Chapter 21. The Patriarchs, Especially Abraham, Prefigured Our Faith by Their Words and Actions.
Chapter 21
1. The fact that our faith was prefigured also in Abraham, since he was the Patriarch of our faith and, so to say, the prophet of our faith, the Apostle has taught quite fully in his Letter to the Galatians: Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, do so by works of the Law, or by learning with faith? Thus Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are men of faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith. For this reason he called him not only the prophet of faith but also the father of those among the Gentiles who believe in Christ Jesus, because his faith and ours is one and the same. He, because of God’s promise, believed in the future things as if they had already taken place. We, likewise, because of God’s promise, view through faith the inheritance that is in the kingdom.
2. Isaac’s story, too, is not without its typical significance. In the Letter to the Romans the Apostle says: also when Rebecca had conceived by one man, our forefather Isaac, she received an answer from the Word, in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of his call. She was told: Two people are conceived by you, and two nations are in your womb; one people shall overcome the other, and the older shall serve the younger. From this it is evident that not only the actions of the Patriarchs but also Rebecca’s childbirth was a prophecy about the two people: that one is the greater and the other the less; that one will be in servitude but the other free. Still, both are of one and the same father. Our God and theirs is one and the same, who knows what is hidden, who is aware of all things before they come to be. That is why he said, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.
3. Now, if anyone examines Jacob’s deeds, he will find that they are not aimless, but full of meaning. First, in his birth, the way he caught hold of his brother’s heel and so was called Jacob, that is, Supplanter—one who holds and is himself not held, one who binds the feet but is himself not bound, one who wrestles and wins, one who holds with his hand the heel, that is victory. The Lord, the type of whose birth Jacob prefigured, was born to fulfill this. Of him John said in the Apocalypse, He went out conquering, and to conquer. Second, he received the rights of the firstborn when his brother despised them. In like manner, the younger people [Gentiles] received the Firstborn of all, Christ, when the older people rejected him, saying, We have no king but Caesar. Again, the entire blessing is in Christ. For this reason the latter people snatched away from the Father the blessings of the former people, as Jacob took away the blessing from Esau.
That is why the one brother endured the ploys and persecutions of the other, just as the Church suffers the same things at the hands of the Jews. The twelve tribes, the race of Israel, were born in a foreign land, since Christ also would be in a foreign land generating the twelve-pillared foundation of the Church. Various sheep accrued to Jacob as his reward; Christ’s reward, too, are the people who come together from the various and diverse nations into the one cohort of faith. So the Father promised, saying, Ask of me and I will make the nations your inheritance, and the ends of the earth your heritage.
Since Jacob became the Lord’s prophet by the multitude of his sons, it was by all means necessary that he bear sons by the two sisters, even as Christ did by the two laws of the one and same Father. In the same way, even by the handmaids, thereby indicating that Christ should raise up sons of God from the freemen and the slaves according to the flesh, bestowing on all the gifts of the Spirit who gives us life. But he did all things for the sake of the younger sister with the beautiful eyes, who prefigured the Church, on account of whom Christ suffered. In those days, through his Patriarchs and Prophets he prefigured and announced beforehand the future things, exercising in advance his role in God’s economies, accustoming his inheritance to obey God, to be on a pilgrimage in the world, to follow his Word, and to prefigure future things. Certainly, with God there is nothing aimless or without significance.