(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors.)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.


ORIGEN

COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

BOOKS I-II, Parts of IV-V

[Translated by Allan Menzies, D.D.]


BOOK I

I.. HOW CHRISTIANS ARE THE SPIRITUAL ISRAEL.

   That people which was called of old the people of God was divided into
twelve tribes, and over and above the other tribes it had the levitical
order, which itself again carried on the service of God in various priestly
and levitical suborders. In the same manner, it appears to me that the
whole people of Christ, when we regard it in the aspect of the hidden man
of the heart,(1) that people which is called "Jew inwardly," and is
circumcised in the spirit, has in a more mystic way the characteristics of
the tribes. This may be more plainly gathered from John in his Apocalypse,
though the other prophets also do not by any means conceal the state of
matters from those who have the faculty of hearing them. John speaks as
follows:(2) "And I saw another angel ascending from the sunrising, having
the seal of the living God, and he cried with a loud voice to the four
angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Hurt not
either the earth, or the sea, or the trees, till we have sealed the
servants of our God on their foreheads. And I heard the number of them that
were sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand who were sealed, out of
every tribe of the children of Israel; of the tribe of Juda were sealed
twelve thousand, of the tribe of Roubem twelve thousand." And he mentioned
each of the tribes singly, with the exception of Dan. Then, some way
further on,(3) he continues: "And I saw, and behold the Lamb standing on
Mount Zion, and with Him a hundred and forty-four thousand, having His name
and the name of His Father written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice
from heaven as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great
thunder. And the voice which I heard was as the voice of harpers harping
with their harps; and they sing a new song before the throne and before the
four beasts and the elders, and no one could learn the song but the hundred
and forty-four thousand who had been purchased from the earth. These are
they which were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. These are
they who follow the Lamb whithersover He goeth. These were purchased from
among men, a first fruits to God and to the Lamb; and in their mouth was
found no lie, for they are without blemish." Now this is said in John with
reference to those who have believed in Christ, for they also, even if
their bodily descent cannot be traced to the seed of the Patriarchs, are
yet gathered out of the tribes. That this is so we may conclude from what
is further said about them: "Hurt not," he says, "the earth, nor the sea,
nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God on their
foreheads. And I heard the number of them that were sealed, a hundred and
forty-four thousand, sealed from every tribe of the children of Israel."

2. THE 144,000 SEALED IN THE APOCALYPSE ARE CONVERTS TO CHRIST FROM THE
GENTILE WORLD.

   These, then, who are sealed on their foreheads(1) from every tribe of
the children of Israel, are a hundred and forty-four thousand in number;
and these hundred and forty-four thousand are afterwards said in John to
have the name of the Lamb and of His Father written on their foreheads, and
to be virgins, not having defiled themselves with women. What else could
the seal be which is on their foreheads but the name of the Lamb and the
name of His Father? In both passages their foreheads are said to have the
seal; In one the seal is spoken of, in the other it appears to contain the
letters forming the name of the Lamb, and the name of His Father. Now these
taken from the tribes are, as we showed before, the same persons as the
virgins. But the number of believers is small who belong to Israel
according to the flesh; one might venture to assert that they would not
nearly make up the number of a hundred and forty-four thousand. It is
clear, therefore, that the hundred and forty-four thousand who have not
defiled themselves with women must be made up of those who have come to the
divine word out of the Gentile world. In this way the truth of the
statement may be upheld that the first fruits of each tribe are its
virgins. For the passage goes on: "These were brought from among men to be
a first fruits to God and to the Lamb; and in their mouth was found no
guile, for they are without blemish." The statement about the hundred and
forty-four thousand no doubt admits of mystical interpretation; But it is
unnecessary at this point, and would divert us from our purpose, to compare
with it those passages of the prophets in which the same lesson is taught
regarding those who are called from among the Gentiles.

3. IN THE SPIRITUAL ISRAEL THE HIGH-PRIESTS ARE THOSE WHO DEVOTE THEMSELVES
TO THE STUDY OF SCRIPTURE.

   But what is the bearing of all this for us? So you will ask when you
read these words, Ambrosius, thou who art truly a man of God, a mall in
Christ. and who seekest to be not a man only, but a spiritual man.(1) The
bearing is this. Those of the tribes offer to God, through the levites and
priests, tithes and first fruits; not everything which they possess do they
regard as tithe or first fruit. The levites and priests, on the other hand,
have no possessions but tithes and first fruits; yet they also in turn
offer tithes to God through the high-priests, and, I believe, first fruits
too. The same is the case with those who approach Christian studies. Most
of us devote most of our time to the things of this life, and dedicate to
God only a few special acts, thus resembling those members of the tribes
who had but few transactions with the priest, and discharged their
religious duties with no great expense of time. But those who devote
themselves to the divine word and have no other employment but the service
of God may not unnaturally, allowing for the difference of occupation in
the two cases, be called our levites and priests. And those who fulfil a
more distinguished office than their kinsmen(1) will perhaps be high-
priests, according to the order of Aaron, not that of Melchisedek. Here
some one may object that it is somewhat too bold to apply the name of high-
priests to men, when Jesus Himself is spoken of in many a prophetic passage
as the one great priest, as(2) "We have a great high-priest who has passed
through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God." But to this we reply that the
Apostle clearly defined his meaning, and declared the prophet to have said
about the Christ, "Thou(3) art a priest for ever, according to the order of
Melchisedek," and not according to the order of Aaron. We say accordingly
that men can be high-priests according to the order of Aaron, but according
to the order of Melchisedek only the Christ of God.

4. THE STUDY OF THE GOSPELS IS THE FIRST FRUITS OFFERED BY THESE PRIESTS OF
CHRISTIANITY.

   Now our whole activity is devoted to God, and our whole life, since we
are bent on progress in divine things. If, then, it be our desire to have
the whole of those first fruits spoken of above which are made up of the
many first fruits, if we are not mistaken in this view, in what must our
first fruits consist, after the bodily separation we have undergone from
each other, but in the study of the Gospel? For we may venture to say that
the Gospel is the first fruits of all the Scriptures. Where, then, could be
the first fruits of our activity, since the time when we came to
Alexandria, but in the first fruits of the Scriptures? It must not he
forgotten, however, that the first fruits are not the same as the first
growth. For the first fruits(4) are offered after all the fruits (are
ripe), but the first growth(5) before them all. Now of the Scriptures which
are current and are believed to be divine in all the churches, one would
not be wrong in saying that the first growth is the law of Moses, but the
first fruits the Gospel. For it was after all the fruits of the prophets
who prophesied till the Lord Jesus, that the perfect word shot forth.

5. ALL SCRIPTURE IS GOSPEL; BUT THE GOSPELS ARE DISTINGUISHED ABOVE OTHER
SCRIPTURES.

   Here, however, some one may object, appealing to the notion just put
forward of the unfolding of the first fruits last, and may say that the
Acts and the letters of the Apostles came after the Gospels, and that this
destroys our argument to the effect that the Gospel is the first fruits of
all Scripture. To this we must reply that it is the conviction of men who
are wise in Christ, who have profited by those epistles which are current,
and who see them to be vouched for by the testimonies deposited in the law
and the prophets,(1) that the apostolic writings are to be pronounced wise
and worthy of belief, and that they have great authority, but that they are
not on the same level with that "Thus sayeth the Lord Almighty."(2)
Consider on this point the language of St. Paul. When he declares that(3)
"Every Scripture is inspired of God and profitable," does he include his
own writings? Or does he not include his dictum,(4) "I say, and not the
Lord," and(5) "So I ordain in all the churches," and(6) "What things I
suffered at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra," and similar things which he
writes in virtue of his own authority, and which do not quite possess the
character of words flowing from divine inspiration. Must we also show that
the old Scripture is not Gospel, since it does not point out the Coming
One, but only foretells Him and heralds His coming at a future time; but
that all the new Scripture is the Gospel. It not only says as in the
beginning of the Gospel,(7) "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the
sin of the world;" it also contains many praises of Him, and many of His
teachings, on whose account the Gospel is a Gospel. Again, if God set in
the Church(8) apostles and prophets and evangelists (gospellers), pastors
and teachers, we must first enquire what was the office of the evangelist,
and mark that it is not only to narrate how the Saviour cured a man who was
blind from his birth,(9) or raised up a dead man who was already
stinking,(10) or to state what extraordinary works he wrought; and the
office of the evangelist being thus defined, we shall not hesitate to find
Gospel in such discourse also as is not narrative but hortatory and
intended to strengthen belief in the mission of Jesus; and thus we shall
arrive at the position that whatever was written by the Apostles is Gospel.
As to this second definition, it might be objected that the Epistles are
not entitled "Gospel," and that we are wrong in applying the name of Gospel
to the whole of the New Testament. But to this we answer that it happens
not unfrequently in Scripture when two or more persons or things are named
by the same name, the name attaches itself most significantly to one of
those things or persons. Thus the Saviour says,(1) "Call no man Master upon
the earth;" while the Apostle says that Masters(2) have been appointed in
the Church. These latter accordingly will not be Masters in the strict
sense of the dictum of the Gospel. In the same way the Gospel in the
Epistles will not extend to every word of them, when it is compared with
the narrative of Jesus(1) actions and sufferings and discourses. No: the
Gospel is the first fruits of all Scripture, and to these first fruits of
the Scriptures we devote the first fruits of all those actions of ours
which we trust to see turn out as we desire.

6. THE FOURFOLD GOSPEL. JOHN'S THE FIRST FRUITS OF THE FOUR. QUALIFICATIONS
NECESSARY FOR INTERPRETING IT.

   Now the Gospels are four. These four are, as it were, the elements of
the faith of the Church, out of which elements the whole world which is
reconciled to God in Christ is put together; as Paul says,(3) "God was in
Christ, reconciling the world to Himself;" of which world Jesus bore the
sin; for it is of the world of the Church that the word is written,(4)
"Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." The
Gospels then being four, I deem the first fruits of the Gospels to be that
which you s have enjoined me to search into according to my powers, the
Gospel of John, that which speaks of him whose genealogy had already been
set forth, but which begins to speak of him at a point before he had any
genealogy. For Matthew, writing for the Hebrews who looked for Him who was
to come of the line of Abraham and of David, says:(6) "The book of the
generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." And
Mark, knowing what he writes, narrates the beginning of the Gospel; we may
perhaps find what he aims at in John; in the beginning the Word, God the
Word. But Luke, though he says at the beginning of Acts, "The former
treatise did I make about all that Jesus began to do and to teach," yet
leaves to him who lay on Jesus' breast the greatest and completest
discourses about Jesus. For none of these plainly declared His Godhead, as
John does when he makes Him say, "I am the light of the world," "I am the
way and the truth and the life," "I am the resurrection, "I am the door,"
"I am the good shepherd;" and in the Apocalypse, "I am the Alpha and the
Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." We may therefore
make bold to say that the Gospels are the first fruits of all the
Scriptures, but that of the Gospels that of John is the first fruits. No
one can apprehend the meaning of it except he have lain on Jesus' breast
and received from Jesus Mary to be his mother also. Such an one must he
become who is to be another John, and to have shown to him, like John, by
Jesus Himself Jesus as He is. For if Mary, as those declare who with sound
mind extol her, had no other son but Jesus, and yet Jesus says to His
mother, "Woman, behold thy son,"(1) and not "Behold you have this son
also," then He virtually said to her, "Lo, this is Jesus, whom thou didst
bear." Is it not the case that every one who is perfect lives himself no
longer,(2) but Christ lives in him; and if Christ lives in him, then it is
said of him to Mary, "Behold thy son Christ." What a mind, then, must we
have to enable us to interpret in a worthy manner this work, though it be
committed to the earthly treasure-house of common speech, of writing which
any passer-by can read, and which can be heard when read aloud by any one
who lends to it his bodily ears? What shall we say of this work? He who is
accurately to apprehend what it contains should be able to say with
truth,(3) "We have the mind of Christ, that we may know those things which
are bestowed on us by God." It is possible to quote one of Paul's sayings
in support of the contention that the whole of the New Testament is Gospel.
He writes in a certain place:(4) "According to my Gospel." Now we have no
written work of Paul which is commonly called a Gospel. But all that he
preached and said was the Gospel; and what he preached and said he was also
in the habit of writing, and what he wrote was therefore Gospel. But if
what Paul wrote was Gospel, it follows that what Peter wrote was also
Gospel, and in a word all that was said or written to perpetuate the
knowledge of Christ's sojourn on earth, and to prepare for His second
coming, or to bring it about as a present reality in those souls which were
willing to receive the Word of God as He stood at the door and knocked and
sought to come into them.

7. WHAT GOOD THINGS ARE ANNOUNCED IN THE GOSPELS.

   But it is time we should inquire what is the meaning of the designation
"Gospel," and why these books have this title. Now the Gospel is a
discourse containing a promise of things which naturally, and on account of
the benefits they bring, rejoice the hearer as soon as the promise is heard
and believed. Nor is such a discourse any the less a Gospel that we define
it with reference to the position of the hearer. A Gospel is either a word
which implies the actual presence to the believer of something that is
good, or a word promising the arrival of a good which is expected. Now all
these definitions apply to those books which are named Gospels. For each of
the Gospels is a collection of announcements which are useful to him who
believes them and does not misinterpret them; it brings him a benefit and
naturally makes him glad because it tells of the sojourn with men, on
account of men, and for their salvation, of the first-born of all
creation,(1) Christ Jesus. And again each Gospel tells of the sojourn of
the good Father in the Son with those minded to receive Him, as is plain to
every believer; and moreover by these books a good is announced which had
been formerly expected, as is by no means hard to see. For John the Baptist
spoke in the name almost of the whole people when he sent to Jesus and
asked,(2) "Art thou He that should come or do we look for another?" For to
the people the Messiah was an expected good, which the prophets had
foretold, and they all alike, though under the law and the prophets, fixed
their hopes on Him, as the Samaritan woman bears witness when she says:(3)
"I know that the Messiah comes, who is called Christ; when He comes He will
tell us all things." Simon and Cleopas too, when talking to each other
about all that had happened to Jesus Christ Himself, then risen, though
they did not know that He had risen, from the dead, speak thus,(4) "Dost
thou sojourn alone in Jerusalem, and knowest not the things which have
taken place there in these days? And when he said what things? they
answered, The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth,(5) which was a prophet,
mighty in deed and in word before God and all the people, and how the chief
priests and our rulers delivered Him up to be sentenced to death and
crucified Him. But we hoped that it was He which should redeem Israel."
Again, Andrew the brother of Simon Peter found his own brother Simon and
said to him,(1) "We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted,
Christ." And a little further on Philip finds Nathanael and says to him,(2)
"We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, wrote, Jesus
the son of Joseph, from Nazareth."

8. HOW THE GOSPELS CAUSE THE OTHER BOOKS OF SCRIPTURE ALSO TO BE GOSPEL.

   Now an objection might be raised to our first definition, because it
would embrace books which are not entitled Gospels. For the law and the
prophets also are to our eyes books containing the promise of things which,
from the benefit they will confer on him, naturally rejoice the hearer as
soon as he takes in the message. To this it may be said that before the
sojourn of Christ, the law and the prophets, since He had not come who
interpreted the mysteries they contained, did not convey such a promise as
belongs to our definition of the Gospel; but the Saviour, when He sojourned
with men and caused the Gospel to appear in bodily form, by the Gospel
caused all things to appear as Gospel. Here I would not think it beside the
purpose to quote the example of Him who ... a few things ... and yet
all.(3) For when he had taken away the veil which was present in the law
and the prophets, and by His divinity had proved the sons of men that the
Godhead was at work, He opened the way for all those who desired it to be
disciples of His wisdom, and to understand what things were true and real
in the law of Moses, of which things those of old worshipped the type and
the shadow, and what things were real of the things narrated in the
histories which "happened to them in the way of type,"(4) but these things
"were written for our sakes, upon whom the ends of the ages have come."
With whomsoever, then, Christ has sojourned, he worships God neither at
Jerusalem nor on the mountain of the Samaritans; he knows that God is a
spirit, and worships Him spiritually, in spirit and in truth; no longer by
type does he worship the Father and Maker of all. Before that Gospel,
therefore, which came into being by the sojourning of Christ, none of the
older works was a Gospel. But the Gospel, which is the new covenant, having
delivered us from the oldness of the letter, lights up for us, by the light
of knowledge,(1) the newness of the spirit, a thing which never grows old,
which has its home in the New Testament, but is also present in all the
Scriptures. It was fitting, therefore, that that Gospel, which enables us
to find the Gospel present, even in the Old Testament, should itself
receive, in a special sense, the name of Gospel.

9. THE SOMATIC AND THE SPIRITUAL GOSPEL.

   We must not, however, forget that the sojourning of Christ with men
took place before His bodily sojourn, in an intellectual fashion, to those
who were more perfect and not children, and were not under pedagogues and
governors. In their minds they saw the fulness of the time to be at hand--
the patriarchs, and Moses the servant, and the prophets who beheld the
glory of Christ. And as before His manifest and bodily coming He came to
those who were perfect, so also, after His coming has been announced to
all, to those who are still children, since they are under pedagogues and
governors and have not yet arrived at the fulness of the time, forerunners
of Christ have come to sojourn, discourses (logoi) suited for minds still
in their childhood, and rightly, therefore, termed pedagogues. But the Son
Himself, the glorified God, the Word, has not yet come; He waits for the
preparation which must take place on the part of men of God who are to
admit His deity. And this, too, we must bear in mind, that as the law
contains a shadow of good things to come, which are indicated by that law
which is announced according to truth, so the Gospel also teaches a shadow
of the mysteries of Christ, the Gospel which is thought to be capable of
being understood by any one. What John calls the eternal Gospel, and what
may properly be called the spiritual Gospel, presents clearly to those who
have the will to understand, all matters concerning the very Son of God,
both the mysteries presented by His discourses and those matters of which
His acts were the enigmas. In accordance with this we may conclude that, as
it is with Him who is a Jew outwardly and circumcised in the flesh, so it
is with the Christian and with baptism. Paul and Peter were, at an earlier
period, Jews outwardly and circumcised, but later they received from Christ
that they should be so in secret, too; SO that outwardly they were Jews for
the sake of the salvation of many, and by an economy they not only
confessed in words that they were Jews, but showed it by their actions. And
the same is to be said about their Christianity. As Paul could not benefit
those who were Jews according to the flesh, without, when reason shows it
to be necessary, circumcising Timothy, and when it appears the natural
course getting himself shaved and making a vow, and, in a word, being to
the Jews a Jew that he might gain the Jews--so also it is not possible for
one who is responsible for the good of many to operate as he should by
means of that Christianity only which is in secret. That will never enable
him to improve those who are following the external Christianity, or to
lead them on to better and higher things. We must, therefore, be Christians
both somatically and spiritually, and where there is a call for the somatic
(bodily) Gospel, in which a man says to those who are carnal that he knows
nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, so we must do. But should we
find those who are perfected in the spirit, and bear fruit in it, and are
enamoured of the heavenly wisdom, these must he made to partake of that
Word which, after it was made flesh, rose again to what it was in the
beginning, with God.

10. HOW JESUS HIMSELF IS THE GOSPEL.

   The foregoing inquiry into the nature of the Gospel cannot be regarded
as useless; it has enabled us to see what distinction there is between a
sensible Gospel and all intellectual and spiritual one. What we have now to
do is to transform the sensible Gospel into a spiritual one.      For what
would the narrative of the sensible Gospel amount to if it were not
developed to a spiritual one? It would be of little account or none; any
one can read it and assure himself of the facts it tells--no more. But our
whole energy is now to be directed to the effort to penetrate to the deep
things of the meaning of the Gospel and to search out the truth that is ill
it when divested of types. Now what the Gospels say is to be regarded in
the light of promises of good things; and we must say that the good things
the Apostles announce in this Gospel are simply Jesus. one good thing which
they are said to announce is the resurrection; but the resurrection is in a
manner Jesus, for Jesus says:(1) "I am the resurrection." Jesus preaches to
the poor those things which are laid up for the saints, calling them to the
divine promises. And the holy Scriptures bear witness to the Gospel
announcements made by the Apostles and to that made by our Saviour. David
says of the Apostles, perhaps also of the evangelists:(1) "The Lord shall
give the word to those that preach with great power; the King of the powers
of the beloved;" teaching at the same time that it is not skilfully
composed discourse, nor the mode of delivery, nor well practised eloquence
that produces conviction, but the communication of divine power. Hence also
Paul says:(2) "I will know not the word that is puffed up, but the power;
for the kingdom of God is not in word but in power." And in another
passage:(3) "And my word and my preaching were not persuasive words of
wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power." To this power
Simon and Cleophas bear witness when they say:(4) "Was not our heart
burning within us by the way, as he opened to us the Scriptures?" And the
Apostles, since the quantity of the power is great which God supplies to
the speakers, had great power, according to the word of David: "The Lord
will give the word to the preachers with great power." Isaiah too says:(5)
"How beautiful are the feet of them that proclaim good tidings;" he sees
how beautiful and how opportune was the announcement of the Apostles who
walked in Him who said, "I am the way," and praises the feet of those who
walk in the intellectual way of Christ Jesus, and through that door go in
to God. They announce good tidings, those whose feet are beautiful, namely,
Jesus.

II. JESUS IS ALL GOOD THINGS; HENCE THE GOSPEL IS MANIFOLD.

   Let no one wonder if we have understood Jesus to be announced in the
Gospel under a plurality of names of good things. If we look at the things
by the names of which the Son of God is called, we shall understand how
many good things Jesus is, whom those preach whose feet are beautiful. One
good thing is life; but Jesus is the life. Another good thing is the light
of the world, when it is true light, and the light of men; and all these
things the Son of God is said to be. And another good thing which one may
conceive to be in addition to life or light is the truth. And a fourth in
addition to time is the way which leads to the truth. And all these things
our Saviour teaches that He is, when He says:(1) "I am the way and the
truth and the life." Ah, is not that good, to shake off earth and
mortality, and to rise again, obtaining this boon from the Lord, since He
is the resurrection, as He says:(2) "I am the resurrection." But the door
also is a good, through which one enters into the highest blessedness. Now
Christ says:(3) "I am the door." And what need is there to speak of wisdom,
which "the Lord created(4) the first principle of His ways, for His works,"
in whom the father of her rejoiced. delighting in her manifold intellectual
beauty, seen by the eyes of the mind alone, and provoking him to love who
discerns her divine and heavenly charm? A good indeed is the wisdom of God,
proclaimed along with the other good foresaid by those whose feet are
beautiful. And the power of God is the eighth good we enumerate, which is
Christ. Nor must we omit to mention the Word, who is God after the Father
of all. For this also is a good, less than no other. Happy, then, are those
who accept these goods and receive them from those who announce the good
tidings of them, those whose feet are beautiful. Indeed even one of the
Corinthians to whom Paul declared that he knew nothing but Jesus Christ and
Him crucified, should he learn Him who for our sakes became man, and so
receive Him, he would become identified with the beginning of the good
things we have spoken of; by the man Jesus he would be made a man of God,
and by His death he would die to sin. For "Christ,(5) in that He died, died
unto sin once." But from His life, since "in that He liveth, He liveth unto
God," every one who is conformed to His resurrection receives that living
to God. But who will deny that righteousness, essential righteousness, is a
good, and essential sanctification, and essential redemption? And these
things those preach who preach Jesus, saying(6) that He is made to be of
God righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Hence we shall have
writings about Him without number, showing that Jesus is a multitude of
goods; for from the things which can scarcely be numbered and which have
been written we may make some conjecture of those things which actually
exist in Him in whom(7) "it pleased God that the whole fulness of the
Godhead should dwell bodily." and which are not contained in writings. Why
should I say, "are not contained in writings"? For John speaks of the whole
world in this connection, and says:(1) "I suppose that not even the world
itself would contain the books which would be written." Now to say that the
Apostles preach the Saviour is to say that they preach these good things.
For this is He who received from the good Father that He Himself should be
these good things, so that each man receiving from Jesus the thing or
things he is capable of receiving may enjoy good things. But the Apostles,
whose feet were beautiful, and those imitators of them who sought to preach
the good tidings, could not have done so had not Jesus Himself first
preached the good tidings to them, as Isaiah says:(2) "I myself that speak
am here, as the opportunity on the mountains, as the feet of one preaching
tidings of peace, as one preaching good things; for I will make My
salvation to be heard, saying, God shall reign over thee, O Zion!" For what
are the mountains on which the speaker declares that He Himself is present,
but those who are less than none of the highest and the greatest of the
earth? And these must be sought by the able ministers of the New Covenant,
in order that they may observe the injunction which says:(3) Go up into a
high mountain, thou that preachest good tidings to Zion; thou that
preachest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength!" Now
it is not wonderful if to those who are to preach good tidings Jesus
Himself preaches good tidings of good things, which are no other than
Himself; for the Son of God preaches the good tidings of Himself to those
who cannot come to know Him through others. And He who goes up into the
mountains and preaches good things to them, being Himself instructed by His
good Father,(4) who "makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and
sends rain on the just and on the unjust," He does not despise those who
are poor in soul. To them He preaches good tidings, as He Himself bears
witness to us when He takes Isaiah(5) and reads: "The spirit of the Lord is
upon me, for the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor,
He hath sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and sight to the
blind. For closing the book He handed it to the minister and sat down. And
when the eyes of all were fastened upon Him, He said, This day is this
Scripture fulfilled in your ears."

12. THE GOSPEL CONTAINS THE ILL DEEDS ALSO WHICH WERE DONE TO JESUS.

   It ought not to be forgotten that in such a Gospel as this there is
embraced every good deed which was done to Jesus; as, for example, the
story of the woman(1) who had been a stalker and had repented, and who,
having experienced a genuine recovery from her evil state, had grace to
pour her ointment over Jesus so that every one in the house smelt the sweet
savour. Hence, too, the words, "Wherever this Gospel shall be preached
among all the nations, there also this that she has done shall be spoken
of, for a memorial of her." And it is clear that whatever is done to the
disciples of Jesus is done to Him. Pointing to those of them who met with
kind treatment, He says to those who were kind to them? "What ye did to
these, ye did to Me." So that every good deed we do to our neighbours is
entered ill the Gospel, that Gospel which is written on the heavenly
tablets and read by all who are worthy of the knowledge of the whole of
things. But on the other side, too, there is a part of the Gospel which is
for the condemnation of the doers of the ill deeds which have been done to
Jesus. The treachery of Judas and the shouts of the wicked crowd when it
said,(3) "Away with such a one from the earth," and "Crucify Him, crucify
Him," the mockings of those who crowned Him with thorns, and everything of
that kind, is included ill the Gospels. And as a consequence of this we see
that every one who betrays the disciples of Jesus is reckoned as betraying
Jesus Himself. To Saul,(4) when still a persecutor it is said, "Saul Saul,
why persecutest thou Me?" and, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." There
are those who still have thorns with which they crown and dishonour Jesus,
those, namely, who are choked by the cares, and riches, and pleasures of
life, and though they have received the word of God, do not bring it to
perfection.(5) We must beware, therefore, lest we also, as crowning Jesus
with thorns of our own, should be entered in the Gospel and read of in this
character by those who learn the Jesus, who is in all and is present in all
rational and holy lives, learn how He is anointed with ointment, is
entertained, is glorified, or how, on the other side, He is dishonoured,
and mocked, and beaten. All this had to be said; it is part of our
demonstration that our good actions, and also the sins of those who
stumble, are embodied in the Gospel, either to everlasting life or to
reproach and everlasting shame.

13. THE ANGELS ALSO ARE EVANGELISTS.

   Now if there are those among men who are honoured with the ministry of
evangelists, and if Jesus Himself brings tidings of good things, and
preaches the Gospel to the poor, surely those messengers who were made
spirits by God,(1) those who are a flame of fire, ministers of the Father
of all, cannot have been excluded from being evangelists also. Hence an
angel standing over the shepherds made a bright light to shine round about
them, and said:(2) "Fear not; behold I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all tile people; for there is born to you, this day, a
Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David." And at a time when
there was no knowledge among men of the mystery of the Gospel, those who
were greater than men and inhabitants of heaven, the army of God, praised
God, saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will
among men."(3) And having said this, the angels go away from the shepherds
into heaven, leaving us to gather how the joy preached to us through the
birth of Jesus Christ is glory in the highest to God; they humbled
themselves even to the ground, and then returned to their place of rest, to
glorify God in the highest through Jesus Christ. But the angels also wonder
at the peace which is to be brought about on account of Jesus on the earth,
that seat of war, on which Lucifer, star of the morning, fell from heaven,
to be warred against and destroyed by Jesus.

14. THE OLD TESTAMENT, TYPIFIED BY JOHN, IS THE BEGINNING OF THE GOSPEL.

   In addition to what we have said, there is also this to be considered
about the Gospel, that in the first instance it is that of Christ Jesus,
the head of the whole body of the saved; as Mark says,(4) "The beginning of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Then also it is the Gospel of the Apostles;
whence Paul(5) says, "According to my Gospel." But the beginning of the
Gospel--for in respect of its extent it has a beginning, a continuation, a
middle, and an end--is nothing but the whole Old Testament. John is, in
this respect, a type of the Old Testament, or, if we regard the connection
of the New Testament with the Old, John represents the termination of the
Old. For the same Mark says:(6) "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold I send my messenger
before thy face, who shall prepare thy way. The voice of one crying m the
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." And
here I must wonder how the dissentients(1) can connect the two Testaments
with two different Gods. These words, were there no others, are enough to
convict them of their error. For how can John be the beginning of the
Gospel if they suppose he belongs to a different God, if he belongs to the
demiurge, and, as they hold, is not acquainted with the new deity? And the
angels are not entrusted with but one evangelical ministry, and that a
short one, not only with that addressed to the shepherds. For at the end an
exalted and flying angel, having the Gospel, will preach it to every
nation, for the good Father has not entirely deserted those who have fallen
away from Him. John, son of Zebedee, says in his Apocalypse:(2) "And I saw
an angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the Eternal Gospel, to
preach it to those who dwell upon the earth, and to every nation, and
tribe, and tongue, and people, saying, with a loud voice, Fear God and give
Him glory, for the hour of His judgment hath come, and worship Him that
made the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters."

15. THE GOSPEL IS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, AND INDEED IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE.
PRAYER FOR AID TO UNDERSTAND THE MYSTICAL SENSE OF THE WORK IN HAND.

   As, then, we have shown that the beginning of the Gospel, according to
one interpretation, is the whole Old Testament, and is signified by the
person of John, we shall add, lest this should be called a mere unsupported
assertion, what is said in the Acts about the eunuch of the queen of the
Ethiopians and Philip. Philip, it is said, began at the passage of Isaiah:
"He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a lamb before his shearer is
dumb," and so preached to him the Lord Jesus. How can he begin with the
prophet and preach Jesus, if Isaiah was not a part of the beginning of the
Gospel? From this we may derive a proof of the assertion made at the
outset, that every divine Scripture is Gospel. If he who preaches the
Gospel preaches good things, and all those who spoke before the sojourn of
Jesus in the flesh preach Christ, who is as we saw good things, then the
words spoken by all of them alike are in a sense a part of the Gospel. And
when the Gospel is said to be declared throughout the whole world, we infer
that it is actually preached in the whole world, not, that is to say, in
this earthly district only, but in the whole system of heaven and earth, or
from heaven and earth. And why should we discuss any further what the
Gospel is? What we have said is enough. Besides the passages we have
adduced, passages by no means inept or unsuited for our purpose,--much to
the same effect might be collected from the Scriptures, so that it is
clearly seen what is the glory of the good things in Jesus Christ shed
forth by the Gospel, the Gospel ministered by men and angels, and, I
believe, also by authorities and powers,(1) and thrones and dominions, and
every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in the world to
come, and indeed even by Christ Himself. Here, then, let us bring to a
close what has to be said before proceeding to read the work itself. And
now let us ask God to assist us through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, so
that we may be able to unfold the mystical sense which is treasured up in
the words before us.

16. MEANING OF "BEGINNING." (1) IN SPACE.

   "In the beginning was the Word."(2) It is not only the Greeks who
consider the word "beginning" to have many meanings. Let any one collect
the Scripture passages in which the word occurs, and with a view to an
accurate interpretation of it note what it stands for in each passage, and
he will find that the word has many meanings in sacred discourse also. We
speak of a beginning in reference to a transition. Here it has to do with a
road and with length. This appears in the saying:(3) "The beginning of a
good way is to do justice." For since the good way is long, there have
first to be considered in reference to it the question connected with
action, and this side is presented in the words "to do justice;" the
contemplative side comes up for consideration afterwards. In the latter the
end of it comes to rest at last in the so-called restoration of all things,
since no enemy is left them to fight against, if that be true which is
said:(4) "For He must reign until He have placed His enemies under His
feet. But the last enemy to be destroyed is death." For then but one
activity will be left for those who have come to God on account of His word
which is with Him, that, namely, of knowing God, so that, being found by
the knowledge of the Father, they may all be His Son, as now no one but the
Son knows the Father. For should any one enquire carefully at what time
those are to know the Father to whom He who knows the Father reveals Him,
and should he consider how a man now sees only through a glass and in a
riddle, never having learned to know as he ought to know, he would be
justified in saying that no one, no apostle even, and no prophet had known
the Father, but when he became one with Him as a son and a father are one.
And if any one says that it is a digression which has led us to this point,
our consideration of that one meaning of the word beginning, we must show
that the digression is necessary and useful for the end we have in view.
For if we speak of a beginning in the case of a transition, and of a way
and its length, and if we are told that the beginning of a good way is to
do justice, then it concerns us to know in what manner every good way has
for its beginning to do justice, and how after such beginning it arrives at
contemplation, and in what manner it thus arrives at contemplation.

17. (2) IN TIME. THE BEGINNING OF CREATION.

   Again, there is a beginning in a matter of origin, as might appear in
the saying:(1) "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." This
meaning, however, appears more plainly in the Book of Job in the
passage:(2) "This is the beginning of God's creation, made for His angels
to mock at." One would suppose that the heavens and the earth were made
first, of all that was made at the creation of the world. But the second
passage suggests a better view, namely, that as many beings were framed
with a body, the first made of these was the creature called dragon, but
called in another passage(3) the great whale (leviathan) which the Lord
tamed. We must ask about this; whether, when the saints were living a
blessed life apart from matter and from any body, the dragon, falling from
the pure life, became fit to be bound in matter and in a body, so that the
Lord could say, speaking through storm and clouds, "This is the beginning
of the creation of God, made for His angels to mock at." It is possible,
however, that the dragon is not positively the beginning of the creation of
the Lord, but that there were many creatures made with a body for the
angels to mock at, and that the dragon was the first of these, while others
could subsist in a body without such reproach. But it is not so. For the
soul of the sun is placed in a body, and the whole creation, of which the
Apostle says:(1) "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now," and perhaps the following is about the same: "The
creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but on account of Him
who subjected it for hope;" so that bodies might be in vanity, and doing
the things of the body, as he who is in the body must.(2) ... One who is in
the body does the things of the body, though unwillingly. Wherefore the
creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but he who does
unwillingly the things of the body does what he does for the sake of hope,
as if we should say that Paul desired to remain in the flesh, not
willingly, but on account of hope. For though he thought it better(3) to be
dissolved and to be with Christ, it was not unreasonable that he should
wish to remain in the flesh for the sake of the benefit to others and of
advancement in the things hoped for, not only by him, but also by those
benefited by him. This meaning of the term" beginning," as of origin, will
serve us also in the passage in which Wisdom speaks in the Proverbs.(4)
"God," we read, "created me the beginning of His ways, for His works." Here
the term could be interpreted as in the first application we spoke of, that
of a way: "The Lord," it says, "created me the beginning of His ways." One
might assert, and with reason, that God Himself is the beginning of all
things, and might go on to say, as is plain, that the Father is the
beginning of the Son; and the demiurge the beginning of the works of the
demiurge, and that God in a word is the beginning of all that exists. This
view is supported by our: "In the beginning was the Word." In the Word one
may see the Son, and because He is in the Father He may be said to be in
the beginning.

18. (3) OF SUBSTANCE.

   In the third place a beginning may be that out of which a thing comes,
the underlying matter from which things are formed. This, however, is the
view of those who hold matter itself to be uncreated, a view which we
believers cannot share, since we believe God to have made the things that
are out of the things which are not, as the mother of the seven martyrs in
the Maccabees teaches,(1) and as the angel of repentance in the Shepherd
inculcated.(2)

19. (4) OF TYPE AND COPY.

   In addition to these meanings there is that in which we speak of an
arche,(3) according to form; thus if the first-born of every creature(4) is
the image of the invisible God, then the Father is his arche. In the same
way Christ is the arche of those who are made according to the image of
God. For if men are according to the image, but the image according to the
Father; in the first case the Father is the arche of Christ, and in the
other Christ is the arche of men, and men are made, not according to that
of which he is the image, but according to the image. With this example our
passage will agree: "In the arche was the Word."

20.(5) OF ELEMENTS AND WHAT IS FORMED FROM THEM.

   There is also an arche in a matter of learning, as when we say that the
letters are the arche of grammar. The Apostle accordingly says:(5) "When by
reason of the time you ought to be teachers, you have need again that some
one teach you what are the elements of the arche of the oracles of God."
Now the arche spoken of in connection with learning is twofold; first in
respect of its nature, secondly in its relation to us; as we might say of
Christ, that by nature His arche is deity, but that in relation to us who
cannot, for its very greatness, command the whole truth about Him, His
arche is His manhood, as He is preached to babes, "Jesus Christ and Him
crucified." In this view, then, Christ is the arche of learning in His own
nature, because He is the wisdom and power of God; but for us, the Word was
made flesh, that He might tabernacle among us who could only thus at first
receive Him. And perhaps this is the reason why He is not only the
firstborn of all creation, but is also designated the man, Adam. For Paul
says He is Adam:(6) "The last Adam was made a life-giving spirit."

21.(6) OF DESIGN AND EXECUTION.

   Again we speak of the arche of an action, in which there is a design
which appears after the beginning. It may be considered whether wisdom is
to be regarded as the arche of the works of God because it is in this way
the principle of them.

22.THE WORD WAS IN THE BEGINNING, I.E., IN WISDOM, WHICH CONTAINED ALL
THINGS IN IDEA, BEFORE THEY EXISTED. CHRIST'S CHARACTER AS WISDOM IS PRIOR
TO HIS OTHER CHARACTERS.

   So many meanings occur to us at once of the word arche. We have now to
ask which of them we should adopt for our text, "In the beginning was the
Word." It is plain that we may at once dismiss the meaning which connects
it with transition or with a road and its length. Nor, it is pretty plain,
will the meaning connected with an origin serve our purpose. One might,
however, think of the sense in which it points to the author, to that which
brings about the effect, if, as we read,(1) "God commanded and they were
created." For Christ is, in a manner, the demiurge, to whom the Father
says, "Let there be light," and "Let there be a firmament." But Christ is
demiurge as a beginning (arche), inasmuch as He is wisdom. It is in virtue
of His being wisdom that He is called arche. For Wisdom says in Solomon:(2)
"God created me the beginning of His ways, for His works," so that the Word
might be in an arche, namely, in wisdom. Considered in relation to the
structure of contemplation and thoughts about the whole of things, it is
regarded as wisdom; but in relation to that side of the objects of thought,
in which reasonable beings apprehend them, it is considered as the Word.
And there is no wonder, since, as we have said before, the Saviour is many
good things, if He comprises in Himself thoughts of the first order, and of
the second, and of the third. This is what John suggested when he said
about the Word:(3) "That which was made was life in Him." Life then came in
the Word. And on the one side the Word is no other than the Christ, the
Word, He who was with the Father, by whom all things were made; while, on
the other side, the Life is no other than the Son of God, who says:(4) "I
am the way and the truth and the life." As, then, life came into being in
the Word, so the Word in the arche. Consider, however, if we are at liberty
to take this meaning of arche for our text: "In the beginning was the
Word," so as to obtain the meaning that all things came into being
according to wisdom and according to the models of the system which are
present in his thoughts. For I consider that as a house or a ship is built
and fashioned in accordance with the sketches of the builder or designer,
the house or the ship having their beginning (arche) in the sketches and
reckonings in his mind, so all things came into being in accordance with
the designs of what was to be, clearly laid down by God in wisdom. And we
should add that having created, so to speak, ensouled(1) wisdom, He left
her to hand over, from the types which were in her, to things existing and
to matter, the actual emergence of them, their moulding and their forms.(2)
But I consider, if it be permitted to say this, that the beginning (arche)
of real existence was the Son of God, saying:(3) "I am the beginning and
the end, the A [Alpha] and the W [Omega], the first and the last." We must,
however, remember that He is not the arche in respect of every name which
is applied to Him. For how can He be the beginning in respect of His being
life, when life came in the Word, and the Word is manifestly the arche of
life? It is also tolerably evident that He cannot be the arche in respect
of His being the first-born from the dead. And if we go through all His
titles carefully we find that He is the arche only in respect of His being
wisdom. Not even as the Word is He the arche, for the Word was in the
arche. And so one might venture to say that wisdom is anterior to all the
thoughts that are expressed in the titles of the first-born of every
creature. Now God is altogether one and simple; but our Saviour, for many
reasons, since God(4) set Him forth a propitiation and a first fruits of
the whole creation, is made many things, or perhaps all these things; the
whole creation, so far as capable of redemption, stands in need of Him.(5)
And, hence, He is made the light of men, because men, being darkened by
wickedness, need the light that shines in darkness, and is not overtaken by
the darkness; had not men been in darkness, He would not have become the
light of men. The same thing may be observed in respect of His being the
first-born of the dead. For supposing the woman had not been deceived, and
Adam had not fallen, and man created for incorruption had obtained it, then
He would not have descended into the grave, nor would He have died, there
being no sin, nor would His love of men have required that He should die,
and if He had not died, He could not have been the first-born of the dead.
We may also ask whether He would ever have become a shepherd, had man not
been thrown together with the beasts which are devoid of reason, and made
like to them. For if God saves man and beasts, He saves those beasts which
He does save, by giving them a shepherd, since they cannot have a king.
Thus if we collect the titles of Jesus, the question arises which of them
were conferred on Him later, and would never have assumed such importance
if the saints had begun and had also persevered in blessedness. Perhaps
Wisdom would be the only remaining one, or perhaps the Word would remain
too, or perhaps the Life, or perhaps the Truth, not the others, which He
took for our sake. And happy indeed are those who in their need for the Son
of God have yet become such persons as not to need Him in His character as
a physician healing the sick, nor in that of a shepherd, nor in that of
redemption, but only in His characters as wisdom, as the word and
righteousness, or if there be any other title suitable for those who are so
perfect as to receive Him in His fairest characters. So much for the phrase
"In the beginning."

23. THE TITLE "WORD" IS TO BE INTERPRETED BY THE SAME METHOD AS THE OTHER
TITLES OF CHRIST. THE WORD OF GOD IS NOT A MERE ATTRIBUTE OF GOD, BUT A
SEPARATE PERSON. WHAT IS MEANT WHEN HE IS CALLED THE WORD.

   Let us consider, however, a little more carefully what is the Word
which is in the beginning. I am often led to wonder when I consider the
things that are said about Christ, even by those who are in earnest in
their belief in Him. Though there is a countless number of names which can
be applied to our Saviour, they omit the most of them, and if they should
remember them, they declare that these titles are not to be understood in
their proper sense, but tropically. But when they come to the title Logos
(Word), and repeat that Christ alone is the Word of God, they are not
consistent, and do not, as in the case of the other titles, search out what
is behind the meaning of the term "Word." I wonder at the stupidity of the
general run of Christians in this matter. I do not mince matters; it is
nothing but stupidity. The Son of God says in one passage, "I am the light
of the world," and in another, "I am the resurrection," and again, "I am
the way and the truth and the life." It is also written, "I am the door,"
and we have the saying, "I am the good shepherd," and when the woman of
Samaria says, "We know the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ; when He
comes, He will tell us all things," Jesus answers, "I that speak unto thee
am He." Again, when He washed the disciples' feet, He declared Himself in
these words(1) to be their Master and Lord: "You call Me Master and Lord,
and you say well, for so I am." He also distinctly announces Himself as the
Son of God, when He says,(2) "He whom the Father sanctified and sent unto
the world, to Him do you say, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the
Son of God?" and(3) "Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that the
Son also may glorify Thee." We also find Him declaring Himself to be a
king, as when He answers Pilate's question,(4) "Art Thou the King of the
Jews?" by saying, "My kingdom is not of this world; if My kingdom were of
this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to
the Jews, but now is My kingdom not from hence." We have also read the
words,(5) "I am the true vine and My Father is the husbandman," and again,
"I am the vine, ye are the branches." Add to these testimonies also the
saying,(6) "I am the bread of life, that came down from heaven and giveth
life to the world." These texts will suffice for the present, which we have
picked up out of the storehouse of the Gospels, and in all of which He
claims to be the Son of God. But in the Apocalypse of John, too, He
says,(7) "I am the first and the last, and the living One, and I was dead.
Behold, I am alive for evermore." And again,(8) "I am the A [Alpha] and the
W [Omega], and the first and the last, the beginning and the end." The
careful student of the sacred books, moreover, may gather not a few similar
passages from the prophets, as where He calls Himself(9) a chosen shaft,
and a servant of God,(10) and a light of the Gentiles.(11) Isaiah also
says," "From my mother's womb hath He called me by my name, and He made my
mouth as a sharp sword, and under the shadow of His hand did He hide me,
and He said to me, Thou art My servant, O Israel, and in thee will I be
glorified." And a little farther on: "And my God shall be my strength, and
He said to me, This is a great thing for thee to be called My servant, to
set up the tribes of Jacob and to turn again the diaspora of Israel. Behold
I have set thee for a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for
salvation to the end of the earth." And in Jeremiah too(1) He likens
Himself to a lamb, as thus: "I was as a gentle lamb that is led to the
slaughter." These and other similar sayings He applies to Himself. In
addition to these one might collect in the Gospels and the Apostles and in
the prophets a countless number of titles which are applied to the Son of
God, as the writers of the Gospels set forth their own views of what He is,
or the Apostles extol Him out of what they had learned, or the prophets
proclaim in advance His coining advent and announce the things concerning
Him under various names. Thus John calls Him the Lamb of God, saying,(2)
"Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world," and in
these words he declares Him as a man,(3) "This is He about whom I said,
that there cometh after me a man who is there before me; for He was before
me." And in his Catholic Epistle John says that He is a Paraclete for our
souls with the Father, as thus:(4) "And if any one sin, we have a Paraclete
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous," and he adds that He is a
propitiation for our sins, and similarly Paul says He is a propitiation:(5)
"Whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood, on
account of forgiveness of the forepast sins, in the forbearance of God."
According to Paul, too, He is declared to be the wisdom and the power of
God, as in the Epistle to the Corinthians:(6) "Christ the power of God and
the wisdom of God." It is added that He is also sanctification and
redemption: "He was made to us of God," he says, "wisdom and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption." But he also teaches us, writing to the
Hebrews, that Christ is a High-Priest:(7) "Having, therefore, a great High-
Priest, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us
hold fast our profession." And the prophets have other names for Him
besides these. Jacob in his blessing of his sons(8) says, "Judah, thy
brethren shall extol thee; thy hands are on the necks of thine enemies. A
lion's whelp is Judah, from a shoot, my son, art thou sprung up; thou hast
lain down and slept as a lion; who shall awaken him?" We cannot now linger
over these phrases, to show that what is said of Judah applies to Christ.
What may be quoted against this view, viz., "A ruler shall not part from
Judah nor a leader from his loins, until He come for whom it is reserved;"
this can better be cleared up on another occasion. But Isaiah knows Christ
to be spoken of under the names of Jacob and Israel, when he says,' "Jacob
is my servant, I will help Him; Israel is my elect, my soul hath accepted
Him. He shall declare judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive nor
cry, neither shall any one hear His voice on the streets. A bruised rod
shall He not break. and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He bring
forth judgment from victory, and in His name shall the nations hope." That
it is Christ about whom such prophecies are made, Matthew shows in his
Gospel, where he quotes from memory and says:(2) "That the saying might be
fulfilled, He shall not strive nor cry," etc. David also is called Christ,
as where Ezekiel in his prophecy to the shepherds adds as from the mouth of
God:(3) "I will raise up David my servant, who shall be their shepherd."
For it is not the patriarch David who is to rise and be the shepherd of the
saints, but Christ. Isaiah also called Christ the rod and the flower:(4)
"There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall
spring out of tits root, and the spirit of God shall rest upon Him, the
spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel slid of might,
the spirit of knowledge and of godliness, and He shall be full of the
spirit of the fear of the Lord." And in the Psalms our Lord is called the
stone, as follows:(5) "The stone which the builders rejected is made the
head of the comer. It is from the Lord, and it is wonderful in our eyes."
And the Gospel shows, as also does Luke in the Acts, that the stone is no
other than Christ; the Gospel as follows:(6) "Have ye never read, the stone
which the builders rejected is made the head of the corner. Whosoever falls
on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will
scatter him as dust." And Luke writes in Acts:(7) "This is the stone, which
was set at naught of you the builders, which has become the head of the
corner." And one of the names applied to the Saviour is that which He
Himself does not utter, but which John records;--the Word who was in the
beginning with God, God the Word. And it is worth our while to fix our
attention for a moment on those scholars who omit consideration of most of
the great names we have mentioned and regard this as the most important
one. As to the former titles, they look for any account of them that any
one may offer, but in the case of this one they proceed differently and
ask, What is the Son of God when called the Word? The passage they employ
most is that in the Psalms,(1) "My heart hath produced a good Word;" and
they imagine the Son of God to be the utterance of the Father deposited, as
it were, in syllables, and accordingly they do not allow Him, if we examine
them farther, any independent hypostasis, nor are they clear about His
essence. I do not mean that they confuse its qualities, but the fact of His
having an essence of His own. For no one can understand how that which is
said to be "Word" can be a Son. And such an animated Word, not being a
separate entity from the Father, and accordingly as it, having no
subsistence. is not a Son, or if he is a Son, let them say that God the
Word is a separate being and has an essence of His own. We insist,
therefore, that as in the case of each of the titles spoken of above we
turn from the title to the concept it suggests slid apply it and
demonstrate how the Son of God is suitably described by it, the same course
must be followed when we find Him called the Word. What caprice it is, in
all these cases, not to stand upon the term employed, but to enquire in
what sense Christ is to be understood to be the door, and in what way the
vine, and why He is the way; but in the one case of His being called the
Word, to follow a different course. To add to the authority, therefore, of
what we have to say on the question, how the Son of God is the Word, we
must begin with those names of which we spoke first as being applied to
Him. This, we cannot deny, will seem to some to be superfluous and a
digression, but the thoughtful reader will not think it useless to ask as
to the concepts for which the titles are used; to observe these matters
will clear the way for what is coming. And once we have entered upon the
theology concerning the Saviour, as we seek with what diligence we can and
find the various things that are taught about Him, we shall necessarily
understand more about Him not only in His character as the Word, but in His
other characters also.

24. CHRIST AS LIGHT; HOW HE, AND HOW HIS DISCIPLES ARE THE LIGHT OF THE
WORLD.

   He said, then, that He was the light of the world; and we have to
examine, along with this title, those which are parallel to it; and,
indeed, are thought by some to be not merely parallel, but identical with
it. He is the true light, and the light of the Gentiles. In the opening of
the Gospel now before us He is the light of men: "That which was made,"(1)
it says, "was life in Him, and the life was the light of men; and the light
shines in darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it." A little further
on, in the same passage, He is called the true light:(2) "The true light,
which lightens every man, was coming into the world." In Isaiah, He is the
light of the Gentiles, as we said before. "Behold,(3) I have set Thee for a
light of the Gentiles, that Thou shouldest be for salvation to the end of
the earth." Now the sensible light of the world is the sun, and after it
comes very worthily the moon, and the same title may be applied to the
stars; but those lights of the world are said in Moses to have come into
existence on the fourth day, and as they shed light on the things on the
earth, they are not the true light. But the Saviour shines on creatures
which have intellect and sovereign reason, that their minds may behold
their proper objects of vision, and so he is the light of the intellectual
world, that is to say, of the reasonable souls which are in the sensible
world, and if there be any beings beyond these in the world from which He
declares Himself to be our Saviour. He is, indeed, the most determining and
distinguished part of that world, and, as we may say, the sun who makes the
great day of the Lord. In view of this day He says to those who partake of
His light, "Work(4) while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work.
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Then He says to
His disciples,(5) "Ye are the light of the world," and "Let your light
shine before men." Thus we see the Church, the bride, to present an analogy
to the moon and stars, and the disciples have a light, which is their own
or borrowed from the true sun, so that they are able to illuminate those
who have no command of any spring of light in themselves. We may say that
Paul and Peter are the light of the world, and that those of their
disciples who are enlightened themselves, but are not able to enlighten
others, are the world of which the Apostles were the light. But the
Saviour, being the light of the world, illuminates not bodies, but by His
incorporeal power the incorporeal intellect, to the end that each of us,
enlightened as by the sun, may be able to discern the rest of the things of
the mind. And as when the sun is shining the moon and the stars lose their
power of giving light, so those who are irradiated by Christ and receive
His beams have no need of the ministering apostles and prophets--we must
have courage to declare this truth--nor of the angels; I will add that they
have no need even of the greater powers when they are disciples of that
first-born light. To those who do not receive the solar beams of Christ.
the ministering saints do afford an illumination much less than the former;
this illumination is as much as those persons can receive, and it
completely fills them. Christ, again, the light of the world, is the true
light as distinguished from the light of sense; nothing that is sensible is
true. Yet though the sensible is other than the true, it does not follow
that the sensible is false, for the sensible may have an analogy with the
intellectual, and not everything that is not true can correctly be called
false. Now I ask whether the light of the world is the same thing with the
light of men, and I conceive that a higher power of light is intended by
the former phrase than by the latter, for the world in one sense is not
only men. Paul shows that the world is something more than men when he
writes to the Corinthians in his first Epistle:(1) "We are made a spectacle
unto the world, and to angels, and to men." In one sense, too, it may be
considered,(2) the world is the creation which is being delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God,
whose earnest expectation is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of
God. We also draw attention to the comparison which may be drawn between
the statement, "I am the light of the world," and the words addressed to
the disciples, "Ye are the light of the world." Some suppose that the
genuine disciples of Jesus are greater than other creatures, some seeking
the reason of this ill the natural growth of these disciples, others
inferring it from their harder struggle. For those beings which are in
flesh and blood have greater labours and a life more full of dangers than
those which are in an ethereal body, and the lights of heaven might not, if
they had put on bodies of earth, have accomplished this life of ours free
from danger and from error. Those who incline to this argument may appeal
to those texts of Scripture which say the most exalted things about men,
and to the fact that the Gospel is addressed directly to men; not so much
is said about the creation, or, as we understand it, about the world. We
read,(1) "As I and Thou are one, that they also may be one in Us," and(2)
"Where I am, there will also My servant be." These sayings, plainly, are
about men; while about the creation it is said that it is delivered from
the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of
God. It might be added that not even when it is delivered will it take part
in the glory of the sons of God. Nor will those who hold this view forget
that the first-born of every creature, honouring man above all else, became
man, and that it was not any of the constellations existing in the sky, but
one of another order, appointed for this purpose and in the service of the
knowledge of Jesus, that was made to be the Star of the East, whether it
was like the other stars or perchance better than they, to be the sign of
Him who is the most excellent of all. And if the boasting of the saints is
in their tribulations, since(3) "tribulation worketh patience, and patience
probation, and probation hope, and hope maketh not ashamed," then the
afflicted creation cannot have the like patience with man, nor the like
probation, nor the like hope, but another degree of these, since(4) "the
creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but on account of Him
who subjected it. for hope." Now he who shrinks from conferring such great
attributes on man will turn to another direction and say that the creature
being subjected to vanity groans and suffers greater affliction than those
who groan in this tabernacle, for has she not suffered for the utmost
extent of time in her service of vanity--nay, many times as long as man?
For why does she do this not willingly, but that it is against her nature
to be subject to vanity, and not to have the best arrangement of her life,
that which she shall receive when she is set free, when the world is
destroyed and released even from the vanity of bodies. Here, however, we
may appear to be stretching too far, and aiming at more than the question
now before us requires. We may return, therefore, to the point from which
we set out, and ask for what reason the Saviour is called the light of the
world, the true light, and the light of men. Now we saw that He is called
the true light with reference to the sensible light of the world, and that
the light of the world is the same thing as the light of men, or that we
may at least enquire whether they are the same. This discussion is not
superfluous. Some students do not take anything at all out of the statement
that the Saviour is the Word; and it is important for us to assure
ourselves that we are not chargeable with caprice in fixing our attention
on that notion. If it admits of being taken in a metaphorical sense we
ought not to take it literally.(1) When we apply the mystical and
allegorical method to the expression "light of the world" and the many
analogous terms mentioned above, we should surely do so with this
expression also.

25. CHRIST AS THE RESURRECTION.

   Now He is called the light of men and the true light and the light of
the word, because He brightens and irradiates the higher parts of men, or,
in a word, of all reasonable beings. And similarly it is from and because
of the energy with which He causes the old deadness to be put aside and
that which is par excellence life to be put on, so that those who have
truly received Him rise again from the dead, that He is called the
resurrection. And this He does not only at the moment at which a man
says,(2) "We are buried with Christ through baptism and have risen again
with Him," but much rather when a man, having laid off all about him that
belongs to death, walks in the newness of life which belongs to Him, the
Son, while here. We always(3) "carry about in our body the dying of the
Lord Jesus," and thus we reap the vast advantage, "that the life of the
Lord Jesus might be made manifest in our bodies."

26. CHRIST AS THE WAY.

   But that progress too, which is in wisdom and which is found by those
who seek their salvation in it to do for them what they require both in
respect of exposition of truth in the divine word and in respect of conduct
according to true righteousness, it lets us understand how Christ is the
way. In this way we have to take nothing with us,(4) neither wallet nor
coat; we must travel without even a stick, nor must we have shoes on our
feet. For this road is itself sufficient for all the supplies of our
journey; and every one who walks on it wants nothing. He is clad with a
garment which is fit for one who is setting out in response to an
invitation to a wedding; and on this road he cannot meet anything that can
annoy him. "No one," Solomon says,(5) "can find out the way of a serpent
upon a rock." I would add, or that of any other beast. Hence there is no
need of a staff on this road, on which there is no trace of any hostile
creature, and the hardness of which, whence also it is called rock (petra),
makes it incapable of harbouring anything hurtful.

27. CHRIST AS THE TRUTH.

   Further, the Only-begotten is the truth, because He embraces in Himself
according to the Father's will the whole reason of all things, and that
with perfect clearness, and being the truth communicates to each creature
in proportion to its worthiness. And should any one enquire whether all
that the Father knows, according to the depth of His riches and His wisdom
and His knowledge, is known to our Saviour also, and should he, imagining
that he will thereby glorify the Father, show that some things known to the
Father are unknown to the Son, although He might have had an equal share of
the apprehensions of the unbegotten God, we must remind him that it is from
His being the truth that He is Saviour, and add that if He is the truth
complete, then there is nothing true which He does not know; truth must not
limp for the want of the things which, according to those persons, are
known to the Father only. Or else let it be shown that some things are
known to which the name of truth does not apply, but which are above the
truth.

28. CHRIST AS LIFE.

   It is clear also that the principle of that life which is pure and
unmixed with any other element, resides in Him who is the first-born of all
creation, taking from which those who have a share in Christ live the life
which is true life, while all those who are thought to live apart from
this, as they have not the true light, have not the true life either.

29. CHRIST AS THE DOOR AND AS THE SHEPHERD.

   But as one cannot be in the Father or with the Father except by
ascending from below upwards and coming first to the divinity of the Son,
through which one may be led by the hand and brought to the blessedness of
the Father Himself, so the Saviour has the inscription "The Door." And as
He is a lover of men, and approves the impulse of human souls to better
things, even of those who do not hasten to reason (the Logos), but like
sheep have a weakness and gentleness apart from all accuracy and reason, so
He is the Shepherd. For the Lord saves men and beasts,(1) and Israel and
Juda are sowed with the seed not of men only but also of beasts.(2)

30. CHRIST AS ANOINTED {CHRIST) AND AS KING.

   In addition to these titles we must consider at the outset of our work
that of Christ, and we must also consider that of King, and compare these
two so as to find out the difference between them. Now it is said in the
forty-fourth Psalm,(3) "Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity,
whence Thou art anointed (Christ) above Thy fellows." His loving
righteousness and hating iniquity were thus added claims in Him; His
anointing was not contemporary with His being nor inherited by Him from the
first. Anointing is a symbol of entering on the kingship, and sometimes
also on the priesthood; and must we therefore conclude that the kingship of
the Son of God is not inherited nor congenital to Him? But how is it
conceivable that the First-born of all creation was not a king and became a
king afterwards because He loved righteousness, when, moreover, He Himself
was righteousness? We cannot fail to see that it is as a man that He is
Christ, in respect of His soul, which was human and liable to be troubled
and sore vexed, but that He is conceived as king in respect of the divine
in Him. I find support for this in the seventy-first Psalm,(4) which says,
"Give the king Thy judgment, O God, and Thy righteousness to the king's
Son, to judge Thy people in righteousness and Thy poor in judgment." This
Psalm, though addressed to Solomon, is evidently a prophecy of Christ, and
it is worth while to ask to what king the prophecy desires judgment to be
given by God, and to what king's Son, and what king's righteousness is
spoken of. I conceive, then, that what is called the King is the leading
nature of the First-born of all creation, to which judgment is given on
account of its eminence; and that the man whom He assumed, formed and
moulded by that nature, according to righteousness, is the King's Son. I am
the more led to think that this is so, because the two beings are here
brought together in one sentence, and are spoken of as if they were not two
but one. For the Saviour made both one,(5) that is, He made them according
to the prototype of the two which had been made one in Himself before all
things. The two I refer to human nature, since each man's soul is mixed
with the Holy Spirit, and each of those who are saved is thus made
spiritual. Now as there are some to whom Christ is a shepherd, as we said
before, because of their meek and composed nature, though they are less
guided by reason; so there are those to whom He is a king, those, namely,
who are led in their approach to religion rather by the reasonable part of
their nature. And among those who are under a king there are differences;
some experience his rule in a more mystic and hidden and more divine way,
others in a less perfect fashion. I should say that those who, led by
reason, apart from all agencies of sense, have beheld incorporeal things,
the things which Paul speaks of as "invisible," or "not seen," that they
are ruled by the leading nature of the Only-begotten, but that those who
have only advanced as far as the reason which is conversant with sensible
things, and on account of these glorify their Maker, that these also are
governed by the Word, by Christ. No offence need be taken at our
distinguishing these notions in the Saviour; we draw the same distinctions
in His substance.

31. CHRIST AS TEACHER AND MASTER.

   It is plain to all how our Lord is a teacher and an interpreter for
those who are striving towards godliness, and on the other hand a master of
those servants who have the spirit of bondage to fear,(1) who make progress
and hasten towards wisdom, and are found worthy to possess it. For  "the
servant knoweth not what the master wills," since he is no longer his
master, but has become his friend. The Lord Himself teaches this, for He
says to hearers who were still servants:(3) "You call Me Master and Lord,
and you say well, for so I am," but in another passage,(4) "I call you no
longer servants, for the servant knoweth not what is the will of his
master, but I call you friends," because(5) "you have continued with Me in
all My temptations." They, then, who live according to fear, which God
exacts from those who are not good servants, as we read in Malachi,(6) "If
I am a Master, where is My fear?" are servants of a master who is called
their Saviour.

32. CHRIST AS SON.

   None of these testimonies, however, sets forth distinctly the Saviour's
exalted birth; but when the words are addressed to Him, "Thou art My Son,
this day have I begotten Thee,"(1) this is spoken to Him by God, with whom
all time is to-day, for there is no evening with God, as I consider, and
there is no morning, nothing but time that stretches out, along with His
unbeginning and unseen life. The day is to-day with Him in which the Son
was begotten, and thus the beginning of His birth is not found, as neither
is the day of it.

33. CHRIST THE TRUE VINE, AND AS BREAD.

   To what we have said must be added how the Son is the true vine. Those
will have no difficulty in apprehending this who understand, in a manner
worthy of the prophetic grace, the saying:(2) "Wine maketh glad the heart
of man." For if the heart be the intellectual part, and what rejoices it is
the Word most pleasant of all to drink which takes us off human things,
makes us feel ourselves inspired, and intoxicates us with an intoxication
which is not irrational but divine, that, I conceive, with which Joseph
made his brethren merry,(3) then it is very clear how He who brings wine
thus to rejoice the heart of man is the true vine. He is the true vine,
because the grapes He bears are the truth, the disciples are His branches,
and they, also, bring forth the truth as their fruit. It is somewhat
difficult to show the difference between the vine and bread, for He says,
not only that He is the vine, but that He is the bread of life. May it be
that as bread nourishes and makes strong, and is said to strengthen the
heart of man, but wine, on the contrary, pleases and rejoices and melts
him, so ethical studies, bringing life to him who learns them and reduces
them to practice, are the bread of life, but cannot properly be called the
fruit of the vine, while secret and mystical speculations, rejoicing the
heart and causing those to feel inspired who take them in, delighting in
the Lord, and who desire not only to be nourished but to be made happy, are
called the juice of the true vine, because they flow from it.

34. CHRIST AS THE FIRST AND THE LAST; HE IS ALSO WHAT LIES BETWEEN THESE.

   Further, we have to ask in what sense He is called in the Apocalypse
the First and the Last, and how, in His character as the First, He is not
the same as the Alpha and the beginning, while in His character as the Last
He is not the same as the Omega and the end. It appears to me, then, that
the reasonable beings which exist are characterized by many forms, and that
some of them are the first, some the second, some the third, and so on to
the last. To pronounce exactly, however, which is the first, what kind of a
being the second is, which may truly be designated third, and to carry this
out to the end of the series, this is not a task for man, but transcends
our nature. We shall yet venture, such as we are, to stand still a little
at this point, and to make some observations on the matter. There are some
gods of whom God is god, as we hear in prophecy,(1) "Thank ye the God of
gods," and(2) "The God of gods hath spoken, and called the earth." Now God,
according to the Gospel,(3) "is not the God of the dead but of the living."
Those gods, then, are living of whom God is god. The Apostle, too, writing
to the Corinthians, says:(4) "As there are gods many and lords many," and
so we have spoken of these gods as really existing. Now there are, besides
the gods of whom God is god, certain others, who are called thrones, and
others called dominions, lordships, also, and powers in addition to these.
The phrase,(5) "above every name that is named, not only in this world, but
also in that which is to come," leads us to believe that there are yet
others besides these which are less familiar to us; one kind of these the
Hebrews called Sabai, from which Sabaoth was formed, who is their ruler,
and is none other than God. Add to all these the reasonable being who is
mortal, man. Now the God of all things made first in honour some race of
reasonable beings; this I consider to be those who are called gods, and the
second order, let us say, for the present, are the thrones, and the third,
undoubtedly, the dominions. And thus we come down in order to the last
reasonable race, which, perhaps, cannot be any other than man. The Saviour
accordingly became, in a diviner way than Paul, all things to all, that He
might either gain all or perfect them; it is clear that to men He became a
man, and to the angels an angel. As for His becoming man no believer has
any doubt, but as to His becoming an angel, we shall find reason for
believing it was so, if we observe carefully the appearances and the words
of the angels, in some of which the powers of the angels seem to belong to
Him. In several passages angels speak in such a way as to suggest this, as
when(6) "the angel of the Lord appeared in a flame of fire. And he said. I
am the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob." But Isaiah also says:(1)
"His name is called Angel of Great Counsel." The Saviour, then, is the
first and the last, not that He is not what lies between, but the
extremities are named to show that He became all things. Consider, however,
whether the last is man, or the things said to be under the earth, of which
are the demons, all of them or some. We must ask, too, about those things
which the Saviour became which He speaks of through the prophet David,(2)
"And I became as a man without any to help him, free among the dead." His
birth from the Virgin and His life so admirably lived showed Him to be more
than man, and it was the same among the dead. He was the only free person
there, and His soul was not left in hell. Thus, then, He is the first and
the last. Again, if there be letters of God, as such there are, by reading
which the saints may say they have read what is written on the tablets of
heaven, these letters, by which heavenly things are to be read, are the
notions, divided into small parts, into A [Alpha] and so on to W [Omega],
the Son of God. Again, He is the beginning and the end, but He is this not
in all His aspects equally. For He is the beginning, as the Proverbs teach
us, inasmuch as He is wisdom; it is written: "The Lord rounded Me in the
beginning of His ways. for His works." In the respect of His being the
Logos He is not the beginning. "The Word was in the beginning." Thus in His
aspects one comes first and is the beginning, and there is a second after
the beginning, and a third, and so on to the end, as if He had said, I am
the beginning. inasmuch as I am wisdom, and the second, perhaps, inasmuch
as I am invisible, and the third in that I am life, for "what was made was
life in Him." One who was qualified to examine and to discern the sense of
Scripture might, no doubt, find many members of the series; I cannot say if
he could find them all. "The beginning and the end" is a phrase we usually
apply to a thing that is a completed unity; the beginning of a house is its
foundation and the end the parapet. We cannot but think of this figure.
since Christ is the stone which is the head of the corner, to the great
unity of the body of the saved. For Christ the only-begotten Son is all and
in all, He is as the beginning in the man He assumed, He is present as the
end in the last of the saints, and He is also in those between, or else He
is present as the beginning in Adam, as the end in His life on earth,
according to the saying: "The last Adam was made a quickening spirit." This
saying harmonizes well with the interpretation we have given of the first
and the last.

35. CHRIST AS THE LIVING AND THE DEAD.

In what has been said about the first and the last, and about the beginning
and the end, we have referred these words at one point to the different
forms of reasonable beings, at another to the different conceptions of the
Son of God. Thus we have gained a distinction between the first and the
beginning, and between the last and the end, and also the distinctive
meaning of A and <greek>W</greek>. It is not hard to see why he is
called(1) "the Living and the Dead," and after being dead He that is alive
for evermore. For since we were not helped by His original life, sunk as we
were in sin, He came down into our deadness in order that, He having died
to sin, we,(2) bearing about in our body the dying of Jesus. might then
receive that life of His which is for evermore. For those who always carry
about in their body the dying of Jesus shall obtain the life of Jesus also,
manifested in their bodies.

36. CHRIST AS A SWORD.

The texts of the New Testament, which we have discussed, are things said by
Himself about Himself. Isaiah, however, He said(3) that His mouth had been
set by His Father as a sharp sword, and that He was hidden under the shadow
of His hand, made like to a chosen shaft and kept close in the Father's
quiver, called His servant by  the God of all things, and Israel, and Light
of the Gentiles. The mouth of the Son of God is a sharp sword, for(4) "The
word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
and piercing to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow,
and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart." And indeed He
came not to bring peace on the earth, that is, to corporeal and sensible
things, but a sword, and to cut through, if I may say so, the disastrous
friendship of soul and body, so that the soul, committing herself to the
spirit which was against the flesh, may enter into friendship with God.
Hence, according to the prophetic word, He made His mouth as a sword, as a
sharp sword. Can any one behold so many wounded by the divine love, like
her in the Song of Songs, who complained that she was wounded:(1) "I am
wounded with love," and find the dart that wounded so many souls for the
love of God, in any but Him who said, "He hath made Me as a chosen shaft."

37.CHRIST AS A SERVANT, AS THE LAMB OF GOD, AND AS THE MAN WHOM JOHN DID
NOT KNOW.

   Again, let any one consider how Jesus was to His disciples, not as He
who sits at meat, but as He who serves, and how though the Son of God He
took on Him the form of a servant for the sake of the freedom of those who
were enslaved in sin, and he will be at no loss to account for the Father's
saying to Him:(2) "Thou art My servant," and a little further on: "It is a
great thing that thou shouldst be called My servant." For we do not
hesitate to say that the goodness of Christ appears in a greater and more
divine light, and more according to the image of the Father, because(3) "He
humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross," than if He had judged it a thing to be grasped to be equal with
God, and had shrunk from becoming a servant for the salvation of the world.
Hence He says,(4) desiring to teach us that in accepting this state of
servitude He had received a great gift from His Father: "And My God shall
be My strength. And He said to Me, It is a great thing for Thee to be
called My servant." For if He had not become a servant, He would not have
raised up the tribes of Jacob, nor have turned the heart of the diaspora of
Israel, and neither would He have become a light of the Gentiles to be for
salvation to the ends of the earth. And it is no great thing for Him to
become a servant, even if it is called a great thing by His Father, for
this is in comparison with His being called with an innocent sheep and with
a lamb. For the Lamb of God became like an innocent sheep being led to the
slaughter, that He may take away the sin of the world. He who supplies
reason (logos) to all is made like a lamb which is dumb before her shearer,
that we might be purified by His death, which is given as a sort of
medicine against the opposing power, and also against the sin of those who
open their minds to the truth. For the death of Christ reduced to impotence
those powers which war against the human race, and it set free from sin by
a power beyond our words the life of each believer. Since, then, He takes
away sin until every enemy shall be destroyed and death last of all, in
order that the whole world may be free from sin, therefore John points to
Him and says:(1) "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the
world." It is not said that He will take it away in the future, nor that He
is at present taking it, nor that He has taken it, but is not taking it
away now. His taking away sin is still going on, He is taking it away from
every individual in the world, till sin be taken away from the whole world,
and the Saviour deliver the kingdom prepared and completed to the Father, a
kingdom in which no sin is left at all, and which, therefore, is ready to
accept the Father as its king, and which on the other hand is waiting to
receive all God has to bestow, fully, and in every part, at that time when
the saying(2) is fulfilled, "That God may be all in all." Further, we hear
of a man who is said to be coming after John, who was made before him and
was before him. This is to teach us that the man also of the Son of God,
the man who was mixed with His divinity, was older than His birth from
Mary. John says he does not know this man, but must he not have known Him
when he leapt for joy when yet a babe unborn in Elisabeth's womb, as soon
as the voice of Mary's salutation sounded in the ears of the wife of
Zacharias? Consider, therefore, if the words "I know Him not" may have
reference to the period before the bodily existence. Though he did not know
Him before He assumed His body, yet he knew Him when yet in his mother's
womb, and perhaps he is here learning something new about Him beyond what
was known to him before, namely, that on whomsoever the Holy Spirit shall
descend and abide on him, that is he who is to baptize with the Holy Spirit
and with fire. He knew him from his mother's womb, but not all about Him.
He did not know perhaps that this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit
and with fire, when he saw the Spirit descending and abiding on Him. Yet
that He was indeed a man, and the first man, John did not know.

38. CHRIST AS PARACLETE, AS PROPITIATION, AND AS THE POWER OF GOD.

   But none of the names we have mentioned expresses His representation of
us with the Father, as He pleads for human nature, and makes atonement for
it; the Paraclete, and the propitiation, and the atonement. He has the name
Paraclete in the Epistle of John:(1) "If any man sin, we have a Paraclete
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." And He is said in the same
epistle to be the atonement(2) for our sins. Similarly, in the Epistle to
the Romans, He is called a propitiation:(3) "Whom God set forth to be a
propitiation through faith." Of this proportion there was a type in the
inmost part of the temple, the Holy of Holies, namely, the golden mercy-
seat placed upon the two cherubim. But how could He ever be the Paraclete,
and the atonement, and the propitiation without the power of God, which
makes an end of our weakness, flows over the souls of believers, and is
administered by Jesus, who indeed is prior to it and Himself the power of
God, who enables a man to say:(4) "I can do all things through Jesus Christ
who strengtheneth me." Whence we know that Simon Magus, who gave himself
the title of "The power of God, which is called great," was consigned to
perdition and destruction, he and his money with him. We, on the contrary,
who confess Christ as the true power of God, believe that we share with
Him, inasmuch as He is that power, all things in which any energy resides.

39. CHRIST AS WISDOM AND SANCTIFICATION AND REDEMPTION.

   We must not, however, pass over in silence that He is of right the
wisdom of God, and hence is called by that name. For the wisdom of the God
and Father of all things does not apprehend His substance in mere visions,
like the phantasms of human thoughts. Whoever is able to conceive a
bodiless existence of manifold speculations which extend to the rationale
of existing things, living and, as it were, ensouled, he will see how well
the Wisdom of God which is above every creature speaks of herself, when she
says:(5) "God created me the beginning of His ways, for His works." By this
creating act the whole creation was enabled to exist, not being unreceptive
of that divine wisdom according to which it was brought into being; for
God, according to the prophet David,(6) made all things in wisdom. But many
things came into being by the help of wisdom, which do not lay hold of that
by which they were created: and few things indeed there are which lay hold
not only of that wisdom which concerns themselves, but of that which has to
do with many things besides, namely, of Christ who is the whole of wisdom.
But each of the sages, in proportion as he embraces wisdom, partakes to
that extent of Christ, in that He is wisdom; just as every one who is
greatly gifted with power, in proportion as he has power, in that
proportion also has a share in Christ, inasmuch as He is power. The same is
to be thought about sanctification and redemption; for Jesus Himself is
made sanctification to us and redemption. Each of us is sanctified with
that sanctification, and redeemed with that redemption. Consider, moreover,
if the words "to us," added by the Apostle, have any special force. Christ,
he says, "was made to us of God, wisdom, and righteousness, and
sanctification, and redemption." In other passages, he speaks about Christ
as being wisdom, without any such qualification, and of His being power,
saying that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, though we
might have conceived that He was not the wisdom of God or the power of God,
absolutely, but only for us. Now, in respect of wisdom and power, we have
both forms of the statement, the relative and the absolute; but in respect
of sanctification and redemption, this is not the case. Consider,
therefore, since(1) "He that sanctifies and they that are sanctified are
all of one," whether the Father is the sanctification of Him who is our
sanctification, as, Christ being our head, God is His head. But Christ is
our redemption because we had become prisoners and needed ransoming. I do
not enquire as to His own redemption, for though He was tempted in all
things as we are, He was without sin, and His enemies never reduced Him to
captivity.

40. CHRIST AS RIGHTEOUSNESS; AS THE DEMIURGE, THE AGENT OF THE GOOD GOD,
AND AS HIGH-PRIEST.

   Having explicated the "to us" and the "absolutely"--sanctification and
redemption being "to us" and not absolute, wisdom and redemption both to us
and absolute--we must not omit to enquire into the position of
righteousness in the same passage. That Christ is righteousness relatively
to us appears clearly from the words: "Who was made to us of God wisdom and
righteousness and sanctification and redemption." And if we do not find Him
to be righteousness absolutely as He is the wisdom and the power of God
absolutely, then we must enquire whether to Christ Himself, as the Father
is sanctification, so the Father is also righteousness. There is, we know,
no unrighteousness with God;(1) He is a righteous and holy Lord,(2) and His
judgments are in righteousness, and being righteous, He orders all things
righteously.

   The heretics drew a distinction for purposes of their own between the
just and the good. They did not make the matter very clear, but they
considered that the demiurge was just, while the Father of Christ was good.
That distinction may, I think, if carefully examined, be applied to the
Father and the Son; the Son being righteousness, and having received powers
to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man and will judge the world
in righteousness, but the Father doing good to those who have been
disciplined by the righteousness of the Son. This is after the kingdom of
the Son; then the Father will manifest in His works His name the Good, when
God becomes all in all. And perhaps by His righteousness the Saviour
prepares everything at the fit times, and by His word, by His ordering, by
His chastisements, and, if I may use such an expression, by His spiritual
healing aids, disposes all things to receive at the end the goodness of the
Father. It was from His sense of that goodness that He answered him who
addressed the Only-begotten with the words "Good Master,"(4) and said, "Why
callest thou Me good? None is good but one, God, the Father." This we have
treated of elsewhere, especially in dealing with the question of the
greater than the demiurge; Christ we have taken to be the demiurge, and the
Father the greater than He. Such great things, then, He is, the Paraclete,
the atonement, the propitiation, the sympathizer with our weaknesses, who
was tempted in all human things, as we are, without sin; and in consequence
He is a great High-Priest, having offered Himself as the sacrifice which is
offered once for all, and not for men only but for every rational creature.
For without(5) God He tasted death for every one. In some copies of the
Epistle to the Hebrews the words are "by the grace of God." Now, whether He
tasted death for every one without God. He died not for men only but for
all other intellectual beings too, or whether He tasted death for every one
by the grace of God, He died for all without God, for by the grace of God
He tasted death for every one. It would surely be absurd to say that He
tasted death for human sins and not for any other being besides man which
had fallen into sin, as for example for the stars. For not even the stars
are clean in the eyes of God, as we read in Job,(1) "The stars are not
clean in His sight," unless this is to be regarded as a hyperbole. Hence he
is a great High-Priest, since He restores all things to His Father's
kingdom, and arranges that whatever defects exist in each part of creation
shall be filled up so as to be full of the glory of the Father. This High-
Priest is called, from some other notion of him than those we have noticed,
Judas, that those who are Jews secretly(2) may take the name of Jew not
froth Judah, son of Jacob, but from Him, since they are His brethren, and
praise Him for the freedom they have attained. For it is He who sets them
free, saving them from their enemies on whose backs He lays His hand to
subdue them. When He has put under His feet the opposing power, and is
alone in presence of His Father, then He is Jacob and Israel; and thus as
we are made light by Him, since He is the light of the world, so we are
made Jacob since He is called Jacob, and Israel since He is called Israel.

41. CHRIST AS THE ROD, THE FLOWER, THE  STONE.

   Now He receives the kingdom from the king whom the children of Israel
appointed, beginning the monarchy not at the divine command and without
even consulting God. He therefore fights the battles of the Lord and so
prepares peace for His Son, His people, and this perhaps is the reason why
He is called David. Then He is called a rod;(3) such He is to those who
need a harder and severer discipline, and have not submitted to the love
and gentleness of God. On this account, if He is a rod, He has to "go
forth;" He does not remain in Himself, but appears to go beyond His earlier
state. Going forth, then, and becoming a rod, He does not remain a rod, but
after the rod He becomes a flower that rises up, and after being a rod He
is made known as a flower to those who, by His being a rod, have met with
visitation. For "God will visit their iniquities with a red,"(4) that is,
Christ. But "His mercy He will not take from him," for He will have mercy
on him, for on whom the Son has mercy the Father has mercy also. An
interpretation may be given which makes Him a rod and a flower in respect
of different persons, a rod to those who have need of chastisement, a
flower to those who are being saved; but I prefer the account of the matter
given above. We must add here, however, that, perhaps, looking to the end,
if Christ is a rod to any man He is also a flower to him, while it is not
the case that he who receives Him as a flower must also know Him as a rod.
And yet as one flower is more perfect than another and plants are said to
flower, even though they bring forth no perfect fruit, so the perfect
receive that of Christ which transcends the flower. Those, on the other
hand, who have known Him as a rod will partake along with it, not in His
perfection, but in the flower which comes before the fruit. Last of all,
before we come to the word Logos, Christ was a stone,(1) set at naught by
the builders but placed on the head of the corner, for the living stones
are built up as on a foundation on the other stones of the Apostles and
prophets, Christ Jesus Himself our Lord being the chief corner-stone,
because He is a part of the building made of living stones in the land of
the living; therefore He is called a stone. All this we have said to show
how capricious and baseless is the procedure of those who, when so many
names are given to Christ, take the mere appellation "the Word," without
enquiring, as in the case of His other titles, in what sense it is used;
surely they ought to ask what is meant when it is said of the Son of God
that He was the Word, and God, and that He was in the beginning with the
Father, and that all things were made by Him.

42. OF THE VARIOUS WAYS IN WHICH CHRIST IS THE LOGOS.

   As, then, from His activity in enlightening the world whose light He
is, Christ is named the Light of the World, and as from His making those
who sincerely attach themselves to Him put away their deadness and rise
again and put on newness of life, He is called the Resurrection, so from an
activity of another kind He is called Shepherd and Teacher, King and Chosen
Shaft, and Servant, and in addition to these Paraclete and Atonement and
Propitiation. And after the same fashion He is also called the Logos,(2)
because He takes away from us all that is irrational, and makes us truly
reasonable, so that we do all things, even to eating and drinking, to the
glory of God, and discharge by the Logos to the glory of God both the
commoner functions of life and those which belong to a more advanced stage.
For if, by having part in Him, we are raised up and enlightened, herded
also it may be and ruled over, then it is clear that we become in a divine
manner reasonable, when He drives away from us what in us is irrational and
dead, since He is the Logos (reason) and the Resurrection. Consider,
however, whether all men have in some way part in Him in His character as
Logos. On this point tile Apostle teaches us that He is to be sought not
outside the seeker, and that those find Him in themselves who set their
heart on doing so; "Say not(1) in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven?
That is to bring Christ down; or, Who shall descend into the abyss? That is
to bring Christ up from the dead. But what saith the Scripture? The Word is
very nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart," as if Christ Himself were
the same thing as the Word said to be sought after. But when the Lord
Himself says(2) "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had
sin but now they have no cloak for their sin," the only sense we can find
in His words is that the Logos Himself says that those are not chargeable
with sin to whom He (reason) has not fully come, but that those, if they
sin, are guilty who, having had part in Him, act contrary to the ideas by
which He declares His full presence in us. Only when thus read is the
saying true: "If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin."
Should the words be applied, as many are of opinion that they should, to
the visible Christ, then how is it true that those had no sin to whom He
did not come? In that case all who lived before the advent of the Saviour
will be free from sin, since Jesus, as seen in flesh, had not yet come. And
more--all those to whom He has never been preached will have no sin, and if
they have no sin, then it is clear they are not liable to judgment. But the
Logos in man, in which we have said that our whole race had part, is spoken
of in two senses; first, in that of the filling up of ideas which takes
place, prodigies excepted, in every one who passes beyond the age of
boyhood, but secondly, in that of the consummation, which takes place only
in the perfect. The words, therefore, "If I had not come and spoken to
them, they would not have had sin, but now they have no cloak for their
sin," are to be understood in the former sense; but the words,(1) "All that
ever came before me are thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not hear
them," in the latter. For before the consummation of reason comes, there is
nothing in man but what is blameworthy; all is imperfect and defective, and
can by no means command the obedience of those irrational elements in us
which are tropically spoken of as sheep. And perhaps the former meaning is
to be recognized in the words "The Logos was made flesh," but the second in
"The Logos was God." We must accordingly look at what there is to be seen
in human affairs between the saying, "The Word (reason) was made flesh" and
"The Word was God." When the Word was made flesh can we say that it was to
some extent broken up and thinned out, and can we say that it recovered
from that point onward till it became again what it was at first, God the
Word, the Word with the Father; the Word whose glory John saw, the verily
only-begotten, as from the Father. But the Son may also be the Logos
(Word), because He reports the secret things of His Father who is intellect
in the same way as the Son who is called the Word. For as with us the word
is a messenger of those things which tile mind perceives, so the Word of
God, knowing the Father, since no created being can approach Him without a
guide, reveals the Father whom He knows. For no one knows the Father save
the Son,(2) and he to whomsoever the Son reveals Him, and inasmuch as He is
the Word He is the Messenger of Great Counsel,(3) who has the government
upon His shoulders; for He entered on His kingdom by enduring the cross. In
the Apocalypse,(4) moreover, the Faithful and True (the Word), is said to
sit on a white horse, the epithets indicating, I consider, the clearness of
the voice with which the Word of truth speaks to us when He sojourns among
us. This is scarcely the place to show how the word "horse" is often used
in passages spoken for our encouragement in sacred learning. I only cite
two of these: "A horse is deceitful for safety,"(5) and "Some trust in
chariots and some in horses, but we will rejoice in the name of the Lord
our God."(6) Nor must we leave unnoticed a passage in the forty-fourth
Psalm,(7) frequently quoted by many writers as if they understood it: "My
heart hath belched forth a good word, I speak my works to the King."
Suppose it is God the Father who speaks thus; what is His heart, that the
good word should appear in accordance with His heart? If, as these writers
suppose, the Word (Logos) needs no interpretation, then the heart is to be
taken in the natural sense too. But it is quite absurd to suppose God's
heart to be a part of Him as ours is of our body. We must remind such
writers that as when the hand of God is spoken of, and His arm and His
finger, we do not read the words literally but enquire in what sound sense
we may take them so as to be worthy of God, so His heart is to be
understood of His rational power, by which He disposes all things, and His
word of that which announces what is in this heart of His. But who is it
that announces the counsel of the Father to those of His creatures who are
worthy and who have risen above themselves, who but the Saviour? That
"belched forth" is not, perhaps, without significance; a hundred other
terms might have been employed; "My heart has produced a good word," it
might have been said, or "My heart has spoken a good word." But in
belching, some wind that was hidden makes its way out to the world, and so
it may be that the Father gives out views of truth not continuously, but as
it were after the fashion of belching, and the word has the character of
the things thus produced, and is called, therefore, the image of the
invisible God. We may enter our agreement, therefore, with the ordinary
acceptation of these words, and take them to be spoken by the Father. It is
not, however, a matter of course, that it is God Himself who announces
these things. Why should it not be a prophet? Filled with the Spirit and
unable to contain himself, he brings forth a word about his prophecy
concerning Christ: "My heart hath belched forth a good word, I speak my
works to the King, my pen is the tongue of a ready writer. Excellent in
beauty is He beyond the sons of men." Then to the Christ Himself: "Grace is
poured out on Thy lips." If the Father were the speaker, how could He go on
after the words, "Grace is poured out on thy lips," to say, "Therefore God
hath blessed thee for ever," and a little further on, "Therefore God, thy
God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." Some
of those who wish to make the Father the speaker may appeal to the words,
"Hear, O daughter, and behold and incline thine ear, and forget thy people
and thy father." The prophet, it may be said, could not address the Church
in the words, "Hear, O daughter." It is not difficult, however, to show
that changes of person occur frequently in the Psalms, so that these words,
"Hear, O daughter," might be from the Father, in this passage, though the
Psalm as a whole is not. To our discussion of the Word we may here add the
passage,(1) "By the word of the Lord were the heavens rounded, and all the
power of them by the breath of His mouth." Some refer this to the Saviour
and the Holy Spirit. The passage, however, does not necessarily imply any
more than that the heavens were founded by the reason (logos) of God, as
when we say that a house is built by the plan (logos) of the architect, or
a ship by the plan (logos) of the shipbuilder. In the same way the heavens
were founded (made solid) by the Word of God, for they are(2) of a more
divine substance, which on this account is called solid;(3) it has little
fluidity for the most part, nor is it easily melted like other parts of the
world, and specially the lower parts. On account of this difference the
heavens are said in a special manner to be constituted by the Word of God.

   The saying then stands, first, "In the beginning was the Logos;" we are
to place that full in our view; but the testimonies we cited from the
Proverbs led us to place wisdom first, and to think of wisdom as preceding
the Word which announces her. We must observe, then, that the Logos is in
the beginning, that is, in wisdom, always. Its being in wisdom, which is
called the beginning, does not prevent it from being with God and from
being God, and it is not simply with God, but is in the beginning, in
wisdom, with God. For he goes on: "He was in the beginning with God." He
might have said, "He was with God;" but as He was in the beginning, so He
was with God in the beginning, and "All things were made by Him," being in
the beginning, for God made nil things, as David tells us, in wisdom. And
to let us understand that the Word has His own definite place and sphere as
one who has life in Himself (and is a distinct person), we must also speak
about powers, not about power. "Thus saith the Lord of powers, (A.V.
hosts)" we frequently read; there are certain creatures, rational and
divine, which are called powers: anti of these Christ was the highest and
best. and is called not only the wisdom of God but also His power. As,
then, there are several powers of God, each of them in its own form, and
the Saviour is different from these, so also Christ, even if that which is
Logos in us is not in respect of form outside of us, will be understood
from our discussion up to this point to be the Logos, who has His being in
the beginning, in wisdom. This for the present may suffice, on the word:
"In the beginning was the Logos."

BOOK II.

   1. "And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In the preceding
section, my revered brother Ambrosius, brother formed according to the
Gospel, we have discussed, as far as is at present in our power, what the
Gospel is, and what is the beginning in which the Word was, and what the
Word is which was in the beginning. We now come to consider the next point
in the work before us, How the Word was with God. To this end it will be of
service to remember that what is called the Word came to certain persons;
as "The Word of the Lord(1) which came to Hosea, the son of Beeri," and
"The Word(2) which came to Isaiah, the son of Amos, concerning Judah and
concerning Jerusalem," and "The Word which came to Jeremiah(3) concerning
the drought." We must enquire how this Word came to Hosea, and how it came
also to Isaiah the son of Amos, and again to Jeremiah concerning the
drought; the comparison may enable us to dud out how the Word was with God.
The generality will simply look at what the prophets said, as if that were
the Word of the Lord or the Word, that came to them. May it not be,
however, that as we say that this person comes to that, so the Son, the
Word, of whom we are now theologizing, came to Hosea, sent to him by the
Father; historically, that is to say, to the son of Beeri, the prophet
Hosea, but mystically to him who is saved, for Hosea means, etymologically,
Saved; and to the son of Beeri, which etymologically means wells, since
every one who is saved becomes a son of that spring which gushes forth out
of the depths, the wisdom of God. And it is nowise marvellous that the
saint should be a son of wells. From his brave deeds he is often called a
son, whether, from his works shining before men, of light, or from his
possessing the peace of God which passes all understanding, of peace, or,
once more, from the help which wisdom brings him, a child of wisdom; for
wisdom,(1) it says, is justified of her children. Thus he who by the divine
spirit searches all things, and even the deep things of God, so that he can
exclaim,(2) "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge
of God!" he can be a son of wells, to whom the Word of the Lord comes.
Similarly the Word comes also to Isaiah, teaching the things which are
coming upon Judaea and Jerusalem in the last days; and so also it comes to
Jeremiah lifted up by a divine elation. For IAO means etymologically
lifting up, elation. Now the Word comes to men who formerly could not
receive the advent of the Son of God who is the Word; but to God it does
not come, as if it had not been with Him before. The Word was always with
the Father; and so it is said, "And the Word was with God." He did not come
to God, and this same word "was" is used of the Word because He was in the
beginning at the same time when He was with God, neither being separated
from the beginning nor being bereft of His Father. And again, neither did
He come to be in the beginning after He had not been in it, nor did He come
to be with God after not having been with Him. For before all time and the
remotest age(3) the Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God.
Thus to find out what is meant by the phrase, "The Word was with God," we
have adduced the words used about the prophets, how He came to Hosea, to
Isaiah, to Jeremiah, and we have noticed the difference, by no means
accidental, between "became" and "was." We have to add that in His coming
to the prophets He illuminates the prophets with the light of knowledge,
causing them to see things which had been before them, but which they had
not understood till then. With God, however, He is God, just because He is
with Him. And perhaps it was because he saw some such order in the Logos,
that John did not place the clause "The Word was God" before the clause
"The Word was with God." The series in which he places his different
sentences does not prevent the force of each axiom from being separately
and fully seen. One axiom is, "In the beginning was the Word," a second,
"The Word was with God," and then comes, "And the Word was God." The
arrangement of the sentences might be thought to indicate an order; we have
first "In the beginning was the Word," then, "And the Word was with God,"
and thirdly, "And the Word was God," so that it might be seen that the Word
being with God makes Him God.

2. IN WHAT WAY THE LOGOS IS GOD. ERRORS TO BE AVOIDED ON THIS QUESTION.

   We next notice John's use of the article in these sentences. He does
not write without care in this respect, nor is he unfamiliar with the
niceties of the Greek tongue. In some cases he uses the article, and in
some he omits it. He adds the article to the Logos, but to the name of God
he adds it sometimes only. He uses the article, when the name of God refers
to the uncreated cause of all things, and omits it when the Logos is named
God. Does the same difference which we observe between God with the article
and God without it prevail also between the Logos with it and without it?
We must enquire into this. As the God who is over all is God with the
article not without it, so "the Logos" is the source of that reason (Logos)
which dwells in every reasonable creature; the reason which is in each
creature is not, like the former called par excellence The Logos. Now there
are many who are sincerely concerned about religion, and who fall here into
great perplexity. They are afraid that they may be proclaiming two Gods,
and their fear drives them into doctrines which are false and wicked.
Either they deny that the Son has a distinct nature of His own besides that
of the Father, and make Him whom they call the Son to be God all but the
name, or they deny the divinity of the Son, giving Him a separate existence
of His own, and making His sphere of essence fall outside that of the
Father, so that they are separable from each other. To such persons we have
to say that God on the one hand is Very God (Autotheos, God of Himself);
and so the Saviour says in His prayer to the Father,(1) "That they may know
Thee the only true God; "but that all beyond the Very God is made God by
participation in His divinity, and is not to be called simply God (with the
article), but rather God (without article). And thus the first-born of all
creation, who is the first to be with God, and to attract to Himself
divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other gods beside Him,
of whom God is the God, as it is written,(2) "The God of gods, the Lord,
hath spoken and called the earth." It was by the offices of the first-born
that they became gods, for He drew from God in generous measure that they
should be made gods, and He communicated it to them according to His own
bounty. The true God, then, is "The God," and those who are formed after
Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the prototype. But the archetypal
image, again, of all these images is the Word of God, who was in the
beginning, and who by being with God is at all times God, not possessing
that of Himself, but by His being with the Father, and not continuing to be
God, if we should think of this, except by remaining always in
uninterrupted contemplation of the depths of the Father.

3. VARIOUS RELATIONS OF THE LOGOS TO MEN.

   Now it is possible that some may dislike what we have said representing
the Father as the one true God, but admitting other beings besides the true
God, who have become gods by having a share of God. They may fear that the
glory of Him who surpasses all creation may be lowered to the level of
those other beings called gods. We drew this distinction between Him and
them that we showed God the Word to be to all the other gods the minister
of their divinity. To this we must add, in order to obviate objections,
that the reason which is in every reasonable creature occupied the same
relation to the reason who was in the beginning with God, and is God the
Word, as God the Word occupies to God. As the Father who is Very God and
the True God is to His image and to the images of His image--men are said
to be according to the image, not to be images of God--so He, the Word, is
to the reason (word) in every man. Each fills the place of a fountain--the
Father is the fountain of divinity, the Son of reason. As, then, there are
many gods, but to us there is but one God the Father, and many Lords, but
to us there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, so there are many Logoi, but we, for
our part, pray that that one Logos may be with us who was in the beginning
and was with God, God the Logos. For whoever does not receive this Logos
who was in the beginning with God, or attach himself to Him as He appeared
in flesh, or take part in some of those who had part in this Logos, or
whoever having had part in Him falls away from Him again, he will have his
portion in what is called most opposite to reason. What we have drawn out
from the truths with which we started will now be clear enough. First, we
spoke about God and the Word of God, and of Gods, either, that is, beings
who partake in deity or beings who are called Gods and are not. And again
of the Logos of God and of the Logos of God made flesh, and of logoi, or
beings which partake in some way of the Logos, of second logoi or of third,
thought to be logoi, in addition to that Logos that was before them all,
but not really so. Irrational Reasons these may be styled; beings are
spoken of who are said to be Gods but are not, and one might place beside
these Gods who are no Gods, Reasons which are no Reasons. Now the God of
the universe is the God of the elect, and in a much greater degree of the
Saviours of the elect; then He is the God of these beings who are truly
Gods, and then He is the God, in a word, of the living and not of the dead.
But God the Logos is the God, perhaps, of those who attribute everything to
Him and who consider Him to be their Father. Now the sun and the moon and
the stars were connected, according to the accounts of men of old times,
with beings who were not worthy to have the God of gods counted their God.
To this opinion they were led by a passage in Deuteronomy which is somewhat
on this wise:(1) "Lest when thou liftest up thine eyes to heaven, and seest
the sun and the moon and the whole host of heaven, thou wander away and
worship them and serve them which the Lord thy God hath appointed to all
the peoples. But to you the Lord thy God hath not so given them." But how
did God appoint the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven to all the
nations, if He did not give them in the same way to Israel also, to the end
that those who could not rise to the realm of intellect, might be inclined
by gods of sense to consider about the Godhead, and might of their own free
will connect themselves with these and so be kept from falling away to
idols and demons? Is it not the case that some have for their God the God
of the universe, while a second class, after these, attach themselves to
the Son of God, His Christ, and a third class worship the sun and the moon
and all the host of heaven, wandering, it is true, from God, but with a far
different and a better wandering than that of those who invoke as gods the
works of men's hands, silver and gold,-works of human skill. Last of all
are those who devote themselves to the beings which are called gods but are
no gods. In the same way, now, some have faith in that Reason which was in
the beginning and was with God and was God; so did Hosea and Isaiah and
Jeremiah and others who declared that the Word of the Lord, or the Logos,
had come to them. A second class are those who know nothing but Jesus
Christ and Him crucified, considering that the Word made flesh is the whole
Word, and knowing only Christ after the flesh. Such is the great multitude
of those who are counted believers. A third class give themselves to logoi
(discourses) having some part in the Logos which they consider superior to
all other reason: these are they who follow the honourable and
distinguished philosophical schools among the Greeks. A fourth class
besides these are they who put their trust in corrupt and godless
discourses, doing away with Providence, which is so manifest and almost
visible, and who recognize another end for man to follow than the good. It
may appear to some that we have wandered from our theme, but to my thinking
the view we have reached of four things connected with the name of God and
four things connected with the Logos comes in very well at this point.
There was God with the article and God without the article, then there were
gods in two orders, at the summit of the higher order of whom is God the
Word, transcended Himself by the God of the universe. And, again, there was
the Logos with the article and the Logos without the article, corresponding
to God absolutely and a god; and the Logoi in two ranks. And some men are
connected with the Father, being part of Him, and next to these, those whom
our argument now brings into clearer light, those who have come to the
Saviour and take their stand entirely in Him. And third are those of whom
we spoke before, who reckon the sun and the moon and the stars to be gods,
and take their stand by them. And in the fourth and last place those who
submit to soulless and dead idols. To all this we find analogies in what
concerns the Logos. Some are adorned with the Word Himself; some with what
is next to Him and appears to be the very original Logos Himself, those,
namely, who know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and who behold
the Word as flesh. And the third class, as we described them a little
before. Why should I speak of those who are thought to be in the Logos, but
have fallen away, not only from the good itself, but from the very traces
of it and from those who have a part in it?

4. THAT THE LOGOS IS ONE, NOT MANY. OF THE WORD, FAITHFUL AND TRUE, AND OF
HIS WHITE HORSE.

   "He was in the beginning with God." By his three foregoing propositions
the Evangelist has made us acquainted with three orders, and he now sums up
the three in one, saying, "This (Logos) was in the beginning with God." In
the first premiss we learned where the Logos was: He was in the beginning;
then we learned with whom He was, with God; and then who He was, that He
was God. He now points out by this word "He," the Word who is God, and
gathers up into a fourth proposition the three which went before, "In the
beginning was the Word," "The Word was with God," and "The Word was God."
Now he says, He, this (Word) was in the beginning with God. The term
beginning may be taken of the beginning of the world, so that we may learn
from what is said that the Word was older than the things which were made
from the beginning. For if "in the beginning God created heaven and earth,"
but "He" was in the beginning, then the Logos is manifestly older than
those things which were made at the beginning, older not only than the
firmament and the dry land, but than the heavens and earth. Now some one
might ask, and not unreasonably, why it is not said, "In the beginning was
the Word of God, and the Word of God was with God, and the Word of God was
God." But he who asked such a question could be shown to be taking for
granted that there are a plurality of logoi, differing perhaps from each
other in kind, one being the word of God, another perhaps the word of
angels, a third of men, and so on with the other logoi. Now, if this were
so with the Logos, the case would be the same with wisdom and with
righteousness. But it would be absurd that there should be a number of
things equally to be called "The Word;" and the same would apply to wisdom
and to righteousness. We shall be driven to confess that we ought not to
look for a plurality of logoi, or of wisdom, or of righteousness, if we
look at the case of truth. Any one will confess that there is only one
truth; it could never be said in this case that there is one truth of God,
and another of the angels, and another of man,--it lies ill the nature of
things that the truth about anything is one. Now, if truth be one, it is
clear that the preparation of it and its demonstration, which is wisdom,
must in reason be conceived as one, since what is regarded as wisdom cannot
justly claim that title where truth, which is one, is absent from its
grasp. But if truth is one and wisdom one, then Reason (Logos) also, which
announces truth and makes truth simple and manifest to those who are fitted
to receive it, will be one. This we say, by no means denying that truth and
wisdom and reason are of God, but we wish to indicate the purpose of the
omission in this passage of the words "of God," and of the form of the
statement, "In the beginning the Logos was with God." The same John in the
Apocalypse gives Him His name with the addition "of God," where he says:(1)
"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse, and He that sat thereon
called Faithful and True; and in righteousness doth He judge and make war.
And His eyes are as a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems, and
He hath a name written which no one knoweth but He Himself. And He is
arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood, and His name is called(2) Word
of God. And His armies in heaven followed Him on white horses, clothed in
pure fine linen. And out of His mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that with
it He should smite the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron,
and He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty
God. And He hath on His garment and on His thigh a name written: King of
kings, and Lord of lords." In this passage Logos is necessarily spoken of
absolutely without the article, and also with the addition Logos of God;
had the first not been the case (i.e., had the article been given) we might
have been led to take up the meaning wrongly,(3) and so to depart from the
truth about the Logos. For if it had been called simply Logos, and had not
been said to be the Logos of God, then we would not be clearly informed
that the Logos is the Logos of God. And, again, had it been called Logos of
God but not said to be Logos absolutely, then we might imagine many logoi,
according to the constitution of each of the rational beings which exist;
then we might assume a number of logoi properly so called. Again, in his
description in the Apocalypse of the Logos of God, the Apostle and
Evangelist (and the Apocalypse entitles him to be styled a prophet, too)
says he saw the Word of God in the opened heaven, and that He was riding on
a white horse. Now we must consider what he means to convey when he speaks
of heaven being opened and of the white horse, and of the Word of God
riding on the white horse, and also what is meant by saying that the Word
of God is Faithful and True, and that in righteousness He judges and makes
war. All this will greatly advance our study on the subject of the Word of
God. Now I conceive heaven to have been shut against the ungodly, and those
who bear the image of the earthly, and to have been opened to the righteous
and those adorned with the image of the heavenly. For to the former, being
below and still dwelling in the flesh, the better things are closed, since
they cannot understand them and have neither power nor will to see their
beauty, looking down as they do and not striving to look up. But to the
excellent, or those who have their commonwealth in heaven,(1) he opens,
with the key of David, the things in heavenly places and discloses them to
their view, and makes all clear to them by riding on his horse. These words
also have their meaning; the horse is white because it is the nature of
higher knowledge (gnw^sis) to be clear and white and full of light. And on
the white horse sits He who is called Faithful, seated more firmly, and so
to speak more royally, on words which cannot be set aside, words which run
sharply and more swiftly than any horse, and overhear in their rushing
course every so-called word that simulates the Word, and every so-called
truth that simulates the Truth. He who sits on the white horse is called
Faithful, not because of the faith He cherishes, but of that which He
inspires, because He is worthy of faith. Now the Lord Jehovah, according to
Moses,(2) is Faithful and True. He is true also in respect of His relation
to shadow, type, and image; for such is the Word who is in the opened
heaven, for He is not on earth as He is in heaven; on earth He is made
flesh and speaks through shadow, type, and image. The multitude, therefore,
of those who are reputed to believe are disciples of the shadow of the
Word, not of the true Word of God which is in the opened heaven. Hence
Jeremiah says,(1) "The Spirit of our face is Christ the Lord, of whom we
said, In His shadow shall we live among the nations." Thus the Word of God
who is called Faithful is also called True, and ill righteousness He judges
and makes war; since He has received from God the faculty of judging in
very righteousness and very judgment, and of apportioning its due to every
existing creature. For none of those who have some portion of righteousness
and of the faculty of judgment can receive on his soul such copies and
impressions of righteousness and judgment as to come short in no point of
absolute righteousness and absolute justice, just as no painter of a
picture can communicate to the representation all the qualities of the
original. This, I conceive, is the reason why David says,(2) "Before Thee
shall no living being be justified." He does not say, no man, or no angel,
but no living being, since even if any being partakes of life and has
altogether put off mortality, not even then can it be justified in
comparison of Thee, who art, as it were, Life itself. Nor is it possible
that one who partakes of life and is therefore called living, should become
life itself, or that one who partakes of righteousness and, therefore, is
called righteous should become equal to righteousness itself. Now it is the
function of the Word of God, not only to judge in righteousness, but also
to make war in righteousness, that by making war on His enemies by reason
and righteousness, so that what is irrational and wicked is destroyed,(3)
He may dwell in the soul of him who, for his salvation, so to speak, has
become captive to Christ, and may justify that soul and cast out from her
all adversaries. We shall, however, obtain a better view of this war which
the Word carries on if we remember that He is an ambassador for the truth.
while there is another who pretends to be the Word and is not, and one who
calls herself the truth and is not, but a lie. Then the Word, arming
Himself against the lie, slays it with the breath of His mouth and brings
it to naught by the manifestation of His coming.(4) And consider whether
these words of the Apostle to the Thessalonians may be understood in an
intellectual sense. For what is that which is destroyed by the breath of
the mouth of Christ, Christ being the Word and Truth and Wisdom, but the
lie? And what is that which is brought to naught by the manifestation of
Christ's coming, Christ being conceived as wisdom and reason, what but that
which announces itself as wisdom, when in reality it is one of those things
with which God deals as the Apostle describes,(1) "He taketh the wise,
those who are not wise with the true wisdom, in their own craftiness"? To
what he says of the rider on the white horse, John adds the wonderful
statement: "His eyes are like a flame of fire." For as the flame of fire is
bright and illuminating, but at the same thee fiery and destructive of
material things, so, if I may so say, are the eyes of the Logos with which
He sees, and every one who has part in Him; they have not only the inherent
quality of laying hold of the things of the mind, but also that of
consuming and putting away those conceptions which are more material and
gross, since whatever is in any way false flees from the directness and
lightness of truth. It is in a very natural order that after speaking of
Him who judges in righteousness and makes war in accordance with His
righteous judgments, and then after His warring of His giving light, the
writer goes on to say, "On His head are many diadems." For had the lie been
one, and of one form only, against which the True and Faithful Word
contended, and for conquering which. He was crowned, then one crown alone
would naturally have been given Him for the victory. As it is, however, as
the lies are many which profess the truth and for warring against which the
Word is crowned, the diadems are many which surround the head of the
conqueror of them all. As He has overcome every revolting power many
diadems mark His victory. Then after the diadems He is said to have a name
written which no one knows but He Himself. For there are some things which
are known to the Word alone; for the beings which come into existence after
Him have a poorer nature than His, and none of them is able to behold all
that He apprehends. And perhaps it is the case that only those who have
part in that Word know the things which are kept from the knowledge of
those who do not partake of Him. Now, in John's vision, the Word of God as
He rides on the white horse is not naked: He is clothed with a garment
sprinkled with blood, for the Word who was made flesh and therefore died is
surrounded with marks of the fact that His blood was poured out upon the
earth, when the soldier pierced His side. For of that passion, even should
it be our lot some day to come to that highest and supreme contemplation of
the Logos, we shall not lose all memory, nor shall we forget the truth that
our admission was brought about by His sojourning in our body. This Word of
God is followed by the heavenly armies one and all; they follow the Word as
their leader, and imitate Him in all things, and chiefly in having mounted,
they also, white horses. To him that understands, this secret is open. And
as sorrow and grief and wailing fled away at the end of things, so also, I
suppose, did obscurity and doubt, all the mysteries of God's wisdom being
precisely and clearly opened. Look also at the white horses of the
followers of the Word and at the white and pure linen with which they were
clothed. As linen comes out of the earth, may not those linen garments
stand for the dialects on the earth in which those voices are clothed which
make clear announcements of things? We have dealt at some length with the
statements found in the Apocalypse about the Word of God; it is important
for us to know clearly about Him.

5. HE (THIS ONE) WAS IN THE BEGINNING WITH GOD.

   To those who fail to distinguish with care the different propositions
of the context the Evangelist may appear to be repeating himself. "He was
in the beginning with God" may seem to add nothing to "And the Word was
with God." We must observe more carefully. In the statement "The Word was
with God" we are not told anything of the when or the where; that is added
in the fourth axiom. There are four axioms, or, as some call them,
propositions, the fourth being "He was in the beginning with God." Now "The
Word was with God" is not the same thing as "He was," etc; for here we are
told, not only that He was with God, but when and where He was so: "He was
in the beginning with God." The "He," too, used as it is for a
demonstration, will be considered to refer to the Word, or by a less
careful enquirer, to God. What was noted before is now summed up in this
designation "He," the notion of the Logos and that of God; and as the
argument proceeds the different notions are collected in one; for the
notion God is not included in the notion Logos, nor the notion Logos in
that of God. And perhaps the proposition before us is a summing up in one
of the three which have preceded. Taking the statement that the Word was in
the beginning, we have not yet learned that He was with God, and taking the
statement that the Word was with God it is not yet clear to us that He was
with God in the beginning; and taking the statement that the Word was God,
it has neither been shown that He was in the beginning, nor that He was
with God.

   Now when the Evangelist says, "He was in the beginning with God," if we
apply the pronoun "He" to the Word and to God (as He is God) and consider
that "in the beginning" is conjoined with it, and "with God" added to it,
then there is nothing left of the three propositions that is not summed up
and brought together in this one. And as "in the beginning" has been said
twice, we may consider if there are not two lessons we may learn. First,
that the Word was in the beginning, as if lie was by Himself and not with
any one, and secondly, that He was in the beginning with God. And I
consider that there is nothing untrue in saying of Him both that He was in
the beginning, and in the beginning with God, for neither was He with God
alone, since He was also in the beginning, nor was He in the beginning
alone and not with God, since "He was in the beginning with God."

6. HOW THE WORD IS THE MAKER OF ALL THINGS, AND EVEN THE HOLY SPIRIT WAS
MADE THROUGH HIM.

   "All things were made through Him." The "through(1) whom "is never
found in the first place but always in the second, as in the Epistle to the
Romans,(2) "Paul a servant of Christ Jesus, a called Apostle, separated to
the Gospel of God which He promised before by His prophets in Holy
Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of the seed of David according
to the flesh, deter mined the Son of God in power according to the Spirit
of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,
through whom we received grace and apostleship, for obedience of the faith
among all the nations, for His name's sake." For God promised aforehand by
the prophets His own Gospel, the prophets being His ministers, and having
their word to speak about Him "through whom." And again God gave grace and
apostleship to Paul and to the others for the obedience of the faith among
all the nations, and this He gave them through Jesus Christ the Saviour,
for the "through whom" belonged to Him. And the Apostle Paul says in the
Epistle to the Hebrews:(1) "At the end of the days He spoke to us in His
Son, whom He made the heir of all things, 'through whom' also He made the
ages," showing us that God made the ages through His Son, the" through
whom" belonging, when the ages were being made, to the Only-begotten. Thus,
if all things were made, as in this passage also, through the Logos, then
they were not made by the Logos, but by a stronger and greater than He. And
who else could this be but the Father? Now if, as we have seen, all things
were made through Him, we have to enquire if the Holy Spirit also was made
through Him. it appears to me that those who hold the Holy Spirit to be
created, and who also admit that "all things were made through Him," must
necessarily assume that the Holy Spirit was made through the Logos, the
Logos accordingly being older than He. And he who shrinks from allowing the
Holy Spirit to have been made through Christ must, if he admits the truth
of the statements of this Gospel, assume the Spirit to be uncreated. There
is a third resource besides these two (that of allowing the Spirit to have
been made by the Word, and that of regarding it as uncreated), namely, to
assert that the Holy Spirit has no essence of His own beyond the Father and
the Son. But on further thought one may perhaps see reason to consider that
the Son is second beside the Father, He being the same as the Father, while
manifestly a distinction is drawn between the Spirit and the Son in the
passage,(2) "Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man. it shall
be forgiven him, but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, he
shall not have forgiveness, either in this world or in the world to come."
We consider, therefore, that there are three hypostases, the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit; and at the same thee we believe nothing to be
uncreated but the Father. We therefore, as the more pious and the truer
course, admit that all things were made by the Logos, and that the Holy
Spirit is the most excellent and the first in order(3) of all that was made
by the Father through Christ. And this, perhaps, is the reason why the
Spirit is not said to be God's own Son. The Only-begotten only is by nature
and from the beginning a Son, and the Holy Spirit seems to have need of the
Son, to minister to Him His essence, so as to enable Him not only to exist,
but to be wise and reasonable and just, and all that we must think of Him
as being. All this He has by participation of the character of Christ, of
which we have spoken above. And I consider that the Holy Spirit supplies to
those who, through Him and through participation in Him, are called saints,
the material of the gifts, which come from God; so that the said material
of the gifts is made powerful by God, is ministered by Christ, and owes its
actual existence in men to the Holy Spirit. I am led to this view of the
charisms by the words of Paul which he writes somewhere,(1) "There are
diversities of gifts but the same Spirit, and diversities of ministrations,
and the same Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but it is the
same God that worketh all in all." The statement that all things were made
by Him, and its seeming corollary, that the Spirit must have been called
into being by the Word, may certainly raise some difficulty. There are some
passages in which the Spirit is placed above Christ; in Isaiah, for
example, Christ declares that He is sent, not by the Father only, but also
by the Holy Spirit. "Now the Lord hath sent Me," He says,(2) "and His
Spirit." and in the Gospel He declares that there is forgiveness for the
sin committed against Himself, but that for blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit there is no forgiveness, either in this age or in the age to come.
What is the reason of this? Is it because the Holy Spirit is of more value
than Christ that the sin against Him cannot be forgiven? May it not rather
be that all rational beings have part in Christ, and that forgiveness is
extended to them when they repent of their sins, while only those have part
in the Holy Spirit who have been found worthy of it, and that there cannot
well be any forgiveness for those who fall away to evil in spite of such
great and powerful cooperation, and who defeat the counsels of the Spirit
who is in them. When we find the Lord saying, as He does in Isaiah, that He
is sent by the Father and by His Spirit, we have to point out here also
that the Spirit is not originally superior to the Saviour, but that the
Saviour takes a lower place than He in order to carry out the plan which
has been made that the Son of God should become man. Should any one stumble
at our saying that the Saviour in becoming man was made lower than the Holy
Spirit, we ask him to consider the words used in the Epistle to the
Hebrews,(3) where Jesus is shown by Paul to have been made less than the
angels on account of the suffering of death. "We behold Him," he says, "who
hath been made a little lower than the angels, Jesus, because of the
suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour." And this, too, has
doubtless to be added, that the creation, in order to be delivered from the
bondage of corruption, and not least of all the human race, required the
introduction into human nature of a happy and divine power, which should
set right what was wrong upon the earth, and that this action fell to the
share, as it were, of the Holy Spirit; but the Spirit, unable to support
such a task, puts forward the Saviour as the only one able to endure such a
conflict. The Father therefore, the principal, sends the Son, but the Holy
Spirit also sends Him and directs Him to go before, promising to descend,
when the thee comes, to the Son of God, and to work with Him for the
salvation of men. This He did. when, in a bodily shape like a dove, He flew
to Him after the baptism. He remained on Him, and did not pass Him by, as
He might have done with men not able continuously to bear His glory. Thus
John, when explaining how he knew who Christ was, spoke not only of the
descent of the Spirit on Jesus, but also of its remaining upon him. For it
is written that John said:(1) "He who sent me to baptize said, On
whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending and abiding upon Him, the
same is He that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit and with fire." It is not
said only, "On whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending," for the
Spirit no doubt descended on others too, but "descending and abiding on
Him." Our examination of this point has been somewhat extended, since we
were anxious to make it clear that if all things were made by Him, then the
Spirit also was made through the Word, and is seen to be one of the "all
things" which are inferior to their Maker. This view is too firmly settled
to be disturbed by a few words which may be adduced to the opposite effect.
If any one should lend credence to the Gospel according to the Hebrews,
where the Saviour Himself says, "My mother, the Holy Spirit took me just
now by one of my hairs and carried me off to the great mount Tabor," he
will have to face the difficulty of explaining how the Holy Spirit can be
the mother of Christ when it was itself brought into existence through the
Word. But neither the passage nor this difficulty is hard to explain. For
if he who does the will of the Father in heaven(2) is Christ's brother and
sister and mother, and if the name of brother of Christ may be applied, not
only to the race of men, but to beings of diviner rank than they, then
there is nothing absurd in the Holy Spirit's being His mother, every one
being His mother who does the will of the Father in heaven.

   On the words, "All things were made by Him," there is still one point
to be examined. The "word" is, as a notion, from "life," and yet we read,
"What was made in the Word was life, and the life was the light of men."
Now as all things were made through Him, was the life made through Him,
which is the light of men, and the other notions under which the Saviour is
presented to us? Or must we take the "all things were made by Him" subject
to the exception of the things which are in Himself? The latter course
appears to be the preferable one. For supposing we should concede that the
life which is the light of men was made through Him, since it said that the
life "was made" the light of men, what are we to say about wisdom, which is
conceived as being prior to the Word? That, therefore, which is about the
Word (His relations or conditions) was not made by the Word, and the result
is that, with the exception of the notions under which Christ is presented,
all things were made through the Word of God, the Father making them in
wisdom. "In wisdom hast Thou made them all," it says,(1) not through, but
in wisdom.

7. OF THINGS NOT MADE THROUGH THE LOGOS.

   Let us see, however, why the words are added, "And without Him was not
anything (Gr. even one thing) made." Some might think it superfluous to add
to the words "All things were made through Him," the phrase "Without Him
was not anything made." For if everything whatsoever was made through the
Logos, then nothing was made without Him. Yet it does not follow from the
proposition that without the Logos nothing was made, that all things were
made through the Logos. It is possible that though nothing was made without
the Logos, all things were made, not through the Logos only, but some
things by Him. We must, therefore, make ourselves sure in what sense the
"all things" is to be understood, and in what sense the "nothing." For,
without a clear preliminary definition of these terms, it might be
maintained that, if all things were made through the Logos, and evil is a
part of all things, then the whole matter of sin, and everything that is
wicked, that these also were made through the Logos. But this we must
regard as false. There is nothing absurd in thinking that creatures were
made through the Logos, and also that men's brave deeds have been done
through Him, and all the useful acts of those who are now in bliss; but
with the sins and misfortunes of men it is otherwise. Now some have held
that since evil is not based in the constitution of things--for it did not
exist at the beginning and at the end it will have ceased--that, therefore,
the evils of which we spoke are the Nothing; and as some of the Greeks say
that genera and forms, such as the (general) animal and the man, belong to
the category of Nothings, so it has been supposed that all that is not of
God is Nothing, and has not even obtained through the Word the subsistence
it appears to have. We ask whether it is possible to show from Scripture in
any convincing way that this is so. As for the meanings of the word
"Nothing" and "Not-being," they would appear to be synonymous, for Nothing
can be spoken of as Not-being, and the Not-being can be described as
Nothing. The Apostle, however, appears to count the things which are not,
not among those which have no existence whatever, but rather among things
which are evil. To him the Not-being is evil; "God," he says,(1) "called
the things that are not as things that are." And Mardochaeus, too, in the
Esther of the Septuagint, calls the enemies of Israel "those that are not,"
saying,(2) "Deliver not Thy sceptre, O Lord, to those that are not." We may
also notice how evil men, on account of their wickedness, are said not to
be, from the name ascribed to God in Exodus:(3) "For the Lord said to
Moses, I am, that is My name." The good God says this with respect of us
also who pray that we may be part of His congregation. The Saviour praises
him, saying,(4) "None is good but one, God the Father." The good, then, is
the same as He who is. Over against good is evil or wickedness, and over
against Him who is that which is not, whence it follows that evil and
wickedness are that which is not. This, perhaps, is what has led some to
affirm that the devil is not created by God. In respect that he is the
devil he is not the work of God, but he who is the devil is a created
being, and as there is no other creator but our God, he is a work of God.
It is as if we should say that a murderer is not a work of God, while we
may say that in respect he is a man, God made him. His being as a man he
received from God; we do not assert that he received from God his being as
a murderer. All, then, who have part in Him who is, and the saints have
part in Him, may properly be called Beings; but those who have given up
their part in the Being, by depriving themselves of Being, have become Not-
beings. But we said when entering on this discussion, that Not-being and
Nothing are synonymous, and hence those who are not beings are Nothing, and
all evil is nothing, since it is Not-being, and thus since they are called
Not-being came into existence without the Logos, not being numbered among
the all things which were made through Him. Thus we have shown, so far as
our powers admit, what are the "all things" which were made through the
Logos, and what came into existence without Him, since at no time is it
Being, and it is, therefore, called "Nothing."

HERACLEON'S VIEW THAT THE LOGOS IS NOT THE AGENT OF CREATION.

   It was, I consider, a violent and unwarranted procedure which was
adopted by Heracleon,(1) the friend, as it is said, of Valentinus, in
discussing this sentence: "All things were made through Him." He excepted
the whole world and all that it contains, excluding, as far as his
hypothesis goes, from the "all things "what is best in the world and its
contents. For he says that the aeon (age), and the things in it, were not
made by the Logos; he considers them to have come into existence before the
Logos. He deals with the statement, "Without Him was nothing made," with
some degree of audacity, nor is he afraid of the warning:(2) "Add not to
His words, lest He find thee out and thou prove a liar," for to the
"Nothing" he adds: "Of what is in the world and the creation." And as his
statements on the passage are obviously very much forced and in the face of
the evidence, for what he considers divine is excluded from the all, and
what he regards as purely evil is, that and nothing else, the all things,
we need not waste our time in rebutting what is, on the face of it, absurd,
when, without any warrant from Scripture, he adds to the words, "Without
Him was nothing made," the further words, "Of what is in the earth and the
creation." In this proposal, which has no inner probability to recommend
it, he is asking us, in fact, to trust him as we do the prophets, or the
Apostles, who had authority and were not responsible to men for the
writings belonging to man's salvation, which they handed to those about
them and to those who should come after. He had, also, a private
interpretation of his own of the words: "All things were made through Him,"
when he said that it was the Logos who caused the demiurge to make the
world, not, however, the Logos from whom or by whom, but Him through whom,
taking the written words in a different sense from that of common
parlance.(1) For, if the truth of the matter was as he considers, then the
writer ought to have said that all things were made through the demiurge by
the Word, and not through the Word by the demiurge. We accept the "through
whom," as it is usually understood, and have brought evidence in support of
our interpretation, while he not only puts forward a new rendering of his
own, unsupported by the divine Scripture, but appears even to scorn the
truth and shamelessly and openly oppose it. For he says: "It was not the
Logos who made all things, as under another who was the operating agent,"
taking the "through whom" in this sense, "but another made them, the Logos
Himself being the operating agent." This is not a suitable occasion for the
proof that it was not the demiurge who became the servant of the Logos and
made the world; but that the Logos became the servant of the demiurge and
formed the world. For, according to the prophet David,(2) "God spake and
they came into being, He commanded and they were created." For the
unbegotten God commanded the first-born of all creation,(3) and they were
created, not only the world and what is therein, but also all other things,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, for all things
were made through Him and unto Him, and He is before all things."

9. THAT THE LOGOS PRESENT IN US IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR SINS.

   One point more on the words: "Without Him was not anything made." The
question about evil must receive adequate discussion; what was said of it
has not, it is true, a very likely appearance, and yet it appears to me
that it ought not to be simply overlooked. The question is whether evil,
also, was made through the Logos, taking the Logos, now be it well noted,
in the sense of that reason which is in every one, as thus brought into
being by the reason which was from the beginning. The Apostle says:(1)
"Without the law sin was dead," and adds, "But when the commandment came
sin revived," and so teaches generally about sin that it has no power
before the law and the commandment (but the Logos is, in a sense, law and
commandment), and there would be no sin were there no law, for,(2) "sin is
not imputed where there is no law." And, again, there would be no sin but
for the Logos, for "if I had not come and spoken unto them," Christ
says,(3) "they had not had sin." For every excuse is taken away from one
who wants to make excuse for his sin, if, though the Word is in him and
shows him what he ought to do, he does not obey it. It seems, them, that
all things, the worse things not excepted, were made by the Logos, and
without Him, taking the nothing here in its simpler sense, was nothing
made. Nor must we blame the Logos if all things were made by Him, and
without Him nothing was made, any more than we blame the master who has
showed the pupil his duty, when the instruction has been such as to leave
the pupil, should he sin, no excuse or room to say that he erred through
ignorance. This appears the more plainly when we consider that master and
pupil are inseparable. For as master and pupil are correlatives, and belong
together, so the Logos is present in the nature of reasonable beings as
such, always suggesting what they ought to do, even should we pay no heed
to his commands, but devote ourselves to pleasure and allow his best
counsels to pass by us unregarded. As the eye is a servant given us for the
best purposes, and yet we use it to see things on which it is wrong for us
to look, and as we make a wrong use of our hearing when we spend our time
in listening to singing competitions and to other forbidden sounds, so we
outrage the Logos who is in us, and use Him otherwise than as we ought,
when we make Him assist in our transgressions. For He is present with those
who sin, for their condemnation, and He condemns the man who does not
prefer Him to everything else. Hence we find it written:(4) "The word which
I have spoken unto you, the same shall judge you." That is as if He should
say: "I, the Word, who am always lifting up my voice in you, I, myself,
will judge you, and no refuge or excuse will then be left you." This
interpretation. however, may appear somewhat strained, as we have taken the
Word in one sense to be the Word in the beginning, who was with God, God
the Word, and have now taken it in another sense, speaking of it, not only
in reference to the principal works of creation, as in the words, "All
things were made through Him," but as related to all the acts of reasonable
beings, this last being the Logos (reason), without whose presence none of
our sins are committed. The question arises whether the Logos in us is to
be pronounced the same being as that which was in the beginning and was
with God, God the Word. The Apostle, certainly, does not appear to make the
Logos in us a different being from the Logos who was in the beginning with
God. "Say not in thine heart," he says,(1) "who shall go up into heaven;
that is to bring Christ down, or who shall go down into the abyss; that is
to bring Christ up from the dead. But what saith the Scripture? The Logos
is very nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart."

10."THAT WHICH WAS MADE WAS LIFE IN HIM, AND THE LIFE WAS THE LIGHT OF
MEN." THIS INVOLVES THE PARADOX THAT WHAT DOES NOT DERIVE LIFE FROM THE
LOGOS DOES NOT LIVE AT ALL.

   The Greeks have certain apothegms, called paradoxes, in which the
wisdom of their sages is presented at its highest, and some proof. or what
appears to be proof, is given. Thus it is said that the wise man alone, and
that every wise man, is a priest, because the wise man aloha: and every
wise man possesses knowledge as to the service of God. Again, that the wise
man alone and that every wise man is free and has received from the divine
law authority to do what he himself is minded to do, and this authority
they call lawful power of decision. Why should we say more about these so-
called paradoxes? Much discussion is devoted to them, and they call for a
comparison of the sense of Scripture with the doctrine thus conveyed. so
that we may be in a position to determine where religious doctrine agrees
with them and where it differs from them. This has been suggested to us by
our study of the words, "That which was made was life in Him;" for it
appears possible to follow the words of Scripture here and to make out a
number of thing's which partake of the character of the paradoxes and are
even more paradoxical than these sentences of the Greeks. If we consider
the Logos in the beginning, who was with God, God the Word, we shall
perhaps be able to declare that only he who partakes of this being,
considered in this character, is to be pronounced reasonable ("logical"),
and thus we should demonstrate that the saint alone is reasonable. Again,
if we apprehend that life has come in the Logos, he, namely, who said, "I
am the life," then we shall say that no one is alive who is outside the
faith of Christ, that all are dead who are not living to God, that their
life is life to sin, and therefore, if I may so express myself, a life of
death. Consider however, whether the divine Scriptures do not in many
places teach this; as where the Saviour says,(1) "Or have ye not read that
which was spoken at the bush, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac
and the God of Jacob. He is not God of the dead but of the living." And(2)
"Before Thee shall no living being be justified." But why need we speak
about God Himself or the Saviour? For it is disputed to which of them the
voice belongs which says in the prophets,(3) "As I live, saith the Lord."

II. HOW NO ONE IS RIGHTEOUS OR CAN TRULY BE SAID TO LIVE IN COMPARISON WITH
GOD.

   First let us look at the words, "He is not the God of the dead but of
the living." That is equivalent to saying that He is not the God of sinners
but of saints. For it was a great gift to the Patriarchs that God in place
of His own name should add their name to His own designation as God, as
Paul says,(4) "Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God." He is
the God, therefore, of the fathers and of all the saints; it might be hard
to find a passage to the effect that God is the God of any of the wicked.
If, then, He is the God of the saints, and is said to be the God of the
living, then the saints are the living and the living are saints; neither
is there any saint outside the living, nor when any one is called living is
the further implication absent that in addition to his having life he is a
holy one. Near akin to this is the lesson to be drawn from the saying,(5)
"I shall be well pleasing to the Lord in the land of the living." The good
pleasure of tile Lord, he appears to say, is in the ranks of the saints, or
in the place of the saints, and it is there that he hopes to be. No one
pleases God well who has not entered the rank of the saints, or the place
of the saints; and to that place every one must come who has assumed
beforehand, as it were in this life, the shadow and image of true God-
pleasing. The passage which declares that before God no living being shall
be justified shows that in comparison with God and the righteousness that
is in Him none, even of the most finished saints, will be justified. We
might take a parable from another quarter and say that no candle can give
light before the sun, not that the candle will not give light, only it will
not when the sun out-shines it. In the same way every "living" will be
justified, only not before God, when it is compared with those who are
below and who are in the power of darkness. To them the light of the saints
will shine. Here, perhaps, we have the key to the meaning of that verse:(1)
"Let your light shine before men." He does not say, Let your light shine
before God; had he said so he would have given a commandment impossible of
fulfilment, as if he had bidden those lights which have souls to let their
light shine before the sun. It is not only, therefore, the ordinary mass of
the living who will not be justified before God, but even those among the
living who are distinguished above the rest, or, to put it more truly, the
whole righteousness of the living will not be justified before God, as
compared with the righteousness of God, as if I were to call together all
the lights which shine on the earth by night, and to say that they could
not give light in comparison with the rays of the sun. We rise from these
considerations to a higher level when we take the words before our minds,
"I live, saith the Lord." Life, in the full sense of the word, especially
after what we have been saying on the subject, belongs perhaps to God and
none but Him. Is this the reason why the Apostle, after speaking of the
supreme excellency of the life of God and being led to the highest
expression about it, says about God (showing in this a true understanding
of that saying, "I live, saith the Lord"); "who only hath immortality."(1)
No living being besides God has life free from change and variation. Why
should we be in further doubt? Even Christ did not share the Father's
immortality; for He "tasted death for every man."

12. IS THE SAVIOUR ALL THAT HE IS, TO ALL?

   We have thus enquired as to the life of God, and the life which is
Christ, and the living who are in a place by themselves, and have seen how
the living are not justified before God, and we have noticed the cognate
statement, "Who alone hath immortality." We may now take up the assumption
which may appear to be involved in this, namely, that whatever being is
gifted with reason does not possess blessedness as a part of its essence,
or as an inseparable part of its nature. For if blessedness and the highest
life were an inseparable characteristic of reasonable being, how could it
be truly said of God that He only has immortality? We should therefore
remark, that the Saviour is some things, not to Himself but to others, and
some things both to Himself and others, and we must enquire if there are
some things which He is to Himself and to no other. Clearly it is to others
that He is a Shepherd, not a shepherd like those among men who make gain
out of their occupation; unless the benefit conferred on the sheep might be
regarded, on account of His love to men, as a benefit to Himself also.
Similarly it is to others that He is the Way and the Door, and, as all will
admit, the Rod. To Himself and to others He is Wisdom and perhaps also
Reason (Loges). It may be asked whether, as He has in Himself a system of
speculations, inasmuch as He is wisdom, there are some of those
speculations which cannot be received by any nature that is begotten, but
His own, and which He knows for Himself only. Nor should the reverence we
owe to the Holy Spirit keep us from seeking to answer this question. For
the Holy Spirit Himself receives instruction, as is clear from what is said
about the Paraclete and the Holy Spirit,(1) "He shall take of mine and
shall declare it to you." Does He, then, from these instructions, take in
everything that the Son, gazing at the Father from the first, Himself
knows? That would require further consideration. And if the Saviour is some
things to others, and some things it may be to Himself, and to no other, or
to one only, or to few, then we ask, in so far as He is the life which came
in the Loges, whether he is life to Himself and to others, or to others,
and if to others, to what others. And are life and the light of men the
same thing, for the text says, "That which was made was life in Him and the
life was the light of men." But the light of men is the light only of some,
not of all, rational creatures; the word "men" which is added shows this.
But He is the light of men, and so He is the life of those whose light he
is also. And inasmuch as He is life He may be called the Saviour, not for
Himself but to be life to others, whose light also He is. And this life
comes to the Logos and is inseparable from Him, once it has come to Him.
But the Loges, who cleanses the soul, must have been in the soul first; it
is after Him and the cleansing that proceeds from Him, when all that is
dead or weak in her has been taken away, that pure life comes to every one
who has made himself a fit dwelling for the Loges, considered as God.

13. HOW THE LIFE IN THE LOGES COPIES AFTER THE BEGINNING.

   Here, we must carefully observe, we have two things which are one, and
we have to define the difference between them. First, what is before us in
The Word in the beginning, then what is implied in The Life in Word. The
Word was not made in the beginning; there was no time when the beginning
was devoid of the Word, and hence it is said, "In the beginning was the
Word." Of life, on the other hand, we read, not that it was as the Word,
but that it was made; if at least it he the case that the life is the light
of men. For when man was not yet, there was no light of men; for the light
of men is conceived only in relation to men. And let no one annoy us with
the objection that we have put this trader the category of time, though it
be the order of the things themselves, that make them first and second and
so on, and even though there should have been no time when the things
placed by the Loges third and fourth were not in existence. As, then, all
things were made by Him, not all things were by Him, and as without Him was
nothing made, not, without Him nothing was, so what was made in Him, not
what was in Him, was life. And, again, not what was made in the beginning
was the Word, but what was in the beginning was the Word. Some of the
copies, it is true, have a reading which is not devoid of probability,
"What was made is life in Him." But if life is the same thing as the light
of men, then no one who is in darkness is living, and none of the living is
in darkness; but every one who is alive is also in light, and every one who
is in light is living, so that not he only who is living, but every one who
is living, is a son of light; and he who is a son of light is he whose work
shines before men.

14. HOW THE NATURES OF MEN ARE NOT SO FIXED FROM THE FIRST, BUT THAT THEY
MAY PASS FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT.

   We have been discussing certain things which are opposite, and what has
been said of them may serve to suggest what has been omitted. We are
speaking of life and the light of men, and the opposite to life is death;
the opposite to the light of men, the darkness of men. It is therefore
plain that he who is in the darkness of men is in death, and that he who
works the works of death is nowhere but in darkness. But he who is mindful
of God, if we consider what it is to be mindful of Him, is not in death,
according to the saying,(1) "In death there is no one who remembers Thee."
Are the darkness of men, and death, such as they are by nature? On this
point we have another passage,(2) "We were once darkness, but now light in
the Lord," even if we be now in the fullest sense saints and spiritual
persons. Thus he who was once darkness has become, like Paul, capable of
being light in the Lord. Some consider that some natures are spiritual from
the first. such as those of Paul and the holy Apostles; but I scarcely see
how to reconcile with such a view, what the above text tells us, that the
spiritual person was once darkness and afterwards became light. For if the
spiritual was once darkness what can the earthy have been? But if it is
true that darkness became light, as in the text, how is it unreasonable to
suppose that all darkness is capable of becoming light? Had not Paul said,
"We were once in darkness, but now are we light in the Lord," and thus
implied of those whom they consider to be naturally lost, that they were
darkness, or are darkness still, the hypothesis about the different natures
might have been admissible. But Paul distinctly says that he had once been
darkness but was now light in the Lord, which implies the possibility that
darkness should turn into light. But he who perceives the possibility of a
change on each side for the better or for the worse, will not find it hard
to gain an insight into every darkness of men, or into that death which
consists in the darkness of men.

15. HERACLEON'S VIEW THAT THE LORD BROUGHT LIFE ONLY TO THE SPIRITUAL,
REFUTATION OF THIS.

   Heracleon adopts a somewhat violent course when he arrives at this
passage, "What was made in Him was life." Instead of the "In Him" of the
text he understands "to those men who are spiritual," as if he considered
the Logos and the spiritual to be identical, though this he does not
plainly say; and then he proceeds to give, as it were, an account of the
origin of the matter and says, "He (the Logos) provided them with their
first form at their birth, carrying further and making manifest what had
been sown by another,(1) into form and into illumination and into an
outline of its own." He did not observe how Paul speaks of the
spiritual,(2) and how he refrains from saying that they are men. "A natural
man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness
to him; but the spiritual judgeth all things." We maintain that it was not
without a meaning that he did not add the word men to the word spiritual.
Spiritual is something better than man, for man receives his form either in
soul, or in body, or in both together, not in what is more divine than
these, namely, in spirit; and it is after he has come to have a prevailing
share of this that he is called "spiritual." Moreover, in bringing forward
such a hypothesis as this, he furnishes not even the pretence of a proof,
and shows himself unable to reach even a moderate degree of plausibility
for his argument on the subject. So much, then, for him.

16. THE LIFE MAY BE THE LIGHT OF OTHERS BESIDES

   Let us suggest another question, namely, whether the life was the light
of men only, and not of every being as well that is in blessedness. For if
the life were the same thing as the light of men, and if the light of
Christ were for men alone, then the life also would be only for men. But
such a view is both foolish and impious, since the other Scriptures testify
against this interpretation and declare that, when we are somewhat more
advanced, we shall be equal to the angels.(3) The question is to be solved
on the principle that when a predicate is applied to certain persons, it is
not to be at once taken to apply to them alone. Thus, when the light of men
is spoken of, it is not the light of men only; had that been the meaning, a
word would have been added to express it; the life, it would have read, was
the light of men only. For it is possible for the light of men to be the
light of others besides men, just as it is possible that certain animals
and certain plants may form the food of men, and that the same animals and
plants should be the food of other creatures too. That is an example from
common life; it is fitting that another analogy should be adduced from the
inspired books. Now the question here before us, is why the light of men
should not be the light of other creatures also, and we have seen that to
speak of the light of men by no means excludes the possibility that the
light may be that of other beings besides man, whether inferior to him or
like him, Now a name is given to God; He is said to be the God of Abraham
and of Isaac and of Jacob. He, then, who infers from the saying, "The life
was the light of men," that the light is for no other than for men, ought
also to conclude that the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God
of Jacob is the God of no one else but these three patriarchs. But He is
also the God of Elijah,(1) and, as Judith says,(2) of her father Simeon,
and the God of the Hebrews. By analogy of reasoning, then, if nothing
prevents Him from being the God of others, nothing prevents the light of
men from being the light of others besides men.

17. THE HIGHER POWERS ARE MEN; AND CHRIST IS THEIR LIGHT ALSO.

   Another, again, appeals to the text, "Let us make man according to our
image and likeness," and maintains that whatever is made according to God's
image and likeness is man. To support this, numberless instances are
adduced to show that in Scripture "man "and "angel" are used indifferently,
and that the same subject is entitled both angel and man. This is true of
the three who were entertained by Abraham, and of the two who came to
Sodom; in the whole course of Scripture, persons are styled sometimes men,
sometimes angels. Those who hold this view will say that since persons are
styled angels who are manifestly men, as when Zechariah says,(4) "The
messenger of the Lord, I am with you, saith the Lord Almighty," and as it
is written of John the Baptist,(5) "Behold I send My messenger before thy
face," the angels (messengers) of God are so called on account of their
office, and are not here called men on account of their nature. It confirms
this view that the names applied to the higher powers are not those of
species of living beings, but those of the orders, assigned by God to this
and to that reasonable being. "Throne" is not a species of living being,
nor "dominion," nor "principality," nor "power"; these are names of the
businesses to which those clothed with the names have been appointed; the
subjects themselves are nothing but men, but the subject has come to be a
throne, or a dominion, or a principality, or a power. In Joshua, the son of
Nun, we read(1) that in Jericho there appeared to Joshua a man who said, "I
am captain of the Lord's host, now am I come." The outcome of this is that
the light of men must be held to be the same as the light of every being
endowed with reason; for every reasonable being is man, since it is
according to the image and likeness of God. It is spoken of in three
different ways. "the light of men," and simply "the light," and "the true
light." It is the light of men either, as we showed before, because there
is nothing to prevent us from regarding it as the light of other beings
besides men, or because all beings endowed with reason are called men
because they are made in the image of God.

18. HOW GOD ALSO IS LIGHT, BUT IN A DIFFERENT WAY; AND HOW LIFE CAME BEFORE
LIGHT.

   The Saviour is here called simply light. But in the Catholic Epistle of
this same John(2) we read that God is light. This, it has been maintained,
furnishes a proof that the Son is not in substance different from the
Father. Another student, however, looking into the matter more closely and
with a sounder judgment, will say that the light which shines in darkness
and is not overtaken by it, is not the same as the light in which there is
no darkness at all. The light which shines in darkness comes upon this
darkness, as it were, and is pursued by it, and, in spite of attempts made
upon it, is not overtaken. But the light in which there is no darkness at
all neither shines on darkness, nor is at first pursued by it, so as to
prove victor and to have it recorded that it was not overtaken by its
pursuer. The third designation was "the true light." But in proportion as
God, since He is the Father of truth, is more and greater than truth, and
since He is the Father of wisdom is greater and more excellent than wisdom,
in the same proportion He is more than the true light. We may learn,
perhaps, in a more suggestive manner, how the Father and the Son are two
lights, from David, who says in the thirty-fifth Psalm,(3) "In Thy light we
shall see light." This same light of men which shines in darkness, the true
light, is called, further on in the Gospel, the light of the world; Jesus
says,(4) "I am the light of the world." Nor must we omit to notice that
whereas the passage might very well have run, "That which was made was in
Him the light of men, and the light of men was life," he chose the opposite
order. He puts life before the light of men, even if life and the light of
men are the same thing; in thinking of those who have part in life, though
that life is also the light of men, we are to come first to the fact that
they are living the divine life spoken of before; then we come to their
enlightenment. For life must come first if the living person is to be
enlightened; it would not be a good arrange-meat to speak of the
illumination of one not yet conceived as living, and to make life come
after the illumination. For though "life" and "the light" of men are the
same thing, the notions are taken separately. This light of men is also
called, by Isaiah, "the light of the Gentiles," where he says,(1) "Behold I
have set Thee for a covenant of the generation, for a light of the
Gentiles;" and David, placing his confidence in this light, says in the
twenty-sixth Psalm,(1) "The Lord is my illumination and my Saviour; whom
shall I fear?"

19. THE LIFE HERE SPOKEN OF IS THE HIGHER LIFE, THAT OF REASON.

   As for those who make up a mythology about the aeons and arrange them
in syzygies (yokes or pairs), and who consider the Logos and Life to have
been emitted by Intellect and Truth, it may not be beside the point to
state the following difficulties. How can life, in their system, the
yokefellow of the Word, derive his origin from his yokefellow? For "what
was made in Him," he says, evidently referring to the Word, mentioned
immediately before, "was life." Will they tell us how life, the yokefellow,
as they say, of the Word, came into being in the Word, and how life rather
than the Word is the light of men. It would be quite natural if men of
reasonable minds, who are perplexed with such questions and find the point
we have raised hard to dispose of, should turn round upon us and invite us
to discuss the reason why it is not the Word that is said to be the light
of men, but life which originated in the Word. To such an enquiry we shall
reply that the life here spoken of is not that which is common to rational
beings and to beings without reason, but that life which is added to us
upon the completion of reason in us, our share in that life, being derived
from the first reason (Logos). It is when we turn away from the life which
is life in appearance only, not in truth, and when we yearn to be filled
with the true life, that we are made partakers of it, and when it has
arisen in us it becomes the foundation of the light of the higher knowledge
(gnosis). With some it may be that this life is only potentially and not
actually light, with those who do not strive to search out the things of
the higher knowledge, while with others it is actually light. With these it
clearly is so who act on Paul's injunction, "Seek earnestly the best
gifts;" and among the greatest gifts is that which all are enjoined to
seek, namely, the word of wisdom, and it is followed by the word of
knowledge. This wisdom and this knowledge lie side by side; into the
difference between them this is not a fitting occasion to enquire.

20. DIFFERENT KINDS OF LIGHT; AND OF DARKNESS.

   "And(1) the light shineth in darkness and the darkness hath not
overtaken it." We are still enquiring about the light of men, since it is
what was spoken of in the preceding verse, and also, I consider, about
darkness, which is named as its adversary, the darkness also being, if the
definition of it is correct, that of men. The light of men is a generic
notion covering two special things; and with the darkness of men it is the
same. He who has gained the light of men and shares its beams will do the
work of light and know in the higher sense, being illuminated by the light
of the higher knowledge. And we must recognize the analogous case of those
on the other side, and of their evil actions, and of that which is thought
to be bat is not really knowledge, since those who exercise it have the
reason (Logos) not of light but of darkness. And because the sacred word
knows the things which produce light, Isaiah says:(2) "Because Thy
commandments are a light upon the earth," and David says in the Psalm,(3)
"The precept of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes." But since in
addition to the commandments and the precepts there is a light of higher
knowledge, we read in one of the twelve (prophets),(4) "Sow to yourselves
for righteousness, reap to yourselves for the fruit of life, make light for
yourselves the light of knowledge." There is a further light of knowledge
in addition to the commandments, and so we read, "Make light for
yourselves," not simply light, but what light?--the light of knowledge. For
if any light that a man kindles for himself were a light of knowledge, then
the added words, "Make light for yourselves, the light of knowledge," would
have no meaning. And again that darkness is brought upon men by their evil
deeds, we learn from John himself, when he says in his epistle,(1) "If we
say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do
not the truth," and again, "He that saith he is in the light, and hateth
his brother, is in darkness even until now," and again, "He that hateth his
brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he
goeth, because darkness hath blinded his eyes." Walking in darkness
signifies evil conduct, and to hate one's brother, is not that to fall away
from that which is properly called knowledge? But he also who is ignorant
of divine things walks in darkness, just because of that ignorance; as
David says,(2) "They knew not, they understood not, they walk in darkness."
Consider, however, this passage,(3) "God is light and in Him is no(4)
darkness," and see if the reason for this saying is not that darkness is
not one, being either two, because there are two kinds of it, or many,
because it is taken distributively, individually with reference to the many
evil actions and the many false doctrines; so that there are many
darknesses, not one of which is in God. The saying of the Saviour could not
be spoken of the Holy One, "Ye are the light of the world;" for the Holy
One is light of the world (absolute, not particular), and there is not in
Him any darkness.

21. CHRIST IS NOT, LIKE GOD, QUITE FREE FROM DARKNESS: SINCE HE BORE OUR
SINS.

   Now some one will ask how this statement that there is no darkness in
Him can be regarded as a thing peculiar to Him, when we consider that the
Saviour also was quite without sin. Could it not be said of Him also that
"He is light, and that there is no darkness in Him"? The difference between
the two cases has been partly set forth above. We will now, however, go a
step further than we did before, and add, that if God made Christ who knew
no sin to be sin for us,(5) then it could not be said of Him that there was
no darkness in Him. For if Jesus was in the likeness(6) of the flesh of sin
and for sin, and condemned sin by taking ripen Him the likeness of the
flesh of sin, then it cannot be said of Him, absolutely and directly, that
there was no darkness in Him. We may add that "He(1) took our infirmities
and bare our sicknesses," both infirmities of the soul and sicknesses of
the hidden man of our heart. On account of these infirmities and sicknesses
which He bore away from us, He declares His soul to be sorrowful and sore
troubled,(2) and He is said in Zechariah to have put on filthy garments,(3)
which, when He was about to take them off, are said to be sins. "Behold, it
is said, I have taken away thy sins." Because He had taken on Himself the
sins of the people of those who believed in Him, he uses many such
expressions as these: "Far from my salvation are the words of my
transgressions,"(4) and "Thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins were not
hid from Thee."(5) And let no one suppose that we say this from any lack of
piety towards the Christ of God; for as the Father alone has immortality
and our Lord took upon Himself. for His love to men, the death He died for
us, so to the Father alone the words apply, "In Him is no darkness," since
Christ took upon Himself, for His goodwill towards men, our darknesses.
This He did, that by His power He might destroy our death and remove the
darkness which is in our soul, so that the saying in Isaiah might be
fulfilled,(6) "The people that sat in darkness saw a great light." This
light, which came into being in the Logos, and is also life, shines in the
darkness of our souls, and it has come where the rulers of this darkness
carry on their struggle with the race of men and strive to subdue to
darkness those who do not stand firm with all their power; that they might
be enlightened the light has come so far, and that they might be called
sons of light. And shining in darkness this light is pursued by the
darkness, but not overtaken.

22. HOW THE DARKNESS FAILED TO OVERTAKE THE LIGHT.

   Should any one consider that we are adding something that is not
written, namely, the pursuit of the light by the darkness, let him reflect
that unless the darkness had pursued the light the words, "The darkness did
not overtake it," would have no meaning. John writes for those who have wit
to see what is omitted and to supply it as the context requires, and so he
wrote, "The darkness did not overtake it." If it did not overtake it, it
must first have pursued it, and that the darkness did pursue the light is
clear from what the Saviour suffered, and those also who received His
teachings, His own children, when darkness was doing what it could against
the sons of light and was minded to drive light away from men. But since,
if God be for us,(1) no one, however that way minded, can be against us,
the more they humbled themselves the more they grew, and they prevailed
exceedingly. In two ways the darkness did not overtake the light. Either it
was left far behind and was itself so slow, while the light was in its
course so sharp and swift, that it was not even able to keep following it,
or if the light sought to lay a snare for the darkness, and waited for it
in pursuance of the plan it had formed, then darkness, coming near the
light, was brought to an end. In either case the darkness did not overtake
the light.

23. THERE IS A DIVINE DARKNESS WHICH IS NOT EVIL, AND WHICH ULTIMATELY
BECOMES LIGHT.

   In connection with this subject it is necessary for us to point out
that darkness is not to be understood, every time it is mentioned, in a bad
sense; Scripture speaks of it sometimes in a good sense. The heterodox have
failed to observe this distinction, and have accordingly adopted most
shameful doctrines about the Maker of the world, and have indeed revolted
from Him, and addicted themselves to fictions and myths. We must,
therefore, show how and when the name of darkness is taken in a good sense.
Darkness and clouds and tempest are said in Exodus(2) to be round about
God, and in the seventeenth Psalm,(3) "He made darkness His secret place,
His tent round about Him, dark water in clouds of the air." Indeed, if one
considers the multitude of speculation and knowledge about God, beyond the
power of human nature to take in, beyond the power, perhaps, of all
originated beings except Christ and the Holy Spirit, then one may know how
God is surrounded with darkness, because the discourse is hid in ignorance
which would be required to tell in what darkness He has made His hiding-
place when He arranged that the things concerning Him should be unknown and
beyond the grasp of knowledge. Should any one be staggered by these
expositions, he may be reconciled to them both by the "dark sayings" and by
the "treasures of darkness," hidden, invisible, which are given to Christ
by God. In nowise different, I consider, are the treasures of darkness
which are hid in Christ, from what is spoken of in the text, "God made
darkness His secret place," and (the saint) "shall understand parable and
dark saying."(1) And consider if we have here the reason of the Saviour's
saying to His disciples, "What ye have heard in darkness, speak ye in the
light." The mysteries committed to them in secret and where few could hear,
hard to be known and obscure, He bids them, when enlightened and therefore
said to be in the light, to make known to every one who is made light. I
might add a still stranger feature of this darkness which is praised,
namely, that it hastens to the light and overtakes it, and so at last,
after having been unknown as darkness, undergoes for him who does not see
its power such a change that he comes to know it and to declare that what
was formerly known to him as darkness has now become light.

24. JOHN THE BAPTIST WAS SENT. FROM WHERE? HIS SOUL WAS SENT FROM A HIGHER
REGION.

   "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John."(2) He who is sent
is sent from somewhere to somewhere; and the careful student will,
therefore, enquire from what quarter John was sent, and whither. The
"whither" is quite plain on the face of the story; he was sent to Israel,
and to those who were willing to hear him when he was staying in the
wilderness of Judaea and baptizing by the banks of the Jordan. According to
the deeper sense, however, he was sent into the world, the world being
understood as this earthly place where men are; and the careful student
will have this in view in enquiring from where John was sent. Examining the
words more closely, he will perhaps declare that as it is written of
Adam,(3) "And the Lord sent him forth out of the Paradise of pleasure to
till the earth, out of which he was taken," so also John was sent, either
from heaven or from Paradise, or from some other quarter to this place on
the earth. He was sent that he might bear witness of the light. There is,
however, an objection to this interpretation, which is not to be lightly
dismissed. It is written in Isaiah:(4) "Whom shall I send, and who will go
to the people?" The prophet answers: "Here am I,--send me." He, then, who
objects to that rendering of our passage which appears to be the deeper may
say that Isaiah was sent not to this world from another place, but after
having seen "the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up," was sent to
the people, to say, "Hearing, ye shall hear and shall not understand," and
so on; and that in the same manner John, the beginning of his mission not
being narrated, is sent after the analogy of the mission of Isaiah, to
baptize,(1) and to make ready for the Lord a people prepared for Him, and
to bear witness of the light. So much we have said of the first sense; and
now we adduce certain solutions which help to confirm the deeper meaning
about John. In the same passage it is added, "He came for witness, to bear
witness of the light." Now, if he came, where did he come from? To those
who find it difficult to follow us, we point to what John says afterwards
of having seen the Holy Spirit as a dove descending on the Saviour. "He
that sent me," he says,(2) "to baptize with water, He said unto me, Upon
whomsoever thou shall see the Holy Spirit descending and abiding upon Him,
the same is He that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit and with fire." When did
He send him and give him this injunction? The answer to this question will
probably be that when He sent him to begin to baptize, then He who was
dealing with him uttered this word. But a more convincing argument for the
view that John was sent from another region when he entered into the body,
the one object of his entry into this life being that he should bear
witness of the truth, may be drawn from the narrative of his birth.
Gabriel, when announcing to Zacharias the birth of John, and to Mary the
advent of our Saviour among men, says:(3) That John is to be "filled with
the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb." And we have also the saying,
"For behold, when the voice of thy salutation came into mine ears, the babe
leaped in my womb for joy." He who sedulously guards himself in his
dealings with Scripture against forced, or casual, or capricious procedure,
must necessarily assume that John's soul was older than his body, and
subsisted by itself before it was sent on the ministry of the witness of
the light. Nor must we overlook the text, "This is Elijah which is to
come."(4) For if that general doctrine of the soul is to be received,
namely, that it is not sown at the same time with the body, but is before
it, and is then, for various causes, clothed with flesh and blood; then the
words "sent from God" will not appear to be applicable to John alone. The
most evil of all, the man of sin, the son of perdition, is said by Paul to
be sent by God:(1) "God sendeth them a working of error that they should
believe a lie; that they all might be judged who believed not the truth,
but had pleasure in unrighteousness." But our present question may,
perhaps, be solved in this way, that as every man is a man of God, simply
because God created him, but not every man is called a man of God, but only
he who has devoted himself to God, such as Elijah and those who are called
men of God in the Scriptures, thus every man might be said in ordinary
language to be sent from God, but in the absolute sense no one is to be
spoken of in this way who has not entered this life for a divine ministry
and in the service of the salvation of mankind. We do not find it said of
any one but the saints that he is sent by God. It is said of Isaiah as we
showed before; it is also said of Jeremiah, "To whomsoever I shall send
thee thou shalt go";(2) and it is said of Ezekiel,(3) "I send thee to
nations that are rebellious and have not believed in Me." The examples,
however, do not expressly speak era mission from the region outside life
into life, and as it is a mission into life that we are enquiring about,
they may seem to have little bearing on our subject. But there is nothing
absurd in our transferring the argument derived from them to our question.
They tell us that it is only the saints, and we were speaking of them, whom
God is said to send, and in this sense they may be applied to the case of
those who are sent into this life.

25. ARGUMENT FROM THE PRAYER OF JOSEPH, TO SHOW THAT THE BAPTIST MAY HAVE
BEEN AN ANGEL WHO BECAME A MAN.

   As we are now engaged with what is said of John, and are asking about
his mission, I may take the opportunity to state the view which I entertain
about him. We have read this prophecy about him, "Behold, I send My
messenger (angel) before Thy face, who shall prepare Thy way before Thee;"
and at this we ask if it can be one of the holy angels who is sent down on
this ministry as forerunner of our Saviour. No wonder if, when the first-
born of all creation was assuming a human body, some of them should have
been filled with love to man and become admirers and followers of Christ,
and thought it good to minister to his kindness towards man by having a
body like that of men. And who would not be moved at the thought of his
leaping for joy when yet in the belly, surpassing as he did the common
nature of man? Should the piece; entitled "The prayer of Joseph," one of
the apocryphal works current among the Hebrews, be thought worthy of
credence, this dogma will be found in it clearly expressed. Those at the
beginning, it is represented, having some marked distinction beyond men,
and being much greater than other souls, because they were angels, they
have come down to human nature. Thus Jacob says: "I, Jacob, who speak to
you, arid Israel, I am an angel of God, a ruling spirit, and Abraham and
Isaac were created before every work of God; and I am Jacob, called Jacob
by men, but my name is Israel, called Israel by God, a man seeing God,
because I am the first-born of every creature which God caused to live."
And he adds: "When I was coming from Mesopotamia of Syria, Uriel, the angel
of God, came forth, and said, I have come down to the earth and made my
dwelling among men, and I am called Jacob by name. He was wroth with me and
fought with me and wrestled against me, saying that his name and the name
of Him who is before every angel should be before my name. And I told him
his name and how great he was among the sons of God; Art not thou Uriel my
eighth, and I am Israel and archangel of the power of the Lord and a chief
captain among the sons of God? Am not I Israel, the first minister in the
sight of God, and I invoked my God by the inextinguishable name?" It is
likely that this was really said by Jacob, and was therefore written down,
and that there is also a deeper meaning in what we are told, "He supplanted
his brother in the womb." Consider whether the celebrated question about
Jacob and Esau has a solution. We read,' "The children being not yet born,
neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according
to election might stand, not of works but of him that calleth, it was said,
"The elder shall serve the younger." Even as it is written: "Jacob I loved,
but Esau I hated." What shall we say, then? Is there unrighteousness with
God? God forbid." If, then, when they were not yet born, and had not done
any-thing either good or evil, in order that God's purpose according to
election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, if at such a
period this was said, how if we do not go back to the works done before
this life, can it be said that there is no unrighteousness with God when
the elder serves the younger and is hated (by God) before he has done
anything worthy of slavery or of hatred? We have made something of a
digression in introducing this story about Jacob and appealing to a writing
which we cannot well treat with contempt; but it certainly adds weight to
our argument about John, to the effect that as Isaiah's voice declares(1)
he is an angel who assumed a body for the sake of bearing witness to the
light. So much about John considered as a man.

26. JOHN IS VOICE, JESUS IS SPEECH. RELATION OF THESE TWO TO EACH OTHER.

   Now we know voice and speech to be different things. The voice can be
produced without any meaning and with no speech in it, and similarly speech
can be reported to the mind without voice, as when we make mental
excursions, within ourselves. And thus the Saviour is, in one view of Him,
speech, and John differs from Him; for as the Saviour is speech, John is
voice. John himself invites me to take this view of him, for to those who
asked who he was, he answered, "I am the voice of one crying in the
wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord! make His paths straight!" This
explains, perhaps, how it was that Zacharias lost his voice at the birth of
the voice which points out the Word of God, and only recovered it when the
voice, forerunner of the Word, was born. A voice must be perceived with the
ears if the mind is afterwards to receive the speech which the voice
indicates. Hence, John is, in point of his birth, a little older than
Christ, for our voice comes to us before our speech. But John also points
to Christ; for speech is brought forward by the voice. And Christ is
baptized by John, though John declares himself to have need to be baptized
by Christ; for with men speech is purified by voice, though the natural way
is that speech should purify the voice which indicates it. In a word, when
John points out Christ, it is man pointing out God, the Saviour
incorporeal, the voice pointing out the Word.

27. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NAMES OF JOHN AND OF HIS PARENTS.

The force that is in names may be applied in many matters, and it may be
worth our while to ask at this point what is the significance of the names
John and Zacharias. The relatives wish, as the giving of a name is a thing
not to be lightly disposed of, to call the child Zacharias, and are
surprised that Elisabeth should want him to be called John. Zacharias then
writes, "His name is John," and is at once freed from his troublesome
silence. On examining the names, then, we find "Joannes "to be "Joa"
without the "nes." The New Testament gives Hebrew names a Greek form and
treats them as Greek words; Jacob is changed into Jacobus, Symeon into
Simon, and Joannes is the same as Joa. Zacharias is said to be memory, and
Elisabeth "oath of my God," or "strength of my God." John then came into
the world from grace of God (=Joa=Joannes), and his parents were Memory
(about God) and the Oath of our God, about the fathers. Thus was he born to
make ready for the Lord a people fit for Him, at the end of the Covenant
now grown old, which is the end of the Sabbatic period. Hence it is not
possible that the rest after the Sabbath should have come into existence
from the seventh of our God; on the contrary, it is our Saviour who, after
the pattern of His own rest, caused us to be made in the likeness of His
death, and hence also of His resurrection.(1)

28. THE PROPHETS SORE WITNESS TO CHRIST AND FORETOLD MANY THINGS CONCERNING
HIM.

   "He came for a witness that He might bear witness of the light, that
all through Him might believe."(2) Some of the dissenters from the Church's
doctrine, men who profess to believe in Christ, have desired another being,
as indeed their system requires, besides the Creator, and hence cannot
allow His coming to the world to have been foretold by the prophets.(3)
They therefore endeavour to get rid of the testimonies of the prophets
about Christ, and say that the Son of God has no need of witnesses, but
that He brings with Him His own evidence, partly in the sound words full of
power which He proclaimed and partly in the wonderful works He did, which
were sufficient at once to convince any one whatever. Then they say: If
Moses is believed on account of his word and his works, and has no need of
any witnesses to announce him beforehand, and if the prophets were
received, every one of them, by these people, as messengers from God, how
should not one who is much greater than Moses and the prophets accomplish
His mission and benefit the human race, without prophets to bear witness
about Him? They regard it as superfluous that He should have been foretold
by the prophets, since the prophets were concerned, as these opponents
would say, that those who believed in Christ should not receive Him as a
new God, and therefore did what they could to bring them to that same God
whom Moses and the prophets taught before Jesus. To this we must say that
as there are many causes which may lead men to believe, since men who are
not moved by one argument may be by another, so God is able to provide for
men a number of occasions, any of which may cause their minds to open to
the truth that God, who is over all, has taken on Himself human nature. It
is manifest to all, how some are brought by the prophetic writings to the
admiration of Christ. They are astounded at the voices of so many prophets
before Him, which establish the place of His birth, the country of His
upbringing, the power of His teaching, His working of wonderful works, and
His human passion brought to a close by His resurrection. We must notice,
too, that Christ's stupendous acts of power were able to bring to the faith
those of Christ's own time, but that they lost their demonstrative force
with the lapse of years and began to be regarded as mythical. Greater
evidential value than that of the miracles then performed attaches to the
comparison which we now make between these miracles and the prophecy of
them; this makes it impossible for the student to cast any doubt on the
former. The prophetic testimonies do not declare merely the advent of the
Messiah; it is by no means the case that they teach this and nothing else.
They teach a great deal of theology. The relation of the Father to the Son
and of the Son to the Father may be learned not less from what the prophets
announce about Christ, than from the Apostles narrating the splendours of
the Son of God. A parallel case, which we may venture to adduce, is that of
the martyrs, who were honoured by the witness they bore Him, and by no
means conferred any favour on Him by their witnessing for the Son of God.
And how is it if, as many of Christ's true disciples were honoured by
having thus to witness for Him, so the prophets received from God as their
special gift that of understanding about Christ and announcing Him before,
and that they taught not only those living after Christ's advent how they
should regard the Son of God, but those also who lived in the generations
before Him? As he who in these times does not know the Son has not the
Father either,(1) so also we are to understand it was in these earlier
times. Hence "Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ, and he saw it and
was glad."(2) He, therefore, who declares that they are not to testify
about Christ is seeking to deprive the chorus of the prophets of the
greatest gift they have; for what office of equal importance would be left
to prophecy, inspired as it is by the Holy Spirit, if all connection with
the economy of our Lord and Master were taken away from it? For as these
have their faith well ordered who approach the God of the universe through
Mediator and High-Priest and Paraclete, and as his religion is a halting
one who does not go in through the door to the Father, so also in the case
of men of old time. Their religion was sanctified and made acceptable to
God by their knowledge and faith and expectation of Christ. For we have
observed that God declares Himself to be a witness and exhorts them all to
declare the same about Christ, and to be imitators of Him, bearing witness
of Him to all who require it. For he says,(3) "Be witnesses for Me, and I
am witness, saith the Lord God, and My servant whom I have chosen." Now
every one who bears witness to the truth, whether he support it by words or
deeds, or in whatever way, may properly be called a witness (martyr); but
it has come to be the custom of the brotherhood, since they are struck with
admiration of those who have contended to the death for truth and valour,
to keep the name of martyr more properly for those who have borne witness
to the mystery of godliness by shedding their blood for it. The Saviour
gives the name of martyr to every one who bears witness to the truth He
declares; thus at the Ascension He says to His disciples:(4) "You shall be
my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judaea and in Samaria and unto the
uttermost parts of the earth." The leper who was cleansed(5) had still to
bring the gift which Moses commanded for a testimony to those who did not
believe in the Christ. In the same way the martyrs bear witness for a
testimony to the unbelieving, and so do all the saints whose deeds shine
before men. They spend their life rejoicing in the cross of Christ and
bearing witness to the true light.

29. THE SIX TESTIMONIES OF THE BAPTIST ENUMERATED. JESUS' "COME AND SEE."
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TENTH HOUR.

   Accordingly John came to bear witness of the light, and in his witness-
bearing he cried, saying,(1) "He that cometh after me exists before me; for
He was before me; for of His fulness we have all received and grace for
grace, for the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ. No one hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten God, who
is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." This whole speech is
from the mouth of the Baptist bearing witness to the Christ. Some take it
otherwise, and consider that the words from "for of His fulness" to "He
hath declared Him" are from the writer, John the Apostle. The true state of
the case is that John's first testimony begins, as we said before, "He that
cometh after me," and ends, "He hath declared Him," and his second
testimony is that spoken to the priests and levites sent from Jerusalem,
whom the Jews had sent. To them he confesses and does not deny the truth,
namely, that he is not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet, but "the
voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord,
as saith Isaiah the prophet."(2) After this there is another testimony of
the same Baptist to Christ, still teaching His superior nature, which goes
forth into the whole world and enters into reasonable souls. He says,(3)
"There standeth One among you whom you know not, even He that cometh after
me, the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose." Consider if,
since the heart is in the middle of the whole body, and the ruling
principle in the heart, the saying, "There standeth One among you whom you
know not," can be understood of(4) the reason which is in every man. John's
fourth testimony of Christ after these points to His human sufferings. He
says,(5) "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a man who exists before me, for
He was before me. And I knew Him not, but that He should be made manifest
to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water." And the fifth
testimony is recorded in the words,(1) "I beheld the Spirit descending as a
dove out of heaven, and it abode upon Him, and I knew Him not, but He that
sent me to baptize with water, He said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shall
see the Spirit descending and abiding upon Him, the same is He that
baptizeth with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and borne witness that this
is the Son of God." In the sixth place John witnesses of Christ to the two
disciples:(2) "He looked on Jesus as He walked and saith, Behold the Lamb
of God.': After this testimony the two disciples who heard it followed
Jesus; and Jesus turned and beheld them following, and saith unto them,
"What seek ye?" Perhaps it is not without significance that after six
testimonies John ceases from his witness-bearing and Jesus brings forward
in the seventh place His "What seek ye?" Very becoming in those who have
been helped by John's testimony is the speech in which they address Christ
as their Master, and declare their wish to see the dwelling of the Son of
God; for they say to Him, "Rabbi," which answers to "Master," in our
language, "where dwellest Thou?" And since every one that seeketh findeth,
when John's disciples seek Jesus' dwelling, Jesus shows it to them, saying,
"Come and see." By the word "Come" He exhorts them perhaps to the practical
part of life, while the "see" is to suggest to them that that speculation
which comes in the train of right conduct will be vouchsafed to those who
desire it; in Jesus' dwelling they will have it. After they had asked where
Jesus dwells, and had followed the Master and had seen, they desired to
stay with Him and to spend that day with the Son of God. Now the number ten
is a sacred one, not a few mysteries being indicated by it; and so we are
to understand that the mention of the tenth hour as that at which these
disciples turned in with Jesus, is not without significance. Of these
disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, is one; and he having
profited by this day with Jesus and having found his own brother Simon
(perhaps he had not found him before), told him that he had found the
Messiah, which is, being interpreted, Christ. It is written that "he that
seeketh findeth." Now he had sought where Jesus dwelt, and had followed Him
and looked upon His dwelling; he stays with the Lord "at the tenth hour,"
and finds the Son of God, the Word, and Wisdom, and is ruled by Him as
King. That is why he says, "We have found the Messiah," and this a thing
which every one can say who has found this Word of God and is ruled as by a
king, by His Divinity. As a fruit he at once brings his brother to Christ,
and Christ deigned to look upon Simon, that is to say, by looking at him to
visit and enlighten his ruling principle; and Simon by Jesus' looking at
him was enabled to grow strong, so as to earn a new name from that work of
firmness and strength, and to be called Peter,

3O. HOW JOHN WAS A WITNESS OF CHRIST, AND SPECIALLY OF "THE LIGHT."

   It may be asked why we should have gone through all this when the verse
before us is, "He came for wireless, that he might bear witness of the
light." But it was necessary to give John's testimonies to the light, and
to show the order in which they took place, and also, in order to show how
effective John's testimony proved, to set forth the help it afforded
afterwards to those to whom he bore it. But before all these testimonies
there was an earlier one when the Baptist leaped in the womb of Elisabeth
at the greeting of Mary. That was a testimony to Christ and attested His
divine conception and birth. And what more need I say? John is everywhere a
witness and forerunner of Christ. He anticipates His birth and dies a
little before the death of the Son of God, and thus witnesses not only for
those at the time of the birth, but to those who were expecting the freedom
which was to come for man through the death of Christ. Thus, in all his
life, he is a little before Christ, and everywhere makes ready for the Lord
a people prepared for Him. And John's testimony precedes also the second
and diviner coming of Christ, for we read,(1) "If ye will receive it, this
is Elijah which is to come. He that hath ears to hear let him hear." Now,
there was a beginning, in which the Word was,--and we saw from Proverbs
that that beginning was wisdom.--and the Word was in existence, and in the
Word life was made, and the life was the light of men; and all this being
so, I ask why the man who came, sent from God, whose name was John, why he
came for witness to bear witness especially of the light? Why did he not
come to bear witness of the life, or of the Word, or about the beginning.
or about any other of the many aspects in which Christ appears? Consider
here the texts, "The people which sat in darkness saw a great light," and
"The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness overtook it not," and
consider how those who are in darkness, that is, men, have need of light.
For if the light of men shines in darkness, and there is no active power in
darkness to attain to it, then we must partake of other aspects of Christ;
at present we have no real share of Him at all. For what share have we of
life, we who are still in the body of death, and whose life is hid with
Christ in God?(1) "For when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall
we also appear with Him in glory." It was not possible, therefore, that he
who came should bear witness about a life which is still hid with Christ in
God. Nor did he come for witness to bear witness of the Word, for we know
the Word who was in the beginning with God and who is God the Word; for the
Word was made flesh on the earth. And though the witness had been, at least
apparently, about the Word, it would in fact have been about the Word made
flesh and not about the word of God. He did not come, therefore, to bear
witness of the Word. And how could there be any witness-bearing about
wisdom, to those who, even if they appear to know something, cannot
understand pure truth, but behold it through a glass and in an enigma? It
is likely, however, that before the second and diviner advent of Christ,
John or Elias will come to bear witness about life a little before Christ
our life is made manifest, and that then they will bear witness about the
Word, and offer also their testimony about wisdom. Some inquiry is
necessary whether a testimony such as that of John is to precede each of
the aspects of Christ. So much for the words, "He came for witness, to bear
witness of the light." What we are to understand by the further words,
"That all might believe through Him," may be considered later.

FRAGMENTS OF THE FOURTH BOOK(1)

(Three Leaves from the Beginning.)

   I. He who distinguishes in himself voice and meaning and things for
which the meaning stands, will not be offended at rudeness of language if,
on enquiry, he finds the things spoken of to be sound. The more may this be
so when we remember how the holy men acknowledge their speech and their
preaching to be not in persuasion of the wisdom of words, but in
demonstration of the Spirit and of power....

   [Then, after speaking of the rudeness of style of the Gospel, he
proceeds: ]

   2. The Apostles are not unaware that in some things they give offence,
and that in some respects their culture is defective, and they confess
themselves(2) accordingly to be rude in speech but not in knowledge; for we
must consider that the other Apostles would have said this, too, as well as
Paul. As for the text,(3) "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us," we interpret
it in this way. By "treasures" we understand here, as in other passages,
the treasure of knowledge (gnosis) and of hidden wisdom. By "earthen
vessels" we understand the humble diction of the Scriptures, which the
Greek might so readily be led to despise, and in which the excellency of
God's power appears so clearly. The mystery of the truth and the power of
the things said were not hindered by the humble diction from travelling to
the ends of the earth, nor from subduing to the word of Christ, not only
the foolish things of the world, but sometimes its wise things, too. For we
see our calling,(1) not that no wise man according to the flesh, but that
not many wise according to the flesh. But Paul, in his preaching of the
Gospel, is a debtor(2) to deliver the word not to Barbarians only, but also
to Greeks, and not only to the unwise, who would easily agree with him, but
also to the wise. For he was made sufficient a by God to be a minister of
the New Covenant, wielding the demonstration of the spirit and of power, so
that when the believers agreed with him their belief should not be in the
wisdom of men, but in the power of God. For, perhaps, if the Scripture
possessed, like the works the Greeks admire, elegance and command of
diction, then it would be open to suppose that not the truth of them had
laid hold of men, but that the apparent sequence and splendour of language
had carried off the hearers, and had carried them off by guile.

FROM THE FIFTH BOOK.

(From the Preface.)(1)

   You are not content to fulfil the office, when I am present with you,
of a taskmaster to drive me to labour at theology; even when I am absent
you demand that I should spend most of my time on you and on the task I
have to do for you.(2) I, for my part, am inclined to shrink from toil, and
to avoid that danger which threatens from God those who give themselves to
writing on divinity; thus I would take shelter in Scripture in refraining
from making many books. For Solomon says in Ecclesiastes,(3) "My son,
beware of making many books; there is no end of it, and much study is a
weariness of the flesh." For we, except that text have some hidden meaning
which we do not yet perceive, have directly transgressed the injunction, we
have not guarded ourselves against making many books.

   [Then, after saying that this discussion of but a few sentences of the
Gospel have run to four volumes, he goes on:]

2. HOW SCRIPTURE WARNS US AGAINST MAKING MANY BOOKS.

   For, to judge by the words of the phrase, "My son, beware of making
many books," two things appear to be indicated by it: first, that we ought
not to possess many books, and then that we ought not to compose many
books. If the first is not the meaning the second must be, and if the
second is the meaning the first does not necessarily follow. In either case
we appear to be told that we ought not to make many books. I might take my
stand on this dictum which now confronts us, and send you the text as an
excuse, and I might appeal in support of this position to the fact that not
even the saints found leisure to compose many books; and thus I might cry
off from the bargain we made with each other, and give up writing what I
was to send to you. You, on your side, would no doubt feel the force of the
text I have cited, and might, for the future, excuse me. But we must treat
Scripture conscientiously, and must not congratulate ourselves because we
see the primary meaning of a text, that we understand it altogether. I do
not, therefore, shrink from bringing forward what excuse I think I am able
to offer for myself, and to point out the arguments, which you would
certainly use against me, if I acted contrary to our agreement. And in the
first place. the Sacred History seems to agree with the text in question,
inasmuch as none of the saints composed several works, or set forth his
views in a number of books. I will take up this point: when I proceed to
write a number of books, the critic will remind me that even such a one as
Moses left behind him only five books.

3. THE APOSTLES WROTE LITTLE.(1)

   But he who was made fit to be a minister of the New Covenant, not of
the letter, but of the spirit, Paul, who fulfilled the Gospel from
Jerusalem round about to Illyricum,(2) did not write epistles to all the
churches he taught, and to those to whom he did write he sent no more than
a few lines. And Peter, on whom the Church of Christ is built, against
which the gates of hell shall not prevail(3) left only one epistle of
acknowledged genuineness. Suppose we allow that he left a second; for this
is doubtful. What are we to say of him who leaned on Jesus' breast, namely,
John, who left one Gospel, though confessing(4) that he could make so many
that the world would not contain them? But he wrote also the Apocalypse,
being commanded to be silent and not to write the voices of the seven
thunders.(5) But he also left an epistle of very few lines.

Suppose also a second and a third, since not all pronounce these to be
genuine; but the two together do not amount to a hundred lines.

   [Then, after enumerating the prophets and Apostles, and showing how
each wrote only a little, or not even a little, he goes on:](1)

   4. I feel myself growing dizzy with all this, and wonder whether, in
obeying you, I have not been obeying God, nor walking in the footsteps of
the saints, unless it be that my too great love to you, and my
unwillingness to cause you any pain, has led me astray and caused me to
think of all these excuses. We started from the words of the preacher,
where he says: "My son, beware of making many books." With this I compare a
saying from the Proverbs of the same Solomon,(2) "In the multitude of words
thou shall not escape sin; but in sparing thy lips thou shalt be wise."
Here I ask whether speaking many words of whatever kind is a multitude of
words (in the sense of the preacher), even if the many words a man speaks
are sacred and connected with salvation. If this be the case, and if he who
makes use of many salutary words is guilty of "multitude of words," then
Solomon himself did not escape this sin, for "he spoke(3) three thousand
proverbs, and five thousand songs, and he spoke of trees from the cedar
that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall, he
spoke also of beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things and of fishes."
How, I may ask, can any one give any course of instruction, without a
multitude of words, using the phrase in its simplest sense? Does not Wisdom
herself say to those who are perishing,(4) "I stretched out my words, and
ye heeded not"? Do we not find Paul, too, extending his discourse from
morning to midnight,(5) when Eutychus was borne down with sleep and fell
down, to the dismay of the hearers. who thought he was killed? If, then,
the words are true, "In much speaking thou wilt not escape sin," and if
Solomon was yet not guilty of great sin when he discoursed on the subjects
above mentioned, nor Paul when he prolonged his discourse till midnight,
then the question arises, What is that much speaking which is referred to?
and then we may pass on to consider what are the many books. Now the entire
Word of God, who was in the beginning with God, is not much speaking, is
not words; for the Word is one, being composed of the many speculations
(theoremata), each of which is a part of the Word in its entirety. Whatever
words there be outside of this one, which promise to give any description
and exposition, even though they be words about truth, none of these, to
put it in a somewhat paradoxical way, is Word or Reason, they are all words
or reasons. They are not the monad, far from it; they are not that which
agrees and is one in itself, by their inner divisions and conflicts unity
has departed from them, they have become numbers, perhaps infinite numbers.
We are obliged, therefore, to say that whoever speaks that which is foreign
to religion is using many words, while he who speaks the words of truth,
even should he go over the whole field and omit nothing, is always speaking
the one word. Nor are the saints guilty of much speaking, since they always
have the aim in view which is connected with the one word. It appears,
then, that the much speaking which is condemned is judged to be so rather
from the nature of the views propounded, than from the number of the words
pronounced. Let us see if we cannot conclude in the same way that all the
sacred books are one book, but that those outside are the "many books" of
the preacher. The proof of this must be drawn from Holy Scripture, and it
will be most satisfactorily established if I am able to show that it is not
only one book, taking the word now in its commoner meaning, that we find to
be written about Christ. Christ is written about even in the Pentateuch; He
is spoken of in each of the Prophets, and in the Psalms, and, in a word, as
the Saviour Himself says, in all the Scriptures. He refers us to them all,
when He says:(1) "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have
eternal life, and these are they which testify of Me." And if He refers us
to the Scriptures as testifying of Him, it is not to one that He sends us,
to the exclusion of another, but to all that speak of Him, those which, in
the Psalms, He calls the chapter of the book, saying,(2) "In the chapter of
the book it is written of Me." If any one proposes to take these words, "In
the chapter of the book it is written of Me," literally, and to apply them
to this or that special passage where Christ is spoken of, let him tell us
on what principle he warrants his preference for one book over another. If
any one supposes that we are doing something of this kind ourselves. and
applying the words in question to the book of Psalms, we deny that we do
so, and we would urge that in that case the words should have been, "In
this book it is written of Me." But He speaks of all the books as one
chapter, thus sum-ruing up in one all that is spoken of Christ for our
instruction. In fact the book was seen by John,(1) "written within and
without, and sealed; and no one could open it to read it, and to loose the
seals thereof, but the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, who
has the key of David,(2) he that openeth and none shall shut, and that
shutteth and none shall open." For the book here spoken of means the whole
of Scripture; and it is written within (lit. in front), on account of the
meaning which is obvious, and on the back, on account of its remoter and
spiritual sense. Observe, in addition to this, if a proof that the sacred
writings are one book, and those of an opposite character many. may not be
found in the fact that there is one book of the living from which those who
have proved unworthy to be in it are blotted out, as it is written:(3) "Let
them be blotter out of the book of the living," while of those who are to
undergo the judgment, there are books in the plural, as Daniel says:(4)
"The judgment was set, and the books were opened." But Moses also bears
witness to the unity of the sacred book, when he says:(5) "If  Thou forgive
the people their sins, forgive, but if not, then wipe me out of the book
which Thou hast written." The passage in Isaiah,(6) too, I read in the same
way. It is not peculiar to his prophecy that the words of the book should
be sealed, and should neither be read by him who does not know letters,
because he is ignorant of letters, nor by him who is learned, because the
book is sealed. This is true of every writing, for every written work needs
the reason (Logos) which closed it to open it. "He shall shut, and none
shall open,"(7) and when He opens no one can cast doubt on the
interpretation He brings. Hence it is said that He shall open and no man
shall shut. I infer a similar lesson from the book spoken of in Ezekiel,(8)
in which was written lamentation, and a song, and woe. For the whole book
is full of the woe of the lost, and the song of the saved, and the
lamentation of those between these two. And John, too,

when he speaks of his eating the one roll, (1) in which both front and back
were written on, means the whole of Scripture, one book which is, at first,
most sweet when one begins, as it were, to chew it, but bitter in the
revelation of himself which it makes to the conscience of each one who
knows it. I will add to the proof of this an apostolic saying which has
been quite misunderstood by the disciples of Marcion, who, therefore, set
the Gospels at naught. The Apostle says:(2) "According to my Gospel in
Christ Jesus;" he does not speak of Gospels in the plural, and, hence, they
argue that as the Apostle only speaks of one Gospel in the singular, there
was only one in existence. But they fail to see that, as He is one of whom
all the evangelists write, so the Gospel, though written by several hands,
is, in effect, one. And, in fact, the Gospel, though written by four, is
one. From these considerations, then, we learn what the one book is, and
what the many books, and what I am now concerned about is, not the quantity
I may write, but the effect of what I say, lest, if I fail in this point,
and set forth anything against the truth itself, even in one of my
writings, I should prove to have transgressed the commandment, and to be a
writer of "many books." Yet I see the heterodox assailing the holy Church
of God in these days, under the pretence of higher wisdom, and bringing
forward works in many volumes in which they offer expositions of the
evangelical and apostolic writings, and I fear that if I should be silent
and should not put before our members the saving and true doctrines, these
teachers might get a hold of curious souls, which, in the absence of
wholesome nourishment, might go after food that is forbidden, and, in fact,
unclean and horrible. It appears to me, therefore, to be necessary that one
who is able to represent in a genuine manner the doctrine of the Church,
and to refute those dealers in knowledge, falsely so-called, should take
his stand against historical fictions, and oppose to them the true and
lofty evangelical message in which the agreement of the doctrines, found
both in the so-called Old Testament and in the so-called New, appears so
plainly and fully. You yourself felt at one time the lack of good
representatives of the better cause, and were impatient of a faith which
was at issue with reason and absurd, and you then, for the love you bore to
the Lord, gave yourself to composition from which, however, in the exercise
of the judgment with which you are endowed, you afterwards desisted. This
is the defence which I think admits of being made for those who have the
faculty of speaking and writing. But I am also pleading my own cause, as I
now devote myself with what boldness I may to the work of exposition; for
it may be that I am not endowed with that habit and disposition which he
ought to have who is fitted by God to be a minister of the New Covenant,
not of the letter but of the spirit.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (ANF 9, Menzies). The digital version is by The Electronic Bible
Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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