Demonstratio Evangelica 7 part 1/5

That God would come to men and dwell with men upon the earth as a citizen, and that there would be two very great proofs of his coming -- a calling of the nations throughout the inhabited world unto the receiving of the true knowledge of God, and a falling away and desolation of the Jewish nation on account of their unbelief toward him -- these things we learned, through the prophetic utterances, in the treatise before this one; and having also examined, in the same treatise, what end the things foretold met with, we shall next, in due order, in this seventh treatise of the Evangelical Demonstration, endeavor to consider the manner in which it is said that he made his passage to men.

Come then, let us now from this point consider what manner it was foretold that the sojourn of God among men would be, and in what part of the earth it was proclaimed beforehand that he would be born, and from what family it was declared that he would come forth. From Isaiah.

The prediction of the unbelief of the Jewish nation toward Christ, and the sign given to them by the Lord. This was a virgin bearing God, at whose birth the utter overthrow of the Jewish nation was foretold, and how men of another race and enemies would occupy their land, and how the land which was formerly desert, having obtained divine cultivation, would become fruitful.

This is the manner in which the Church from the nations is signified, just as the wonderful evangelist John, theologizing about our Savior and Lord -- namely the Word of God himself -- with a greatness of voice beyond that of man, beginning from his sacred writing, sets forth, together with the theology, also his enfleshed sojourn among men: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, he says; and adding next to these, and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.

In the very same manner, the divinely inspired prophet also, being about to proclaim the God who was born of a virgin, foresees beforehand his glorious theophany, describing the theology in this way: I saw the Lord Sabaoth sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the house was full of his glory, and Seraphim stood round about him; six wings to the one, and six wings to the one; with two they covered the face, and with two they covered the feet, and with two they flew. And they cried one to another, and said, Holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth; the whole earth is full of his glory.

And next he adds: And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people? And I said, Behold, I am here, send me. And he said to me, Go, and say to this people: By hearing you shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you shall see, and shall not perceive. For the heart of this people has grown fat, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I should heal them. And I said, How long, O Lord? And he said, Until cities are made desolate, so as not to be inhabited, and houses, so that there are no men.

What is it right to say that the prophet saw -- the Lord, or him whom we have shown, in the passages before these, to have appeared to and conversed with Abraham's forefathers? For we have already learned that this one is at once God and Lord, and indeed angel and commander-in-chief of the power of the Lord. The present treatise, then, being about to proclaim his passage to men, foresees beforehand his divine kingship, by which he says he has seen him sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.

This would be that very throne of his which is also indicated in the Psalm concerning the Beloved, according to the words, Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever, upon which the God who is maker of all things, being also his Father, bade him, as his only-begotten and beloved, to be seated, saying, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

John the evangelist confirms this our interpretation of the passages, who, having cited the words of Isaiah before us, in which it was said, for the heart of this people has grown fat, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and their eyes they have closed, adds concerning Christ, saying: These things Isaiah said, when he saw his glory, and spoke concerning him.

The prophet, then, having seen the establishment of our Savior's divine glory and kingship upon the paternal throne, being inspired by the Holy Spirit, and being about next to describe his passage to men and his birth from a virgin, bears witness beforehand to the knowledge and doxology that was to come upon all the earth, introducing the Seraphim encircling him and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth; the whole earth is full of his glory.

Who might the Seraphim be who form Christ of God's bodyguard, but perhaps, it may be, choirs of angels and divine powers, or also of prophets and apostles? For Seraphim is interpreted the beginning of their mouth.

Such are the prophets and apostles, through whose mouth the beginning of the saving proclamation came to be; wherefore they obtained this appellation, just as the powers of the Holy Spirit have also been called wings -- the first and the last of these covering over the knowledge of the Word of God, as being ineffable and incomprehensible in nature, while the middle ones reveal the things concerning his dispensation, since these alone are knowable to the nature of men, while the things beyond and the things after these remain hushed in silence, unspoken.

And divine and heavenly powers might also be signified through the Seraphim, insofar as Seraphim is otherwise interpreted burnings. Wherefore it is said, who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.

These cry out and shout, one to the other, each according to its own power, setting forth the holiness of him who is the subject of the theology, and -- the most paradoxical thing of all -- proclaiming as theology that not only heaven and all that is in heaven is full of his doxology, but that all the earth also shared in the same power, on account of his foretold descent from heaven to men, which the treatise, proceeding onward, next prophesies, proclaiming his birth from a virgin and, through this, his doxology which has been spread abroad over all the earth.

Lord Sabaoth is interpreted Lord of hosts. He himself would be the commander-in-chief of the power of the Lord, whom, in the twenty-third Psalm also, the divine powers again call Lord Sabaoth, proclaiming his ascent from earth to heaven, on whose account they say: Lift up your gates, you rulers, and be lifted up, you everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. The Hebrew text, then, again calls him here Lord Sabaoth.

And since he himself is the King of glory, on account of his coming all the earth was to be filled with his glory; fittingly, this future event is spoken both in the prophet and in the Psalm -- in the prophet, through the words, the whole earth is full of his glory, and in the Psalm, through the beginning, which says, the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, the world, and all who dwell in it.

These things having been foretold, the prophet, going on a little further, next bears witness that although all the earth will indeed be full of his glory, yet the Jewish nation will not receive him; wherefore he says, and the Lord said (namely, that very Lord Sabaoth who had been beheld), Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people? And I said, Behold, I am here, send me. And he said, Go, and say to this people: By hearing you shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you shall see, and shall not perceive. For the heart of this people has grown fat, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I should heal them.

By these words he directly foretells the contradiction that would arise against him from the Jewish people, and how they will indeed see him, but will not attend to who he is; and though he speaks and teaches among them, they will hear, but will not understand either who it is that converses with them, or what teachings of the new doctrine he will hand down to them.

The evangelist John bears witness to the fulfillment of these words, speaking concerning our Savior thus: Though he had done so many signs before them, yet they did not believe in him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke: Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again, He has blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I should heal them. These things Isaiah said, when he saw his glory, and spoke concerning him.

Without dispute, then, the evangelist has referred the theophany in Isaiah to Christ, and has referred to the Jewish people, who did not receive the Lord who was beheld by the prophet, in accordance with the prediction concerning him. To the prophet, then, who had beheld the Lord Sabaoth, the oracle says he was to speak to the Jewish nation, that they too would one day see the same one, but would not understand who he was, and would hear him speaking among them and teaching, but would not understand, because their heart had been hardened.

Isaiah, then, having prophesied these things through the words we have cited, in the narrative account describes an attack of enemies against Ahaz, who then held the kingship of the Jewish people, and he signifies that the overthrow of the sensible enemies would take place immediately and not long after; but of those of whom these were symbols -- namely the intelligible and invisible enemies, certain demons and unseen powers (concerning whom, at the beginning of the whole work, we have discoursed, showing that not only the Jewish nation, but the whole human race, has fallen into every kind of wickedness and even into godless idolatry itself) -- he shows that their defeat would come about in no other way than through the foretold coming to men of the Word of God, who was to assume a human tabernacle from a virgin without experience of marriage. What need there was of this for him, it would now be time to discuss.

Since death entered into the world through a man, says the apostle, victory over death had, of course, to be won through that same man, and the body of death had to be shown forth as a body of life, and the kingdom of sin, which formerly worked in the mortal body, had to be destroyed, sin no longer having dominion, but righteousness.

And since, formerly, the fall came upon all men through the sins of the flesh, fittingly again, through one who was without sin and free from all undefiled wickedness, were trophies raised up against the enemies.

And what enemies, but those who long ago, through the pleasures of the flesh, wore down the human race? And for another reason too it was necessary that the Word of God, being about to converse with men and to hand down the teachings of piety to the hearing of flesh, and to present before the eyes of men, and with clear evidence, both wonders and the power of God, should do this by no other means than the organ familiar to us -- since it was not possible for men to see anything more than bodies with their eyes, nor to hear any hearing more than the sound produced through the tongue.

In order, then, that we might apprehend, even through bodily sensation, the conception of things intelligible and incorporeal, the very God the Word took upon himself the reason that is akin and familiar to us, and through it set forth before those who heard and beheld with their own ears and eyes all the saving things of his divinely inspired words and works.

And these things he did, in no wise bound, as we are, by the necessities of the body, nor undergoing anything worse or greater than himself in his deity, nor so fettered to the body as a human soul is, as to be unable to perform divine works, nor to be everywhere present, being the Word of God, filling all things and coming through all things.

Nor, moreover, did he take upon himself any defilement or corruption or stain from the flesh which he assumed, since, being incorporeal in nature, and immaterial, and fleshless, as befits the Word of God, he passed through the whole dispensation by divine power and by words ineffable to us, imparting of his own, but not in turn taking on anything of what was alien to him.

There is, then, no need to fear the enfleshed dispensation, since the unstained one was not stained, nor was the undefiled one defiled by the flesh, nor did the impassible Word of God become corrupted along with the flesh's own nature -- since not even the sun's rays suffer anything when they touch corpses and bodies of every kind. Rather, by the divine Word, the corruptible was, on the contrary, transformed, and was made holy and immortal, since this too was willed by him; indeed, it was also made to minister to the divinely inspired counsels and works of the Spirit. All this, then, was wrought by the most loving God and the God-Word, for the healing and salvation of all men, in accordance with the voices of the prophets, which from ancient times, from of old, bore witness beforehand to his wondrous birth from a virgin. And it is with great necessity that the prophet places before the account of Christ's birth from a virgin its condition of understanding, crying out directly to those who hear these things: If you do not believe, neither shall you understand.

To this he next adds words to the following effect: If you do not believe, neither shall you understand. And the Lord spoke further to Ahaz, saying: Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height. And Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. And he said: Hear now, O house of David; is it a small thing for you to weary men, and how do you weary the Lord also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, before he knows or prefers evil things, he shall choose the good; because before the child knows good or evil, he refuses wickedness, in order to choose the good. And the land which you dread shall be forsaken because of the two kings.

Such, then, was the content of the prophecy. But it is worth pausing over the preface of the passage, which testifies to those who read it that if they do not believe, neither shall they understand. And it was necessary to note this, showing that not only understanding but also faith is required of those who would read it -- and not only faith, but also understanding. Wherefore those of the circumcision who have not believed in the Christ of God, even now still hearing these words, have not to this day understood the one who was prophesied, so that in their own case, first of all, the prediction has proved true.

For hearing, all through every day, the prophecies concerning Christ, they do not hear with the ears of the understanding. And the cause of their ignorance is nothing other than unbelief, and this too the prediction has truthfully declared concerning them and to them. For if, it says, you do not believe, neither shall you understand.

But if they should say that it was not virgin but young woman that was named in the scripture (for so, they say, it is transmitted among themselves), then, we shall reply, what sort of sign would there be that is worthy of a promise of God, if a young woman were merely to conceive and bear in the usual manner, as all women do, from intercourse with a man? And how, moreover, would he who was born of her be God? And not simply God, but God with us? For this is what Emmanuel means to signify, which he says the one who is born ought to be named. For behold, it says, the virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which, being interpreted, is God with us.

What contest, moreover, could there be for God, or what toil and labor, in a woman giving birth in the usual manner? For in our copies, translated by the seventy men, ancient in race from the Hebrews, but tested for accuracy in their ancestral learning, it is thus transmitted: Is it a small thing for you to weary men? And how do you weary the Lord also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, who shall be called God with us (for this, as I have said, is what the name Emmanuel means to signify); but in the copies of the Jews themselves, transmitted according to the version of Aquila (Aquila was a proselyte, not a Jew by nature), nevertheless even according to him it is said in this manner: Hear now, O house of David, is it a small thing for you men to labor, that you should also labor my Lord God? Therefore he himself will give you a sign: Behold, the young woman conceives in the womb, and bears a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel.

In Symmachus, this stands as follows (Symmachus is said to have been an Ebionite; this is a sect of certain so-called Jews who are said to believe in Christ, and Symmachus was one of them, in whom too these words stand thus): Hear, O house of David, is it not enough for you to weary men, that you should weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, the young woman conceives and bears a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel.

For since the hardness of character of the Jewish nation, and its resistance to piety, caused no small sweat and toil, labor and struggle, to the prophets of God who loved him in ancient times, for this reason it says: Is it not enough for you that the prophets of God should labor, and cause struggle to men? But now you also weary my God, and cause struggle even to my God? For thus Theodotion also rendered it.

The prophet, then, did not speak of him who is wearied and stripped for the contest as belonging peculiarly to himself alone, but also to those to whom the discourse was addressed -- for he would not have said my God, meaning the God over all, in the midst of the Jews, among whom, from their fathers, reverence for the God who is the maker of all things had been preserved, unless that God belonged to them also.

What, then, would be the contest and toil, or the labor, of the God who is prophesied -- namely, his coming into human birth -- according to us and the translation of the Seventy, being born of a virgin, but according to the version now current among the Jews, of a young woman? You would find, moreover, in Moses, that even one who is admittedly a virgin is called a young woman -- namely, one betrothed to one man, but violated by another, whom he has called by this term.

But moreover, the Emmanuel who was to be born of the woman referred to bears a power greater than that of the common man, choosing the good before he knows evil, and refusing wickedness in order to choose the good; and this not in the age of a man, but in that of an infant.

Wherefore it is said, before the child knows good or evil, he refuses wickedness, in order to choose the good, by which words the utter inexperience of the one referred to in wickedness is altogether set forth. But he who is God with us also bears an appellation greater than that of man.

Wherefore also the sign concerning him was said to comprise depth together with height -- depth on account of his descent to men, or also his sojourn even unto death, and height on account of his divine restoration out of the depth, or on account of the theology concerning his divine pre-existence.

Who, then, might this God with us be, but the God and Lord who has been demonstrated in the preceding pages, who also appeared to Abraham in no other way than through the form of a man? But if those of the circumcision should refer these things to Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, claiming that he is the one who was foretold to his father, yet neither was Hezekiah the God with us, nor was any sign befitting God wrought concerning him; nor, moreover, was there any contest or toil for God concerning his birth; and besides this it can also be shown that Hezekiah is excluded by the chronology of the prophecy.

For these things were prophesied concerning future events while Ahaz, his very father, was still reigning; but Hezekiah is shown to have already been born before Ahaz became king. And if the content of the present prediction is not to be referred to him, it is far more removed from being referred to any other of those among the Jews who lived after the times of the prophecy, but applies only to the birth of the true Emmanuel -- that is, of him who became God with us -- and only to the coming to men of our Savior, the Word of God.

For with the two kings destroyed, the land of the Jews was left desolate, just as the oracle had said it would be, saying, the land shall be forsaken because of the two kings -- which itself, taken literally and word for word, might be rendered thus. For in the time of King Ahaz and of Isaiah, son of Amos, and in the times of the prophecy, the king of Syria who was in Damascus, and the king of Israel who was in Samaria -- not the one in Jerusalem, but the one over the multitude of Jews who had apostatized from the divine law -- having made a covenant with one another, set themselves against those who were ruled by the successors of David.

The prophecy, then, in foretelling the overthrow of both these, says that those very Jews and foreigners of that time, who at that time had given their right hands to one another against the people of God, would immediately be dissolved and would withdraw from the war; but that their kingship and succession would be utterly destroyed and extinguished at the time of the birth of the prophesied God who is with us.

Consider, then, when the kingdom of the Damascenes, together with that of the Jews, was destroyed, and in what times the land of the Jews was left without a king, and likewise that very territory of the Damascenes, which formerly had great power, ruling in ancient times over the whole of Syria with a mighty hand.

For it was at the overthrow of these that Emmanuel was, in every respect, to be born, and the one who was prophesied was to have come. If, then, it were possible to see the kingdoms in question still standing, there would be no need to inquire further, and one would only, even now, still have to suspend one's hopes upon a future time; but if the overthrow of the things spoken of is manifest in fact, so that neither in Damascus nor in Judaea, in our own day, does a king any longer appear, it is evident that the oracle which said, and the land shall be forsaken because of the two kings, of whom you are afraid, because of them, has reached its fulfillment -- the kings being named in place of the kingdoms.

Symmachus, at any rate, says: And the land, because of which you are troubled, shall be forsaken because of its two kings. And Aquila: The ground which you loathe shall be forsaken because of its two kings.

Theodotion likewise rendered it in this manner: The land which you abhor shall be forsaken because of its two kings.

Do you see how it foretells that the land would be left without a king? And what land, but that of the Damascenes and that of Israel? For these were the two kings concerning whom the discourse speaks -- whose land Ahaz loathed, or abhorred, being worn out or troubled by it. When, then, did this come to pass? For once these things had reached their conclusion, it is altogether necessary that the aforementioned part of the prophecy too had passed into fulfillment; and this was that the virgin should bear the God who is with us.

And indeed it is evident to those who examine the histories that, down to the times of the manifestation of our Savior Jesus Christ, the kingship at Damascus too, in succession from ancestors, still continued to subsist. The sacred apostle, at any rate, makes mention of Aretas, king of the Damascenes; and as for the Jewish nation, its disorderly and lawless kingship still remained in existence even at that time -- for Herod, and those who came after him down to the time of our Savior, did not derive the succession of their rule from lineage.

After his manifestation, and the evangelic proclamation to all men of the child born of the virgin, the land was straightway abandoned before the face of the two kings. For from that time, when the monarchy of the Romans prevailed over the nations, every local rule of nations and cities was dissolved, and, together with the rest, the matters of the prophecy now in hand were also reaching their fulfilment.

These, then, are the literal statements. But as to the sense, the word of the prophecy signifies the steadfastness, calm, and peace of every soul that has received the God who was born, namely Emmanuel himself. For when the one Christ, and the Word proclaimed by him, reign over the soul of men, the enemies who were formerly there have taken flight — two kinds of impiety: the one that instils in men idolatry and heterodoxy in manifold doctrines, and the one that works corruption of morals.

Now the bodily kings formerly indicated bore the symbols of these two impieties: of these, the king of the Damascenes was an image of the error of the nations concerning idols, while the other was an image of those who revolted from Jerusalem, that is, of those who had fallen away from the worship of God according to the law.

That it is fitting to receive these things figuratively according to their sense, one may learn also from what is said next, in which the word declares that in the day of Emmanuel certain flies and bees will come upon the Jewish nation — some from Egypt, some from the Assyrians — that they will shave the head and the feet and the beard, and that a man will rear a heifer of the herd and two sheep, and certain other things, all to happen at one and the same time, which are in no way to be understood according to the letter, but are to be contemplated only according to the sense.

These things, then, are of this sort. But how the Scripture foretold the manner of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, the evangelist will testify in writing somewhat as follows: 'Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this way. For when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being righteous and not willing to make her a public example, resolved to put her away secretly. But as he thought upon these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife; for that which is begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.'

'For he will save his people from their sins.' Now all this happened that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, 'Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel', which is translated, 'God with us.'

Thus, then, according to us, the matters of divine foreknowledge are confirmed by the outcome of events, since otherwise the prophecy would not be shown to be true. Next, let us consider what and how many things are said to happen in that day — clearly meaning in the time of the manifestation of Emmanuel.