Now since his nature was twofold—on the one hand like the head of a body, in that he is conceived as God, on the other comparable to the feet, in that for the sake of our own salvation he put on man, subject to like passions with us—the account of what follows will be complete for us if we make the narrative of his whole history begin from the most capital and dominant points of the discussion. By this means, moreover, the antiquity and the divine character of the Christian religion will be demonstrated to those who suppose it to be recent and foreign, appearing yesterday and not before.
Of the origin and worth, of the very being and nature of Christ, no discourse could be sufficient for an account; wherefore also the divine Spirit says in the prophecies, 「Who shall declare his generation?」 For neither has any known the Father, save the Son, nor again could any ever worthily know the Son, save only the Father who begat him.
And the pre-mundane light, and the intellectual and substantial Wisdom that was before the ages, and the living Logos who is God, existing in the beginning with the Father—who, save the Father, could clearly conceive him? Before all creation and fashioning, both visible and invisible, he is the first and only offspring of God, the commander-in-chief of the rational and immortal host of heaven, the angel of great counsel, the minister of the Father's ineffable purpose, the fashioner of all things together with the Father, the second cause of the universe after the Father, the genuine and only-begotten Son of God, the Lord and God and King of all begotten things, who has received from the Father lordship together with might, with very deity, with power and honour—since, according to the mystic theologies concerning him in the Scriptures, 「In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God; all things were made through him, and without him was made not one thing.」
This indeed the great Moses also teaches, as the most ancient of all the prophets, when by the divine Spirit he describes the coming-into-being and ordering of the universe: that the Maker and Fashioner of all things yielded to none other than the Christ himself, namely to his own divine and first-begotten Logos, the making of subordinate things, and took counsel with him concerning the creation of man. For 「God said,」 he says, 「Let us make man according to our image and according to our likeness.」
And another of the prophets confirms this saying, theologizing somewhere in hymns thus: 「He spake, and they were begotten; he commanded, and they were created」—introducing the Father and Maker as universal sovereign, who commands with a royal nod, and the divine Logos who is second to him—none other than the one proclaimed by us—as ministering to the Father's commands.
Him also, from the first generation of mankind, all who are said to have been pre-eminent in righteousness and in the virtue of piety—Moses the great servant and his company, and before him Abraham the first, and Abraham's children, and as many righteous men and prophets as appeared thereafter—beholding him with the pure eyes of the mind, recognized him and rendered to him the reverence due to a child of God.
And he himself, never wearying in his devotion to the Father, was established as the teacher of the knowledge of the Father to all men. At all events, 「the Lord God」 is said to have appeared, as an ordinary man, to Abraham as he sat by the oak of Mamre. And Abraham, falling down at once—though with his eyes he saw a man—worshipped him as God, besought him as Lord, and confessed that he was not ignorant who he was, saying in these very words, 「O Lord, that judgest all the earth, wilt thou not do judgement?」
For if no reasoning could permit that the uncreated and unchangeable substance of Almighty God should be transformed into the form of a man, nor again that it should deceive the eyes of beholders by the phantom of any created thing, nor yet that the Scripture should falsely fabricate such things—then who else could be proclaimed as God and Lord, judging all the earth and doing judgement, appearing in the form of a man, if it is not lawful to call him the first cause of the universe, save his pre-existent Logos alone? Concerning whom it is also said in the Psalms, 「He sent forth his Logos, and healed them, and delivered them from their corruptions.」
Moses most clearly proclaims him as second Lord after the Father, when he says, 「The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord.」 Him too the divine Scripture calls God when he appeared again to Jacob in the form of a man, saying to Jacob, 「Thy name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name, because thou hast prevailed with God.」 And then 「Jacob called the name of that place the Form of God, saying, For I saw God face to face, and my soul was saved.」
And indeed it is not lawful to suppose that the recorded theophanies were appearances of subordinate angels and ministers of God; for whenever one of these appears to men, the Scripture does not conceal it, but says by name that they were called angels—not God, nor yet Lord—as it is easy to prove by countless testimonies.
Him too Joshua the successor of Moses names 「the commander-in-chief of the power of the Lord」—as the leader of the heavenly angels and archangels and the supercosmic powers, and as it were the lieutenant of the Father, entrusted with the second rank of the kingship and rule over all—though Joshua too beheld him in no other guise than the form and shape of a man.
At any rate it is written: 「And it came to pass, while Joshua was in Jericho, that he looked up and saw a man standing over against him, and his sword was drawn in his hand; and Joshua went to him and said, Art thou for us or for our adversaries? And he said to him, As commander-in-chief of the power of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and said to him, Master, what dost thou command thy servant? And the commander-in-chief of the Lord said to Joshua, Loose thy sandal from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is a holy place.」
Here too you will note from the very words that this is none other than he who also spoke to Moses; for in his case also the Scripture uses these very same words, saying: 「But when the Lord saw that he drew near to look, the Lord called to him out of the bush, saying, Moses, Moses. And he said, What is it? And he said, Draw not near hither; loose thy sandal from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. And he said to him, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.」
And that there is a certain pre-mundane being, living and subsisting, who ministered to the Father and God of the universe for the fashioning of all created things, being entitled the Logos of God and Wisdom—besides the proofs already set down, one may further hear it from the very person of Wisdom herself, who through Solomon most plainly initiates us into the mysteries concerning herself somewhat thus: 「I, Wisdom, made counsel my dwelling, and I called upon knowledge and understanding. By me kings reign, and rulers decree justice; by me great men are magnified, and by me sovereigns hold the earth.」
To which she adds: 「The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he founded me, in the beginning, before he made the earth, before the springs of waters came forth, before the mountains were settled, and before all the hills he begat me. When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him; and when he made secure the springs under heaven, I was beside him, ordering them. I was she in whom he delighted; and day by day I rejoiced before him at every season, when he rejoiced over the inhabited world.」
Why, then, this proclamation was not made of old, long ago, to all men and to all nations, as it now is, may be made plain as follows. The life of men in old time was not capable of receiving the all-wise and all-virtuous teaching of Christ.
For straightway in the beginning, after that first life in blessedness, the first man, taking little thought of the divine commandment, fell down into this mortal and perishable life, and exchanged the former God-given delight for this accursed earth; and those who sprang from him and filled all our world showed themselves far worse—except perhaps one or two—and took up a brutish manner and an unliveable life.
Nay more, they took no thought of city or polity, of arts or sciences; of laws and ordinances, and moreover of virtue and philosophy, they had not so much as the name; but they lived as nomads in the deserts, like wild and savage creatures. By an excess of self-chosen wickedness they destroyed the reasonings that belong to them by nature, and the rational and gentle seeds of the human soul; they gave themselves over wholly to every unholy deed, so that now they devoured one another as cannibals, now they slew one another, now again they ate human flesh; they dared wars against God and the battles of the giants famed among all; they took it into their minds to wall up the earth against heaven, and in the madness of a monstrous pride made ready to war against the very God who is over all.
While they led their life in this fashion, God, the overseer of all, pursued them with floods and conflagrations, as though they were a wild forest poured out over the whole earth; with continual famines and pestilences, and again with wars and with thunderbolts from on high he cut them down, holding back, as it were, some dreadful and most grievous disease of their souls by bitter chastisements.
At that time, then, when the surfeit of wickedness had poured itself out upon well-nigh all, like a dread intoxication overshadowing and darkening the souls of almost all mankind, the first-begotten and first-created Wisdom of God, the pre-existent Logos himself, in the surpassing of his loving-kindness, showed himself to his subjects—at one time through visions of angels, at another in his own person, as a saving power of God, to one or another of the God-beloved men of old, yet in no other way than through the form of a man, since it was not possible otherwise.
But when through these the seeds of true religion had been sown among a multitude of men, and a whole nation, devoted from of old to the worship of God, sprang up out of the Hebrews—to these, as to a multitude still bred up in the old ways of life, he handed on, through the prophet Moses, images and symbols of a certain mystic sabbath and of circumcision, and introductions to other spiritual contemplations, but not the clear initiations themselves.
But when their legislation became renowned and, like a fragrant breath, was spread abroad among all men, and when from them the minds of most of the nations had already been tamed by the lawgivers and philosophers everywhere—the wild and savage brutality being changed into gentleness, so that they enjoyed deep peace, friendship, and intercourse with one another—then at last, to all men and to the nations throughout the inhabited world, as to those already benefited beforehand and now fit to receive the knowledge of the Father, that same one again, the Teacher of things ineffable, the Father's minister in all good things, the divine and heavenly Logos of God, appeared at the beginning of the Roman Empire through a man who in no respect, as touching the substance of the body, differed from our nature; and he wrought and suffered such things as accorded with the prophecies, which foretold that one who was at once man and God should sojourn in the world as a doer of marvellous works, and should be shown forth to all nations as a teacher of the worship of the Father; foretelling also the marvel of his birth, his new teaching, and the wonders of his works, and besides these the manner of his death, his resurrection from the dead, and above all his divine restoration to the heavens.
At all events, Daniel the prophet, beholding by the divine Spirit his kingdom at the end, was thus inspired, describing the vision of God in more human terms. For he says: 「I beheld until thrones were set, and the Ancient of Days did sit. And his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was a flame of fire, his wheels burning fire. A river of fire flowed before him; thousand thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the judgement sat, and the books were opened.」
And further on he says: 「I beheld, and lo, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he reached as far as the Ancient of Days, and was brought before him. And to him was given the dominion and the honour and the kingdom, and all peoples, tribes, and tongues serve him. His authority is an everlasting authority, which shall not pass away; and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.」
These things plainly could be referred to none other than to our Saviour, the God-Logos who was in the beginning with God, called 「son of man」 on account of his final becoming-man.
But since in my own treatises I have collected the prophetic selections concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ, and have elsewhere set out more demonstratively the things made plain about him, I shall be content for the present with what has been said.