The Angel Who Is God

What about another place where we read, in exactly the same way, that God is described as an angel? When Jacob complained to his wives, Leah and Rachel, about the unfair treatment he had had from their father, and told them that he now wanted to leave and go back to his own country, he backed up what he said with the authority of a dream. He says that at that time the angel of God had said to him in the dream, [a]

“Jacob, Jacob.” “And I said, ‘What is it?’” “Lift up your eyes and see: the male goats and the rams mounting the sheep, and the female goats, are black and white, and mottled, and gray, and speckled, for I have seen everything Laban has done to you. I am God, who appeared to you in the place of God, where you anointed the standing stone for me and made me a vow. So now get up, leave this land, and go to the land where you were born, and I will be with you.”

If the angel of God speaks to Jacob like this, and the angel himself brings it up and says, “I am God, who appeared to you in the house of God,” then we see without any hesitation that this one is declared to be not only an angel but God as well. He speaks of the vow Jacob directed to him in the place of God, and he does not say “in my place.” So it is God’s place, and he too is God. And notice that the text says simply “in the place of God.” It does not say “in the place of the angel and of God,” but only “of God”; and the one who makes those promises is shown to be both God and angel. So there must reasonably be a distinction between the one who is called God and nothing else, and the one who is declared to be not simply God but angel as well. And since authority as great as this cannot belong to any other angel here — the authority to call himself God, and to testify that a vow was made to him — but only to Christ, to whom a vow can be made not merely as to an angel but as to God, it is plain that this is not to be taken as the Father but as the Son, God and angel.

And if this is Christ, as it is, then a man is in terrible danger who says that Christ is only a man or only an angel, withholding from him the power of the divine name — an authority he has steadily been granted on the trustworthiness of the heavenly Scriptures, which say again and again that he is both angel and God. And there is this on top of it all. Just as the divine Scripture has often declared him both angel and God, so the same divine Scripture declares him both man and God, saying in this way what he was to be, and sketching even then, in a picture, what he would be in the reality of his own substance.

For it says, “Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. And he saw that he was not winning against him, and he touched the broad of Jacob’s thigh while he was wrestling with him, and he with him.” Then he said to him, “Let me go, for the morning has dawned.” “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” “What is your name?” “Jacob.” “Your name will no longer be called Jacob; Israel will be your name, because you have prevailed with God, and you are strong with men.”

And it adds this as well: “And Jacob called the name of that place the Vision of God — for I have seen the Lord face to face, and my life has been spared. And the sun rose upon him. Afterward he crossed over the Vision of God, but he was limping on his thigh.”

A man, it says, wrestled with Jacob. If this was a mere man, who is he? Where is he from? Why does he fight and wrestle with Jacob? What had come between them? What had happened? What was the cause of a quarrel like that and a struggle like that? And why is Jacob — who turns out to be strong enough to hold the man he is wrestling, and who asks a blessing from the one he is holding — why is he said to have asked for it, except because this struggle was a picture set out in advance of the struggle between Christ and the sons of Jacob, which the Gospel says was carried through to the end? For Jacob’s people struggled against this man, and in that struggle Jacob’s people were found to be the stronger, because against Christ they won the victory of their own wickedness. And at that point, because of the crime they had committed, they faltered and gave way, and began to limp very badly in the walk of their own faith and salvation. And although they were found the stronger, in the matter of Christ’s condemnation, they still need his mercy, they still need his blessing.

But the man who wrestled with Jacob also says, “Your name will no longer be called Jacob; Israel will be your name.” And if Israel is the man who sees God, the Lord was showing beautifully that it was not only a man who was wrestling with Jacob then, but God as well. Jacob certainly saw God, the one he wrestled with, even though in his own struggle he was holding a man. And so that there could be no hesitation left, he laid down the interpretation himself by saying, “Because you have prevailed with God, and you are strong with men.” That is why this same Jacob, already grasping the force of the mystery and taking in the authority of the one he had wrestled with, called the name of the place where he had wrestled the Vision of God. And he added the reason for the interpretation he was giving of the Vision of God: “For I have seen God face to face,” he said, “and my life has been spared.” He saw God, then, the one he wrestled with as if with a man; and yet he held the man as a winner holds him, while as the lesser he asked a blessing as from God. So he wrestled with God and with man; and so that struggle was truly a picture set out in advance, and in the Gospel it was carried out, between Christ and the people of Jacob — where, although the people had the mastery, they proved to be the lesser by being shown to be guilty. Who will hesitate to acknowledge that Christ, in whom this pattern of a wrestling match was fulfilled, was not man only but God as well, since that very pattern of a wrestling match seems to have proved him man and God?

And even after this the same divine Scripture rightly does not stop calling the angel God and pronouncing God the angel. For when this same Jacob was about to bless Manasseh and Ephraim, the sons of Joseph, with his hands laid crosswise on the boys’ heads, he said, “The God who has fed me from my youth until this day, the angel who has rescued me from all evils, bless these boys.”

He goes so far in affirming that the one he had called God is the same being as the angel that, at the end of what he says, he speaks of the one he means as a single figure, when he says “bless.” If he had meant one to be understood as God and the other as an angel, he would have taken the two persons in with a plural verb. As it is, he set down the singular of one person in the blessing, and by that he meant it to be understood that God and the angel are the same. And yet he cannot be taken as God the Father; he can be taken as Christ, who is both God and angel. And Jacob marked out Christ as the author of this blessing by laying his hands crosswise on the boys, as if their father were Christ, and by putting his hands that way he showed the shape and the coming form of the suffering. So let no one who is not afraid to speak of Christ as an angel be afraid to call him God as well, when he sees that Christ himself was called upon in the blessing of these boys — by the mystery of the suffering, hinted at in the figure of the crossed hands — as both God and angel.

But suppose some heretic, stubbornly struggling against the truth, keeps insisting in all these cases on understanding that Christ was an angel in the strict sense, or argues that he has to be understood that way. Here too he must be beaten down by the force of the truth. All things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth are made subject to Christ; and if even the angels themselves, along with every other creature that is subject to Christ, are called gods, then rightly Christ too is God. And if any angel at all who is subject to Christ can be called God — and if, once said, this is professed without blasphemy — then surely it is far more fitting for Christ himself, the Son of God, to be pronounced God. For if an angel who is subject to Christ is raised to the name of God, then much more, and much more consistently, will Christ, to whom all angels are subject, be said to be God. It does not suit the nature of things that what is granted to the lesser should be refused to the greater. So if an angel is lower than Christ, and an angel is still called god, it follows all the more that Christ is called God, who is found to be greater and better not than one angel but than all of them. [h]

And if “God stands in the assembly of the gods, and in their midst God judges between the gods,” and Christ stood at various times in the synagogue, then Christ stood in the synagogue as God — judging, that is, between the gods, to whom he says, “How long will you show favor to people’s faces?” That is to say, he was charging the men of the synagogue with not practicing just judgments. And if the people who are reproved and blamed there seem for any reason at all to reach this name without blasphemy, so that they are called gods, then he is surely far more to be counted God who is not only said to have stood as God in the assembly of the gods, but is also shown by the same passage to be the one who distinguishes and judges between gods. And even if those who “fall like one of the princes” are still called gods, much more surely will he be said to be God, who not only does not fall like one of the princes, but even overcomes the author and prince of wickedness himself.

And what on earth is the reason that this name should be given even to Moses, as they say it was — since it is said, “I have made you a god to Pharaoh” — and yet be denied to Christ, who is declared appointed as both Lord and God, and not to Pharaoh only but to every creature? In the one case the name is given sparingly, in the other lavishly; in the one by measure, in the other beyond every kind of measure. For it is said, “The Father does not give to the Son by measure, for the Father loves the Son.” In the one case it is for a time, in the other with no reference to time at all; for he received the power of the divine name over all things and for all time. But if a man who has received power over one single man reaches that name of God even so, without hesitation, on the strength of the limited power given him, how much more must the one who has power over Moses himself be believed to have reached the authority of that name?

I could set out how all the heavenly Scriptures handle this subject, and stir up, so to speak, a whole forest of passages about that showing of Christ’s divinity — except that I have not so much undertaken to speak against this one form of heresy as to set out the rule of truth about who Christ is. Still, though I must hurry on to other matters, I do not think I should pass this by: in the Gospel the Lord declared his own majesty when he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up again.” Or when, in another passage and on another subject, he declares, “I have power to lay down my life and to take it up again; for this command I have received from my Father.” [l]

Now who is it who says that he can lay down his life, or can take his life back again himself, because he has received it from his Father? Or who says that he can raise up and rebuild the destroyed temple of his body — except because he is the Word who is from the Father, who is with the Father, “through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made”; the imitator of his Father’s works and powers, “the image of the invisible God,” “who came down from heaven,” who testified to what he had seen and heard; who “came not to do his own will, but rather to do the will of the Father,” who had sent him for this very purpose — that being made the “Messenger of Great Counsel” he might unfold to us the laws of the heavenly mysteries; and who, as the Word made flesh, lived among us? By all of this this Christ is proved to be not man only, because he was the son of man, but God as well, because he is the Son of God.

And if the apostle calls Christ “the firstborn of every creature,” how could he be the firstborn of every creature, unless it is because, in respect of his divinity, the Word came forth from the Father before every creature? And unless the heretics take it this way, they will be forced to show that Christ the man was the firstborn of every creature — which they will not be able to do. So either he is before every creature, so that he can be the firstborn of every creature, and then he is not man only, because man comes after every creature; or he is man only, and then he comes after every creature. And how is he the firstborn of every creature, except because he is that Word which is before every creature? And so, as the firstborn of every creature, he becomes flesh and lives among us — that is, he takes on the nature of that man who comes after every creature — and lives with him and in him, in us, in such a way that neither is humanity taken away from Christ nor his divinity denied. For if he is only before every creature, his humanity is taken away from him; but if he is only man, the divinity that is before every creature is interfered with. Both of them, then, are leagued together in Christ; both are joined; both are linked to each other. And rightly so: since there is in him something that goes beyond the creature, the agreement of divinity and humanity seems to be pledged in him. And that is why the one who is declared to have been made “Mediator between God and man” is shown to have brought God and man together in himself.

And when the same apostle says of Christ that “having put off the flesh, he stripped the powers, and they were openly triumphed over in himself,” he certainly did not say that the flesh was put off for no reason: he wanted it understood that it was put on again as well, at the resurrection. So who is it who put the flesh off and put it on like this? Let the heretics search it out. We know that the Word of God was clothed with the substance of flesh, and that he was stripped again of that same bodily material, which he took up again in the resurrection and put back on like a garment. And yet Christ could not have been stripped of manhood or clothed with it if he had been only man, since a man is never deprived of himself or clothed with himself. Whatever is taken off or put on by anyone has to be something else. So it stands to reason that it was the Word of God who put off the flesh and put it on again in the resurrection, since he put it off because at his birth he had been clothed with it. In Christ, then, it is God who is clothed, and who must likewise be stripped, since the one who is clothed must also be the one who is stripped; whereas as man he is clothed with, and stripped of, what is like a tunic for the body he was fitted with.

And so, as we have said, he was the Word of God, who is shown to be at one time clothed with the flesh and at another time stripped of it. And he foretold this beforehand in the blessings: “He will wash his garment in wine, and his clothing in the blood of the grape.” If in Christ the garment is the flesh, and the clothing itself is the body, let it be asked who this is whose body is clothing and whose garment is flesh. To us it is plain that the flesh is the garment and the body the clothing of the Word; and he washed his bodily substance and cleansed the material of the flesh in blood, that is, in wine, by his suffering, in the human character he had taken on. So if he is indeed washed, he is man, because the garment that is washed is the flesh; but the one who washes is the Word of God, who, in order to wash the garment, was made the one who takes the garment up. Rightly, from the substance that is taken up so that it may be washed, he is shown to be a man, just as from the authority of the Word who washed it he is shown to be God.