The Part Stands for the Whole

Whatever you say of the Lord Jesus Christ, then, you say of the whole person. In mentioning the Son of God you mention the Son of Man, and in mentioning the Son of Man you mention the Son of God. This is by the grammatical figure called synecdoche, in which you understand the whole from the parts, and a part is put for the whole. The Holy Scriptures certainly show this, for in them the Lord often uses this figure. He teaches in this way about others, and he wants us to understand about himself in the same way. For sometimes days, and things, and people, and times are spoken of in Holy Scripture in no other way. [a]

So it is in the case where God declares that Israel will serve the Egyptians for four hundred years, and says to Abraham: “Know that your offspring will be strangers in a land not their own, and they will bring them into slavery and afflict them four hundred years.” Yet if you take into account the whole time after God spoke, it is more than four hundred years; but if you count only the time in which they were in slavery, it is less. And unless you understand the period given here in this way, we would have to think that the word of God lied, and away with such a thought from Christian minds! But since, from the time of the divine word, the whole span of their lives came to more than four hundred years, and their slavery lasted nowhere near four hundred, you must understand that the part is taken for the whole, or the whole for the part.

There is also a similar way of speaking about days and nights, where a single day is meant, and either of its two parts is shown by a portion of it. And indeed this is how the difficulty about the time of our Lord’s passion is cleared up. The Lord prophesied that, after the pattern of the prophet Jonah, the Son of Man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Yet after the sixth day of the week, on which he was crucified, he was in hell for only one day and two nights. How can we show that the divine words are true? Surely by the figure of synecdoche: to the day on which he was crucified belongs the night before it, and to the night in which he rose again belongs the day that followed. So when we add the night that went before its own day, and the day that followed its own night, we see that nothing is lacking to the whole period of time, which is made up of its portions.

The Holy Scriptures abound in such ways of speaking, but it would take too long to relate them all. So when the psalm says, “What is a man, that you are mindful of him?” we understand the whole from the part: only one man is mentioned, but the whole human race is meant. So also, where Ahab sinned, we are told that the people sinned. Here, though all are mentioned, a part is to be understood from the whole.

John too, the Lord’s forerunner, says: “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me, for he was before me.” How, then, does he say that the one whom he shows to have been before him would come after him? If this is understood of a man who was born later, how was he before him? But if it is taken of the Word, how can it be said, “A man comes after me”? Only because in the one Lord Jesus Christ is shown both the later coming of the manhood and the prior being of the Godhead. And so one and the same Lord was before him and came after him: according to the flesh he came after John in time, and according to his deity he was before all people. So John, when he named that man, pointed to both the manhood and the Word. For since the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was complete in both manhood and divinity, by mentioning one of these natures in him he pointed to the whole person.

And what need is there of anything further? I think the day would run out on me if I tried to gather or tell everything that could be said on this subject. What we have already said is enough, at any rate on this part of the subject: enough for the explanation of the creed, for the needs of our case, and for the limits of our book.