The King of Glory

And Trypho said, “And yet I hear that many of those who say they confess Jesus, and who are called Christians, eat food sacrificed to idols and say it does them no harm at all.” [a]

And I answered: The very fact that there are such men — men who confess that they are Christians, and confess the crucified Jesus as both Lord and Christ, and yet teach not his teachings but the teachings of the spirits of error — makes us, the disciples of the true and pure teaching of Jesus Christ, more trusting and more settled in the hope he announced. For the things he said in advance would happen in his name, these we see being carried out before our eyes and in actual fact. For he said, “Many will come in my name, dressed on the outside in sheepskins, but inside they are ravenous wolves.” And, “There will be divisions and sects.” And, “Watch out for the false prophets, who will come to you dressed on the outside in sheepskins, but inside they are ravenous wolves.” And, “Many false Christs and false apostles will arise, and will lead many of the faithful astray.”

So there are, my friends, and there have been, many who came forward in the name of Jesus and taught people to say and do things that are godless and blasphemous; and we name them after the men each teaching and each opinion started from. Some in one way and some in another, they teach people to blaspheme the Maker of all things, and the Christ he foretold would come, and the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. We have nothing in common with any of them, because we know them to be godless and irreverent and unjust and lawless, confessing Jesus by name only instead of worshiping him. Yet they call themselves Christians — in the same way that people among the nations write the name of God on things made by hand, and take part in lawless and godless rites. Some of them are called Marcians, some Valentinians, some Basilidians, some Saturnilians, and others by other names, each named after the man who founded the opinion — just as every man who thinks himself a philosopher, as I said at the beginning, reckons he must take the name of the philosophy he follows from the father of that teaching.

So from these things too we know, as I said, that Jesus knew in advance what would come after him — and we know it from many other things he foretold would happen to those who believe in him and confess him as Christ. Everything we suffer, even being put to death by our own households, he told us beforehand would happen, so that no word or act of his can be found fault with anywhere. That is why we pray for you, and for everyone else who hates us: that you may repent along with us and stop blaspheming him who is faultless and beyond reproach in every way, Christ Jesus — shown to be so by his works, by the mighty deeds still done through his name, by the words of his teaching, and by the prophecies announced about him. Believe in him instead, and be saved at his glorious coming, when he comes again, and not be condemned by him to the fire.

Then he replied, “Let all this stand as you say — that it was foretold that the Christ would suffer, and that he is called a stone, and that after his first coming, in which it was announced that he would appear as one who suffers, he would come in glory and would then be judge of all, and eternal king and priest. Now show whether this man is the one these prophecies were about.” [f]

And I said: As you wish, Trypho. I will come to the proofs you are asking for at the proper place. But for now allow me first to call to mind the prophecies I want to bring up, so that I can show that the Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts, and Jacob, in a figure, by the Holy Spirit — and that your interpreters, as God cries out, are without understanding, since they say this refers to Solomon and not to Christ, at the time when he carried the tent of witness into the temple he had built. This is the psalm of David:

So it has been shown that Solomon is not the Lord of hosts. Rather, when our Christ rose from the dead and was going up into heaven, the rulers appointed by God in the heavens are ordered to open the gates of heaven, so that this one who is King of glory may come in, and, having gone up, may sit at the Father’s right hand until he makes his enemies a footstool for his feet — as another psalm has made clear. For when the rulers in heaven saw him with a form that had no beauty, dishonored and without glory, they did not recognize him, and they asked, “Who is this King of glory?” And the Holy Spirit answers them, either speaking for the Father or in his own person, “The Lord of hosts — he is this King of glory.” Anyone at all will admit that not one of the men posted at the gates of the temple in Jerusalem would have dared to say, of Solomon, glorious a king as he was, or of the tent of witness, “Who is this King of glory?”

And in what follows the break in the forty-sixth psalm, I said, these words are spoken about Christ: [k]

And in the ninety-eighth psalm the Holy Spirit reproaches you, and declares that this man, whom you do not want to be king, is king and lord — of Samuel, and of Aaron, and of Moses, and, in short, of all the rest. These are the words of the psalm:

And Trypho said, “Sir, it would have been better for us to obey our teachers, who laid it down as law that we should have nothing to do with any of you, and that we should not so much as discuss these questions with you. For you say many blasphemous things when you think you can persuade us that this crucified man was with Moses and Aaron and spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; and that he then became a man, was crucified, went up into heaven, is coming again to earth, and is to be worshiped.” [m]

Then I answered: I know that, as the word of God has said, this great wisdom of the Maker of all things and Almighty God is hidden from you. So I feel for you, and I am wearing myself out to make you understand these things of ours that seem so strange to you — and if not that, then at least that I myself may be innocent on the day of judgment. You are going to hear other words that seem stranger still. Do not be upset by them. Become more eager listeners and examiners instead, and think little of the tradition of your teachers, since the prophetic Spirit convicts them of being unable to understand the things that come through God, and of preferring to teach their own doctrines. So in the forty-fourth psalm these words are spoken in the same way about Christ:

And it is no wonder, I went on, that you hate us, who understand these things and expose the hard-heartedness you have never let go of. For Elijah, pleading with God about you, speaks like this: “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; and I am left alone, and they are after my life.” And he answers him, “I still have seven thousand men who have not bent the knee to Baal.” So just as God did not bring his anger down then, on account of those seven thousand men, in the same way he has not yet brought judgment, and does not bring it now — because he knows that day by day some of you are still becoming disciples in the name of his Christ and leaving the road of error. They receive gifts as well, each as he is worthy, being given light through the name of this Christ. One receives a spirit of understanding, another of counsel, another of strength, another of healing, another of foreknowledge, another of teaching, and another of the fear of God. [p]

To this Trypho said to me, “I want you to realize that you are out of your mind, saying such things.” And I said to him: Listen, friend — I am not mad and I am not out of my mind. It was prophesied that after Christ went up into heaven he would take us captive away from error and would give us gifts. These are the words: “He went up on high; he took captivity captive; he gave gifts to people.” So we who have received gifts from the Christ who went up on high prove, from the words of the prophets, that you — “the wise in your own eyes and the clever in your own sight” — are without understanding, and honor God and his Christ with your lips only. But we, who have been taught out of the whole truth, honor them both in what we do, and in what we know, and in our hearts, right up to death. And perhaps this is also why you hesitate to confess that this man is the Christ, though the Scriptures prove it, and so do the things seen and the things done in his name: you do not want to be persecuted by the rulers, who — driven by the working of the evil and deceiving spirit, the serpent — will not stop killing and persecuting those who confess the name of Christ, until he comes again and brings them all to an end and gives each one what he deserves.

And Trypho said, “Then give us the argument now, that this man you say was crucified and went up into heaven is the Christ of God. That the Scriptures announce a Christ who must suffer, and come again with glory, and receive the everlasting kingdom over all the nations, every kingdom being made subject to him — that you have proved well enough from the Scriptures you have already gone through. Now show us that this man is he.” And I said: It has already been proved, gentlemen, to those who have ears, and out of the very things you yourselves have granted. But so that you will not think I am at a loss, and unable to give proofs for what you ask, I will do it, as I promised, in the proper place. For now I am going back to the thread of the argument I was making.

So the mystery of the lamb that God commanded to be sacrificed as the passover was a figure of Christ. With his blood, in proportion to their faith in him, those who believe in him smear their own houses — that is, themselves. For all of you can understand that the thing God formed, that is, Adam, became a house for the breath that came from God. And here is how I prove that this command too was only for a time. God does not allow the passover lamb to be sacrificed in any place except the one where his name has been called on — because he knew that days were coming, after the suffering of Christ, when the very site of Jerusalem would be handed over to your enemies and every offering, without exception, would stop. [t]

And that lamb, which was commanded to be roasted whole, was a symbol of the suffering of the cross that Christ was going to undergo. For the lamb, as it is roasted, is set out in the shape of a cross: one spit is driven straight through from the lowest parts up to the head, and another across the back, and the lamb’s forelegs are fastened to that one. And the two goats that were commanded to be alike and to be brought at the fast — one of them made the goat that is sent away, the other an offering — were an announcement of the two comings of Christ. Of the first: the elders of your people and the priests laid hands on him and put him to death and sent him away like the goat that is sent off. And of his second coming: in that same place, in Jerusalem, you will recognize him, the one you dishonored — the one who was an offering for all sinners who are willing to repent and to keep the fast Isaiah speaks of, tearing apart the knotted cords of forced contracts and keeping the rest of what he lists in the same way, which I have gone through myself, and which those who believe in Jesus do. And you know as well that the offering of the two goats commanded to be brought at the fast was not allowed to take place anywhere else in the same way, but only in Jerusalem.

And the offering of fine flour, gentlemen, I said — the one handed down to be brought for those being cleansed from a skin disease — was a figure of the bread of the thanksgiving, which Jesus Christ our Lord handed down for us to do in memory of the suffering he suffered for those whose souls are being cleansed from every wickedness of men. It is so that we may at the same time thank God: for creating the world, with everything in it, for the sake of man; for setting us free from the evil we were in; and for pulling down the rulers and the authorities in a complete overthrow, through the one who became subject to suffering according to his will. That is why God speaks through Malachi, one of the twelve, about the sacrifices you were offering at that time, as I said earlier: “I take no pleasure in you, says the Lord, and I will not accept your sacrifices from your hands. For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord — but you profane it.” [w]

It is about the sacrifices offered to him in every place by us, the nations — that is, the bread of the thanksgiving and likewise the cup of the thanksgiving — that he speaks in advance there, saying both that we glorify his name and that you profane it. And the command about circumcision, ordering that children be circumcised on the eighth day without exception, was a figure of the true circumcision, by which we were circumcised away from error and wickedness through Jesus Christ our Lord, who rose from the dead on the first day of the week. For the first day of the week, while it is the first of all the days, is nevertheless called the eighth when you count round again through all the days of the cycle — and it still stays the first.