Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XIX. That it was not only the Spirit, but Christ Himself also who made Him to be feared.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XIX.
That it was not only the Spirit, but Christ Himself also
who made Him to be feared.
You say too that the
Spirit made Him to be feared by the devils. To reject and refute which,
even though the horrible character of the utterance is enough, we will
still add some instances. Tell me, I pray, you who say that the fact
that the devils feared Him was not His own doing but another’s,
and who will have it that this was not His own power but a gift, how
was it that even His name had that power, of which He Himself was,
according to you, void? How was it that in His name devils were cast
out, sick persons were cured, dead men were raised? For the Apostle
Peter says to that lame man who was sitting at the beautiful gate of
the Temple: “In the name of Jesus Christ arise and
walk.”2641
And again in the
city of Joppa to the man who had been lying on his bed paralysed for
eight years he says, “Æneas, may the Lord Jesus Christ heal
thee: arise and make thy bed for thyself.”2642
Paul too says to the pythonical spirit:
“I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ come out of
her,” and the devil came out of her.2643
But understand from this how utterly
alien this weakness was from our Lord: for I do not call even those
weak, whom He by His name made strong, since we never heard of any
devil or infirmity able to resist any of the apostles since the
Lord’s resurrection. How then did the Spirit make Him to be
feared, who made others to be feared? Or was He in Himself weak, whose
faith even through the instrumentality of others reigned over all
things? Finally those men who received power from God, never used that
power as if it were their own: but referred the power to Him from whom
they received it: for the power itself could never have any force
except through the name of Him who gave it. And so both the apostles
and all the servants of God never did any thing in their own name, but
in the name and invocation of Christ: for the power itself derived its
force from the same source as its origin, and could not be given
through the instrumentality of the ministers, unless it had come from
the Author. You then—who say that the Lord was the same as one of
His servants (for as the apostles had nothing but what they received
from their Lord, so you make out that the Lord Himself had
nothing
but what He
received from the Spirit; and thus you make out that everything that He
had, He had not as Lord, but had received it as a servant), do you tell
me then, how it was that He used this power as His own and not as
something which He had received? For what do we read of Him? He says to
the paralytic: “Arise, take up thy bed, and go to thine
house.”2644
And again to a
father who pleads on behalf of his child, He says: “Go thy way:
thy son liveth.”2645
And where an
only son of his mother was being carried forth for burial, “Young
man,” He says, “I say unto thee Arise.”2646
Did He then like those who received
power from God, ask that power might be given to Him for performing
these things by the invocation of the Divine Name? Why did He not
Himself work by the name of the Spirit, just as the apostles wrought by
His Name? Finally, what does the gospel itself state about Him? It
says: “He was teaching them as one that had authority, and not
like the Scribes and Pharisees.”2647
Or do you make out that He was so proud
and haughty as to put to the credit of His own might the power which
(according to you) He had received from God? But what do we make of the
fact that the power never submitted to His servants, except through the
name of its author, and could have no efficacy if the actor claimed any
of it as his own?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
