CHAPTER 5
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. V.
CHAPTER
Psalm xxxii.
11ow David equally with Us knows the Word of God, Who is of His Essence, to be by the Command of the Father Creator of All Things ; and how the Same Prophet witnesses that the Same Word of God ivas sent by the Father for the Saving of Men, and how He prophesies that in a Short ((]) Time the Whole World 7Vould be filled by His Teaching.
" By the word of tlie Lord the heavens were made firm, and all the power of them by the spirit of his Ps. xxxii. mouth."
And in Ps. cvi. it is said :
"He sent his word and healed them, and saved Ps. cvi. them from their destruction."
And again in Ps. cxlvii.
Ps. cxlvii.
" He sendeth his oracle upon, earth, his word runneth swiftly."
Now it is evident that with the Psalm before us which says, " By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm,"
(229) the holy gospel exactly agrees when it says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him, and without him John i.
^vas not anything made."
The Gospel rightly calls Him God: for this .same being who is now regarded as God, has been called in our previous quotations, the Word, the Wisdom and the Offspring of God, and the Priest, the Christ, King, Lord, (iod, and the Image of God.
And (1)) that He is other than the l^ithcr, and His Minister, so that He as the greater can bid Him to create, is added in the Psalm before us :
"8.
Let all the earth fear the Lord, | and let all the dwellers on earth be moved by him.
| t).
For he spake, and they were created, | he commanded and " they were made.
| For it is plain that a speaker must speak to some one else, and one who issues a command must issue it to another b<"side himself.
And clearly since our Saviour's Incarnation
Ch.
NATURE 0¥ THE \\-ORD
many multitudes from all the earth, that is to say from all the (c) nations of the earth, have ceased to fear da:moiis as before, and have feared the Lord Jesus, and all the inhabitants of the world have been moved at the Name of Christ, agreeably to the oracle which here says, " Let the earth fear the Lord
By him shall be moved all the inhabitants of the world."
These, then, come from Ps. ii. and xxx.
And you would find similar prophecies also in Ps. cxlviii., which teaches that not only things in earth, but also things in heaven, the whole creation in a word, came into being by the command of God.
For it says :
"1.
Praise the Lord from the heavens, | praise, him (<1) in the height ; | 2.
Praise him all ye angels of his, | ''s. cxlviii.
| 3.
Praise him sun and praise him all his powers, '• I Praise him all ye stars and light,'^ moon, • • • 5For he spake, and they were made, I | he ccMiimanded, and they were created."
For if He commanded. Who was great enough to receive such a command, but the ^V()rd of God, who in many ways has been proved to be God in this treatise, and naturally called the Word of God, because the Almighty has set in Him the words that make and create all things, delivering to Him the task of governing all things and steering them by reason and in order (230) For of course no one should imagine that the Word of God is like to articulate and spoken speech, which among men consists of syllables, and is compounded of ncjuns and verbs : for we know that our speech consists essentially of sounds and syllables and their significations, and is produced by the tongue and the organs - of the throat and mouth, whereas that of the eternal and iincmbodicd nature, totally divon ed from all our conditions, C(juld not possibly involve anything human :
It uses the name of speech and CO nothing more.
Since we must not in the case of the God of the Universe postulate a voice that depends on the movements of the air, nor words, nor syllables, nor tongue, nor mouth, nor anything indeed that is human and mortal.'
E. omits ver. 4 an-l part of 5 in .S. and .^.V.
aprriptwv.
* The Paris editor note? that Eusebius has in view the teaching of >[arcclhis, the heretical Hishop of Ancyra, displaced by Basil A.n. 335, against whom Eusebius wrote the ,/</ Marccllttm,
VOL.
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
I3k. V.
For His must be a Word of the soul, and ([uite incapable of existence or being apart from the soul.
For human speech is in itself without essence and substance, and regarded generally is a self-movement and activity of thought.
But the \\'ord of God is other than this :
It has its own substance (c) in Itself altogether divine and spiritual, It exists in Itself, It is active also in Itself, and being divorced from matter and body, and made like to the nature of the first Unbegotten and Only God, It carries in Itself the meaning of all begotten things, and the ideas of things visible, being
Itself without body and invisible.
"Wherefore the divine oracles call It Wisdom and the Word of God.
(d) CHAPTER Thai Isaiah, as well as David, acknowledges Two Lords, and the (231) Second, as in David, is ihe Creator, as We also confess.
[Passage quoted, Is3. xlviii. 12-15.] (1)) See now how He that says, " I am the first, and I am the last.
He that established the earth and the heaven," clearly confesses that He was sent by "the Lord, the Lord," calling the Father Lord twice, and you will have undeniable evidence of what we seek.
And He says that He is first among beings begotten in all reverence, since He allots
Being, original, unbegotten, and beyond the first, to the Father.
For the customary meaning of first in the sense of "first of a greater number,'" superior in honour and order,
(c) would not be applicable to the Father.
I'or the Almighty God of course is not the first of created things, since the idea of Him does not admit of a beginning.
He must be beyond and above the first, as Himself generating and establishing the First, and the Divine ^^'ord alone is to be called the First of all begott(.n things.
So if we ask with reference to the words, " He spake and they were made, he commanded and they were created," to which of the begotten beings He gave the command to create, we see now clearly that it was given to Him, Who said, " My hand has laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand has
Ch.
LET US MAKE MAN
made the heaven strong":
^^'ho also confesses that He was sent by One greater than Himself, when He says:
"Now((l) the Lord, the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit."
And it must be the Word of (iod Who said also, " By the word of the Lord were the heavens made firm," if we compare the Psalm.
And yet though the Word of Ood is Himself proclaimed divine by the word " Lord," He still calls One Higher and Greater His Father and Lord, using with beautiful reverence the word Lord twice in speaking of Him, so as to differentiate His title.
For He says here, " The Lord, the Lord has sent me," as if the Almighty God were in a special sense first and true Lord both of His Only- (232) begotten Word and of all begotten things after Him, in relation to which the ^^'ord of God has received dominion and power from the Father, as His true and Only-begotten
Son, and therefore Himself holds the title of Lord in a secondary sense.
CHAPTER
From Genesis.
That Moses, God's Greatest Servant, knows the Father and God of the Utiiverse to have been associated with Another in the Creation of Man : And tit at We have learned already that this Being was the Divine Word.
" And God said. Let us make man in our image, and Gen. i. 26. likeness."
And also: "And God said.
It is not good for (c) man to be alone, let us make a helper for him."
And he Gen. ii. iS. at once shews that the Being addressed is not an angel of God, so that it may not be thought that this was said to angels, with the words :
" And God made man, in the Gen. i. 27. image of God he made him."