Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Whenever the Jews pushed back against the wholesome commands and, wandering from the divine law, slid into the impious worship of idols, God kept filling just and chosen men with his holy spirit, raising up prophets among the people, so that through them he could reproach with threatening speech the sins of that ungrateful nation, while still pressing them toward repentance for their wrongdoing. He warned that unless they repented, and, throwing off their empty follies, came back to their God, he would alter his covenant with them — that is, he would hand the inheritance of immortal life over to nations beyond their own, and gather to himself, from among foreigners, a different and more faithful people. Yet they, when the prophets rebuked them, did not merely reject their message but, stung by having their sins laid bare, tortured those same prophets to death in elaborate ways. All of this the sacred writings keep on record. For the prophet Jeremiah declares: my servants the prophets — I sent them to you before dawn broke, yet you paid me no heed nor turned your ears toward me, though I told you: let every one of you turn away from his wicked path and from your most vile pursuits, so that you may go on living in this land, the one I gave to you and your ancestors from one age to the next. Do not follow after foreign gods to worship them, and do not stir me to anger through the works your hands have made, bringing your own ruin. Ezra as well — a prophet active under that very Cyrus who restored the Jews — speaks in this way: they turned away from you and threw your law behind their backs, and slew your prophets, the very ones who begged them to turn back to you. So too Elijah, in the third book of Kings: I have burned with jealous zeal for the Lord God almighty, for the sons of Israel abandoned you, tore down your altars, and put your prophets to the sword; I alone remain, and now they hunt for my life. Because of these wrongs of theirs, he rejected them for good, and stopped sending prophets their way. Instead he commanded that his own firstborn son — the maker and counselor behind his works — come down from heaven, so that he might carry God's sacred religion across to the gentile nations, meaning those who had not recognized God, and teach them the righteousness that the unbelieving people had cast aside. That he would eventually do this he had foretold long before, as shown by the prophet Malachi, who says: you bring me no delight, declares the Lord, nor will I take an offering from what your hands provide, since from where the sun rises to where it sets my name will be honored among the nations. Likewise David, in the seventeenth Psalm: you will make me chief over nations; a people unknown to me now serves me. Isaiah too speaks along these lines: I am coming to bring together every nation and language, and they will arrive and behold my glory. And I will place a sign among them and dispatch some of the survivors to the distant nations who have never heard of my glory, and they will announce my glory to the nations. God, then, meaning to send down to earth the surveyor who would lay out his temple, chose not to send him in heavenly majesty and splendor, so that the people — ungrateful toward God — would be drawn into the deepest error and suffer the penalty for their crimes, for having refused to accept their own Lord and God, exactly as the prophets had long since predicted would occur. Isaiah — whom the Jews themselves cut in two with a saw in their utmost cruelty and killed — says this: listen, heaven, and pay attention, earth, for it is the Lord who has spoken: sons I have fathered and brought up, yet they have scorned me. The ox recognizes the one who owns it, and the donkey knows its master's stall, but Israel does not know me, and my people fail to understand. Jeremiah says something similar: the turtledove and the swallow recognize their season, and the birds of the field observe when it is time for them to arrive, but my people do not recognize the Lord's judgment. How is it you claim: we are the wise ones, and we have the Lord's law with us? The scribe's false measuring line has been drawn to no purpose; those who thought themselves wise have been put to shame, seized with trembling and taken prisoner, all because they spurned what the Lord had spoken. So then, to return to what I had started saying — when God resolved to send mankind a teacher of virtue, he decreed that this same figure be born a second time in the flesh, made like a man, so he could serve as guide, companion, and master to humanity. Yet because God is merciful and devoted to his own, he sent this teacher to the very people he had come to despise, so as not to close off the path to salvation from them permanently, but instead to grant them free choice to follow God — so that those who did follow, as very many indeed have, might win the reward of life, while those who through their own fault rejected their king would bring death's penalty on themselves. He therefore arranged for him to be born among them, from their own lineage, so that, had he instead been a foreigner, they might have claimed a legitimate excuse under the law for refusing him — and also so that no nation on earth whatsoever would be shut out from the hope of immortality.
Coming down, then, from heaven, that holy spirit of God selected a holy virgin, into whose womb it could pour itself. She, having drawn in and grown full of the divine spirit, conceived, and, untouched by any man, her virgin womb suddenly grew large. Now if certain creatures are known to conceive from wind or breeze alone, why should it strike anyone as odd when we assert that a virgin was made pregnant by God's spirit, since anything he wishes is effortless for him? This might well seem unbelievable, if the prophets had not already sung of it, ages in advance, as something destined to happen. Solomon, in his nineteenth ode, puts it this way: the virgin's womb grew feeble and took in a child, and she grew heavy, becoming, in profound tenderness, a mother while still a virgin. So too the prophet Isaiah, in these words: therefore the Lord himself is going to give you a sign: a virgin is going to conceive within her, bearing a son, and you will name him Emmanuel. What clearer statement could there be than that? The very Jews who killed him used to read this passage. If anyone suspects we are inventing this, let him go ask them himself, let him take it from their own mouths above all — testimony from one's enemies is remarkably solid proof of truth. He was, in fact, never actually called Emmanuel but rather Jesus, a name that in Latin signifies bringer of salvation, or savior, since he arrived bringing salvation to every nation; yet the prophet, by using this other name, signaled that God was going to come among men in flesh. Emmanuel, after all, translates as 'God with us' — because, once born from the virgin, it became necessary for people to acknowledge that God dwelt among them, meaning here on earth, in mortal flesh. This is why David, in Psalm 84, states: truth has risen up out of the earth — since God, the source of truth, assumed an earthly body, in order to open a path of salvation for earthly beings. Isaiah likewise says: yet they refused to believe, and angered the holy spirit, so he turned and became their enemy. He himself waged war and called to mind the ancient days, he who brought up out of the earth a shepherd for sheep. And elsewhere he made plain who that shepherd would be, saying: let the heavens above rejoice, and let the clouds be clothed in righteousness; let the earth open wide. Let the savior spring up. For I, the Lord God, am the one who made him. Now this savior, as noted earlier, is Jesus. But the same prophet foretold elsewhere in this manner: look, a child has been born for you, a son has been granted to you, dominion resting upon his shoulders, and his name will be called 'messenger of great counsel.' God the Father sent him for this purpose: that he might disclose to every nation beneath the sky the sacred mystery of the one true God — a mystery withdrawn from the unbelieving people who had so repeatedly offended against God. Daniel too foretold similar events. In a nighttime vision, he says, I saw — and there, one resembling a son of man, arriving amid the clouds of the sky, and he approached all the way to the Ancient of Days. Those standing nearby brought him forward, and he was given rulership, honor, and dominion, so that every people, tribe, and tongue would be his servants; his authority endures forever, will not pass away, and his rule can never be brought down. How then can the Jews both acknowledge and look forward to God's Christ, when they turned away from this very one for no reason but that he was born of a man? Since God ordained that this same Christ should enter the world twice — first to proclaim the one God to the nations, then a second time to rule — how can those who refused to believe at his first arrival trust in his second? Yet the prophet has captured both arrivals within a few words. Look, he says, one like a son of man arriving amid the clouds of the sky. He did not say 'like a son of god' but 'like a son of man,' indicating that he was to take on flesh here on earth — so that, having assumed the shape and mortal state of a human, he could teach righteousness to mankind, and, once he had carried out God's commands and made the truth known among the nations, be made to suffer death itself, thereby overcoming and breaking open the underworld too, and so at last rise again and journey to the Father, carried upward on a cloud. The prophet adds still more on this point, stating that once he had made his way into the presence of the Ancient of Days, he was set there before him. By 'Ancient of Days' he meant the Most High God, whose beginning and age lie beyond comprehension, since he alone has existed across every age, just as he will continue to exist through every age to come. David bore witness that this Christ, following his suffering and rising again, would ascend to God the Father, in Psalm 109, saying: the Lord spoke to my Lord: take your seat at my right hand, until I make a footstool of your enemies beneath your feet. Since this prophet was a king himself, whom else could he mean by his own Lord — one enthroned at God's right hand — except Christ the Son of God, who rules as King over kings and Lord over lords? Isaiah states this even more directly, in this saying: the Lord speaks thus, to his anointed one, my Lord — I have grasped his right hand — so that nations will submit before him; and I will crush the power of kings, throwing open gates before him, so that cities remain unbarred. I will march ahead of you and flatten the mountains, break apart the bronze doors, and snap the iron bars in two. And I will hand over to you treasures kept hidden and unseen, so you may recognize that I am the Lord God, who summons you by name. In the end, on account of the virtue and faith he displayed toward God while on earth, rulership, honor, and dominion were granted to him, and every people, tribe, and tongue serves him; his power endures forever and will never pass away, and his kingdom can never be destroyed. This can be understood in two senses: even now he holds unending power, since every nation and tongue honors his name, professes his greatness, follows what he taught, and models itself on his virtue — he possesses dominion and honor in that every tribe on earth obeys what he commands; and, in a further sense, later, when he returns in glory and might to judge each soul and bring the righteous back to life, he will then truly gain rule over the whole earth. At that point, once every evil has been stripped from human life, that golden age the poets describe — that is, an age of justice and peace — will dawn. But we will take these matters up at greater length in the final book, when the discussion turns to the second coming; for now, let us bring this to a close as we started, with his first coming.