39. For Dial. 61–65 see G. Otranto, "Metodo delle citazioni bibliche ed ese-

The unity of God and the divinity of Christ

3. "It has already been shown," Trypho agreed, "that he who appeared to Abraham, and was called God and Lord, fulﬁlled the commission (which he received from the Lord in heaven) to punish the people of Sodom. Even if the God who appeared to Moses was accompanied by an angel, we cannot identify the God who spoke from the bush to Moses with God, the Creator of all, but with him who certainly appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and who was also called and perceived to be an angel of God the Creator of the universe, because he made known to men the will of the Father and Creator."

4. "Trypho," I replied, "I now wish to prove to you that in the apparition under discussion, only one person, who is termed an angel and is God, was seen by and conversed with Moses. Here is the word of Scripture: An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a ﬂame of ﬁre from the midst of a bush; and he saw that the bush was on ﬁre and not burnt. And Moses said: I will go and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he went forward to see, he called to him from the midst of the bush.37

5. "Now, in the way that Scripture refers to him who appeared to Jacob in a dream as an angel, and then states that the same angel said to Jacob in his sleep, I am the God who appeared to you when you ﬂed from the face of your brother Esau,38 and as Scripture also afﬁrms that, in the judgment of the people of Sodom in the days of Abraham, the Lord executed the will of the Lord who is in heaven; so, when the Scripture here states that an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses, and then announces that he is

Lord and God, it refers to the same person who is identiﬁed in many of our earlier quotations as the minister to God, who is above the world, and above whom there is no other God."

Copyright © 2003. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved. c h a p t e r 6139 "So, my friends," I said, "I shall now show from the Scriptures that God has begotten of himself a certain rational power

Forma futuri: studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pelegrino (Torino: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1975), 282–93.

37. Ex 3.2–4. See Smit Sibinga, 81–85; Skarsaune, 47, 50, 211–12, 417, 435.

38. Gn 31.13, 33–34; 35.7. See Smit Sibinga, 114, 123–24.

39. For Dial. 61–65 see G. Otranto, "Metodo delle citazioni bibliche ed esegesi nei capitoli 63–65 del <Dialogo con Trifone> di Giustino," VetChr 13

(1976): 87–112.

Justin, Martyr, Saint. Dialogue with Trypho (Selections from the Fathers of the Church, Volume 3), edited by Michael Slusser, Catholic University of America Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/de

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st. justin martyr as a beginning40 before all creatures. The Holy Spirit indicates this power by various titles, sometimes the Glory of the Lord, at other times Son, or Wisdom, or Angel, or God, or Lord, or Word.

He even called himself Commander-in-chief when he appeared in human guise to Joshua, the son of Nun. Indeed, he can justly lay claim to all these titles from the fact both that he performs the Father's will and that he was begotten by an act of the Father's will.

2. "But, does not something similar happen also with us humans? When we utter a word, it can be said that we beget the word, but not by cutting it off, in the sense that our power of uttering words would thereby be diminished. We can observe a similar example in nature when one ﬁre kindles another41 without losing anything, but remaining the same; yet the enkindled ﬁre seems to exist of itself and to shine without lessening the brilliancy of the ﬁrst ﬁre.

3. "My statements will now be conﬁrmed by none other than the Word of Wisdom, who is this God begotten from the Father of all, and who is Word and Wisdom and Power and Glory of him who begot him. Here are his words as spoken by Solomon:

If I shall declare to you what happens daily, I shall call to mind events from eternity, and recount them. The Lord begot me in the beginning of his ways for his works. He set me up from eternity, before he made the earth, and before he made the depths, before the fountains of water had sprung out, before the mountains had been established. Before all the hills he begets me.

4. "God made the earth, and the desert, and the highest inhabited places under the sky. When he prepared the heavens, I was present.

When he set up his throne on the winds, when he established the clouds above and strengthened the fountains of the deep, when he reinforced the foundations of the earth, I was with him arranging all things. I 40. jArchvn: "beginning," not "in the beginning." Maran (PG 6.613 n 77) notes that Justin does not allude to the eternal generation of the Son, but to that by which the Father is said to have generated him as the beginning of all creatures. See also Daniélou, 166–67 (on ajrchv) and 311–13 (on attempts to identify the church with pre-existent Wisdom).

41. The lumen de lumine, incorporated into the Nicene Creed. See Lampe, PGL, s.v. pu'r, H 3. Tatian, Oration 5.4 has the same conceit; also Clement, Stromateis 5.14.

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The unity of God and the divinity of Christ

was that in which he delighted; daily and at all times I delighted in his presence, because he rejoiced for having ﬁnished the habitable world and delighted in the sons of men.

5. "Now, therefore, my son, hear me. Blessed is the man who hears me, and the man who shall keep my ways, watching daily at my gates, and waiting at my door posts, for my ways are the ways of life; and my will has been prepared by the Lord. But they who sin against me hurt their own souls, and they who hate me love death." 42 c h a p t e r 62 "My friends," I continued, "the Word of God, through Moses, stated exactly the same thing, when it revealed to us that at the creation of man God spoke of him (who was pointed out by Moses) in the same sense. Here is the text: Let us make man in our image and likeness; and let them have dominion over the ﬁshes of the sea and the fowls of the air, and over the cattle, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moves upon the earth. And God created man; according to the image of God did he create him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and ﬁll the earth, and gain dominion over it.43

2. "Lest you distort the meaning of these words by repeating what your teachers say—either that God said to himself, Let us make, just as we, when on the verge of doing something, say to ourselves, Let us make; or that God said Let us make to the elements, that is, to the earth or other similar substances of which we think man was composed—I wish again to quote Moses to prove beyond all doubt that he spoke with one endowed with reason and numerically different from himself.

3. "These are the words: And God said: Behold Adam has become as one of Us, knowing good and evil.44 Now, the words as one of Us clearly show that there were a number of persons together,

42. Prv 8.21–36; See Skarsaune, 388: "And one notices how Justin strives to connect two series of Christological predicates: The one derives from the theophany argument (glory, angel, God, Lord); the other from the Wisdom Christology: Son, Wisdom, Word."

43. Gn 1.26–28. See R. McL. Wilson, "The early history of the exegesis of Gen. 1:26," SP 1 (= TU 63; 1957), 420–37; A. Altmann, "Homo imago Dei in Jewish and Christian Theology," JourRel 48 (1968): 235–59.

44. Gn 3.22. See Smit Sibinga, 17.

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