Demonstration of the Gospel — Book V

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

praef.1| In the book before this of the Demonstration of the Gospel, the account of our Savior Jesus Christ was shown to be twofold. The one is beyond nature and transcendent: by it we define him as the only-begotten Son of God, or the essential Word of God, the second cause of the universe, or an intellectual essence, and God's firstborn nature, full of virtue, the divine and all-virtuous power that is before all begotten things, or the intellectual image of the unbegotten nature. The other is akin to us and more our own: by it, again, we define him as the Word of God who in a man proclaims the Father's godliness, the mode in which he appeared long ago in human form to Abraham and those with him (Abraham, that celebrated founder of the nation of the friends of God),

praef.2| who would appear again among human beings through human birth and in flesh like ours, and of whom it had been foretold that he would suffer the most shameful things. Since this is so, our argument would advance by its proper road and order, now that we are about to set out the prophetic testimonies concerning him, if we first examined the first mode, as we promised, and confirmed from the ancient and prophetic testimony the theology about him in the gospels. But it is necessary first to consider what kind of possession by God the prophets among the Hebrews experienced, since it is from them that we have been taught in advance the things foretold.

praef.3| Greeks and barbarians record that seats of divination and oracles were established in every part of the earth. These, they say, were brought to light by the providence of the Maker for the use and benefit of human beings, so that the prophets among the Hebrews differ in nothing from the oracles of the other nations. For just as the God over all gave oracles to the Hebrews through prophets of this kind, so too, they say, he gave oracles to the other nations through the local seats of divination and counseled them on what was to their advantage.

praef.4| For he is God not of the Jews only, they say, but of all the rest of humankind as well; he cares no more for the one than for the other, but provides for all alike, as he has given the sun ungrudgingly to all and not to the Hebrews alone, and the yearly supply of what they need, and to all a like structure of body, one manner of birth for all, and one nature of rational soul.

praef.5| In the same way, they say, he ungrudgingly grants to all human beings the science of foreknowing the future: to some through prophetic men, to others through oracles, to others through the flight of birds, or through sacrifices, or through dreams that are sent, or through chance utterances, or twitchings, or certain other signs. For these, they say, have been given to all human beings by God's providence, so that the prophets of the Hebrews appear to have nothing more.

praef.6| Such, then, is their argument; ours will answer them in something like this way. If any argument established that true gods, or divine powers, or good demons presided over the seats of divination of the peoples mentioned, or over the bird-omens, or over the rest of the things named, there would be room to grant what they say, on the ground that the God over all had given these too to those who use them, for their benefit. But if it has already been shown before, by complete demonstrations and by the admissions of the Greeks themselves, that they are demons, and not good ones either, but the causes of every harm and wickedness, how could they be prophets of God? Our argument caught them out as base in the Preparation for the Gospel: from the human sacrifice performed to them of old in every city and country and place; from the way they deceived those who consulted them, through ignorance of the future; and from the countless lies in which they were caught, sometimes openly, sometimes through the ambiguity of their oracles, by which they were shown to have entangled those who took refuge with them in very many evils, very many times.

praef.7| It was shown beforehand, too, that their tribe is foul and unclean, from their delight in shameful and licentious songs and hymns told about them, and in mythical tales and indecent and harmful stories, which they were caught ratifying against themselves and confirming as true.

praef.8| And last of all, the proof of their powerless nature was that they were extinguished and no longer gave oracles as before; and that they were extinguished at no other time than from the times of the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ.

praef.9| For from the time that the word of his gospel teaching ran out into all the nations, from then on the oracles have failed, and deaths of demons are recorded. All these things, then, and countless others like them, were the means by which the beings under discussion were exposed as wicked demons in the books of the Preparation for the Gospel.

praef.10| If, then, they are such as these, what reason requires us to regard the oracles of demons as prophecies of the God over all, or to compare what belongs to them with the prophets of God? And what were their predictions, which they made to those who asked them, when they seemed to exist? Were they not about disreputable, lowly, and cheap men, boxers, say, or others of the kind, whom they ordered people to honor with sacrifices? And what were the customs concerning human sacrifice? For this is the chief point of what has been said.

praef.11| Did they leave behind any base deed that exceeded this in absurdity, if the saviors of human beings, gods and good demons, urged their suppliants and pious refugees to slaughter their own dearest, as though they were other livestock, openly thirsting for human blood beyond the nature of any beasts, and proving that they themselves were nothing other than blood-drinkers and man-eaters and lovers of destruction? Or let anyone who wishes speak, if he can show anything dignified and worthy of virtue among these things: prophecies and predictions that extend to the whole race of human beings, or laws and civil ordinances laying down how all human beings ought to live, or philosophical doctrines and lessons put forward by the gods to lovers of philosophy.

praef.12| But no one could say that anything of the kind was ever provided for human life by the famous oracles; for if there were, human beings legislated for by gods would not have used differing and conflicting laws.

praef.13| For being gods and good, how would they not have used the same ordinances? And how not the temperate and most just legislation? What need was there, then, of the legislation of Solon, or Draco, or of the other men who gave laws to Greeks and barbarians, with gods close at hand and prescribing what was needful through their oracles?

praef.14| But if someone should say that they, and no others, were the ones legislating for each nation of human beings, let him say who that god was, and of what sort, who ordained for the Scythians to eat human flesh, or who made it law for others to have intercourse with mothers and daughters, or who commanded that the aged be thrown to dogs, as something good, or who permitted marrying sisters and males lying with males. And why must I enumerate the lawless customs among Greeks and barbarians, to prove that these were not gods but wicked and accursed demons, the marvelous givers of their oracles, who cast the thrice-wretched human race into unnatural enormities,

praef.15| when not even the gods and seers celebrated among the Greeks are shown to have provided anything profitable or advantageous for the benefit of the soul to those who consulted them?

praef.16| For why on earth did Greek men leave behind the benefit that came from them and set out for the barbarian land, gathering lessons as a trade from somewhere abroad, when they could have used the gods as teachers? For if gods or good demons gave oracles, and at one time displayed their own power through foreknowledge and other wonder-working, at another taught true wisdom through the unfailing truth of their lessons, what reason was there that the children of the philosophers were not taught by them, but, drawing their ideas for doctrines each from a different source, from long disagreement diverse sects of philosophers arose? And even if the many did not attend to them, the pious, at least, and those who walked before the gods, ought surely to have gained unerring truth from the benefit of the gods.

praef.17| Who then are these? For whomever you name, those who hold opposing opinions expose them as mistaken. But in fact, as it seems, the divination was the demons', reaching only to the detection of a thief or the loss of a vessel or some other such thing, which it was not unlikely for them, spending their time in the air about the earth, to have known; but they possessed nothing fine and wise, no philosophical doctrine, no polity, no law laid down by right reason. Or rather, if one must speak with a free voice, all of them should be held to have been the originators of evil. They listened as human beings told of their adulteries and couplings of males, their marriages with mothers and lawless unions of siblings, and countless other battles of gods, hatreds and wars of gods against gods, in songs and hymns and tales, and in the mysteries at secret rites; yet not one of them, at any rate, is ever seen to have been indignant at what was said, as at things fit for licentious men, and not even for temperate human beings, to think or say.

praef.18| And why must I press the point, when from one greatest example the savage, inhuman, and truly foul character of these beings can be seen? I mean human sacrifice.

praef.19| For to delight in the destruction of human beings, and not only in the slaughter of irrational animals, what excess of cruelty does that not outstrip? These, as I said, were the things attested in the Preparation, from the Greek philosophers and writers themselves, from which above all they are shown to be wicked demons who pervert the human race with intricate devices, now through divinations, now through birds or signs or victims or the like.

praef.20| Therefore it must be declared that their oracles did not come from the God over all. Nor would it be right to compare them with the prophets of the Hebrews, of whom the first hierophant and theologian was Moses — and how many good things he brought about for human life! First, he published a sacred writing containing true gospel doctrines concerning God, the Maker and Creator of everything, and concerning the second cause of the rational and intellectual essences that come after him, and concerning the origin of the world and of humanity; further, drawing the histories of the God-fearing Hebrews of old, beloved of God, as images of the virtues, he stirred his subjects to emulate good men, and began a divinely inspired legislation, suited to those who then used it, a light of words, and showed himself the introducer of a God-fearing religion, and above all he cried out predictions of what would come long afterward, as will be mentioned a little later.

praef.21| Such was this man; and in the same way the prophets after him: incidentally, if some matter of the day was sought, they would also tell this beforehand to those who asked, but the main point of their prophecy was accomplished for great things.

praef.22| For it was not for the divination of things of the day, sought for the present occasion, nor indeed for small and lowly matters, that they were counted worthy of divine possession; rather, the illumination of the divine Spirit in them concerned the whole race of human beings and carried the greatest subject. It did not promise predictions about a man whose body was sick, nor about this brief and suffering life, nor about something lost, nor in any way about things intermediate and indifferent, which neither improve the soul when present nor bring loss or harm when absent. There were indeed times, as I said, when they foretold these things also, but not as their chief aim, only as a consequence of their grasp of the higher things; and the original causes of their divine inspiration in prophesying embraced a greater subject than the things mentioned.

praef.23| If someone, then, examined closely the whole compass of the writing of Moses and of those after him, he would find that it contains an exhortation and teaching of piety directed to the God of the universe, the Maker of all himself, and knowledge and the highest theology of the second cause, and a turning away from all polytheistic error; then a memorial of the men of old beloved of God, who were the first to begin the piety mentioned; and predictions and announcements of those who in later times would come to live according to their way of life, through the appearing and coming among human beings of God, the second Lord and God after the supreme Father, himself the teacher of the same piety, and a savior who would appear in the life of human beings, through whom, they foretold, the manner of God-fearing worship of the Hebrews of old, beloved of God, would be handed on to all the nations, Greeks and barbarians alike.

praef.24| This was what Moses proclaimed, and this too the sons of the other prophets, all of whom announced it from one mouth; and this was the cause of the bestowal of the divine Spirit on human beings: to teach them knowledge of God and the highest theology of Father and Son, to train them in the manner of true piety, to recall those of old who had succeeded and those afterward who had fallen from the piety of their forebears, and to set out in long discourses the rebuke against these, and to prophesy the coming of the Savior and Teacher of the whole race of human beings and to announce beforehand the passing on, through him, of the ancient God-fearing religion of the Hebrews to all the nations.

praef.25| These were the things proclaimed from ages past, in concert, on the pillars and sacred books of the prophets; the very things that we ourselves, long after, see with our own eyes still being fulfilled. With one voice all these, possessed by the divine Spirit, proclaimed to all human beings the light of true piety, and purity of soul and body, and the complete cleansing of the mind, which they themselves had first practiced and put before their hearers, keeping those who approached from every licentious act, and from imitating the lawless practices of polytheistic error, and teaching them to flee headlong from every demonic undertaking, and from those human sacrifices once so zealously pursued, and from the shameful and unspeakable tales about the gods. Holding them back from these, they advised them to devote themselves to the Maker of all alone, God, who is overseer and judge of what is done among human beings, and not to be ignorant of the Christ of God who was to come among human beings, who would stand forth as savior of every race of human beings and teacher of true piety to barbarians and Greeks alike.

praef.26| So great was the difference between those possessed by the divine Spirit and those who pretended to prophesy by demonic energy. For the evil demon, as kin to darkness, casting darkness and mist over the soul by his visit, laid out the person he seized like a corpse, carried away from natural reasoning, not following what was said or done through him, wholly senseless and out of his mind; this is why they seem fittingly to have called such a collapse divination, as a kind of madness.

praef.27| But the truly divine Spirit, which is like light, or rather is light itself, wherever it comes upon a soul, at once worked in it a new and most brilliant day of light, showing it far clearer and more contemplative than before, so that it was sober and awake, and best of all discerned and judged what was being prophesied.

praef.28| For this reason it seems to me that we well and truly call such men prophets, because the divine Spirit makes visible and illuminates in them beforehand not only the present but a true and exact knowledge of things to come.

praef.29| Consider whether this account is not far better and truer, which says that the divine Spirit visits souls that have been purified and prepared, with a rational and clear mind, to receive the divine, than the account of those who shut the divine up in lifeless matter and dark recesses, in the unclean souls of women and men, and even in ravens and hawks and other birds, and in goats and other animals, and indeed in pools of water, in inspections of the liver, in the blood of foul and ugly beasts, and in the bodies of venomous creatures, such as snakes and weasels and others of the sort, through which these marvelous people have supposed that the God over all reveals foreknowledge of things to come.

praef.30| This is the view of men who have not seen the nature of God, nor even conceived the power of the divine Spirit, which in no way dwells in lifeless or irrational animals, nor even in all rational ones, unless perhaps [….] of souls alone and virtuous souls, such as the discourse has just described for us in the prophets of the Hebrews, whom we say were counted worthy of the divine Spirit, for the sake of great matters that contribute to the improvement of human beings throughout the whole world.

praef.31| And if there ever followed them, like a shadow, the knowing of present intermediate and indifferent things, and the foretelling at the right time of what those asking did not know, they provided this as well, of necessity, to those of old who came near them, so that the greedy for foreknowledge might not reasonably seem to turn aside to the outside oracles of foreign nations for lack of prophets of their own.

praef.32| But let this be the end of these matters, which are demonstrations of the divine power in the prophets of the Hebrews. It is now time to obey them, as God-inspired and wise men, who were such not in a human way but by the inspiration of the divine Spirit, and to be taught their doctrines and their pious and unerring theologies, which no longer give any doubt that they bring in anything alien to virtue and truth. Come then, taking up the discussion afresh, let us confirm, from the prophetic testimony, the theology of our Savior Jesus Christ in the Gospels.

praef.33| The testimony of the Gospel, then, speaks of Christ in this way: "In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God. Everything came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be." It also calls him intellectual light, and calls him Lord, just as it also calls him God.

praef.34| The divine Paul too, being a disciple and apostle of Christ, is in agreement with this theology, recounting of him: "Who, being the image of the invisible God, is the firstborn of all creation, for in him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him, and he is prior to all things, and all things hold together through him." He is also called God's power and God's wisdom. These very things we now propose to gather as flowers from the writings of the Hebrews, so that through the agreement in both parts the proof of the truth may be established.

praef.35| It must not be overlooked that the divine oracles, which in the Hebrew tongue contain much that is beyond the ordinary both in wording and in meaning, have received a varying translation into Greek, because of the difficulty of seeing into them. Seventy Hebrew men, then, together and in agreement translated them, and to these we shall give most attention, since the church of Christ is pleased to use them.

praef.36| Where need arises, we shall not decline even the editions by the later translators, which the Jews still like to use, so that the points of our demonstration may find a firmer support from every side. With these preliminaries made, we shall now at last take up the divine utterances themselves.

1.1| "I, Wisdom, made counsel my dwelling, and I called upon knowledge and thought. The fear of the Lord hates injustice, insolence and arrogance and the ways of the wicked. And I have hated the twisted ways of evil men. Counsel is mine, and security; prudence is mine, and strength is mine. Through me kings reign, and rulers write justice. Through me nobles are magnified, and tyrants rule the earth. I love those who love me, and those who seek me will find favor. Wealth and glory are mine, and the possession of many things and righteousness.

1.2| It is better to have my fruit than gold and much precious stone; and my offspring are better than choice silver. I walk in the ways of righteousness, and I move about in the paths of righteousness, to apportion substance to those who love me, and to fill their treasuries with good things. If I tell you what happens day by day, I shall remember to count the things from eternity. The Lord created me, the beginning of his ways, for the sake of his works; before the age he founded me, at the start, before he made the earth, and before he made the depths.

1.3| Before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were set firm, before all the hills, he begets me. The Lord made uninhabited regions and the highest inhabited parts under heaven. When he prepared the heaven, I was there beside him, and when he marked off his throne upon the winds; when he made the clouds above strong, and when he set the springs of the earth under heaven secure, when he set a limit for the sea, and the waters will not pass beyond his command; when he made the foundations of the earth strong, I was beside him, fitting things together. I was she in whom he delighted, and day by day I rejoiced before his face at every moment, when he rejoiced after completing the inhabited world, and rejoiced in the sons of men."

1.4| The divine and all-virtuous essence that is before all begotten things, the intellectual, firstborn image of the unbegotten nature, the genuine Son of the God of the universe, the only-begotten, bearing many names and spoken of in theology under very many appellations, is honored in the present passage with the dignity and title of Wisdom. We have been taught to call him Word of God and light, and life and truth, and above all Christ, power of God and wisdom of God.

1.5| In the passage now in hand, then, he himself speaks about himself, as the living Wisdom of God subsisting in her own right, through the most wise Solomon: "I, Wisdom, made counsel my dwelling, and I called upon knowledge and thought," and the words that follow these.

1.6| But also, as one who has taken on the governance and providence of the universe, he adds: "Through me kings reign, and rulers write justice. Through me nobles are magnified." Then, having said he will recall the things from eternity, he adds: "The Lord created me, the beginning of his ways, for the sake of his works; before the age he founded me." By these words he teaches at once that he is begotten, and not identical with the unbegotten, having received essence before every age, and set forth as a foundation of all begotten things.

1.7| Hence it is likely that the divine apostle, setting out from this, said concerning him, "he is the image of the invisible, the firstborn of all creation, because in him all things were created, those in heaven and those on earth." He is called firstborn of all creation in accord with "The Lord created me, the beginning of his ways, for the sake of his works." And he may fittingly be understood as image of God, being the offspring of the unbegotten nature.

1.8| This he confesses in the passage at hand, in the words, "before the mountains were set firm, and before all hills, he begets me." From this we proclaim him the only-begotten Son and firstborn Word of God, the same as the Wisdom here described. How we say that he is the offspring of God would need an examination of its own, since we do not conceive his ineffable generation as by projection, nor by separation, or division, or diminution, or cutting, nor by any of the things that take place in mortal generation.

1.9| For it is not lawful to liken his unspeakable and unnameable birth and coming into essence to anything among begotten things, nor to set beside it any image drawn from the passing and mortal; for it is not holy to say that the Son came forth from the Father as living creatures among us are born, essence from essence by passion or division, in a divisible and separable way.

1.10| For the divine is partless and indivisible, not cut, not divided, not extended, not diminished, not contracted, not becoming greater or worse or better than itself, and having in itself nothing other than itself, so as to send that forth.

1.11| For everything that is in something is there either as an accident, as white in a body, or as one thing in another, as what is carried in the womb is carried in the pregnant woman, or as a part in a whole, as in a body a hand or foot or finger are parts of the whole, and when these suffer cutting off or some severing or division, the whole is left incomplete and mutilated, the part having been amputated.

1.12| But indeed, to apply such an image and likeness to the unbegotten nature of the God of all, and for the birth of his only-begotten and firstborn, would be the most impious thing of all.

1.13| The Son, then, was not unbegotten in the Father from endless and beginningless ages as one thing in another, a part of him that later changed and was emptied out to become outside him; for this already belongs to alteration. And on that view there would be two unbegotten beings, the one who projected and the one projected. And what was the better state? Was it the one before the alteration of separation by projection? One cannot, then, conceive the Son as a part or limb that was always previously united unbegottenly with the Father, and then stood apart and became separate from the whole.

1.14| For these things are unspeakable and flatly impious, being proper to the matter of bodies and foreign to the incorporeal and immaterial nature. Hence, at the right moment, one might here again cry out, "Who will describe his generation?"

1.15| For it is also not without danger to go to the opposite extreme, and to declare outright that the Son is begotten out of nothing, like the other begotten things. For the birth of the Son is one thing, and the creation through the Son is another.

1.16| But just as the divine Scripture at one time proclaims the Son firstborn of all creation, speaking from his own person, "The Lord created me, the beginning of his ways," and at another says that he is the Father's offspring, in the words, "and he begets me before all the hills,"

1.17| so it would be sound for us too to follow, and to confess that he, being the creative Word of God, exists before all ages and is with the Father, and is the only-begotten Son of the God of all things, begotten as servant and fellow-worker with the Father in giving essence to all things and ordering them.

1.18| For if something else in the nature of the universe has been left to us unspeakable and incomprehensible, and there are countless such things, like those promised to the beloved of God, "what eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and what has not come up into a human heart," in the words of the holy apostle, then much more would the things concerning the first begetting of the only-begotten of God be beyond all thought, unspeakable and unnameable, inconceivable and unimaginable, since we have nothing more to say or think about him than "Who will describe his generation?" And if anyone, going further than this, were led by boldness to compare things wholly inconceivable with visible and bodily examples, he might perhaps say that the Son, as a fragrance or a gleam of light from the unbegotten nature and ineffable essence of the Father, came to subsist from endless ages, or rather before all ages, and, having come to be, is with him, being ever together with the Father, as the fragrance is with the ointment and the ray with the light—though not in every respect like the examples, as has already been said before.

1.19| For lifeless bodies have what belongs to them as an accident among their qualities. The ray, being naturally joined to the nature of light and essentially coexisting with the light, could not exist apart from that in which it is; but the Word of God has his essence and subsistence in himself, and does not coexist with the Father unbegottenly, but as the only-begotten Son, alone, begotten of the Father before all ages. And the fragrance, being a bodily emanation from its substrate and not filling what is near it by itself apart from the first cause, is no less itself bodily.

1.20| So the matter of the first coming into essence of our Savior is not to be understood by us in this way. For he did not come into essence out of the unbegotten essence by any passion or division, nor does he subsist without a beginning alongside the Father: for the one is unbegotten, the other begotten; the one is Father, the other Son. And that a father exists and subsists before a son everyone would surely agree.

1.21| In this way also he may be the image of God, again ineffably and beyond our reckoning, a living image of the living God, subsisting by himself, immaterially and incorporeally and unmixed with anything contrary; yet not like our image, which has one thing as its underlying substrate and another as its form, but being wholly form itself, and made like the Father in his very essence; and so also he is the most life-giving fragrance of the Father, ineffably again for us and beyond our reckoning.

1.22| For all that is true about him would be unspeakable to human voices and, strictly speaking, unreckonable to the reasonings of mortals. But as it pleases us to hear, so the oracles teach us also, in just such terms.

1.23| Or did not the holy apostle call himself and those like him the fragrance of Christ, through their sharing in the Spirit of Christ, and was the heavenly bridegroom not likewise named in the Songs an ointment poured out? Therefore all things, visible and invisible, bodies and incorporeal beings, rational and irrational, having shared in his outpouring, are deemed worthy in due proportion of participation, and have taken a share in communion with the divine Word.

1.24| The whole world gives the perception of this divine breath to those whose rational senses are not impaired, so that bodies earthy and perishable by nature breathe forth an immaterial and incorruptible fragrance, the God of the universe flowing from above, who, being the Father of his only-begotten Word, is himself the first and sovereign and only truly good, the begetter of the good; and the Son, who is second and is supplied as from a first and leading essence, is alone said by us to be a kind of fragrance of the Father's essence, we who serve the saying that teaches about him, that "he is a breath of God's power, a pure emanation of the Almighty's glory, a radiance from eternal light, a spotless mirror of God's activity, and an image of his goodness."

1.25| Still, let anyone place these matters as he likes; for us it is enough to take up again that true and pious saying, by which we shall also settle the questions raised, having said many times already, "Who will describe his generation?" For the begetting of God's only-begotten is truly unattainable, not for human beings only but even for the powers beyond all essence; just as our Savior and Lord himself, initiating his own disciples into these very things, says, "No one has known the Father except the Son."

1.26| To which he adds, "and no one has known the Son except the Father." Since, then, the theology concerning the Father and the Son is alike unknown to all except themselves, it must be heard as among things unspeakable in the words of Solomon just set down, where Wisdom says, "before the mountains were settled and the earth was formed, before all the hills he begets me."

1.27| He says further that, when the heaven was being made, he was at the Father's side: "When he prepared the heaven, I was there with him." And the eternity of his abiding with the Father from endless ages he shows by what he adds: "I was beside him, fitting things together; I was the one he delighted in, and day by day I rejoiced before his face."

1.28| As for the depths and springs of waters, mountains and hills, and whatever else is named there in common terms, these must be heard either as the speaker indicating the whole by part, concerning the constitution of the world, or taken more figuratively, transferring what is signified to intelligible essences and divine powers, before all of which the firstborn Wisdom, the Word of God, only-begotten and first-begotten, subsisted, whom we call Christ, being disciples of the apostle as teacher, who says, "Christ, God's power and God's wisdom." He is called here, fittingly, by the name of Wisdom, since the only wise Father [….] the all-wise and knowing contemplations of the universe and [….]

2.1| [….] and in the second he honors him with a royal scepter, and in the third he bears witness to his perfection in virtue. Then, besides these, it teaches that this very God and King was anointed by the God most high, and in this way became Christ. For what else could one call him who was anointed not by human beings but by the God over all himself? On this account it says, "O God" (addressing the one anointed), "you loved righteousness and hated injustice; therefore God, your God, anointed you,"

2.2| as if to say, the God over all anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. So this anointing spoken of was neither common nor earthly, nor like that legislated by Moses and prepared from perishable matter, with which it was the custom for the ancient priests and kings of the Hebrews to be anointed.

2.3| Hence he is fittingly proclaimed to us as God and Christ together, since he alone, not through human beings nor from human beings, but by the Maker of the universe himself, was anointed with an incorporeal and godlike ointment of divine joy and gladness.

2.4| Therefore he alone, justly, innocently, and in a good and proper sense, beyond those named his companions, would be proclaimed Christ. And who would his companions be, if not those who are able to say, "For we have become partakers of Christ," of whom it has been said, "Do not touch my christs, and do no harm to my prophets"?

2.5| And now that Christ has been plainly shown through these words as beloved, God, and king, it is time for you to ask how one so great is said to have enemies, who they are, and for what reason, against whom he sharpened his own arrows and his own sword, and how it was not by armed battle line but for the sake of truth and gentleness and righteousness that he brought countless peoples under himself.

2.6| Whoever examines these things exactly would do well to transfer them to our Savior and Lord Jesus, the Christ of God, and to run back to what has been recounted about his passage among human beings, in which he routed the hostile and unseen powers of the wicked and ruinous demons and of the evil and unclean spirits, and gathered to himself countless peoples out of all the nations. It is fitting from this to proclaim him the true Christ of God, anointed not with common oil, as the men of old customarily were (nothing of the kind is recorded of him), but with a better and divine anointing, in accord with which he says through Isaiah, "The Lord's Spirit is upon me, on account of which he anointed me."

2.7| Hence, more than all those who were ever anointed in bodily fashion among the Hebrews, he alone throughout the whole inhabited world is called Christ by all, and has filled the whole world with the name of Christians, taken from him. How we say that he was anointed, and what the anointing was, and what the manner of the anointing, we have determined sufficiently in the preceding treatise.

2.8| On his lips and in his teaching such grace was poured out that within a little while it filled every place with the piety he proclaimed, so that now in all nations, among those who pursue his teaching, he has, in accord with the present prophecy, been clothed with the glory of king and of God, and among all human beings he is proclaimed Christ.

2.9| Plain too are his enemies, not only those who existed before, but those who always make war against his word, whether among human beings or among the unseen powers, whom, by an unseen and hidden power, he continually brings down, and so has made all kinds of peoples out of all the nations subject to himself.

2.10| As for what follows in the Psalm, "Myrrh and stacte and cassia from your garments," and what comes after, spoken as of a queen and daughter who has left her father's house and been wed to the Christ, king and God, already described, and who calls him lord, these may be referred to the church from the nations, which turned away from her ancestral and demonic error, was cleansed, and was fitted together through communion with the divine Word, and they would receive their proper interpretation at leisure.

3.1| "The Lord said to my Lord: Sit on my right until I set your enemies as a footstool for your feet. The Lord will send out to you a rod of power from Zion, and you will rule in the midst of your enemies. With you is sovereignty in the day of your power, in the splendors of your holy ones. From the womb before the morning star I have begotten you. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek."

3.2| "The Lord at your right hand." Our Savior and Lord, the firstborn of all creation, the Word of God, the Wisdom before the age, the beginning of God's ways, the Father's firstborn and only-begotten offspring, who is honored with the title of Christ, the present Psalm also calls Lord, teaching that he is enthroned with the God over all and Lord of the universe, and is Son, and eternal priest of the Father.

3.3| First, then, observe that he has already here been called a second offspring of God. And since we believe that the words of prophecy were spoken to us by the Spirit of God, see whether the very Holy Spirit in the prophet does not proclaim him as his own Lord, second after the Lord of the universe. "For the Lord," it says, "said to my Lord, Sit on my right." The first Lord, as master of all absolutely, the Hebrews proclaimed with an unspoken name made of four letters; the second they no longer called by that, but called him specially "Lord."

3.4| Fittingly, then, our Savior and Lord, Jesus himself, the Christ of God, once asked the Pharisees, "What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?" and when they said, "David's," he added, "How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord spoke to my Lord: Sit on my right?" He all but interprets the text, to the effect that it proclaims him Lord not only of David but also of the Spirit in the prophet.

3.5| But if the prophetic Spirit, which we believe is the Holy Spirit, acknowledges as Lord the one whom it teaches to be enthroned with the Father, and not Lord absolutely but Lord of itself, then much more and still more would the rational powers that come after the Holy Spirit say this, and the whole creation, both what is seen in bodies and what stands among the incorporeal, of all of which the only one enthroned with the Father, through whom all things came to be, would fittingly be shown to be Lord, because, according to the marvelous apostle, "in him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, whether visible or invisible."

3.6| It is likely, then, that he alone has authority in likeness to the Father, as the only one shown enthroned with the Father. It is plain, therefore, that to none of the begotten beings is it permitted to obtain the right hand of the almighty rule and kingdom, unless it be to the one alone who is variously described in theology in the passages before us.

3.7| Observe, then, that to one and the same person the supreme Lord over all gives both the voice "Sit at my right hand" and the voice "Before the morning star I have begotten you," and with the assurance of an oath hands over to him an unshaken and inviolable honor of priesthood lasting to endless ages: "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever."

3.8| And who could be imagined, not a mortal man nor even of the angelic nature, begotten by God and consecrated priest forever, other than the one alone who said earlier too, "The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways, for the sake of his works; before the age he founded me, at the beginning, before the mountains were set firm, and before all hills he begets me"? Fix your mind carefully on the present Psalm and on the passages set beside it in the one before.

3.9| For in this one the God most high establishes the second, and our Lord, as enthroned with himself, saying, "Sit at my right hand"; and in the earlier the text said that the throne remains forever and ever, proclaiming him at once God in the words, "Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever."

3.10| Again, in the present one it says, "The Lord will send out to you a rod of power from Zion"; in that one, "the rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom." And again, the present one says, "Sit at my right hand, until I place your enemies as a footstool for your feet, and you will rule in the midst of your enemies"; and the earlier one, "Your arrows are sharpened, O powerful one, in the heart of the king's enemies." So what is said of the enemies of the one described agrees in both.

3.11| Who, then, seeing with his eyes the churches of our Savior flourishing in the midst of cities and in villages and countries throughout the whole inhabited world, and the peoples ruled by him, and the myriad throngs of those consecrated to him from every side, encircled by the enemies and foes of Christ's teaching, those seen among human beings and those unseen and hidden, would not marvel at the present oracle uttered to the person of the one prophesied: "Rule in the midst of your enemies"?

3.12| And since in the earlier Psalm it is said of him "anointed with the oil of gladness beyond your companions," and anointing was proper among the Hebrews to priests, fittingly the present Psalm now names him a priest more clearly, setting out further teaching about him, by which it instructs that he alone, beyond all who ever lived, is an eternal priest, which could not be fitted to any human nature.

3.13| It says that he is made priest "according to the order of Melchizedek," in contrast with the priest under the ordinance of Moses, that is, Aaron or any of his line, each of whom, not having been a priest before, was later anointed by human beings with a prepared ointment, so that, in types and symbols so to speak, he was made a shadowy and figurative Christ; and being mortal, he did not hold the priesthood for long, and he served as priest among the people of the Jews alone, not among the other nations; nor did he come to the service with an oath of God, but was honored by the judgment of human beings, so that sometimes one was found among them unworthy of the service of God, such as Eli is recorded to have been.

3.14| Moreover, that ancient priest under the ordinance of Moses was chosen from the tribe of Levi alone; and he had of necessity to derive his descent from the succession of Aaron, and to serve the divine with sacrifices of irrational animals and with blood, a bodily worship. But the one named Melchizedek, which is translated into the Greek tongue "king of righteousness," and then king of Salem, which would be "king of peace," "fatherless, motherless, without genealogy, having, according to the account, neither beginning of days nor end of life," bears nothing in common with the manner of the priesthood of Aaron.

3.15| For he was not chosen by human beings, was not anointed with prepared oil, was not of the stock of men who had not yet even appeared; and, most astonishing of all, he had not even been circumcised in the flesh, and yet he blesses Abraham, as being much greater than he; nor did he serve the Most High God with libations and sacrifices, nor perform his service at the temple in Jerusalem.

3.16| For how could he, when it did not exist? Fittingly, then, since to our Savior the Christ nothing like Aaron's lot was to happen: for he was not shown to be a priest later after not being one before, and he did not become a priest but was one. We must attend carefully to "You are a priest forever." For it does not say, "you will be, not having been before," nor "you were once, but no longer," but, from him who said "I am the one who is," you are, and you continue a priest forever.

3.17| Since, then, Christ did not begin the priesthood from a point in time, nor come from a tribe of priests, nor was anointed with prepared and bodily oil, nor was to have an end of the priesthood, nor to be established for Jews only but for all nations, for these very reasons he fittingly releases him from the service according to the type of Aaron and says that he will be a priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

3.18| And the outcome of the oracle is marvelous to one who sees how our Savior Jesus, the Christ of God, in the manner of Melchizedek, still now performs the priestly service among human beings through his own servants.

3.19| For just as that one, being a priest of nations, nowhere appears to have used bodily sacrifices, but blessed Abraham with wine and bread only, in the same way first our Savior and Lord himself, and then all the priests from him throughout all the nations, performing the spiritual priestly service according to the ordinances of the church, hint in wine and bread at the mysteries of his body and of his saving blood, Melchizedek having foreseen these by the divine Spirit and made use of the images of things to come, as the writing of Moses testifies in saying: "And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth loaves and wine; and he was a priest of the Most High God, and blessed Abraham."

3.20| Fittingly, then, the oath is taken up for the one described alone: "The Lord God has sworn and will not change his mind: You are," he says, "a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek."

3.21| And hear what the apostle says about these matters: "In which God, wishing to show even more abundantly to the heirs of the kingdom 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 who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us."

3.22| And he goes on: "And the former priests were many in number because death prevented them from continuing; but he, because he remains, holds his priesthood inviolable. Hence he is able to save completely those who approach God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them. For such a high priest was fitting for us: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and become higher than the heavens."

3.23| And he adds: "Now the main point of what has been said is this: we have a high priest of such a kind, who took his seat on the right of the Majesty in the heights, a minister of the holy places and of the true tent, which the Lord pitched, not man." So the apostle says.

3.24| The Psalm, going on, reveals also the passion of the one prophesied, though in a veiled way, saying: "He will drink from the torrent by the way; therefore he will lift up his head."

3.25| That the time of trials is a torrent another Psalm also indicates: "Our soul has passed through a torrent; surely our soul has passed through the irresistible water." In the torrent, then, he says, he will drink, plainly the cup which he hinted at near the time of the passion, saying, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me."

3.26| And again, "If it cannot pass unless I drink it, let your will be done." Having drunk this cup, he lifted up his head, and according to the apostle, "Since he became obedient to the Father to the point of death, even death on a cross, therefore," he says, "God exalted him, raising him up from the dead and seating him at his right hand, far above every rule and authority and power and lordship and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things," he says, "under his feet," in accord with the promise made to him, which he presents through the Psalm, saying, "Sit on my right until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Rule in the midst of your enemies." It is plain to everyone that even now the power of our Savior and the word of his teaching rules in the midst of his enemies and adversaries, over all those who have believed in him.

4.1| "I, the Lord, made the earth and man upon it; I with my hand fixed the heaven, I gave orders to all the stars, I raised up the king with righteousness, and all his ways are straight. He will build my city and turn back the captivity of the people, not for ransom and not for gifts, said the Lord of Hosts."

4.2| Thus far, God the Maker of the universe prophesies through the prophet concerning a certain king and savior who is to build the commonwealth of piety and to redeem the captivity that befell human beings from demonic error. Next after this the prophetic Spirit hints at the subjection of the foreign nations, that they will be subjected to the one prophesied, and that those who are subjected will worship him as God, and will pray in him, because a greater God dwells in him, namely the supreme Father and God of the universe.

4.3| The wording is as follows: "Thus says the Lord: Egypt has labored, and so has the merchandise of the Ethiopians; and the Sabaeans, tall men, will cross over to you and will be your slaves, and they will follow behind you bound in handcuffs, and they will bow down to you and pray in you, because God is in you, and there is no God but you. For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, Savior. All who oppose him shall be ashamed and humiliated, and they will go in shame." So the prophecy. I do not think anyone, however perverse, can face down the plain and clear wording, which so evidently introduces a God, Savior of Israel, and another God in him. "The righteous," it says, "will bow down to you and pray in you, because God is in you, and there is no God but you. For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, Savior."

4.5| The words "we did not know it," spoken in the person of those who had not previously recognized him, are found only among the Seventy; the Hebrew has them otherwise, and translating it Aquila says: "Truly a mighty God hiding himself, God of Israel saving,"

4.6| and Theodotion: "Therefore a mighty hidden God, saving." Most wonderfully he names Christ a hidden God, and he plainly teaches the reason why he alone, among begotten beings, after the first and unbegotten, is called God: the Father's indwelling in him. "For in him," says the divine apostle, "all the fullness of the deity was pleased to dwell."

4.7| This is what the text indicates when it says, "because God is in you, and there is no God but you." In place of "but you," Theodotion has "but him," so that it reads "there is no God besides him," that is, the God in you, through whom you too are God. According to Aquila it reads: "Only in you is the mighty one, and there is no other beside you; truly a mighty and hidden God, a saving God." According to Symmachus: "Only in you is God, and there is no other, nor does any God exist; truly you are a hidden God, God of Israel saving."

4.8| By these words the text has plainly set out the reason why the Christ of God is God.

4.9| For since God is in you, it says, therefore you are a mighty and hidden God. Through these words, then, the true and only God would be one, he alone properly holding the title; but the second has been counted worthy of fellowship by participation in the true one, neither existing of himself, nor subsisting apart from the Father who makes him God, nor spoken of in theology apart from the Father, but being, living, and subsisting in this very respect through the Father in him, being with the Father and made God from him and through him, and having both his being and his being God not from himself but from the Father.

4.10| Therefore we have been taught to honor him too as God after the Father, because of the God dwelling in him, just as the prophecies in hand contain. For as the image of a king is honored on account of the one whose features and likeness it bears, and when the image is honored, the one honored is the king himself, one and not two—for there are not two kings, the first and true one and the one portrayed in the image, but one, who is understood and also named and honored in both—so too the only-begotten Son, who alone is image of the invisible God, is rightly proclaimed image of the invisible God because of the likeness he bears, and is made God by the Father himself, being so by nature in essence, and bearing from his first existence an image of the Father that is natural and not acquired.

4.11| Therefore he is at once by nature God and only-begotten Son, and not, like those adopted from outside, holding an added dignity of the title of God; yet even though he is acclaimed by us as by nature only-begotten Son and God, he is not the first God, but the first Son of God, the only-begotten, and therefore God.

4.12| And the whole cause of his also being God would be that he alone by nature is called Son and only-begotten of God, and that he preserves through and through the animate, living, and intellectual image of the only God, made like the Father in every respect and bearing the likeness of the deity itself.

4.13| In this way, then, the divine words fittingly proclaim him God, as being the only Son, and the sole image of God, clothed with the powers of the unbegotten and beginningless essence of the Father according to the pattern of likeness, and worked out by the Father, the most skilled of all, all-knowing painter and giver of life, to the exactness of the likeness; as one who, along with the other things, has been counted worthy by the Father of this title also, having received it and not possessed it as his own acquisition.

4.14| For one gives while the other receives; so that properly that one is the one and only God, both alone and by nature and not having received from another, whereas the other has been counted worthy of second place and has his being God by having received it from the Father, as God's image, a single deity being conceived in both according to the pattern, and there being one God who exists in himself without beginning and unbegotten, and who is contemplated through the Son as through a mirror and image.

4.15| This is also what the spiritual saying teaches, which says that the one described is to be worshiped as God for no other reason than the Father dwelling in him. "For in you," it says, "they will pray, because God is in you; and you yourself, being God, are savior of Israel, and for this reason you are a mighty and hidden God, since God is in you, and there is none other besides him."

4.16| In place of "Egypt has labored," the Hebrew and all the other translators have given "the labor of Egypt," so that what is said is of this sort: "They will bow down to you, and the labor of Egypt shall be your slaves, and the Ethiopians' merchandise, and the Sebōeim"; by which I suppose barbarian and obscure nations are indicated, and all that had long before been worn down by demonic superstition.

4.17| For since the Egyptians were thought to be the most superstitious of all the nations and the first to have begun the error of idolatry, it fittingly puts them first as those who will be subjected to Christ, and through them makes plain what concerns the other idolaters.

4.18| And these things have been fulfilled in our Savior and Lord, in that he is worshiped among all nations and countless multitudes of the nations throughout the inhabited world serve him.

4.19| The Ethiopians and Sebōeim, who are here prophesied to worship Christ, I think are indicated also through the seventy-first Psalm, by the words, "Before him the Ethiopians will fall down, and the kings of the Arabs and of Saba will bring gifts, and they will worship him." It is plain from the context that they will worship the Christ prophesied in that Psalm too. Psalm thirty-two: How David knows, as we do, that the essential Word of God is the Maker of all things at the command of the Father; and how the same prophet testifies that this same Word of God was sent from the Father for the healing of human beings; and how he foretells that in a short time he will fill the whole earth with his teaching.

5.1| "By the Lord's word the heavens were made firm, and by the breath of his mouth all their power." And in the one hundred sixth Psalm we read: "He sent forth his word and healed them, and rescued them from their corruptions." And again in the one hundred forty-seventh: "He who sends his saying to the earth; his word will run swiftly."

5.2| But the holy Gospel agrees with the present Psalm, which says "By the Lord's word the heavens were made firm," saying expressly: "In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God. This one was in the beginning in God's presence. All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be." The Gospel fittingly names him God, since in the preceding passages too this very one who is now spoken of in theology had been proclaimed Word and Wisdom and offspring of God and priest and Christ, king and Lord and God, and image of God.

5.3| And that, being other than the Father, he was his servant, so that at the command of the greater he made things, the present Psalm goes on to say: "Let the whole earth fear the Lord, and let all who inhabit the world be shaken by him, for he spoke and they came to be; he commanded and they were created."

5.4| For it is plain that the one who speaks speaks to another, and the one who commands commands another besides himself. And plainly, at the incarnation of our Savior, countless multitudes from all the earth, that is, from all the nations on earth, no longer feared the demons as before, but feared the Lord Jesus himself,

5.5| and all who inhabit the world were shaken at the name of Christ, in accord with the saying now before us: "Let the whole earth fear the Lord, and let all who inhabit the world be shaken by him."

5.6| So much from the thirty-second Psalm. You may find things in agreement with these in the one hundred forty-eighth Psalm too, which teaches that not only things on earth but also things in heaven and, in sum, the whole creation came to be at the command of the God of the universe. Its words are: "Praise the Lord out of the heavens, praise him in the highest places; praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his powers; sun and moon, praise him; praise him, all stars and light; for he spoke and they came to be; he commanded and they were created."

5.7| For if he himself gave the command, who then was great enough to receive a command about matters of such magnitude, if not the Word of God, who in the present inquiry has been spoken of as God in many ways, and is rightly called the Word of God, since the Almighty has laid down in him the creative and productive reasons of all things, having handed over to him the ordering and steering of the universe by reason and order?

5.8| Let no one suppose that God's Word is like the articulate, spoken word found among men, which is made up of syllables and put together from nouns and verbs. Our word has its being in sounds and syllables and in what is signified by them, and is brought forth through the tongue and the windpipe, the throat and the mouth. But the Word of the eternal and incorporeal nature, differing entirely and in every respect from our own, would bring in nothing human, using only the sameness of the name,

5.9| since we must ascribe to the God of the universe neither a voice that comes into being by a striking of the air, nor syllables, nor words, nor tongue, nor mouth, nor anything at all of what is human and mortal. For such a word would belong to a soul, and could in no way exist or subsist by itself apart from a soul. Such is the word among men: taken by itself it has no essence and no subsistence, but is wholly a self-movement and activity of the mind.

5.10| But the Word of God is not of this kind. He has in himself a subsistence of his own, wholly divine and intelligent, subsisting in its own right and again acting in its own right, immaterial and incorporeal, and in every respect likened to the nature of the first God, unbegotten and sole, bearing within itself the reasons of all things begotten and the incorporeal and invisible forms of the things seen. For this reason the divine oracles call it both Wisdom and the Word of God.

6.1| "Hear me, Jacob and Israel, whom I [….] I am the first, and I am forever, and my hand founded the earth, and my right hand established the heaven. I will call them, and they will stand together, and all will be gathered and will hear who has declared these things to them. The Lord who loves you has done your will against Babylon, to remove the seed of the Chaldeans. I have spoken and I have called. I brought him, and I prospered his way. Draw near to me and hear these things. I have not spoken in secret from the beginning. When it came to be, I was there. And now the Lord, the Lord, has sent me, together with his Spirit."

6.2| See now in what way he who declares, "I am the first, and I exist forever," he who established the earth and the heaven, confesses so plainly that he has been sent by the Lord, the Lord, thus customarily proclaiming the Father twice as Lord, so that you may have this also as an indisputable testimony for the matter under inquiry.

6.3| He says, with piety, that he is first among things begotten, assigning to the Father the essence that is without beginning and unbegotten and above the first. For the first precedes a greater number, set before it in honor and order, and that would not fit the Father.

6.4| For the God over all is not the first of things begotten, since not even any beginning of him can be conceived. He would be beyond and above the first, seeing that he himself begot and brought into subsistence the first, while the divine Word alone is styled first of all things begotten.

6.5| Now when it was being asked, according to the words "He said, and they came to be; he gave the order, and they were created," to whom he had given the command for the creation of things begotten, it has now been clearly shown that it was to the one who said, "My hand founded the earth, and my right hand established the heaven," who also acknowledges that he has been sent by a greater one, saying, "Now the Lord, the Lord, has sent me, together with his Spirit."

6.6| It would be God the Word who says these things, "because by the Lord's word the heavens were made firm," according to the citation from the Psalm. Yet even if the Word of God himself is spoken of as God under the title "Lord," he nonetheless, with all piety, calls his own Father and Lord, who is highest and greater, "Lord" twice over, using a distinguishing name for him.

6.7| For now too he says, "The Lord, the Lord, has sent me," since the God over all is Lord in the proper sense, first and truly, of his only-begotten Word as well as of all things begotten after him; and over these the Word of God, having received lordship and mastery in the second place from the Father, as a genuine and only-begotten Son, may himself also, in second rank, be piously styled Lord. From Genesis. How Moses too, the greatest servant of God, in the account of the making of the world, recognizes the Father and God of the universe conversing with another about the creation of man; and we have already learned that this other is the divine Word.

7.1| "And God said, Let us make a human being after our image and likeness." And again: "And God said, That the human being should be alone is not good; let us make for him a helper corresponding to him."

7.2| And lest anyone suppose that this was said to angels, he shows at once that the one commanded is not an angel of God, saying, "And God made man; according to the image of God he made him." From the same book. How the same Moses, most plainly and without veiling, speaks of two Lords as God.

8.1| "The sun rose upon the earth, and Lot entered into Segor, and the Lord rained on Sodom brimstone and fire from the Lord."

8.2| He plainly names a second, whom he also teaches to have been commissioned by the greater to carry out the punishment of the impious. But even if we confess two Lords without veiling, we do not use like theological titles for both. Holding piously to the order, we have been taught that the one is the highest Father and God and Lord, and also Lord and God of the second; while the Word of God, the second Lord, is master of those beneath him, but not in like manner of the greater.

8.3| For God the Word is neither the Father's Lord nor the Father's God, but is his image, Word, wisdom, and power; of those after him, however, he is master and Lord and God; whereas the Father is Father, Lord, and God, even of the Son. Hence the doctrines of our pious theology rightly run back to one first principle and are established for us in one God. From the same book. How the same servant shows God the Word to have been named beforehand as a second God and Lord, and relates that he appeared and gave answers to the men of old in human form and shape.

9.1| "And the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him, To your seed I will give this land." And again: "Abraham was ninety-nine years old, and the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him, I am God. Be well-pleasing before me and be blameless, and I will set my covenant between you and me, and I will multiply you exceedingly."

9.2| And again: "And God appeared to him at the oak of Mambre, as he sat at the door of his tent at midday. And lifting up his eyes he saw, and behold, three men stood above him. And seeing them he ran from the door of the tent to meet them and bowed down."

9.3| And in sequence, after the vision, he adds: "And the Lord said, I will not hide from Abraham my servant what I am doing. Abraham is to become a great and populous nation, and in him every nation of the earth will be blessed."

9.4| And to these he adds again, as though speaking of someone else: "For I knew that he will command his sons, and his household after him, and they shall observe the Lord's ways, doing righteousness and judgment, in order that the Lord may bring upon Abraham all that he spoke to him."

9.5| These things are recorded as spoken by the very Lord who gave answers to Abraham, who acknowledges another Lord, namely his own Father and the maker of the universe. Abraham, for his part, as a prophet with an exact grasp of the one who was giving answers, immediately after what has been set out above makes his entreaty, saying: "Do not destroy the righteous with the impious, and the righteous will be as the impious. If there are fifty righteous in the city, will you destroy them? Will you not spare the whole place for the sake of the fifty righteous? By no means will you do this thing, to put to death the righteous with the impious, and the righteous will be as the impious. By no means! You who judge all the earth, will you not do justice?"

9.6| I do not think it can fittingly be said that angels, or any of God's ministers, speak these words; for to judge all the earth would not be the part of just anyone. Nor is the one described named an angel; rather he is a God and Lord greater than an angel, seen in some human form at the oak just mentioned, together with the two angels.

9.7| Again, one must not suppose that the God over all is made known through these words. For to say that the divine changes and is shaped into the appearance and form of a man is not pious. What remains is to acknowledge that he is the Word of God, declared God in what has gone before. For this reason even now the place is venerated by the neighboring peoples as divine, in honor of those who appeared there to Abraham, and the terebinth may still be seen remaining to this day.

9.8| For those who were entertained by Abraham are set up in a painting, two on either side, and in the middle the greater one, surpassing them in honor. He would be the Lord we have described, our Savior himself, whom even those who do not know him worship, confirming the divine oracles. He, then, sowing from that point the seeds of piety among men, and taking on a human appearance and form, made plain to Abraham, the forefather beloved of God, who he was, and handed on the purpose of his Father. From the same book. How the same prophet, in the case of Jacob, shows more clearly the Lord we have been describing, whom he calls both God and angel, naming him as belonging to the God over all.

10.1| "And he went to Haran, and came upon a place, and slept there, for the sun had set. And he took some of the stones and put them at his head, and slept in that place, and dreamed. And behold, a ladder set firmly on the earth, whose head reached up to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord was fixed on it, and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; do not be afraid. The land on which you are sleeping, to you I will give it and to your seed.

10.2| And your seed will be like the sand of the sea, and it will spread to the sea and the east and the north and the south; and in you all the tribes of the earth will be blessed, and in your seed. And behold, I am with you, guarding you in every way that you go, and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not forsake you until I have done all that I have spoken to you."

10.3| "And Jacob woke from his sleep and said, The Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, How fearful is this place! This is nothing other than a house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob got up early in the morning and took the stone that he had put at his head, and erected it as a pillar, and poured oil on top of it, and Jacob called the name of that place House of God."

10.4| As you go on you will find that this one, who in all these passages gives answers as Lord and God, is the angel of God, in the passage where Jacob himself speaks to his wives: "And the angel of God spoke to me in my sleep, Jacob; and I replied, What is it?" And a little later: "I have seen all that Laban does to you. I am the God who appeared to you in the place where you anointed a pillar for me and vowed a vow to me."

10.5| So then the one who said above, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac," for whom the man beloved of God also set up a pillar, was God and Lord, for we must believe him as he speaks; yet not the God over all, but that God's second, ministering and announcing the Father's will to men.

10.6| For this reason Jacob here calls him an angel, saying, "The angel of God spoke to me in a dream, I am the God who appeared to you in the place." So the same one is plainly named by these words angel of the Lord, and also God, and Lord. And in the prophet Isaiah he is called Angel of Great Counsel, and at once also God, Ruler, and Authority, where the prophet foretells his birth among men, saying: "For a child has been born to us, and a son has been given to us, whose rule is upon his shoulder, and his name is called Angel of Great Counsel, Ruler of Peace, Mighty God, Authority, Father of the age to come."

11.1| "And rising up that night he took his two wives and his two maidservants and his eleven children. And he crossed the ford of the Jabbok, and took them and brought across all that was his. And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until morning. And he saw that he did not prevail against him, and he touched the broad part of his thigh, and the broad part of Jacob's thigh grew numb as he wrestled with him. And he said to him, Let me go, for the dawn has risen. But he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. And he said to him, What is your name? And he said, Jacob. And he said to him, Your name will no longer be called Jacob, but your name will be Israel, because you have prevailed with God, and with men you will be strong. And Jacob asked and said, Tell me your name. And he said, Why do you ask my name? And he blessed him there, and Jacob called the name of that place Form of God: for I saw God face to face, and my soul was kept safe. And the sun rose upon him when he passed the form of God."

11.2| To Moses it was said, "No human being shall see my face and live." Here, however, Jacob saw God, not simply, but face to face; and being saved, not in his body but in his soul, he was deemed worthy of the name Israel, a name fitting for souls, if indeed Israel, when interpreted, means one who sees God. So he did not see the God over all; for that God is invisible and unchangeable, and he who is highest above all essence would in no way change into a man. It was, then, the one whose name the time had not yet come to make known to Jacob, though he pressed to learn it.

11.3| And if someone supposes that the one who ministers the oracles to the saints is one of the angels, or of the divine spirits in heaven, he is plainly mistaken. This is so, first, because the one described is called Lord in the proper sense and is spoken of as God; for the divine Scripture expressly proclaims him God and calls him Lord, honoring him with the mark made by the four letters among the Hebrews, which the children of the Hebrews are accustomed to attach only to the unspoken and unutterable name of God. Second, it is so because the narrative clearly marks off angels whenever it means to call them angels. For example, the God and Lord who gave answers to Abraham did not at all think the impious men in Sodom worthy of his presence, as the divine Scripture again says: "The Lord went away, when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and the two angels came to Sodom in the evening."

11.4| And to Jacob "angels of God came to meet him; and seeing them he said, This is a camp of God. And that place he named Camps."

11.5| So well did the man beloved of God distinguish the visions, that in this case he calls the name of the place Camps, from the sight of the angelic camps; but when he converses with God, he gives the place the name Form of God, adding, "For I saw God face to face." And in the case of Moses too, when an angel appears, the divine Scripture indicates this very thing, saying, "An angel of the Lord was seen by him in the flame of a bush." But when it means the Master himself, it names him God and Lord, and no longer angel.

11.6| Likewise at the Red Sea it clearly distinguishes the angel and the Lord, in the words: "And the angel of God, the one of the camp of the sons of Israel, moved and went behind them. The pillar of the cloud also moved from before their face."

11.7| Just as in the earlier cases the Lord is brought in giving answers to the men of old in a form, so here too he does so through a cloud. For it is said next: "And in the morning watch the Lord looked down on the Egyptians' camp, from a pillar of fire and cloud," and throughout the whole wilderness God gave answers to Moses through the cloud.

11.8| Precisely, then, when the text means to indicate the nature of an angel, it names neither God nor Lord, but openly names an angel; and when it knows the one who appears to be Lord and God, it plainly uses these very titles. That the one called Lord and God is not the First Cause is made manifest by the words of the divine Scripture, which address as angel of God the one who was named beforehand Lord and God in the story of Jacob.

11.9| There remains, therefore, someone among the things that are, who is God and Lord after the universal King and God of all. This would be the Word of God, existing before the ages, who is greater than every angelic nature, yet less than the First Cause.

12.1| "And God said to Jacob, To the place Bethel, and dwell there, and make an altar for the God who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau the brother. And Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, Take away the foreign gods from among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments, and let us rise and go up to Bethel, and there make an altar for the Lord, who heard me on the day of affliction and was with me and saved me on the road I traveled."

12.2| Here God himself, the God of the universe, who alone is unbegotten and highest of all, did not appear but spoke invisibly to Jacob, and stirred him by an unutterable power, and plainly speaks of another. For God said to him: "Build an altar for the God who appeared to you." And who it was that appeared to him we have just established, having shown that he is God the Word. From Exodus. How the God over all, himself the one who gave answers to Moses through an angel, teaches that he appeared to the fathers, no longer through an angel, but through the Son.

13.1| "And Moses was shepherding the sheep of his father-in-law, and he came to the mountain of God, at Horeb. And an angel of the Lord was seen by him in a fire of flame from a bush." And after other things: "And when he drew near to see, he called to him from the middle of the bush, saying, Moses, Moses, do not come near here. Loose the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground." And after a little: "And the Lord said to him, I am he who is.

13.2| And again: "The Lord spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob as being their God, and my name I did not make known to them, and I established my covenant with them."

13.3| Just as with the prophets among men, Isaiah, for example, and Jeremiah and the like, what was seen was a man, but God spoke oracles through what appeared, as through an instrument, now speaking through the prophet in the person of Christ, now of the Holy Spirit, now of the God over all, so too here, to Moses, still a beginner, the highest God over all delivers the oracles set before us through the angel who appeared.

13.4| The sense of these words would be something like this: To you, prophet, as a beginner, not yet able to take in more than an angelic vision, I have for the present wished my angel to be seen, and I make plain to you only my own name, teaching that I am he who is, and that my name is Lord. But to your fathers I disclosed not only this, but bestowed something greater than this, for I appeared to them. Who it was that had appeared to the fathers, and that it was not the God over all, was demonstrated earlier, when we demonstrated that the God and Lord was named the angel of God.

13.5| How, then, can the one who is beyond the universe, himself the only God over all, say here that he appeared to the fathers? Someone might reasonably ask. The question would be resolved if we paid attention to the exactness of the divine Scripture. Where the Seventy read "And I appeared to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, being their God," Aquila has: "And I was seen by Abraham and by Isaac and by Jacob in a sufficient God."

13.6| By this he plainly shows that the God over all, who is alone, did not appear through himself, nor, as to Moses, so also to the fathers, through an angel or a bush or fire; rather he gave answers "in a sufficient God," with the result that the Father was beheld through the Son even by the fathers, according to what is said in the gospels by him: "He who has seen me has seen the Father." For in him and through him the knowledge of the Father was being revealed.

13.7| But when he appeared as a savior of men, he was visible in the human shape of the Son, pledging beforehand to the men beloved of God, from that time, the salvation that would come to all among men. But when he was to be the avenger of the impious and the punisher of the Egyptians, he appeared no longer "in a sufficient God" but in an angel, a minister of the punishment, and in the form of fire, and of the flame that was all but ready to devour them like wild and thorny brush. They say, then, that the bush hints at the wild, harsh, untamed wickedness of the Egyptians, and the fire at the avenging and punishing power that took hold of them.

14.1| "And the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I come to you in a pillar of cloud, so that the people may hear me speaking to you and believe you." And in sequence: "And God led them by day in a pillar of cloud, to show them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light." And: "The Lord came down in a pillar of cloud."

14.2| And: "Whenever Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud came down and stood at the doors of the tent, and spoke to Moses, and all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the doors of the tent. And all the people stood and bowed down, each at the door of his tent."

14.3| The people, then, saw the pillar of cloud, but it spoke to Moses. Who was it that spoke? Clearly the pillar of cloud, which earlier had appeared to the fathers in human form. It has been shown beforehand that this was not the God over all, but another, who, being the Word of God, is the one we call Christ, and who even then, on account of the multitude, was beheld by Moses himself and by the people in a pillar of cloud, since they were not able, like the fathers, to see him in the form of a man.

14.4| For it was characteristic of the perfect to be able to foresee his appearing one day in the flesh among men. Since the whole people was not able to take this in even then, he was reasonably seen by them at one time through fire, for fear and amazement, at another through a cloud, so that he might be seen giving them the law as though shadowed and veiled, and in like manner by Moses too, for their sake.

15.1| "The Lord said, Behold, I send my angel before my face, to guard you on the way, to bring you into the land that I prepared for you. Pay attention to yourself and listen to him, and do not disobey him. For he will not shrink from you, for my name is upon him." And in another place: "He said to Moses, Go and lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you; behold, my angel goes before your face." And again: "And he said to Moses, Go and go up from here, you and the people."

15.2| And in sequence: "And I will send my angel with you before your face." That these are not the words of an angel, but could only be the words of God, is plain to anyone. And of what God, if not of the one who had been seen by the forefathers, whom Jacob plainly called angel of God? This was for us the Word of God, who is named both child of God and himself God and Lord. From the Decalogue.

16.1| "I am the Lord your God, who [….] you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods besides me." And in sequence: "For I am the Lord your God, a jealous God."

16.2| And: "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not cleanse the one who takes his name in vain." Here too the Lord himself teaches what is set before us as spoken of another Lord. For after saying, "I am the Lord your God," he adds, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God," the second Lord initiating his servant into the mystery concerning the Father and God of the universe.

16.3| And you would find countless other passages throughout the whole holy Scripture put forth in a manner like these, in which God spoke his oracles as of another God, and the Lord himself as of another Lord.

17.1| "And the Lord said to Moses, This word too that you have spoken I will do for you; for you have found grace before me, and I know you above all. And Moses said, Show me your glory. And he said, I will go before you in my glory, and I will call in my name, Lord, before you; and I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and will show compassion on whom I show compassion." And after other things he adds, saying: "And he came down in a cloud and stood by him there, and called in the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by in his name, and called, Lord, Lord, God compassionate and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in mercy, and true, and keeping righteousness, doing mercy to thousands, taking away iniquities and injustices and sins, and he will by no means clear the guilty, bringing the sins of fathers upon children and children's children to the third and fourth generation. And Moses hastened and bowed to the ground and worshiped."

17.2| See in what way here too the Lord himself, who came down in a cloud and stood by Moses, called in the name of the Lord upon another beside himself, invoking him, as is customary, by repetition twice as "Lord," as the one spoken of as God and master both of himself and of all the rest, namely his own Father. And that in these words it is not Moses, as someone might suppose, but the Lord himself who is calling the Father another Lord, the very one who gave answers to Moses, says in advance: "I will pass by before you in my glory, and I will call in the name of the Lord."

17.3| When he has said this, Scripture next adds in narrative: "And the Lord came down in a cloud and stood by him there, and called in the name of the Lord." So the Lord himself comes down to fulfill his own promise, and, as the text says, goes before the face of Moses.

17.4| And the Lord himself calls, saying, "Lord, God compassionate and merciful," and what follows, the Lord plainly initiating his servant into the mystery of who he himself is and of the knowledge of the greater Lord. This you will see confirmed where Moses, praying for the people, recalls the words before us, saying that the Lord said these things, and not he himself: "And now let your hand be lifted up, Lord, as you said, speaking, The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in mercy and true, taking away iniquities and injustices and sins, and he will by no means clear the guilty, repaying the sins of fathers upon children to the third and fourth generation."

17.5| Observe how in these words the Lord himself, having said that the Father is slow to anger and abounding in mercy, adds that he is also true, in agreement with the saying "That they may know you, the only true God," which was said in the gospels by one and the same Savior of ours. He names the Father the only true God, most piously, giving the due reverence to the unbegotten nature, of which the divine oracles teach that he is the image and offspring. From Numbers. How the divine Scripture teaches that God was visible to Israel, hinting at the Word of God.

18.1| In Numbers Moses says in his prayer: "Because you, Lord, are among this people, you who are seen eye to eye, Lord." In place of this Aquila rendered: "Because you are Lord in the midst of this people, who see eye in eyes, you, Lord." And Symmachus: "Because you are, Lord."

18.2| And in Exodus it is said: "And Moses went up, and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of Israel's elders, and they saw the place at which the God of Israel was." In place of this Aquila says: "and the God of Israel," and Symmachus: "and in a vision, the God of Israel."

18.3| Because of the words "has ever seen God," someone might suppose the present expression contrary to the doctrine, as if it posited as visible one who is invisible by nature. But if you take these words too as referring to the Word of God, who appeared to the fathers in many parts and in many ways, as in what we have already demonstrated, you will no longer seem to fall into contradictions. It teaches that the God of Israel seen here is that same one who appeared to Israel when a man grappled with him, who first altered his name from Jacob to Israel, saying, "Because of God [….]"; and when Jacob, receiving a perception of his divine power, called that place Form of God, saying, "For I have beheld God face to face, and my soul was saved," we showed in its proper place that this is none other than the Word of God. From Jesus son of Nave. How God the Word, who gave answers to Moses, appeared in the same way as to the forefathers of old also to Jesus, the successor of Moses, in human form.

19.1| "And it came to pass, when Jesus was in Jericho, that he looked up and sees a man standing opposite him, with a sword drawn in his hand. And Jesus went up to him and said, Are you ours, or of our adversaries? And he replied to him, I am commander-in-chief of the power of the Lord; I have now come. And Jesus fell on his face to the ground and said to him, Master, what do you command your servant? Then the Lord's commander-in-chief says, Jesus, loose the sandal from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground."

19.2| These very same words were said by the Lord to Moses too, when he began his contemplation at the bush, as the Scripture shows: "And when the Lord saw that he was approaching to look, the Lord called to him from the middle of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, do not come near here; loose the sandal from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground."

19.3| So it was one and the same God who gave answers to both, as the command shows; but now through the commander-in-chief of his power, and to Moses through the angel who appeared. And when there are heavenly armies and powers beyond the world and invisible spirits, divine angels and archangels, serving the universal King and God who rules over all, as is said in Daniel: "A thousand thousands served him, and before him stood ten thousand times ten thousand," who could be above all of these other than the Word of God and the firstborn Wisdom and the God-filled offspring? Rightly, then, he is called here commander-in-chief of the power of the Lord, as in other places Angel of Great Counsel, and sharer of the Father's throne, and eternal and great high priest.

19.4| It has been shown that the same one is Lord and also God, and Christ, whom the Father anointed with the oil of gladness. To Abraham, then, appearing at the oak in the calm and peaceful form of a man, he shows himself, introducing from that time his saving presence among men; to Jacob, as to an athlete and contender about to wrestle and struggle against enemies, as a man; and to Moses and to the people he led the way in the form of cloud and fire, presenting himself as at once fearful and shadowed.

19.5| But when Jesus, the successor of Moses, was about to draw up his line against enemies, the earlier inhabitants of the land of the Palestinians, foreign and most impious nations, he is rightly shown with a drawn sword sharpened against the enemies, all but showing by his appearance that he himself, with an invisible sword of God-given power, would pursue the impious, fighting alongside his own people and sharing their struggle. For this reason he proclaimed himself at the right time commander-in-chief of the Lord. From Job. How, like the fathers, Job too is said to have received oracles from the Maker of the universe, God the Word himself, and to have seen him with his eyes.

20.1| "And the Lord said to Job through the storm and the clouds, Where were you when I was laying the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding, who set its measures, if you know." And in sequence: "When the stars were made, all my angels praised me with a loud voice; and I shut up the sea with gates."

20.2| And in sequence: "Or was it in your day that I ordered the morning light? And has the morning star seen its own station?"

20.3| And again: "Or did you take clay from the earth and form a living creature, and set it on the earth able to speak? Did you take the light from the impious, and break the arm of the proud? Did you reach the spring of the sea, and walk in the tracks of the abyss? Are the gates of death opened to you in fear, and did the gatekeepers of Hades cower when they saw you?"

20.4| And at the end of the whole oracle Job answers the Lord, saying: "Hear me, Lord, that I too may speak; I will question you, and you teach me. I had heard of you before by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye has seen you. Therefore I despised myself and melted away, and I count myself earth and ashes."

20.5| That the words before us belong to the Lord, the Maker, it is easy to recognize not only from what has been set out but also from what is plain to you. As for the words "You came to the spring of the sea, and walked in the tracks of the abyss," and "The gates of death are opened to you in fear, and the gatekeepers of Hades cowered when they saw you," we shall show in the fitting season that they prophesy our Savior's [….] to Hades, noting only this much now, that it is more fitting to assign what is said here to God the Word rather than to the God of the universe.

20.6| Job, then, in sequence, like the fathers, bears witness that he has beheld with his own eyes this very Lord who at the beginning gave him answers through the storm and the clouds, with these words: "Hear me, Lord, that I too may speak; I will question you, and you teach me. I had heard of you before by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye has seen you. Therefore I despised myself and melted away, and I count myself earth and ashes."

20.7| How could a soul that is clothed in flesh, and the eyes of mortals, behold the highest God, who transcends the universe, that unchangeable and unbegotten essence, unless we say that here too it is plainly God the Word, who condescends from his own greatness, and who, variously shown to be Lord, stands present. This can be learned from the very oracles by which the Lord again, speaking to Job, took up the matters concerning the devil as concerning a dragon: "Is it not true that it has been prepared for me?"

20.8| For to what Lord is it fitting to attribute a dragon, if not to God the Word and our Savior? He brought down the ruler of this age, who of old besieged the race of men, loosing the birth pangs of death, as he himself shows, saying: "You came to the spring of the sea, and walked in the tracks of the abyss; the gates of death are opened to you in fear, and the gatekeepers of Hades cowered when they saw you."

20.9| These things were reasonably said to Job after the great trial that he endured, and the contest, teaching him that he had contended for a part only, while the greater and more powerful war and contest was reserved for the Lord himself at the time of his coming to death. From Psalm [….]. How the Psalm before us too knows two Lords.

21.1| "Because you, Lord, are my hope, you have made the Most High your refuge. Evils will not come near you, and a scourge will not draw near your tent. For he will give his angels charge concerning you, on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on asp and basilisk, and trample lion and dragon."

21.2| The devil employed these words when tempting our Savior. See, then, in what way the Psalm says to the Lord himself: "Because you, Lord, are my hope, you have made the Most High your refuge." For you yourself, it says, are my hope, O Lord; you have made God himself, the Most High, who is over all and your own Father, greater than yourself, your refuge; because of whom evils will not come near you, near you my Lord, and a scourge will not draw near your tent.

21.3| For even if impious men attempt to scourge you who became man, and to hand you over to death, the scourge from God will by no means draw near your tent, that is, your body, which clearly you put on for our sake when you became man. Following on this you will apply to him all that is indicated through the whole Psalm, which we ourselves will examine in its proper season. From Hosea. Concerning the Word of God and the Father, as concerning a Lord.

22.1| "I will not forsake Jacob to be wiped out, for I am God, and not a man; the Holy One is in your midst, and I will not enter into a city; I will go after the Lord." In these words too, God the Word, having become man, says to those who acknowledge him as a holy man yet not God: "I am God," he says, "and not a man; the Holy One is in your midst."

22.2| Then, having called himself God, he points to the one over all as his own Lord and God and Father, adding, "I will go after the Lord." And "I will not enter into a city" would be the words of one refusing the common and popular civic life of men, from which he also turns away his own disciples, saying: "Do not go off on the road of the nations, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans." Amos. Concerning our Savior as Lord, and the Father as God, and the overthrow of the Jewish nation.

23.1| "I overthrew you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand plucked from the fire. And not even so did you return to me, says the Lord." Here too the Lord himself says that a certain God brought about the overthrow of Sodom, being evidently another than the one who is speaking.

23.2| And in the overthrow of Sodom two Lords are presented, when the Lord rained fire from the Lord on Sodom and Gomorrah. Such an overthrow, then, as Sodom endured because of its extraordinary impieties, he says, such you also, O people, will suffer, and not even so did you return to me. It is customary for Scripture to declare the future as past. So the present words too must be understood likewise: "I overthrew" stands for "I will overthrow," the past tense said of the future, and "you returned" is put for "you will return."

23.3| These words are directed at the nation of the Jews, and they were fulfilled in them at no other time than after the plot against our Savior. Their holy place, once sacred, has now come to such a state that it falls short in nothing of the overthrow of Sodom. Yet although they have suffered in accord with the prediction, they have not even to this day turned to the Christ of God, on whose account they have suffered these things; so that it is fitting that this too is prophesied by the prophecy in our hands, which says, "And not even so did you return to me, says the Lord." From Obadiah. Concerning the two Lords, the Father and the calling of the nations.

24.1| "The vision of Obadiah. Thus says the Lord to Idumea: I have heard a report from the Lord, and he has sent out a siege against the nations. The Lord God heard tidings from the Lord." And this too was about the calling of the nations. From Zechariah. How God the Word, who is Lord, confesses that he has been sent by the greater Lord.

25.1| "Thus says the Lord Almighty: After glory he has sent me to the nations that plundered you." Then, a little later, he adds: "And you will know that the Lord Almighty has dispatched me." If the one who sends is Lord Almighty, and the one who says he has been sent is likewise, then there are two. And plainly the one who was sent is Lord Almighty: "He has sent me to the nations," he says.

26.1| "Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Zion, for behold, I am coming and I will dwell in your midst, says the Lord. And many nations will take refuge in the Lord on that day, and they will be a people for him, and I will dwell in your midst, and you will know that it is the Lord Almighty who has sent me to you," and what follows. To which, after other things, he adds: "And I will make them strong in the Lord their God, and in his name they will boast, says the Lord."

26.2| These words too are like the earlier ones, proclaiming the coming of Christ among men and the saving calling of the nations that came about through him. I myself, the Lord, he says, will come; and at my coming it will no longer be the ancient Israel, nor even one nation only on earth, but many nations that will take refuge in the greater and great Lord, who is God of myself and of the universe; and the nations that take refuge in him will obtain such benefaction that they are called and become the people of God, and dwell in the midst of what is called the daughter of Zion. This is the way the sacred writings are accustomed to name the church of God upon the earth, since it is a kind of daughter of the heavenly one.

26.3| This is also what the oracle proclaims as good news when it says: "Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Zion, for behold, I am coming and I will dwell in your midst." For we have believed that God the Word makes his dwelling in the midst of the church, just as he promised when he said: "Behold, I am with you every day, until the end of the age."

26.4| And: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them." And when I, he says, the Lord myself, have come and dwell in your midst, you will then receive a greater knowledge about the God Almighty, since I, the Lord, trace the cause of my being sent to human beings back to the Father who sent me out.

26.5| "And you will know that it is the Lord Almighty who has sent me to you." And next, concerning another Lord and God, the Lord himself adds something like this: "And I will make them strong in the Lord their God, and in his name they will boast, says the Lord." And who might they be who boast in the Lord?

27.1| "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, and the Lord rebuke you, he who has chosen Jerusalem."

27.2| Again here the Lord declares that a second Lord will rebuke the devil; it is not the Lord who is speaking who himself rebukes, but he is recalling another Lord. By this I think the demonstration is plainly set forth concerning the two Lords, namely the Father and God of all things, and the one after the Father who has taken over lordship and mastery over all things begotten. From Malachi. How God Almighty calls the Christ angel of the covenant, and the same one also Lord.

28.1| "Behold, I send out the angel, and he will look upon the way before my face, and suddenly the Lord whom you seek will come to the temple, and the angel of the covenant whom you desire. Behold, he comes, says the Lord Almighty, and who will endure the day of his entrance?"

28.2| These words too are like the earlier ones. For the Lord, God Almighty himself, says that a Lord will come to his temple, speaking of another; and he thereby indicates God the Word. After this he also names an angel of the covenant, whom the Lord Almighty himself teaches that he sends out before his own face, saying: "Behold, I send out my angel before my face."

28.3| And this same one whom he called my angel he next names Lord: "And suddenly the Lord will come," he says, "and the angel of the covenant." And, having first declared them one and the same, he adds: "Behold, he comes, and who will endure the day of his entrance?" signifying his second and glorious coming. And the one who prophesies all this is Lord Almighty, the God of the universe.

29.1| "And for those who fear my name the sun of righteousness will rise, and healing will be in its wings." The one so often named Lord and God and angel and commander-in-chief, Christ, priest, Word, and Wisdom of God, and image, is now himself called sun of righteousness. This one, then, the Father who begot him promises to cause to rise not for all, but only for those who fear his name, giving them, as a prize for their fear of him, the light of the sun of righteousness. This would be God the Word, who declared, "I am the world's light," and who "was the light that enlightens every man coming into the world."

29.2| It is this one, then, and not the perceptible sun, which is plain to all, rational and irrational alike, but the God-filled and intelligible one, the cause of all virtue and righteousness, that God says here will rise only for those who fear him, hiding him from the unworthy. Of these he says elsewhere: "And the sun will set upon the prophets who lead my people astray." From Jeremiah. How God the Word, being Lord, sends up a prayer to the Lord, his Father, prophesying the conversion of the nations.

30.1| "Lord, my strength and my help and my refuge in the day of affliction, to you nations will come from the end of the earth, and they will say: How false the idols our fathers acquired, and there is no profit in them. If a man makes gods for himself, these too are not gods. Therefore, behold, I will show them my hand at this time and make my power known to them, and they will know that I am the Lord."

30.2| A Lord is praying to another Lord, that is, to the Father and God of all, in the words with which he begins, "Lord, my strength," and what follows. And he clearly foretells the turning of the nations from their idolatry of many wanderings to piety toward God. This prophecy too is shown most plainly to have found fulfillment after the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ among men.

30.3| But now that we have learned, through thirty prophetic chapters in all, that our Savior and Lord, the Word of God, is a second God after the God who is highest and over all, we shall pass on to another theme of his dispensation, establishing from the same sacred books of the Hebrews that this very God was bound to come to men.

Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/094-demonstration-of-the-gospel-book-v#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.

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