Teaching Christianity (continued)
snatched up to the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body, as the apostle says, and there hear unutterable words which it is not lawful for man to speak (2 Cor 12:2–4), or there see the Lord Jesus Christ and listen to the gospel directly from his mouth rather than from other people.
6. Let us be on our guard against all such dangerous temptations to pride, and let us rather reflect on how the same apostle Paul, although he had been struck down and instructed by the divine voice from heaven, was still sent to a man to receive the sacraments and be joined to the Church;[6] and how the centurion Cornelius, although it was an angel who told him his prayers had been heard and his almsgiving acknowledged, was still handed over to Peter to be instructed and baptized.[7] And it could all, of course, have been done by the angel; but then no respect would have been shown to our human status, if God appeared to be unwilling to have his word administered to us by other human beings.
How, after all, could the saying be true, For the temple of God, which is what you are, is holy (1 Cor 3:17), if God never gave any answers from his human temple,[8] but only thundered out his revelation from the sky and by means of angels? Then again charity itself, which binds people together with the knot of unity, would have no scope for pouring minds and hearts in together, as it were, and blending them with one another, if human beings were never to learn anything from each other.
7. And certainly the apostle Philip did not send on that eunuch, who was reading the prophet Isaiah without understanding him, to an angel; nor was the point he did not understand explained to him by an angel, or revealed to him in his mind by God without any human ministry. What happened in fact was that Philip, who knew the prophet Isaiah, was sent to him by a prompting from God, and sat with him, and in human words and human language opened up to him what was hidden in that passage.[9]