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| Chapter IX. How those are wrong who say that the birth of Christ was a secret, since it was clearly shown even to the patriarch Jacob.
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Chapter IX.
How those are wrong who say that the birth of Christ was
a secret, since it was clearly shown even to the patriarch Jacob.
But I suppose you excuse
the degradation offered to the Lord by means of a subordinate honour,
by the words “as the image of the secret God.” By the fact
that you term Him an image you compare Him to man’s estate. In
speaking of Him as the image of the secret God, you detract from the
honour plainly due to Him. For “God,” says David,
“shall plainly come; our God, and shall not keep
silence.”2615
And He surely
came and did not keep silence, who before that He in His own person
uttered anything after His birth, made known His advent by both earthly
and heavenly witnesses alike, while the star points Him out, the magi
adore Him, and angels declare Him. What more do you want? His voice was
yet silent on earth, and His glory was already crying aloud in heaven.
Do you say then that God was and is secret in Him? But this was not the
announcement of the Prophets, of the Patriarchs, aye and of the whole
Law. For they did not say that He would be secret, whose coming they
all foretold. You err in your wretched blindness, seeking grounds for
blasphemy and not finding them. You say that He was secret even after
His advent. I maintain that He was not secret even before His advent.
For did the mystery of God to be born of a Virgin escape the knowledge
of that celebrated Patriarch on whom the vision of God present with him
conferred a title, whereby from the name of Supplanter he rose to the
name of Israel? Who, when from the struggle with the man who wrestled
with him he understood the mystery of the Incarnation yet to come,
said, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is
preserved.”2616
| 2616 Gen. xxxii. 30. The name Israel was in the 4th and 5th
centuries commonly explained to mean the “man seeing God”
as if it came from שּׁיא,
האָרָ, and לא”· S.
Jerome (Quæst. in Genesim c. xxxii. ver. 27, 28) rejects this
interpretation as forced and prefers “a Prince with God.”
Hence the rendering in the A.V. “For as a prince hast thou power
with God and with men and hast prevailed.” This however is now
generally rejected, and the right interpretation of the name appears to
be “He who striveth with God.” Cf. R.V. “For thou
hast striven with God and men, and hast prevailed.” Cf. the
Conferences, Pref. and V. xxiii. XII. xi. | What, I pray
you, had he seen, for him to believe that he had seen God? Did God
manifest Himself to him in the midst of thunder and lightning? or when
the heavens were opened, did the dazzling face of the Deity show itself
to him? Most certainly not: but rather on the contrary he saw a man and
acknowledged a God. O truly worthy of the name he received, as with the
eyes of the soul rather than of the body he earned the honour of a
title given by God! He saw a human form wrestling with him, and
declared that he saw God. He certainly knew that human form was indeed
God: for in that form in which God then appeared, in the selfsame form
He was in very truth afterwards to come. Although why should we be
surprised that so great a patriarch unhesitatingly believed what God
Himself so plainly showed in His own Person to him, when he said,
“I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved.”
How did God show to him so much of the presence of Deity, that he could
say that the face of God was shown to him? For it seems that only a man
had appeared to him, whom he had actually beaten in the struggle. But
God was certainly bringing this about by precursory signs, that there
might not be any one to disbelieve
that God was born of man, when already long
before the Patriarch had seen God in human form.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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