Holy Spirit descending in a corporeal form like a dove,435
and in the
tongues like as of fire, which appeared with a sound from heaven on
the day of Pentecost, after the ascension of the Lord,436
it was not
the Word of God Himself by His own substance, in which He is equal
and eternal with the Father, nor the Spirit of the Father and of
the Son by His own substance, in which He Himself also is equal and
co-eternal with both, but assuredly a creature, such as could be
formed and exist in these fashions, which appeared to corporeal and
mortal senses,—it remains, I say, to consider what difference
there is between these manifestations and those which were proper
to the Son of God and to the Holy Spirit, although wrought by the
visible creature;437
| 437 [The reference here is to the
difference between a theophany, and an incarnation; already alluded
to, in the note on p. 149.—W.G.T.S.] | which
subject we shall more conveniently begin in another
book.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
