Teaching Christianity
things work together for good, for those who have been called according to plan. For those whom he foreknew beforehand, he also predestined to be replicas of the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What therefore shall we say to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? The one who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all, how has he not also with him granted us all things? Who will bring charges against the chosen ones of God? God who justifies them? Who is it that may condemn them? Christ Jesus who died, or rather who rose again, who is at the right hand of God, who is also interceding for us? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being done to death all day long, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter." But in all these things we do more than conquer through him who loved us. For I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angel nor princedom, neither things present nor things to come, neither might nor height nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 6:28–39).
44. As for the Letter to the Galatians, although the whole of it is written in the calm style of speaking, except for its first and last parts,[48] where you have the moderate style, still he does insert one place of such heartfelt emotion, that without any embellishments indeed of the sort to be found in the passages we have quoted just now, it could still only be spoken in the grand manner. You observe days, he says, and months and years and seasons. I am afraid about you, lest perchance I have labored over you for nothing. Be as I am, since I too am as you are, brothers, I beg you. You have done me no harm. You know that it was through a weakness of the flesh that some time ago I preached the gospel to you, and you did not spurn the trial you underwent in my flesh, nor reject me, but you took me to your heart like an angel of God, like Christ Jesus. So what was your blessedness? I bear you witness that if it had been possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. So have I become an enemy to you by preaching the truth? They are zealous for you in a way that is not good, but they wish to exclude you, so that you may be zealous for them. But it is good to be zealous in the good at all times, and not only when I am present among you, my little children, with whom I am again in labor, until Christ takes shape in you. But I wish I were now present among you and could change my tone, because I do not know what to make of you (Gal 4:10– 20). Do we have here any words balanced against each other in contrast, or linked to each other in any kind of progression, or has there been any music of phrases and clauses and periods? And yet that did not result in any tepidity in the grandeur of the emotion, with which we sense the whole passage to be so highly charged.
Examples from ecclesiastical writers: Cyprian and Ambrose
21, 45. But these passages from the apostle are clear in such a way that they are also profound, and so written and committed to memory that they call not only for a reader or a hearer, but also for an expositor, for anyone who is not content with their surface meaning, but wishes to plumb their depths. For that reason, let us take a look at these different kinds of speaking in those authors who by reading these have made advances in the knowledge of matters pertaining to divinity and salvation, and have ministered that knowledge to the Church.
The blessed Cyprian employs the plain, calm manner of speaking in the book where he discusses the sacrament of the cup.[49] In it, that is to say, the question has been raised and is settled whether the Lord's cup should have only water in it, or water mixed with wine. But we must give an extract from it by way of example. So after the letter's opening salutation he is now getting down to settling the question that has been raised:
But you must know, he says, that we have been admonished, in offering the cup, to keep to what has been handed down to us from the Lord, and that nothing different should be done by us from what the Lord did for us first; so that the cup which is offered in commemoration of him should be offered with wine mixed in it. For since Christ says, I am the true vine (Jn 15:8), the blood of Christ is assuredly not water, but wine; nor can his blood, by which we have been redeemed and given life, be seen to be in the cup when wine is lacking in the cup. For it is by wine that Christ's blood is shown forth, and by which it is proclaimed by the sacramental symbolism and testimony of all the scriptures.
For we find in Genesis, as regards the sacramental symbolism, that Noah was a forerunner in this very case, and presented a representation of the Lord's passion there, in that he drank wine, got drunk, stripped himself naked in his own home, and was lying on his back with his thighs naked and spread out; in that his nakedness was pointed out by his middle son, but covered by the eldest and youngest;[50] and the rest which there is no need to run through, as this is enough on its own to show Noah as a type of the true reality to come, since he drank wine, not water, and thus presented an image of the Lord's passion.
Again, we can see in the priest Melchizedek a sacramental prefiguration of the Lord's sacrifice, according to the testimony of the divine scripture, where it says, And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. Now he was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abraham (Gn 14:18–19). Now that Melchizedek represented Christ is declared by the Holy Spirit in the psalms, saying to the Son in the person of the Father, Before the daystar I begot you; you are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek (Ps 110:4).
This, and the rest of the letter that follows, keeps to the