Demonstration of the Gospel — Book IV

Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

1.1| Since in the preceding book, the third of the Demonstration of the Gospel, we have worked out at sufficient length what was fitting concerning the incarnation of our Savior, it is now time to take up the more secret discourses that concern the more mystical theology about him.

1.2| The account of the first and eternal God, the only unbegotten, the cause of all things, ruler of all and sovereign of all, is common to all mankind. But the account of Christ is peculiar to the Hebrews and to us, and again shared between us. In some respects they still confess him even now just as we do, following the Scriptures they hold; in others they fall far away, neither perceiving his divinity, nor knowing the causes of his coming, nor even grasping the times at which it was foretold that he would come among men.

1.3| For they still expect him as one who is yet to come, while we show that he has already come once for all; and, trusting the predictions and teachings of the God-inspired prophets, we pray to see his second coming with divine glory. Now since the account of him is twofold, the one part would be the more recent, brought in among men only yesterday or the day before; the other is more ancient than every time and every age.

1.4| For God, since he alone is good and the source and fount of every good, willed to make many sharers in his treasures. He was about to bring forth the whole rational creation: certain incorporeal, intellectual and divine powers, angels and archangels, immaterial and wholly pure spirits, and besides these the souls of men, which carry in their nature an unconstrained and free power of self-willed choice for the good or for its opposite; together with all the bodily instruments that were to serve these, suited to the conduct of various lives; and he was to assign to all of them their proper regions and places (to those that remained good, the better ones; to the others, in turn, those fitting for them, places of correction for their leaning to the contrary). Foreseeing what was to be, as God, by his foreknowledge, and perceiving before they came to be that all these would need a head, as in a great body, he thought it necessary to set over them one who would be steward of the whole creation and leader and king of all things, as the divine oracles also teach in their mysteries, those delivered of old among the Hebrews by men who were theologians and prophets.

1.5| From them one may learn that there is one first principle of all things, or rather that which is higher even than a first principle, prior to the first, more primordial than the monad, and greater than any name: unspeakable, inexpressible, incomprehensible, good, the cause of all things, the maker, the benefactor, the provider, the savior, he who is himself the single and only God, from whom come all things, through whom all things are; for in him we live, and are moved, and exist.

1.6| Whatever he wills, that indeed would be the sole cause of the coming into essence and existence of all things that have come to be. For they are because he wills it, and he wills it because he is by nature good. And to the good nothing is natural except to will what is good.

1.7| And willing these things, he is also able. And so, at once willing and able, he established for himself, without hindrance or obstruction, everything fair and beneficial among things seen and unseen, putting forth his own will and power as a kind of matter and essence for the coming-to-be and constitution of all things; so that it can no longer reasonably be said that any of the things that are came from things that are not. For nothing could come from what is not: how could what is not become the cause of being for something else? Everything whatsoever that exists has received its being from the one who alone is and who was before all, who also said, "I am he who is."

1.8| For he, being alone and being forever, became the cause of being for all who have acquired their being from him, by his willing and his power, and out of himself he has bestowed on all things, richly and ungrudgingly, their essence, their powers, and their forms.

2.1| And so, first of all that exists, he brings into being his offspring, the first-born Wisdom, wholly and throughout intellectual and rational and all-wise, or rather mind itself, reason itself, wisdom itself; and, if it is permitted to conceive in the realm of generated things anything that is beauty itself and good itself, this he brings forth first from himself as the foundation of what would come afterward: the perfect product of the perfect, the wise master-work of the wise, the good offspring of a good Father. And what else is he than the protector and guardian of all that afterward took their being through him, savior and physician, and the helmsman who has the rudder of the creation of the universe in hand?

2.2| Hence the oracles, in their theology, reasonably declare him a begotten God, as the one who alone carries in himself the image of the ineffable and inconceivable divinity; because of that image he both is and is called God, on account of his likeness to the First. In this way they say that he was set by the Father as a good servant, so that through one all-wise living instrument, a skilled and knowing rule, all things might be directed by him, bodies and incorporeals alike, ensouled and soulless, rational with irrational, mortal with immortal, and whatever else exists and is woven together with these; and that, as by one power of the universe, by one living and ensouled law and word that is in all things and reaches through all things, everything might be fitted together under one all-wise bond, the very Word and Law of God, gathered and bound together.

3.1| Because the Father is one, the Son too must be one and not many; and there must be one perfect begotten God from God, and not several. For among several there will be otherness, and difference, and the bringing in of what is worse. For this reason the one God is father of one Son, perfect and only-begotten, and not of several gods or sons,

3.2| since, when the essence of light is one, it is wholly necessary to posit that what is begotten from it is one and perfect too.

3.3| For what other offspring of light could one conceive, except only the ray that comes from it, fills all things and shines down on them? Anything foreign to this would be darkness, not light. Thus, in the case of the Father, who is above all and is ineffable light, no pattern could be brought forward that is close to him or akin to him, except just this one, which may also be said of the Son, since he is the radiance of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's working, and the image of his goodness.

3.4| Hence it is said, "who being the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his subsistence." But the radiance of perceptible light is inseparable from it, whereas the Son has his own subsistence, apart from the Father, by himself; and the radiance holds the place of the working of the light, whereas the Son is something other than a working, having his essence by himself.

3.5| Again, the radiance coexists with the light, being in some way its completion (for without radiance light could not subsist), and both stand together and by themselves; but the Father exists before the Son and subsists before his begetting, in that he alone was unbegotten.

3.6| And he is perfect in himself and first, being Father and the cause of the Son's constitution, receiving nothing from the Son for the completion of his own divinity; but the other, as a Son who came from a cause, stands second to him whose Son he is, having received both his being and his being of such a kind from the Father.

3.7| And again, the radiance does not shine by the choice of the light, but as an inseparable accident of its essence, whereas the Son came into subsistence as image of the Father by purpose and choice. For God, by willing, became the Father of a Son, and established a second light made like himself in every respect.

3.8| Since, then, there is one unbegotten and eternal light, how could another come to be, as an image, that is not also a radiance and so light, preserving in every respect its likeness to the original? And how could it be an image of that one light unless it too were one and the same? In this way it brings the likeness not of the first's essence alone but also of its number in quantity, so that the one eternal light has one perfect offspring, and not many different ones: the first and only-begotten offspring, that very perfect good which, for us as well, is spoken of in theology as first after the beginningless and unbegotten essence.

3.9| The Son, then, must be one, the Son of one Father. For if a single fragrance proceeds from some underlying essence, one would have to agree that it pours out one and the same sweet odor upon all, not different and many ones. So when the first and only good, who is God the universal King, gives subsistence to a divine and life-giving fragrance that can be grasped by mind and thought, it is right to conceive this fragrance as one, not as several.

3.10| For what could there be other than this fragrance, made like the Father in every respect, unless it were something inferior and worse? That we must on no account bring in to our theology of the Son. Since he is a vapor of God's power and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty.

3.11| From a fragrant body, say a perfume, or the flowers and spices that bloom on the earth, a sweet breath is poured from the original substance into all the surrounding space, and spreading out fills the air far and wide, and yet without any loss or diminishment or cutting or division of the underlying substance.

3.12| For while that substance stays in its own place and preserves its identity with itself, and begets the fragrant power, the offspring that is begotten, though a fragrance with a subsistence of its own, is in no way inferior to what came before, and imitates by its own nature as closely as possible the nature of what begot it. Yet these are still earthly and mortal things, parts of the lower, perishable, earthy nature.

3.13| The matters of the theology now before us, however, lie beyond every example. Nothing like what comes from bodies is brought in. With the keenest thought one imagines a begotten Son, not one who at certain times did not exist and later came into being, but one who exists and pre-exists before eternal ages, and is with the Father always as Son; who is not unbegotten but begotten of an unbegotten Father; the only-begotten, Word and God from God, who was not put forth from the Father's essence by separation or cutting or division, but, ineffably and beyond our reckoning, from eternity, or rather before all ages, takes his essence from the inexpressible and incomprehensible counsel and power of the Father: so these matters teach. For "who," it says, "will describe his generation?" and "As no one knew the Father except the Son, so no one knew the Son except the Father alone who begot him."

4.1| Nevertheless it seemed good to the all-good Father that a single only-begotten and beloved Son ought to be established before the creation of all created things, since he was presently about to bring forth one world, like one great body made of many different members and parts, [….] not to preside over it from above, attached as to a greater head to the Father's divinity (since the Father is the head of Christ), but to lead and to exist before everything that came after it, and moreover to be equal both to the Father's command and to the creation of what came afterward.

4.2| Therefore we also said that he was the first of all things put forth by the Father, as a single-natured instrument, living and ensouled, of every essence and nature; or rather an instrument that is divinely inspired, life-giving and all-wise: begetter of good things, supplier of light, maker of heaven, builder of the world, creator of angels, ruler of spirits, saving instrument of souls, increaser of bodies, and the one who provides for, steers, tends, rules and judges all things, and proclaims reverence toward the Father.

5.1| Therefore, over all created things in general, one must marvel at a single divine power and not suppose many. For the power that makes the world as a whole is one, and one is the Word, the Maker of the universe, who "in the beginning was in God's presence." "In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God."

5.2| This Word we must truly not ignore but worship and honor as he deserves, because all things were established through him, not only at the beginnings of the universe, but have come to be and are coming to be forever, and "without him not one thing came to be."

5.3| For if there is any life among existing things, "what came to be in him was life"; from him and through him comes the quickening and ensouling of all things. Whether it is rhythm or beauty or harmony or order or blending or essence or quality or size, one Word holds all things together and arranges them, and one world-making power of God leads all.

5.4| For just as in our own body the difference between the parts is great and varied, yet the power that forms the whole is one (it is not by one power of God that the nature of the head came to be, by another that of the eyes, by another that of the ears, by another that of the feet), so also over the whole world there presides one divine power, the same, which is the maker of heaven and stars, of the living creatures in air and earth and sea, of the elements in general and in particular, and further of natures of every kind, both by genus and by species.

5.5| There is not one power that makes fire, another water, and again another earth and air; but there is one and the same craftsman wisdom of the universe, and this is the world-maker himself, the Word of God, whom we speak of in theology as Maker of the universe.

5.6| The friendship of the elements with one another bears witness to this, proving by the mingling of their blends that the nature of the whole is kindred and sisterly, the work, as it were, of a single architect. For the earth, the heavy element, rides upon the waters and is not dragged down into the depths by the solidity of its nature, but is always borne aloft and does not sink: it bears witness to the Word, the counsel and the power of God.

5.7| Again, the partnership of the liquid substance with the dry shows no destruction and does not suddenly flood the whole into a swamp, but is bound by an unspeakable nod of God; so once more it presents the same Word of God.

5.8| And what of fire? Though its nature is to burn and destroy, it lurks in wood and is mixed into the bodies of all kinds of living creatures, ranged together with earth and water and air, and then by measure and reckoning supplies to all what is needed, as much as would be of use to each, forgetting its own power. Does it not seem to you that it too serves the Word and power of God? And when you look at the alternating movements of day and night, the waxing of the seasons and times at one moment and the waning at another, the circles of the years and the revolutions of the ages, the whirling of the stars, the sun's courses and the turnings of the moon, the sympathies and antipathies of all things, and the single world formed of them all, is it permissible for you to declare that unreason, and chance, and what simply happened, is the cause of the whole? Or should you rather sing in truth of the Word of God, and the wisdom and power of God, and of this as one, not many?

5.9| Since in a human being as well, one soul and one rational power can be the maker of very many things: the same soul, having learned many arts, may set its hand to farming and shipbuilding and steering and building; and the one mind and reasoning in a person can at some time take in the sciences of ten thousand things, and the same person will do geometry and astronomy, and teach the principles of grammar and medicine, and take charge of studies and of works at hand. Yet no one has ever supposed that there are several souls in one body, or marveled at many powers in a human being because of the many subjects he has taken in.

5.10| And if someone found a shapeless lump of clay, and softening it with his hands gave it the form of a living creature, shaping with the plastic art the head in one fashion, the hands and feet in a different way, the eyes in yet another, the cheeks likewise, and ears and mouth and nostrils, chest and shoulders, would we say, because many shapes and limbs and parts have been fashioned in one body, that there must be as many makers? Or should we praise the craftsman of the whole, who built the all at once with one design and one power?

5.11| Why, then, regarding the universe, which is one though it is composed of very many parts, should we have to posit many creative powers and call many gods, and not rather acknowledge the one true power of God and wisdom of God, which with one power and one excellence establishes and gives life to all things together, and furnishes from itself a varied supply to all? In the same way a single ray of the sun's light, all at once and in the same moment, brightens the air, illumines the eyes, warms the sense of touch, fattens the earth, makes plants grow, brings time into being, leads the stars, circles the heaven, makes the world shine, establishes the plain power of God throughout the universe, and accomplishes all this by one impulse of nature.

5.12| The nature of fire purifies gold and melts lead; it dissolves wax, dries clay, scorches timber, working all these effects by one burning power. So too the heavenly Word of God, the Maker of sun and heaven and the whole world, being present to all things with active power and passing through all, rains light on sun and moon and stars out of his own ever-flowing power; having established the heaven in the beginning as the most fitting image of his own greatness, he holds it together forever; the powers beyond heaven and the world, of angels and spirits, intellectual and rational essences, he fills with life and light and wisdom and every virtue and everything fair and good from his own treasures, by one and the same creative art. For the elements he never ceases to supply essence, and mixtures and blendings, forms and shapes and figures, and countless qualities, variously diversifying them now one way and now another in living creatures and plants and souls and bodies, rational and irrational; to all alike he furnishes all things with one power, and gives to all human beings a mind able to discern and contemplate his wisdom, and, setting it before all openly and explicitly, he displays one world as the work of one world-making Word.

5.13| Such a master craftsman of his counsel, the only-begotten Son and Maker of all things, was begotten first of all by the Most High, the God and Father even of the Maker himself, who established in him and through him the creative principles of things that were to be, and laid in him the seeds of the constitution and administration of the whole.

5.14| Do you not behold with your eyes the whole world, which one heaven embraces, and the countless dances around it and the revolutions of the stars? Again, there is one sun, not several, and by the excess of its light it hides the glitter of them all.

5.15| So, since the Father is one, the Son too had to be one. And if anyone should blame him for not having made more than one, it is time to fault him also for not having set up more suns, and moons, and worlds, and ten thousand other things, in the manner of a madman who tries to distort what is right and well-ordered in nature.

6.1| In this way, then, as in the visible world one sun lights the whole perceptible world, so also in the intelligible world the one perfect Word of God lights up the immortal and bodiless powers, the intellectual and rational essences, countless as stars and luminaries. For there had to be one law over all in general, and one Word of God coming in all and through all, so that in this too the likeness of the image to the Father might be preserved in every respect: in virtue, in power, in essence, and in the number of the monad and unity. But the essence of created things was to be established as manifold and varied,

6.2| subject to countless changes of every sort, now one and now another, because of its own weakness; and because of the excess of the inexpressible and, for all, boundless nature of the Father's supreme power it would fall short, since it could not, being created, partake of the unbegotten and uncontainable Godhead, nor look upward and face the unspeakable flashings of the eternal light. So it was fitting, surely, that the all-good Father and Savior of the universe,

6.3| so that the nature of things about to come into being should not, being utterly bereft of communion with him, be deprived of the greatest goods, he should interpose as a middle term the divine, all-powerful and all-virtuous power belonging to his only-begotten and firstborn: a power that converses most exactly and as closely as possible with the Father, and perhaps enjoys his unspeakable secrets, yet most gently comes down and in some way conforms itself to those who fall short of the summit and who, because of their weakness, need the improvement and benefit that come from the second, just as we behold the sun's flashings coming down to us quietly and gently, since otherwise, because of the weakness of the body, we could not enjoy the power of the unmixed light.

6.4| If, as a supposition in argument, the all-shining sun itself were to come down from heaven and live among human beings on earth, nothing on earth would remain unharmed, since all things at once, living and lifeless alike, would be destroyed by the massed projection of its light.

6.5| It would sooner make blind the eyes of those who see, becoming for everyone a cause of harm and ruin far more than of benefit, though it is not so in its nature, but becomes such to those who, because of their own weakness, cannot bear to enjoy its excessive radiance.

6.6| Why then, when you learn similar things about God, whose work are the sun and all the heaven and world, do you wonder? If in fact none of existing things has a share in his unspeakable and inexpressible power and essence, except one alone, whom the Father himself, out of his providence for the universe, established before all others, so that the nature of created things should not fall away entirely, standing apart from the unbegotten and uncontainable essence of the Father by its own feebleness and incapacity, but should remain and grow and be nourished, enjoying the intermediate supply which God's only-begotten Word never ceases to provide for all; and going everywhere and passing through all things, he cares equally for the salvation of all, rational and irrational, mortal and immortal, heavenly and earthly, divine and invisible powers, and, in short, of everything that has a share in being through him; yet far more especially of the intellectual and rational nature, on account of which he did not despise even the human race but honored it greatly and cared for it, for the sake of its kinship and union with himself through the Word, whereby it is declared in the sacred oracles to have been formed in his image.

6.7| But he established his image, the whole intellectual and rational nature, as the Word of God, at the beginning of the creation of the universe, and for this reason he appointed man ruler and king of all living creatures on earth, and let him go free and self-determining in his inclination toward the good or toward the opposite.

6.8| But man, using his self-determination badly, was turned aside from the right road and set out on the opposite one; he reckoned neither God nor Lord nor anything holy and pious, but like irrational beasts took in hand all kinds of savage and undisciplined deeds.

6.9| So the all-good and universal King, the Most High himself and God of the universe, acting in a manner fitting to himself, lest the people on earth should be leaderless and unsupervised like herds of irrational animals, appointed divine angels as their protectors and caretakers, like herd-leaders and shepherds, and set over them all and placed in charge of them all his Word, only-begotten and firstborn.

6.10| To him he set apart as a special portion the angels and archangels themselves, the divine powers, the immaterial spirits above the heavens, and moreover among earthly things the God-loving souls among human beings, called by the Hebrew names Jacob and Israel.

7.1| This greatest of mysteries Moses, first of theologians, taught in secret to the Hebrews of old, saying: "Ask your father, and he will tell you; your elders, and they will tell you. When the Most High divided the nations, as he scattered the sons of Adam, he fixed the boundaries of the nations in accordance with the number of the angels of God, and the Lord's portion became his people Jacob, Israel the measured part of his inheritance."

7.2| By these words he names the highest God, who is above all, "Most High," and "Lord" his Word, whom we too call Lord in the second place after the God of the universe. He says that every nation and the sons of men, called sons of Adam, were distributed by the judgment of the Most High God, and by unspeakable words, to the invisible guardians of the nations, the angels themselves; but that to the supreme ruler and king of the universe, Christ himself, as the only-begotten Son, there was handed over, among human beings, Jacob and Israel, that is, the whole race that sees and reveres God.

7.3| The man who practices virtue, having set before himself the contest of virtue and still striving and wrestling in the exercises of piety, is called in the Hebrew tongue Jacob; but the one who has already been judged worthy of victory and of the prizes from God is proclaimed Israel, as that renowned forefather of the whole Hebrew nation was himself, and his genuine children, and their descendants and forefathers, all the prophets and God-loving men. For do not suppose that the multitude of the Jews is meant here, but only those of old who had been brought to perfection in virtue and piety.

7.4| These, then, the Word of God, leader and guardian of all, took in charge and called up to the worship of the Father alone, the Most High himself, above everything visible, beyond heaven and every created essence, calling back his subjects gently and mildly, and handing over to them for their reverence only the unbegotten God, Maker of the universe, the Most High.

8.1| But the angels who were the overseers and shepherds of the other nations thought it right that those who were not able to behold the invisible with the mind, and could not climb so high because of their own weakness, should give heed to the things seen in the heaven: sun and moon and stars.

8.2| These shine out in the visible nature of the universe, high up and as near as possible, as in the forecourts of the universal King, and called the gaze of those who looked upward, showing by the greatness and beauty of the visible creatures, in due proportion, a view of the originator of all. For "his invisible things," as the apostle says, "are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood through the things that are made, both his eternal power and divinity."

8.3| This again the great Moses teaches in the mysteries. For urging the Lord's portion to reach for the intelligible and bodiless with a clear mind and a purified soul, he forbids them to be struck with wonder at the visible things in heaven, adding: "These the Lord your God has allotted to all the nations." It is necessary to see why he said they had been allotted.

8.4| Since there is, invisible to us, a wandering earthly and demonic essence flying about the air around the earth, unknown and indistinguishable to human beings, and differing for the worse from that of the good spirits and powers and of the divine angels themselves, it was well for those who fall away from the highest piety toward the universal King to choose, of the things seen in heaven, the best.

8.5| For the fear was not slight that, in seeking God and busying themselves with invisible things, in their perplexity over what is unseen and obscure they might be turned toward opposing powers and demons. So all the splendid works of God that are seen were handed over to those who did not aspire to the better, since from them, in some measure, as in a mirror, a vision of the invisible shines through.

9.1| Such, then, was the arrangement on this side; but on the other side was the rebellious and apostate power, whether of demons or of other still worse spirits, borne along more and less in wickedness, and moreover a terrible great demon who is ruler over all of them. These, who were the first to waver from piety toward the divine and had fallen from their own allotted station, drew the opposite way out of envy at the salvation of human beings, and through every contrivance of wickedness plotted against every nation, and even against the portion of the Lord itself, out of malice toward good things.

9.2| This godless and impious reasoning of the great demon the prophetic Spirit in Isaiah refutes, speaking somewhat as follows. For he said: "By strength I will act, and by the wisdom of understanding I will remove the borders of the nations, and plunder their strength, and shake the inhabited cities. And the whole world I will seize in my hand like a nest, and like abandoned eggs I will take it up, and there shall be none who escapes me or speaks against me."

9.3| These are the words of the one who fights against God, boasting in the strength of his wickedness, threatening to plunder and confuse the boundaries of the nations which the Most High had handed over to the angels, to plunder the world, to shake the whole human race and displace it from its former good order, and speaking with arrogance.

9.4| Hear what he thought of himself when he boasted in this way, as the same prophecy again says of him: "How has the Morning Star fallen from heaven, he who rose at dawn? He who sent out to all the nations is crushed to the earth. You said in your mind: I will go up to heaven; above the stars of heaven I will set my throne. I will go up above the clouds; I will become like the Most High. But now you will go down to Hades and to the foundations of the earth."

9.5| The passage shows many things at once through these words: the madness of the one described, his fall, from better to worse, and the end of his fall. After uttering terrible threats against all the nations, he found human beings easily taken, as with one hand, by his hunting spears, since by their own free choice they had ready at hand, from their own judgment, a falling into evil.

9.6| So he shook the cities away from their standing with the better powers, and with the baits of pleasure dragged down the souls of the many into every kind of baseness. Leaving no device untried, through the skilled deception of demons he put before his captives what was dear and pleasing to them: shameful stories about the gods and licentious tales.

9.7| Thus he took the whole world under his hand and held it, and wiped out the boundaries of the nations, just as he had threatened that he would, saying: "I will remove the borders of the nations, and plunder their strength, and shake the inhabited cities, and I will seize the whole world in my hand like a nest."

9.8| From then on error ruled all human beings, and wicked demons were assigned to every place and city and country under their own ruler. The whole life of humanity was enslaved to earthly powers and evil spirits in place of God's former ministers, all of them giving themselves up together and headlong to the slippery paths of pleasure, so that they even crossed the bounds of nature, at one time corrupting one another, at another doing unspeakable things that it is not even lawful to think of; and they not only did these things but attributed them to their beliefs about their own gods, and so all the more, as things dear to gods, committed the licentious acts with greater ease.

9.9| From this point, according to the holy apostle, not even stopping at the bright works of God in heaven, "they became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless heart grew dark. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and traded the glory of the incorruptible God for a likeness of an image of perishable man, and of birds and four-footed creatures and reptiles."

9.10| That in the most ancient times the people on earth gave their attention to the heavenly luminaries alone, knowing no idol and not occupied with the error of the demons, the testimony of authors outside our own account would be sufficient proof; I set it out in the first book of the Preparation, before the present treatise, showing clearly that the most ancient of men served neither hand-made carved images made of lifeless matter, nor invisible demons, but only these luminaries, which are also attested by the divine Scripture as having been allotted to the nations.

9.11| It is time, then, to agree, with those too whose words I set out there, that the superstition of idols and the meddling with unseen spirits was introduced among them as something newer and foreign to the worship of the ancients. All this the one described as the enemy of God accomplished by plotting against all on earth. And the whole tribe of unclean demons worked with him. He himself, the leader of wickedness, did these things, fulfilling in deed, in the madness of his extravagant mind, his threats against all human beings, and raising ever higher his godless shout, "I will be like the Most High," while with the services of the unclean and wicked demons offering oracles and cults and such things through the sorceries of men.

10.1| In such a flood of wickedness, none of the angels who had been set over the nations was able to give them any help. They cared for the rest of creation, presided over the parts of the world, and served as usual at the nod of God, Maker of all; but they did not interfere in the fall of mortals, which came about through human beings' voluntary choice of evils. So a long and hard-to-cure disease took hold of everyone on earth, as the several nations, each in its own way, were driven wild by the wicked spirits and fell into an incurable abyss of wickedness.

10.2| By now, like raw-eating, man-devouring beasts, some saw fit to feast upon the flesh of their dearest kin, to couple without restraint with mothers and sisters and daughters, and to put the old in a noose and give the dead to dogs and birds.

10.3| Why should I recall to you the savage and outlandish human sacrifices offered to the so-called gods, who were in fact those base demons, sacrifices to which they drove the human race mad?

10.4| These matters I laid out beforehand in the earlier part of the subject now in hand. But since so many evils were being set forth over the whole world by the base and wretched spirits and their tyrant, and none of the angels in charge could give help against these evils, then, as was fitting, that divine Word, the Savior of the universe, by the good nod of the Father's love for humanity, so that the race dear to him should not go on wallowing in the depths of impiety, for the time being sent out a few faint rays of his own light through the prophet Moses and the God-loving men before and after him, offering in the sacred laws a cure for the evils among men.

10.5| The Word himself, legislating through Moses for the Hebrew nation, says outright: "You shall not do according to the practices of the land of Egypt, in which you lived, and you shall not do according to the practices of the land of Canaan, the land into which I am bringing you; and you shall not walk in their customs. You shall do my judgments and keep my commandments. I am the Lord your God."

10.6| Then, having forbidden every unlawful marriage and every shameful act, unions of women with women and of males with males, he adds: "Do not defile yourselves in any of these things. For in all these the nations were defiled, which I am sending out from before you. And the land was defiled, and I repaid its iniquity, and the land loathed those who lived on it."

10.7| And again he says: "When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to act in line with the abominations of those nations. No one shall be found among you who purifies his son or his daughter by fire, a diviner, one who observes omens or reads signs, a sorcerer who casts spells, a ventriloquist, a wonder-seer, or one who consults the dead. For everyone who does these things is abhorrent to the Lord your God. For on account of these abominations the Lord your God will destroy them from before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God."

10.8| Such teachings and commandments of piety, and countless others, God the Word in former times laid down for them through Moses, handing them the elements of the pious life as introductory lessons, by means of symbols and a kind of shadowy, bodily worship in the circumcision of the body and certain other things of that kind carried out on earth.

10.9| But as time went on, not even any of the prophets after him had enough strength, on account of the excess of wickedness, to heal the evils of life, and from day to day the working of the demons advanced to greater things, so that even the Hebrew nation itself was being carried off in the ruin of the godless. Then at last the Savior and Physician of the universe himself came down to human beings, going to the aid of his own angels on behalf of human salvation, because the Father had promised in advance to grant him this, as he himself teaches in the Psalms, saying: "The Lord told me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Request it of me, and I shall give you the nations as your inheritance, and the limits of the earth as your holding."

10.10| No longer was it only the righteous, far-seeing Israel, nor only his own portion; all the nations on earth, which had before been allotted to a number of angels and had wallowed in every kind of impiety, he brought under his own authority, and he came proclaiming to all the knowledge and friendship of his Father, promising release and remission of the ignorance and sins of former times.

10.11| This he also proclaimed plainly, saying: "The strong need no physician, but those who are ill. I did not come to summon the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

10.12| And he came to his own angels, the very ones who had formerly presided over the nations, and was seen by them. And they, recognizing at once and most exactly their helper and Lord, came to him full of joy and served him, as the sacred Scripture of the gospel teaches when it says: "And angels came and served him"; and when a throng of the heavenly army, praising God, cried: "Glory in the highest to God, and peace on earth, good will among men."

10.13| These, then, as his own angels needing his alliance, he took up in some such way; but the accursed demons that had long flown about the haunts of men, lording it over those on earth, unseen and seen, and the tribes of savage and cruel spirits, and the one who among them was the leader of wickedness, that terrible avenger, he put to flight and subdued with great and divine power, so that some of them, perceiving it, said: "Ah, what have we to do with you, Son of God? Have you come before the time to torment us?"

10.14| These he tormented mightily, by what he did and taught, but the whole human race he healed and tended with the gentle, kindly remedies of his words and his mild and encouraging teachings, and freed it of all kinds of diseases and passions of bodies no less than of souls, releasing it from old superstition and terrors, from the error of many gods, and from the shameful [….]; and he moved and changed those who attached themselves to him from licentiousness to a temperate life, from impiety to piety, and from injustice to justice, indeed from the dominion of bitter demons to a God-inspired grasp of true piety. Besides this, he held out to the nations throughout the whole world the gates of heavenly life and of teaching in piety, and he came down so far that he not only stretched out the saving right hand to those whose souls were sick and gravely ailing, but even from the very gates of death released those who were half dead, or even entirely lost and long buried, from the bonds of death.

10.15| For this reason above all he needed to act even as far as those regions, so that he might rule as Lord over the dead as well as the living. When, then, he is present with the Father and governs the providence over all things by divine power, the Word of God and Wisdom of God and Power of God oversees and cares for heaven itself and earth together and the natures contained in them and the divine and bodiless essences beyond heaven, and is acclaimed ruler and leader and king, and indeed God and Lord, in the divine oracles, enlightening the bodiless and intellectual natures.

10.16| He is also called the Sun of righteousness and the true light, and, serving and working together with the Father's ordinances, is styled the Father's servant and Maker; he alone knows how to serve God in due order, and standing between the unbegotten God and the created things that come after him, having taken upon himself the care of the universe and, as priest, offering on behalf of all his subjects to the Father, and alone making him favorable and gracious to all, he is named the eternal High Priest and Christ of the Father, just as among the Hebrews, in ancient times, those who by symbols carried out the image of the First were called "christs";

10.17| and when he commands the angels as their marshal, he is proclaimed Angel of Great Counsel; and since he leads the armies in heaven, he is Commander-in-chief of the power of the Lord. Then coming down to our world, laying hold of us, of our rational nature and of his own image, through the Father's love for humanity, in so far as he is seen to govern infants, and in a sense herds, he is named Shepherd of sheep, and in so far as he undertakes the healing of souls subject to passion, he would naturally be called Savior and Physician.

10.18| This is what the Hebrew name of Jesus signifies. And since at some point he also needed a human instrument, in order to show himself to human beings and teach them the true doctrine of the knowledge and piety of the Father, he did not refuse even this way. Stepping fully into our nature, he came among human beings, showing to all, through a man, God as a great marvel, so that he might not rule only from the unseen and obscure, being without flesh and body, but might be seen by them with the eyes of flesh, and give human eyes to see works of wonder beyond the human, and furthermore deliver to bodily ears the teachings that come through tongue and articulate voice. He was a truly divine and wondrous thing, such as no other is remembered ever to have appeared, showing himself both saving and beneficent to all.

10.19| So God the Word was called Son of Man and named Jesus, inasmuch as he made his visit to us for the sake of the healing and cure of human souls. The name of Jesus is also interpreted among the Hebrews as Savior. He submitted to the common conditions of our life, in no way departing from being what he was, preserving God together within the man.

10.20| At once, then, in his first descent among human beings, he mingles the divine working of great deeds with [….] of our birth: he was born like us, and clothed himself with man in the manner of a mortal; but as no longer man but God, he gave substance to the generation of what appeared from an undefiled maiden untouched by marriage, not by intercourse and corruption.

11.1| And the whole of his life afterward he carried on in this way, now showing his likeness to us in suffering, now showing God the Word, doing great works and wonders as God, uttering beforehand predictions of what was to be, and displaying by his deeds, quite openly, the God the Word whom the many did not see. And fittingly, in keeping with the beginnings, the end too of his departure from among men was brought about in a like manner.

12.1| For even to death and to the dead themselves the laws of his love for humanity called him, so that he might call back the souls of those who had died long ago.

12.2| Since the salvation of everyone from the beginning of the age was his concern, and in order that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, as the divine oracles teach, here again he took up the dispensation in a mixed manner: as man he gave over his body to the customary burial, but as God he withdrew from it.

12.3| Crying out with a loud voice and saying, "To the Father I commit the spirit," he departed from the body free, not waiting at all for death to come upon him; death was hesitating, and as it were shrinking back, or rather giving ground and fleeing, while he himself pursued it from behind and drove it on, breaking down the age-old gates of the dark recesses, and making for the dead there, bound in the chains of death, a return journey of ascent to life.

12.4| Therefore, through him the dead man was raised, and many bodies of the sleeping saints rose, driven along with him into the holy and truly heavenly city, so that it was fittingly said in the divine words: "Death, having prevailed, has swallowed up," and again, "God has wiped away every tear from every face."

12.5| And the Savior of the universe and our Lord himself, the Christ of God, called victorious, is brought in by the prophetic predictions as mocking death and loosing the bound souls there, by which he sings the song of victory, saying these very words: "Out of Hades' hand I will deliver them, and from death I will redeem their souls. Where is your victory, death? Where is your sting, death? Death's sting is sin, and sin's power is the law."

12.6| Such was his dispensation up to death, for which one who cared to inquire might find not one cause but several. The first the Word teaches: that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living; the second, that he might wipe away our sins, being slain for us and becoming a curse for us;

12.7| the third, that he might be offered to the God over all as a victim consecrated to God and a mighty sacrifice on behalf of the entire world; the fourth, that in this way he might bring about, by unspeakable words, the overthrow of the manifold deceiving and demonic activity;

12.8| The fifth reason, in addition to this: that to his acquaintances and disciples he might set before them the hope of a life with God beyond death, not in words or phrases or sounds, but in the deeds themselves, and having handed over to their eyes the promise made through words, might make them confident and more eager to proclaim to all Greeks and barbarians alike the pious way of life that had been laid down.

12.9| So at once these very acquaintances and companions, whom he himself had judged the best and chosen for himself as his apostles and disciples, he filled with the divine power that came from him, to teach the whole human race the knowledge of God which he proclaimed, so that, laying down a way of piety for all, Greeks and barbarians alike, proclaiming beforehand the departure and flight of demons and the turning away from the error of many gods, and the true knowledge of the one God alone who is over all, they might promise release from former ignorance, if they no longer persisted in it, and one hope of salvation for all through the all-wise and all-virtuous way of life which he laid down.

13.1| This being so, the mind need not be troubled when it hears of birth and body and sufferings and death in connection with the immaterial and bodiless Word of God. For just as the beams of sunlight, filling all things, suffer nothing even when they touch dead and unclean bodies, much more would the bodiless power of God not suffer in its essence, nor be harmed, nor ever be made worse than itself, in touching a body bodilessly.

13.2| What of this? Even apart from the body in which he became man, he is always and through everything present throughout all the matter of the elements and of the bodies themselves, being as it were the Word of God, the Maker; he seals into it the principles of the wisdom that comes from him, imprinting life on the lifeless and form on what by nature is formless and shapeless, stamping on the qualities of bodies the beauties that are in himself and the bodiless ideas, and moving things that by their own principle are lifeless and motionless, earth, water, air, fire,

13.3| in a most wise and wholly harmonious motion, setting all in order out of disorder, making them grow and bringing them to completion, going over all things, one might almost say, with that same divine and rational power, passing through all and touching all, yet taking no harm from anything, nor being defiled in his own nature. So, in the same way, having been among human beings, in ancient times to a few, to a number that could be counted, only the recorded prophets and righteous men, he appeared now in one way and now in another; but at the end, to all alike, bad and impious, Hebrews and Greeks together, because of the surpassing goodness and love of humanity of the all-good Father, he offered himself as benefactor and savior, proclaiming this expressly: "It is not the strong who need a physician, but the ill; I came not to summon the righteous but sinners to repentance."

13.4| The Savior of all called: "Come to me, all you who [….] and are burdened, and I will give you rest." He called and healed abundantly through the human instrument which he had put forward, like a musician displaying his skill through the lyre; and for souls sick in bodies, like the best of physicians treating a man with a kindred and fitting remedy, he also offered himself as the pattern of an all-wise, all-virtuous and pious life, teaching truths not gathered from others but received from himself and from the Father, the things which had been laid down as law long ago and from the age's beginning for the God-loving men of old and for the Hebrews before Moses;

13.5| and caring for bodies no less than for souls, he provided for the fleshly eyes of men to see the things he did through the flesh, and for the ears of flesh to hear the teachings that sounded through tongue and flesh, and he accomplished everything through the man he had taken up, for those who could perceive his divinity in no other way but this.

13.6| All these things, then, for our use and benefit, the all-loving Word of God served according to the Father's counsels, remaining himself immaterial and bodiless, just as he had been before with the Father; he did not change his essence, nor vanish from his own nature, nor was he bound by the fetters of flesh, nor fall from his divinity, nor lose his own power as the Word; nor, while he spent time here where the human vessel was, was he prevented from being elsewhere in the universe. Rather, even then, while he lived as a citizen among men, he filled all things, being with the Father and dwelling in him, and at the same moment cared for all things, in heaven and on earth, not at all shut out of his presence everywhere as we are, nor hindered from doing his divine works as usual; rather he imparted of himself to the man, and received nothing in return from the mortal, supplying the divine power to the mortal but drawing in no share in exchange from the mortal.

13.7| The bodiless one, therefore, was not defiled by being born in a body, nor did the impassible suffer in his essence at the hands of the mortal, since, if a lyre were struck, as it might be, or its strings torn apart, the player would not be likely to suffer, and if a wise man's body were punished, we could not reasonably say that the wisdom in him, or even the soul in the body, was beaten or burned. So much the more reasonable is it to say that the Word's nature or power took no harm from the body's sufferings, just as the example of light given us would not allow that the sun's rays, sent from heaven to earth and touching mud and mire and every pollution, are in any way stained.

13.8| Nothing prevents one from saying that these things are lit up by the beams of the light; but to say that the sun is defiled by the mixture with bodies, or smeared with mud, no longer. And these things would not be foreign to the nature of bodies.

13.9| But the immaterial and bodiless Word of God, who is life itself and intellectual light itself and all the other things already listed, makes everything he touches with divine and bodiless power necessarily live and pass its time in rational light. So any body that he touches is at once made holy and enlightened, and every disease and weakness and all such things give way before it.

13.10| Lack receives in exchange the fullness that comes from him. So the corpse, touching only a little the power of the Word, was raised, brought to life; death fled before life; darkness was dissolved by light; and the corruptible put on incorruption, the mortal immortality.

14.1| And what else but that the whole man was swallowed up by the divinity, and God the Word was again God such as he was before he became man, and he deified the man along with himself as first fruits of our hope, judging this very man worthy there of eternal life with himself and of sharing in the divinity and blessedness, and so giving to us all alike the greatest proof of immortality and kingdom with him and in him?

15.1| This was the end of his coming among human beings: to lead back to his own the one who long ago had strayed from the knowledge of the Father, and to let the kinsman and friend, judged worthy of his image, enjoy the life proper to it, and to make friend and kinsman of the Father the very one for whose sake the Word of God himself undertook to become man.

15.2| In this way, to put it briefly, the subject of our Savior and Lord Jesus the Christ, with its varied dispensation, will be established out of the prophetic words among the Hebrews, as the testimonies from them will show a little later, the new writings confirming the old and the gospels sealing the testimonies of the prophets. But this being so, it is time next to go through his title, by which he is proclaimed Jesus and Christ, and through how many prophecies he was announced by name.

15.3| First let us consider what the title of Christ means to show, before we begin the detailed gathering of the prophetic oracles on the matter before us. I think it right to take up first the title of Christ itself and to articulate the idea of it, so that nothing of what is sought in this place may escape us.

15.4| Another person, starting from what is near and from our own affairs, would say that Moses was the first of all to legislate that those consecrated to God be anointed with prepared ointment, since he thought their bodies ought to breathe out fragrance and something good, for everything foul-smelling is dear to foul and unclean powers, as on the contrary the fragrant is dear to lovers of the good.

15.5| Hence also he legislated that the priests in the temple should use each day an incense compounded to an extreme of fragrance, so that, as the air is blended and drives away the foul smell, a divine effluence may mingle with those who pray.

15.6| For this very reason he also composed, by the perfumer's art, a most fragrant anointing oil, for those about to be set over the public affairs of the people to be anointed with it; and Moses was the first to give the name of Christ to those anointed. This ointment was handed down not only to high priests but to the prophets and kings after them, who alone were permitted to be anointed with this ointment.

15.7| These explanations would be more ready to hand, but they stand far from the inspired and lofty mind of the prophet.

15.8| For that wonderful and truly great initiator, knowing that every earthy and bodily substance is distinguished only by its qualities, in no way preferred one to another, knowing that all are offspring of one matter which never stands still and has nothing stable in its nature, but is always flowing and hastening to its own corruption. So he did not choose the pleasant quality of bodies, nor would he have preferred for its own sake what is agreeable to the senses; for that would be the affection of a soul that had sunk to the ground and to bodily pleasure.

15.9| Countless men, in fact, who make their bodies effeminate, passionate and licentious besides, using the refinements of perfumes of every kind, carry about souls that are foul and filthy with every stench, while on the contrary the God-loving, breathing virtue, bring with them a fragrance far better than the aromas from the earth, the fragrance that is given off by temperance and righteousness and all piety, and count the odor of material bodies as nothing.

15.10| Having grasped these things well, the prophet made no principal concern of perfumes or incenses, but handed over images of better and divine things, as far as was possible, through bodies, to those who can learn divine things in this way alone and no other.

15.11| That this very thing was said is recorded in the divine oracle, which says: "See that you make everything according to the place shown you on the mountain." So by performing the anointing with ointment he was legislating symbols of other things, which it is customary to call types.

15.12| The lofty account of them, made known in secret teachings, so far as it can be put into words, had this meaning: the one good, the only truly fragrant and honorable thing, the cause of all life, who has given to all, together with being, well-being, this one the Hebrew account knew as first cause of the universe, the Most High himself, the universal King and Maker of all, God.

15.13| The divine Spirit, then, by a fitting and congenial comparison, calls the all-powerful, all-good power of the supreme and unbegotten Godhead, the supplier of every fair thing, the oil of God; therefore it calls the one who shares in it Christ, the anointed.

15.14| By oil here do not understand pity, or sorrow at the misfortunes of others, but what the fruit of the tree provides: what is unmixed with any other liquid matter, that increases light, heals toils, relieves weariness, makes the anointed cheerful, shines like light with its gleamings, and makes the face of those who use it bright and radiant; which the divine Scripture says: "to [….] the face with oil."

15.15| With this example, then, the Word compared the supreme power of God, the universal Leader and King, and called "Christ" and "anointed" the first and only one anointed with the whole of it, who has shared in the divine fragrance of the Father, which is common to none, who alone was begotten from him as God the Word, and who by participation in the unbegotten, first and greater one who begot him has been shown to be God from God. For this reason also in the Psalms the oracle addresses this very one anointed by the Father, saying: "Your throne, O God, is unto the age of the age; a rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom. You loved righteousness and hated injustice; for this reason God, your God, anointed you with oil of exultation beyond your fellows."

15.16| But the nature of oil is one, whereas "ointment" signifies the coming together of many things into one. Accordingly the first and unbegotten power of God the universal King, in so far as it is conceived as simple, uncompounded and unmixed with any other essence, is compared to the simple name of oil; but in so far as it comprises in itself many ideas, such as creative or royal, provident and judging, humane and saving, and countless others observed in thought, it is fittingly likened in turn to ointment, the power that embraces many good things; and this ointment the divine words teach us the true and sole High Priest of God has employed.

15.17| Moses himself, indeed, the first deemed worthy to behold in secret the divine things and the rites concerning the first and only anointed one and High Priest of God, performed by him in his theophanies, is ordered to establish on earth images and symbols of what was understood in those visions, so that those counted worthy of them might practice beforehand with the symbols until the true things were beheld.

15.18| Setting apart for the time being the man from among men fit to serve as priest to God on earth, he was the first to name him Christ, in reference to the contemplation of intelligible things; and by making him through a fragrant anointing superior to the rest of men, he proclaimed outright and expressly that the whole nature of the created, and much more the human, falling short of the unbegotten power, in itself needs the fragrance from the better.

15.19| But to attain the highest and first it is lawful for no one; for this prerogative was reserved for the only-begotten and firstborn alone; and those after him could enjoy the good things in no other way than through participation in the second. The symbol in Moses, then, was of the divine Spirit.

15.20| "There are distinctions of gifts, but the same Spirit," in which he thought priests and prophets and kings should especially strive to share, since they are consecrated to God not for themselves alone but for the whole nation.

15.21| That the symbols in Moses belonged to more divine things, and that it was possible even without earthly ointment for those possessed by the divine Spirit to be called Christs, let us examine a little more precisely.

15.22| David, in the 104th Psalm, taking up the histories concerning Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, calls those very God-loving forefathers, who lived even before the times of Moses, Christs, for no other reason than the inflow of the divine Spirit in which they shared.

15.23| After recounting how they sojourned among foreigners and, when plotted against, found God their savior, as set out in Moses, he names them at once prophets and Christs, though Moses was not yet among men, nor the ointment prepared according to him yet legislated. Hear what the Psalm says: "Remember his marvelous works that he did, his wonders and the decisions of his mouth; seed of Abraham, his servants, sons of Jacob, his chosen.

15.24| He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth. He remembered his covenant forever, the word that he commanded for a thousand generations, which he made with Abraham, and his oath to Isaac. And he established it for Jacob as a decree, and for Israel as an everlasting covenant, saying: To you I shall give the land of Canaan as the measuring-line of your inheritance. And they passed from nation to nation and from one kingdom to another people. He let no man wrong them, and he reproved kings on their account: Do not touch my christs, and act not wickedly against my prophets."

15.25| This is what David says; and Moses recounts what kings he reproved, saying: "And the Lord afflicted Pharaoh with great afflictions, and his house, on account of Sarah the wife of Abraham."

15.26| Again he writes concerning the king of Gerar: "Then God came to Abimelech by night in a dream, and said: Behold, you are about to die because of the woman whom you took; and she is Abraham's."

15.27| Of him, going on further, he says: "Now return the woman to the man, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you."

15.28| You see how by these words David, or rather the divine Spirit through him, called the God-loving men of old and prophets Christs, although they were not anointed with the earthly ointment. How could they be, when Moses gave that ordinance in later times? Hear also Isaiah prophesying most clearly about the Christ, that he would be sent by God to human beings as redeemer and savior, and would come to proclaim release to those captive in soul and sight to those blind in mind.

15.29| For this one again the prophet teaches was made Christ, not with prepared ointment, but with the intelligible, God-befitting anointing of the Father's divinity, anointed not by men but by the Father.

15.30| He says, then, in his person: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, on account of which he anointed me; and he has sent me to announce good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives, to heal the broken-hearted, and sight to the blind."

15.31| Let this be observed first: that Isaiah, similarly to David, prophesies of the one he said would come to men and proclaim release to captives and sight to the blind that he was made Christ, not with prepared ointment, but with the power of the unbegotten Father, the all-good. And by a certain prophetic custom the prophet speaks of things to come as already past and as if it concerned the prophesying person himself.

15.32| So far, then, we have learned that those called Christs in the true sense of the word are anointed by God and not by men, with the divine Spirit and not with prepared oil.

15.33| It is time to see that the account among the Hebrews also knows the true Christ of God to be a divine power greater than human nature. Hear David again, saying that he recognizes an eternal priest of God, proclaiming him his Lord, and confessing that he shares the throne of the supreme God, in the 109th Psalm, where he speaks in some such words as these: "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on my right, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. The Lord will send out the rod of your power from Zion, and you shall rule in the midst of your enemies. With you is sovereignty in the day of your power, in the splendor of your holy ones. From the womb before the morning star I begot you. The Lord swore and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." And see how in these words David, king of the whole Hebrew nation and, in addition to the kingdom, adorned with the divine Spirit, perceived such a great and supernaturally wonderful person, the one signified by him and beheld in the Spirit, that he named him his own Lord. "For the Lord," he says, "said to my Lord."

15.35| Moreover he knows him as an eternal High Priest, and priest of the God Most High, and sharing the throne of the God over all, and his offspring. Among the Hebrews it was impossible to be a priest to God without anointing, which is why it pleased them to call all such persons Christs. So the priest signified in the Psalm too would be a Christ.

15.36| For how was he attested as priest unless he had first become Christ? Moreover he is said to be priest forever. This could no longer fit a human nature. For to last forever does not belong to a man, since our race is mortal and perishable.

15.37| So the priest of God signified in these words was something greater than human, having received from God, with the assurance of an oath, an enduring and unending priesthood. "The Lord swore," he says, "and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek."

15.38| For since Moses records that Melchizedek was priest of the God Most High, not anointed with prepared ointment, and became priest of the God Most High long before Moses' own legislation, and by far better in virtue than the celebrated Abraham,

15.39| (he says, then: "And Melchizedek of Salem, priest of the God Most High, blessed Abraham. And without any dispute," says the apostle, "the lesser is blessed by the greater"), since, then, Melchizedek too, whoever that man was, is introduced as one not anointed with prepared ointment but consecrated to God Most High, it is fitting that the one prophesied through David should be said to be "according to the order of Melchizedek," being great and surpassing all in nature, as priest of the God over all and sharing the throne of the unbegotten power, Lord of prophet and king, and priest not merely, but eternal priest of the Father.

15.40| The divine apostle also says, examining the passages: "In this, God, wishing to show more abundantly to the heirs the unchangeableness of his counsel, interposed with an oath, so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement." And again: "They have become priests without an oath, but he with an oath, through the one who said to him: The Lord swore and will not change his mind; You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. And the many have become priests because they were prevented by death from continuing, but he, because he remains forever, has his priesthood unchangeable. Hence he is able also to save to the uttermost those who approach God through him, since he always lives to intercede on their behalf."

15.41| By these things it is established that there is among the things that are, subsisting in the intelligible realm, a divine power consecrated to the God of the universe according to the Hebrew oracles, set up as priest to the God over all not by earthly, human ointment but by a certain God-befitting and divine virtue and power.

15.42| The one prophesied through the Psalm was thus plainly presented as Son of the Most High God and an eternal priest, as having been begotten by the Most High God himself, and sharing the throne of his kingdom.

15.43| It has also been shown that the Christ spoken of through Isaiah was made so not by men but was anointed by the Father himself and through the divine Spirit, and was sent as redeemer from the captivity of men.

15.44| This one, then, Moses saw by the divine Spirit, and set up images and symbols of him among men, anointing and smearing with prepared ointment, in place of the divine Spirit, the priest who was put forward among men, and calling him Christ and anointed, with reference to the true one.

15.45| That this is so, who could be a more reliable witness than Moses himself? For in his writing he teaches that the God and Lord who spoke to him expressly commanded him, according to the intelligible and heavenly vision shown to him, to establish on earth a more bodily worship, holding an image of the intelligible and bodiless things. He is said, at any rate, to have sketched in shadow a kind of type of the order of the angels and divine powers in heaven, since the oracle said to him: "You shall make everything according to the type shown to you on the mountain."

15.46| So, as he did with the other things, did he bring in the high priest too, anointing him with earthly ointment, producing a shadowy and figurative, but not true, Christ and high priest, an imitation of the Christ and high priest in heaven,

15.47| I think I have clearly shown that the Christ in the proper sense was not a man but a Son of God, honored with the right hand of the Father's divinity, and far superior not only to mortal and human nature but to all intellectual essence among created things.

15.48| But further, as was said before, the same David in the 44th Psalm, using the heading "For the beloved and for those who will be changed," proclaims God and king and Christ together as one and the same person, writing in these words: "My heart has uttered a good word; I tell my works to the king; the reed of a swift-writing scribe is my tongue. You are fairer in beauty than the sons of men."

15.49| After this he adds: "Your throne, O God, endures to the age of the age; the rod of your kingdom is a rod of uprightness. You loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, anointed you with oil of gladness beyond your fellows."

15.50| Observe more carefully how, in the Psalm's heading "for the beloved," it opens by saying that the discourse concerns the beloved, besides stirring the hearer to understanding of what will be said. It also points out the cause of the dispensation of the discourse, saying: "To the end, for those who will be changed, for understanding, for the beloved."

15.51| Whom else could you say are those who will be changed, for whom the Psalm speaks, but those who are going to change from their former life and way, and be transferred and altered through the one prophesied? This was the beloved of God, concerning whom the Psalm in its heading says there is need of understanding in the prophecy. And if you should ask who this beloved was about whom the Psalm prophesied, the discourse will show you on the spot, beginning at once and saying: "My heart has uttered a good word." One might say that he is meant, the Word who was in the beginning in God's presence, whom the great evangelist John, speaking in theology, presents, saying: "In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God."

15.52| And "My heart has uttered a good word," if it is said in the person of the Father and God of the universe, would show the only-begotten Word of God, as a Son who subsists from the Father, but not by emission, or by division, or cutting, or diminution, or by any of the things conceived in bodies; for these are impious and wholly remote from the ineffable begetting.

15.53| According to what we have already understood, we must take these words also as follows: just as he was said to have been begotten from the womb of God and before the morning star, with us hearing such things figuratively, so we must accept the like in terms of contemplation in the intelligible realm alone. And in "My heart has uttered a good word" the divine Spirit goes through these matters by thought alone, and here too it is fitting for us to say, as is our custom in each of the theological statements about him, that pious word: "Who will describe his generation?" Even if the divine Scriptures, in the manner of mortal human speech, say "to be begotten" and take up the word "womb."

15.54| For these matters belong to contemplation by thought alone, and are subject to the laws of allegory, no other way; just as "My heart has uttered a good word" might be said to be spoken about the constitution and coming into essence of the first Word, since it is not lawful in any other way to understand "heart" of the God of the universe in the sense that we understand it in ourselves. Yet someone could say that this is the Word that was in God's presence in the beginning, the one signified in the Psalm, fittingly called a good Word, as being the offspring of the all-good Father.

15.55| But we, going a little further in the Psalm, shall find the prophesied one, this very beloved of God, anointed again, not as here by Moses, nor by anyone among men, but by the highest God over all and his own Father. As it goes on to say: "Therefore God, your God, anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your fellows."

15.56| The one who is attested here too as anointed by the God over all, by what other name could one call him than Christ? So from these words we already have two names of the prophesied one, Christ and Beloved, given to one and the same person. As for the cause of the anointing, on account of which the one signified is said to have received anointing with the oil of gladness, the Psalm teaches it, and it will be plain to you if you go back a little, or rather look at the whole sense of the passage.

15.57| The Psalm, then, addressing the prophesied Christ and Beloved of God himself, says what was set out a little earlier, in which it was said: "O God, your throne is forever and ever; the rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom. Righteousness you have loved, and iniquity hated; therefore God, your God, anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your fellows."

15.58| Consider, then, whether these words were not addressed directly to God. For "you, the God," it says, in place of "O God": "Your throne is forever and ever, and the rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom. And since you yourself, God, have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, God, your God, has therefore anointed you, and set you up as Christ beyond all." The Hebrew Scripture makes this plainer, which Aquila, translating exactly, rendered somewhat thus: "Your throne, O God, is forever and yet beyond; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

15.59| You loved the righteous and hated impiety; on this account your God anointed you, O God, with the oil of joy from your companions." In place of "God, your God," the Hebrew word itself contains "O God, your God," so that the whole is: "You have loved, O God, the righteous, and hated impiety; therefore on this account he has anointed you, O God, he who is supreme and greater, your own God too," so that there are both the one anointed and the one anointing, who is far prior, being God of all, and especially of the anointed one himself.

15.60| This would also become clear to anyone who attends to the Hebrew tongue itself. For in the first address, where Aquila rendered "Your throne, O God," saying plainly "O God" in place of "the God," the Hebrew contains Elōim. And here likewise, in "Therefore he has anointed you, O God," Elōim is used, which indicated the vocative case, "O God."

15.61| But in place of the nominative of the name, as it is said "Therefore God, your God, has anointed you," the Hebrew contains Elōach, quite precisely, so that Elōim, put in the vocative, signifies "O God," and Elōach "your God," in the nominative; so that the interpretation which reads "Therefore he has anointed you, O God, your God" is accurate.

15.62| Most plainly, then, through these words the passage, addressing God, says that he was anointed by God with the oil of gladness beyond all who ever shared the same title.

15.63| In these words, therefore, you have clearly God anointed becoming Christ, not by prepared ointment, nor entering this office through men, nor even like the rest of men.

15.64| This same person was also the beloved of God and his offspring, and was proclaimed eternal priest and sharer of the Father's throne. And who could this be but the firstborn Word of God, God in the beginning with God, who is spoken of in theology through the whole inspired Scripture, as the discourse will show at greater length in what follows?

15.65| Having first considered these matters concerning the essence and title of Christ, let us now take up the subject proposed and see by how many prophetic predictions the Christ was announced by name.

16.1| From Psalm 2. By how many Scriptures the Christ was proclaimed by name, as being plotted against by kings and rulers and nations and peoples, as begotten of God, called Son of Man, and receiving from the Father the inheritance of nations and the ends of the earth. "Why did nations rage, and peoples meditate on empty things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers gathered as one against the Lord and against his Christ."

16.2| After this: "But I was appointed king by him on Zion, his holy mountain, declaring the decree of the Lord. The Lord said to me, My Son you are; today I have begotten you. Ask me, and I shall give you nations for your inheritance, and for your possession the ends of the earth."

16.3| Most clearly through these words too the divine Spirit proclaims the Christ, calls him Son of God as was said before, and at the same time signifies that a plot would be made against him, and announces beforehand the calling of the nations that came through him; things which the outcome of events has shown expressly in the deeds themselves in the case of our Savior Jesus Christ. Even now, in fact, nations and peoples, kings and rulers have not ceased from conspiring against him and his teaching.

16.4| But if those of the circumcision refer these things to a future time, it is time for them to confess that the Christ whom they expect will be plotted against again, according to the present oracle, which says: "The kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers gathered as one against the Lord and against his Christ." This they would not grant, expecting that the Christ who is to come will be a great potentate and eternal king and their own redeemer.

16.5| For if that one too, when he comes, should suffer like the one who has come, why should one believe or disbelieve him more than this one? And if, shut out from this, they refer the oracle to David or to one of the kings of the Jewish nation descended from him, it must also be shown that neither David nor any other distinguished person among the Hebrews is recorded either as called Son of God or as begotten by God, according to what is prophesied in the Psalm, nor as ruling all the nations, nor as plotted against by kings, rulers and peoples. And if none of those is shown, while all this is established by the facts themselves, and the Christ of God both endured it long ago and is still today resisted by kings and rulers, by nations and peoples, what prevents him from being the one prophesied by the oracle that says: "The kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers gathered as one against the Lord and against his Christ"? Only to him would also fit what follows in the Psalm, in which it is said: "The Lord said to me, My Son you are; today I have begotten you. Ask me, and I shall give you nations for your inheritance, and for your possession the ends of the earth."

16.6| For indeed these words too have, beyond dispute, found the outcome of the prophecy in him alone, when the sound of his disciples went forth into the whole earth, and their words to the limits of the world.

16.7| The discourse names Christ expressly, announcing beforehand, as though teaching in his own person that he is God's Son, with "The Lord told me, You are my Son, today I have begotten you." To this you may add what is said again in Proverbs from his own person: "Before the mountains were settled, before all the hills, he begets me." Then what the Father says to him in the 109th Psalm: "From the womb before the morning star I have begotten you."

16.8| Observe that the sacred Scriptures prophesy that this same one, named expressly as Christ and also Son of God, would be plotted against by men and would take the nations as his inheritance and hold the ends of the earth, signifying his dispensation toward men by two proofs: the plot against him and the submission of the nations to him. Psalm 19: Christ, by name, obtaining all his requests from the Father.

16.9| "May the Lord fulfill all your requests. Now I know that the Lord has rescued his Christ; he will answer him from his holy heaven." Since the present task is to show by how many passages the Christ is proclaimed by name in the prophecies, I set these down too, which plainly proclaim the Christ.

16.10| The whole Psalm sends up a prayer, in the person of the holy men, for the person of the Christ. For since for us and on our behalf he took upon himself every outrage in becoming man, we are taught to pray together with him as he prays and begs the Father for us, as one defending himself against the wars waged against us, visible and invisible. Therefore we say to him from the Psalm, as it stands: "May the Lord hear you in the day of your affliction; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you. May he send you help from the sanctuary, and support you out of Zion."

16.11| Then, since it is proper to him, as great High Priest, to perform on our behalf the spiritual priestly services in praises and theologies, and since, as priest, he offered himself and the man he had taken from the earth to God and Father on our behalf as a whole burnt offering, for this reason we say to him: "May he remember all your sacrifice, and make your whole burnt offering fat."

16.12| And because everything he plans is saving and beneficial in the world, we fittingly cry to him: "May the Lord grant you according to your heart," saying, "and fulfill all your counsel."

16.13| After this, confessing his rising from the dead, we say: "We will rejoice in your salvation." For what else could be understood as the Christ's salvation but his resurrection from the dead, through which he raises up all who had fallen before? Hence we say: "And in the name of our God we shall be magnified, and may the Lord fulfill all your requests."

16.14| Besides all this, we are instructed to say: "Now I have come to know that the Lord saved his Christ," not as having known this long ago, but only when we first understood his salvation, having grasped the power of his resurrection. Psalm 27: Christ, by name, having the Father as Lord and protector. "The Lord is the might of his people, and the defender of the saving acts of his Christ."

16.15| The Psalm now in hand also refers to the Christ, containing the Christ's own prayer, which he prayed at the time of the passion. Therefore at the beginning of the Psalm he says: "To you, Lord, I cried; my God, do not be silent toward me, or I shall become like those who go down to the pit."

16.16| Near the end he prophesies his resurrection from the dead, saying: "Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard the voice of my supplication. The Lord is my helper and my protector; in him my heart hoped, and I was helped, and my flesh flourished again, and willingly I will give thanks to him." After these words the divine, prophetic Spirit adds: "The Lord is the might of his people, and the defender of the saving acts of his Christ,"

16.17| teaching us that all the wonders of the Christ recorded in the divine Scriptures, done for the salvation of men, whether they be lessons or letters or what are now called the mysteries of his resurrection from the dead, were brought about by the nod and power of the Father, who shields his own Christ in all the wondrous and saving words and deeds. Psalm 83: Christ, by name, inscribing God as overseer; and the single day of his resurrection, and the single house of God, his church.

16.18| "Our protector, behold, O God, and look upon the face of your Christ. For one day in your courts is better than thousands. I chose to be cast down in the house of my God rather than to dwell in the tents of sinners."

16.19| Those who know the Christ to be the Word of God and wisdom and true light and life, and then reflect on his becoming man, were struck with amazement at the strangeness of the will, so as to say: "And we saw him, and he had neither form nor beauty, but his form was without honor and failing beyond the sons of men. A man in affliction and knowing how to bear sickness, for he turned his face away and was dishonored."

16.20| Fittingly they entreat God to regard the face of the Christ, dishonored and outraged for our sake, and to be gracious to us because of him, since he has taken up our sins and suffers pain for us. They plead for this, all but longing and setting it in prayer to gaze on the face of the glory of the Christ and to look upon the day of his light; this was the day of his rising again from the dead, which, being one and alone truly sovereign and the Lord's, they say is better than countless days understood in more ordinary ways, or those laid down in Moses with feasts and new moons and sabbaths, which the divine apostle teaches are a shadow of days, not days. This one Lord's day of our Savior alone is said to shine not everywhere, but only in the Lord's courts.

16.21| These courts would be the churches of Christ throughout the world, being courts of God's one house, in which the one who knows such things loves and chooses to be cast down, declaring the time spent in them far better than that in the tents of sinners; unless everyone who chooses the Jews' synagogues, those who deny God's Christ, or those of the godless heretics and of the other unbelieving nations, declares them far better than the churches of Christ. Psalm 88: Christ, by name, despised and about to suffer the most shameful things, and his people, his exchange, reproached by enemies. "But you have rejected and despised, you have postponed your Christ, you have overturned the covenant of your servant. You have profaned his sanctuary to the ground," and the rest. After which he adds: "Remember, remember, Lord, the reproach of your servants, which I bore in my bosom from many nations, with which your enemies reproached, Lord, with which they reproached the exchange of your Christ."

16.22| Clearly in these words too the Christ is mentioned by name, together with the prophesied circumstances of his passion. At leisure, examining the whole Psalm, we shall show that the words before us could fit no one but our Savior and Lord alone.

16.23| But the second time that Christ is named, whom else does it indicate than the same, whose exchange, that is to say the church, the so-called enemies of Christ reproached and even now still reproach? In any case, the sufferings of our Savior that he took upon himself for us, and above all the death and the cross, every enemy of the teaching of Christ is accustomed to cast in our teeth. Psalm 131: Christ, by name, rising from the seed of David, called horn of David, putting his enemies the Jews to shame, renewing the sanctuary of the Father. "The Lord swore truth to David, and will not set him aside: Of the fruit of your belly I will set one upon your throne."

16.24| Then going down a little he says: "There I will make a horn to spring up for David; I have prepared a lamp for my Christ. I will clothe his enemies with shame, but my sanctuary will blossom upon him."

16.25| Here too the Lord swears about the one from the seed of David, which seed he also calls his horn. And again, proclaiming the Christ by name, he says he has prepared for him a lamp, the prophetic word, naturally, that went before the Christ, who alone has risen, like the light of the sun, for all human beings throughout the whole world.

16.26| David himself too had been prepared as a lamp for the Christ, holding the rank of a lamp in comparison with the sun and perfect light. "There," he says, "I will make a horn spring up," pointing to the place where he signifies that the Christ would be born.

16.27| For when David prayed to see beforehand in the Spirit the place of the Christ's birth, saying: "If I enter the tent of my house, if I go up upon the bed of my couch, if I give sleep to my eyes and slumber to my eyelids and rest to my temples, until I find for the Lord a place, a tent for the God of Jacob," the divine Spirit reveals the place in Bethlehem. Therefore he goes on to say:

16.28| "Behold, we heard of it in Ephrathah" (this is Bethlehem), "we came upon it in the fields of the forest. We will enter into his tents, we will worship in the place where his feet stood." Fittingly, then, after disclosing these things, he adds: "There I will make a horn spring up for David; I have prepared a lamp for my Christ,"

16.29| perhaps also signifying, by another understanding, the body taken up by the Christ at Bethlehem, since through the body, as through an earthen vessel, the divine power dwelling in it, as through a lamp, shone the flashings of the divine and rational light on all human beings. From Amos. Christ, by name, announced by God, made known to all human beings, and renouncing the nation of the Jews.

16.30| "Prepare to call on the God of Israel, for behold, he who makes firm thunder and creates the wind, and who announces to human beings his Christ, who makes the dawn and the mist and walks upon the high places of the earth. The Lord God Almighty is his name. Hear the word of the Lord, which I take up against you, a lament. The house of Israel has fallen; it will rise no more. The virgin of Israel has stumbled upon her land; there is none to raise her up."

16.31| Seventh, God is said, in announcing Christ by name to human beings, to establish thunder and to create spirit. The "thunder" is the gospel proclamation, so named because it is heard by all people; and likewise the Spirit of Christ breathed into the apostles is meant. This was plainly fulfilled at our Savior's coming, when God is also prophesied to make dawn and mist together: dawn for those who received the saving light, and the opposite for those of the circumcision who disbelieved in him.

16.32| For these the prophetic word also proclaims the final sentence, adding a lament over the nation of the Jews, which overtook them immediately after the impiety against our Savior Jesus Christ.

16.33| For from that time, truly, down to this day the house of Israel has fallen, and a vision and a pronouncement was once issued by God concerning their fallen house in Jerusalem and concerning their whole body, to the effect that they will never rise again and that there is no one present to raise them up. "There is no one," he says, "to raise her up."

16.34| For since, when he came, they did not receive the Christ of God, he rightly left them and passed over to all the nations, teaching the cause of the change by words in which, weeping, he all but made his defense, saying: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you did not want it. See, your house is left to you desolate." From Habakkuk: Christ, by name, saved by the Lord the Father and saving his own christs. "You went out for the salvation of your people, to save your christs; you cast death upon the heads of the lawless."

16.35| Aquila: "You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your people with your Christ." Since Aquila has given the singular in place of the plural, saying that the God of all effected the salvation for the people together with Christ, we have fittingly set down his wording, as it bears plainly on the question at hand.

16.36| According to the translation of the Seventy, there may be several who are called Christs out of him and through him, of whom it has been said, "Do not touch my christs, and do not do evil to my prophets"—both those who have believed in him and have been counted worthy of the holy anointing of new birth in Christ, and who are able to say, like the holy apostle, "We have become sharers in Christ." From the Lamentations of Jeremiah: Christ, by name, plotted against by the Jews and recognized by the nations. "The breath of our face, Christ the Lord, was caught in their corruptions, of him we said: Beneath his shadow we shall be alive among the nations."

16.37| The divinely inspired prophets of God, foreseeing the future by the divine Spirit, foretold that they themselves and their words would live and would be at work, as among the living, among the nations, but not in Israel. Again they said, by name, that the Christ, as being the very Christ from whom the prophetic Spirit had been supplied to them, would be caught in their corruptions.

16.38| Whose? Is it not clear that it is those of the circumcision who plotted against him? Observe here too how the prophecy announces that the Christ will be caught, which could not fit the second coming of Christ, which the prophetic words proclaim will be glorious and accompanied by a divine kingdom. For this reason it is likely that those of the circumcision go astray, taking what concerns his second appearing as if it were his first arrival, though the text nowhere allows this.

16.39| For it is not possible, at the same time and in the same respect, to suppose him both glorious and inglorious, both honored and a king, and again having neither form nor beauty but dishonored beyond the sons of men; and again both savior and redeemer of Israel, and yet plotted against by them and led like a sheep to slaughter and handed over to death for their lawless deeds.

16.40| It is well, then, as we hold, and as the appearance of events shows, that the predictions about Christ are divided into two modes: those that are more human and somber are agreed to have found fulfilment at his first coming, while those more glorious and divine are still awaited at his second presence.

16.41| A clear proof of the first coming is the knowledge of God that has been carried into effect through him among all the nations, which countless prophetic voices foretell in various ways, as does the present one too, where it says, "of whom we said, We shall live among the nations in his shadow." From the first book of Kingdoms: Christ, by name, exalted by the Lord the Father. "The Lord went up into the heavens and thundered; he will judge the ends of the earth, and will give strength to our kings, and will lift up the horn of his Christ."

16.42| Here again the word of God has in mind, by name, the restoration of Christ to the heavens, and the divine Scripture foretells both his teaching to all, which is heard far and wide like thunder, and the judgment of all that will follow after this. Next after this, the Lord himself is said to give strength to our kings. These would be the apostles of Christ, concerning whom you have in the sixty-seventh Psalm, "The Lord will grant a word to those who bring the good news with great power."

16.43| In this passage too he mentions Christ by name, our Savior understood as to his humanity, whose horn, he says, will be exalted, showing the invisible power in him and his kingdom. For it is Scripture's custom to call a kingdom a horn. In the eighty-eighth Psalm, too, it is written, "and in my name his horn shall be exalted." From the first book of Kingdoms: Christ, by name, receiving from the Father a faithful house, his church, and as a faithful priest presiding genuinely over his church for all time. "See, days are coming, he says, and I will root out your seed and the seed of your father's house; and there shall be no elder in your house."

16.44| After saying this to Eli, the oracle goes on to say, after other things, "And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who will perform everything within my heart and within my soul; and for him I will build a faithful house, and he will walk before my Christ all the days."

16.45| The divine word, having threatened removal and rejection for those who do not minister in the right way, promises to appoint another priest from another stock, of whom it says that he will walk before his Christ, or, as Aquila rendered it, will go about in the face of his anointed one, or, as Symmachus has it, will move about in front of his Christ.

16.46| Who could this be? Everyone who approaches in godliness the priestly service of the Christ of God, for whom the God of all himself promises to build the house of the church, as a wise architect and builder, signifying no other house than the church established by name for Christ throughout the whole inhabited world, where everyone consecrated through the Christ of God, in the spiritual services, is said to do what is dear to God's heart and soul, whereas the sacrifices performed through the blood of bulls and goats under the old figurative training are agreed, through the prophecy of Isaiah, to have been hated by God.

16.47| So much for the passages in which Christ was proclaimed beforehand by name. But since in most of them the sufferings of Christ are joined to his title, it is necessary to take up again what was said earlier about his divinity, which we showed earlier to be conveyed in the forty-fourth Psalm, entitled "for the beloved," where the text, having first reminded us of him as a king, adds after other things concerning the divinity of Christ: "Your throne, O God, stands forever and ever; the rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom; righteousness you have loved, and injustice you have hated; therefore God, your own God, anointed you with the oil of exultation beyond your companions."

16.48| For in these words, as we already showed before, the one who is praised, being himself one, is plainly said to be God, having loved righteousness and hated injustice. And for this reason he was anointed by another, greater God, who is his Father, with a better oil, one surpassing the types, the oil called that of gladness.

16.49| And he who was anointed with such oil, not by human beings nor through human beings but by the most high God himself, what else could he rightly be called but Christ? He is therefore shown to be named God at the same time, just as was already established earlier in the proper places. And Isaiah too must be recalled again here, who said, "The Lord's Spirit is upon me, for which reason he anointed me, sending me to bring good news to the poor, to heal those crushed in heart, to proclaim release to captives and sight to the blind."

16.50| We showed in these passages too that the priests who in earlier times came from among human beings to serve the divine were anointed with prepared oil, whereas the prophecy tells us that the one it indicates was anointed with divine power.

16.51| This applied wholly to our Savior, Jesus, the one true Christ of God, who once, in the synagogue of the Jews, took up the prophecy, went through the passage set out, and taught that the reading had been fulfilled in himself.

16.52| For it is written that "when he had read and folded the book and given it back to the attendant, he sat down, and the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

16.53| Besides all this, the words of Moses must be set beside these again. He appointed his own brother Aaron high priest according to the pattern shown to him, in accord with the oracle that said to him, "You shall make everything according to the pattern shown to you on the mountain," and it is clear that, by the divine Spirit and with the eyes of the mind, he saw the true Christ of God, the great High Priest of the universe, whose image he sketched along with the rest of the bodily and figurative worship, and honored the man so designated with the title of the true Christ.

16.54| The divine apostle also shows this, saying of the laws of Moses, "who worship in a pattern and shadow of the heavenly things." And once more, "since the law has a shadow of the good things to come." And again, "Therefore let no one judge you in food or drink or with regard to a festival or new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of what is to come."

16.55| For if the regulations about indifference in foods and those about festivals and sabbath, being shadowy, preserved an outline of other true and mystical realities, you will not unreasonably say that the high priest too was taken as a symbol of another high priest and was named Christ as a symbol of the one who is alone and truly Christ; he falls short of the true one to the degree that the true Christ hears from the God of all, "Sit at my right hand, until I set your enemies as a footstool for your feet," and "Rule in the midst of your enemies,"

16.56| and "From the womb before the morning star I begot you," and "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." By these words he is plainly shown to be the offspring and Son of God, having come into being before the morning star and before all creation, an eternal high priest.

16.57| But the Christ of Moses, who acted out the pattern in a brief time as in a play, lies reckoned among mortals, having handed on the reality to another, the one who alone is true. And the true Christ, though he had no need of the anointing according to Moses nor of prepared oil and earthly matter, nevertheless filled the inhabited world with his excellence and his title, establishing among all the nations the race of Christians, named after him.

16.58| But of the Christ of Moses it would not even be known that he was ever so named among human beings, except through the writing of Moses; and he, late on, after the exodus from Egypt, was purified by certain sprinklings and sacrifices of blood and anointed with prepared oil, Moses having anointed him.

16.59| But the archetypal and true Christ, from the beginning and to endless ages, wholly and entirely like himself in all things and varying in nothing, was always, both before his sojourn among human beings and likewise after it, anointed not by a human being nor by matter among human beings, but by the God over all, with the unbegotten divinity.

16.60| And since the matter of his title is being examined by us, a seal on all that has been said would be the saying of the most wise Solomon in the Song of Songs: "Your name is ointment poured out."

16.61| For he, too, supplied with divine wisdom and deemed worthy of the more hidden insights concerning Christ and his church, mentioning the one as a heavenly bridegroom and the other as his bride, when the question arises what the bridegroom's name was, cries out as if to him: your name, bridegroom, is ointment: not ointment merely, but ointment poured out.

16.62| What name could indicate poured-out ointment better than the name of Christ? For one would not become or be called Christ in any other way than by ointment poured on. What kind of ointment this was, with which the Christ spoken of was anointed, has been set out for us in the preceding pages. Now that so much has been said about the title of Christ, let us consider also that of Jesus.

17.1| Again it was Moses who first, using another title for his own successor, renamed him Jesus. For it stands written: "Here are the names of the men Moses dispatched to scout the land; and Moses gave the name Jesus to Nausē son of Nauē, and he dispatched them."

17.2| See, then, how the prophet, who understood no small things about the nature of names, and who philosophized at great length about the divine men renamed in his writing and the reasons why they are renamed, introduces Abraham receiving from God, as a prize for virtue, the full name of father Abraham, what that signifies being a matter not for explaining now.

17.3| So too he gave Sarah the name Sarra, and recorded that Isaac was called "laughter" before his birth, and that Jacob had the prize of the wrestling bound on him through the name Israel, and with inspired wisdom and knowledge he treated countless other matters about the power and nature of names, matters more divine than human. Although no one before him, from the beginning, had used the name of Jesus, he was the first, carried by the divine Spirit, to change the name that the man who was to be his successor in leading the people had previously had, and to call him Jesus, thinking that the title given him at birth by his ancestors was not enough; for his parents called him Nausē.

17.4| But the prophet of God, changing the name he had from birth, calls the man Jesus in accordance with the divine Spirit: he would lead the whole people after Moses' own death in no other way [….], since the legislation laid down by Moses would one day be removed and reach its end, and in a certain manner would die just like Moses himself, and no one other than Jesus alone, the Christ of God, would lead a different polity, better than the former.

17.5| Thus Moses, the most marvelous of all the prophets, knowing by the divine Spirit both titles of our Savior Jesus Christ, honored with them, as with royal diadems, the chosen few among all the rulers under him: on the two rulers and leaders of the people, namely the high priest and his own successor, he fittingly conferred the names Christ and Jesus, assigning Christ to Aaron, and Jesus to Nausē, as the one who would succeed him at his death.

17.6| In this way, then, the writing of Moses himself was adorned with the titles of our Savior Jesus Christ. From Exodus: How Jesus, Moses' successor, called an angel and about to lead the people, is said to carry the name of the Christ who speaks the oracle. "See, I am sending my angel before your face, to guard you on the way, so that he may bring you into the land that I have prepared for you. Pay attention to yourself and listen to him; do not disobey him, for he will not hold back from you; for my name is upon him."

17.7| "The name of me, who give you this oracle," says the Lord himself, "is inscribed upon the one about to bring the people into the land of the promise." And if that one was Jesus and no other, it is plain that he says his own name was placed upon him.

17.8| It is no wonder, then, that he also calls him an angel, when it is said even of John, who was a man, "See, I am sending my angel before your face, who prepares your way before you." From Zechariah: How Jesus the son of Josedek, the great priest, also bore the image and type of our Savior, who turns back to God the captivity that long held sway over human souls.

17.9| "And the Lord showed me Jesus the great priest standing before the angel of the Lord; and the devil stood at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to the devil, The Lord rebuke you, devil; the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked from the fire? And Jesus was clothed in filthy garments, and he stood before the face of the angel of the Lord, and he answered and said to those standing before him, Take away the [….]. See, I have taken away your lawless deeds, and clothe him in a long robe, and set a clean turban on his head; and they put garments on him."

17.10| And next he adds: "Listen now, Jesus the great priest, you and those near you who sit before you, for they are men who watch for portents, because I am bringing my servant, the Dawn."

17.11| And after a few lines he adds to these, saying: "And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Take what comes from the captivity, from the rulers and from its oracles and from those who have come to know it, and on that day you shall enter the house of Sophonias, who has come from Babylon, and you shall take silver and gold and make crowns, and put them on the head of Jesus the son of Josedek the great priest. And you shall say to him, Thus says the Lord Almighty: See, a man, Dawn is his name, and from beneath him he shall arise, and he shall construct the Lord's house, and he himself shall receive excellence, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And the priest shall be at his right hand, and a peaceful counsel shall be between the two."

17.12| The Jesus in the present prophet, proclaimed a great priest, seems to me to preserve a very bright image and a clear symbol of our Savior Jesus Christ, being honored with his title and having led the people's return from the Babylonian captivity.

17.13| For our Savior Jesus Christ is also said to have been sent, according to the prophet Isaiah, "to proclaim to captives, and to the blind recovery of sight, to comfort all who mourn, and to give to those who mourn in Zion glory in place of ashes, the oil of gladness." You already have, then, two great high priests, the one the Christ in Moses, the other the Jesus now in hand, who by themselves carry the symbols of the truth concerning our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.

17.14| But Aaron, the Christ in Moses, who freed the people from slavery among the Egyptians and led their journey from Egypt toward freedom and worship, would preserve the image of the true Lord, who redeemed all of us from the nations from Egyptian idolatry;

17.15| while Jesus the great priest in the prophet presided over the return from Babylon to Jerusalem, bearing a pattern of Jesus our Savior, whom we have as a great priest who has passed through the heavens, through whom we too, redeemed as if from Babylon, from the confusion and captivity of the present life, have been taught to hasten to the city of heaven, the true Jerusalem.

17.16| And fittingly Jesus, who bore in himself the image of the truth, was clothed in filthy garments, and the devil is described as standing at his right hand and opposing him, since the true Savior and Lord Jesus, descending into our captivity, took up our sins, and bore the filth of humanity, and endured the shames of the passion out of his love for us.

17.17| Therefore Isaiah says: "This one carries our sins and suffers pain for us, and we considered him to be in toil and in stripes and in ill treatment; but he was wounded because of our sins and made weak because of our lawless deeds." And John the Baptist too, when he saw the Lord, said, "See, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world."

17.18| And Paul, writing similarly of him, says: "He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." And "Christ bought us back from the curse of the law, having become a curse on our behalf." All this, then, the prophecy made plain in foretelling by the words, "And Jesus was clothed in filthy garments."

17.19| But having laid these aside at his ascent into the heavens and his return from our captivity to his own, he is crowned with the diadem of the Father's divinity, puts on the most brilliant robe of the Father's light, and is adorned with a divine turban and the other ornaments of the high priest. Nor is it hard to account for what is said of the devil. Even now he opposes the teaching of Christ and the church that Christ founded throughout the whole inhabited world, and so stands against our Savior himself, just as earlier he took the field against him in open hostility, when he came to rescue us from the captivity under the devil's power.

17.20| He tempted him, at any rate, both the first time and a second time, when he contrived the plot against him at the passion.

17.21| After all this, having routed the devil and all the invisible enemies and foes under him, he made us, the captives, his own household, and out of our very selves, as out of living stones, he set up the house of God and the commonwealth of godliness. So the oracle fits him fittingly that says: "See, a man, Dawn is his name; and from beneath him he shall rise, and he shall build the Lord's house; and he himself shall receive excellence, and shall be seated and rule on his throne."

17.22| Pay careful attention, then, to how at this point, speaking spiritually about the Jesus of old, who bore the image of the true one, he says, "See, a man, Dawn is his name." And a little lower down, as though Dawn were someone else, it is said to that very Jesus who was then present: "Listen now, Jesus, the great priest, you and those near you, for they are men who watch for portents. See, I am bringing my servant, Dawn." If, then, the word was about one [….] who was to come, that man was an image of the Dawn who was to come, called in image not only Jesus but also Dawn, if indeed "See, a man, Dawn is his name" was said to him as to one present.

17.23| Fittingly, then, for the sake of the image, this man too was counted worthy of the Savior's title, just as he was of Dawn's, since [….] "salvation of God" in the Greek tongue; for among the Hebrews [….] "salvation," and the son of Nauē is called by them Josue; and Josue is "salvation of Iao," that is, "salvation of God." Fittingly, therefore, wherever "salvation of God" is mentioned in the Greek copies, you may be sure that nothing else is meant than Jesus, in the Hebrew tongue.

17.24| Now that this much has been said about the title of our Savior as well, we shall take up the argument again from a different starting point and move on to the fuller prophetic proofs concerning him.

Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/093-demonstration-of-the-gospel-book-iv#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.

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