Where the Law Ends

The rule that twelve bells be fastened to the high priest’s robe, the one that hung down to his feet, was handed down as a symbol of the twelve apostles, who hang from the power of Christ, the eternal priest. It is through their voice that the whole earth has been filled with the glory and grace of God and of his Christ. That is why David also says: “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” [a]

And Isaiah speaks as though from the apostles’ own lips, when they tell Christ that they do not trust in their own report but in the power of the one who sent them. So he says: “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We proclaimed before him as a child, as a root in thirsty ground” — and the rest of the prophecy in its order, which I quoted before.

But when the passage speaks as though from the lips of many — “We proclaimed before him” — and then adds “as a child,” it shows that the wicked will become subject to him and will serve his command, and that all will become as one child. You can see the same thing in a body: though its parts are counted as many, all of them together are called one, and are one body. For a people and a church too, many individuals though they are in number, are called and addressed by one name, as though they were a single thing.

And I said, In short, gentlemen, I could count up all the rest of the arrangements Moses made and show that they were types and symbols and announcements of what was going to happen to Christ, and of those who were known beforehand as people who would believe in him, and of what Christ himself was going to do. But since what I have counted up so far seems to me enough, I am going back again to the argument in its order.

So then: circumcision began with Abraham, and the sabbath and the sacrifices and offerings and feasts began with Moses, and it has been shown that they were laid down because of your people’s hardness of heart. In the same way they had to come to an end, according to the Father’s will, in the one who was born of a virgin, from the family of Abraham and the tribe of Judah and of David — in Christ the Son of God, who was proclaimed to the whole world as the one who would come, the eternal law and the new covenant, just as the prophecies quoted above show. [e]

And we who have come to God through him have received not this circumcision of the flesh but a spiritual one, which Enoch and those like him kept. We received it through baptism, since we had become sinners, by God’s mercy; and it is open to everyone alike to receive it.

But the mystery of his birth presses to be spoken of now, so I will speak of it. Isaiah said of how Christ came to be that it cannot be told by any human being, in the words I have already quoted: “Who will tell of his generation? For his life is taken from the earth; because of the lawless acts of my people he was led to death.” That is what the Spirit of prophecy said: the coming to be of the one who was going to die, so that we sinful people might be healed by his wound, was such that it could not be told.

And so that the people who believe in him might also come to know the way he came into the world by being born, the Spirit of prophecy foretold through the same Isaiah how it would happen: “And the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying: Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height. And Ahaz said: I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. And Isaiah said: Listen then, house of David. Is it a small thing for you to pick a fight with men? And how is it that you pick a fight with the Lord? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look: the virgin will conceive and will bear a son, and his name will be called Immanuel. He will eat butter and honey. Before he knows or chooses evil he will choose the good; for before the child knows good or bad, he refuses evil by choosing the good. For before the child knows how to call for father or mother, he will receive the power of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria in the presence of the king of the Assyrians. And the land will be seized, the land you bear so hard because of its two kings. But God will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house days such as have not yet come upon you, from the day when Ephraim took away from Judah the king of the Assyrians.”

Now it is plain to everyone that in Abraham’s race according to the flesh no one has ever been born of a virgin, or is said to have been born of one, except this Christ of ours. But you and your teachers dare to say that what stands in Isaiah’s prophecy is not “Look, the virgin will conceive,” but “Look, the young woman will conceive and bear a son,” and you explain the prophecy as though it were about Hezekiah, who was your king. So I will try to argue this point against you briefly as well, and to show that it was spoken about the one we acknowledge as Christ.

For in this way, as far as you are concerned, I will be found innocent in every respect: if I keep struggling to persuade you by laying out proofs. But if you stay hard-hearted, or if your resolve is weakened by the death that is marked out for Christians, and you are unwilling to agree with the truth, then you will turn out to be the cause of your own trouble. [l]

And you deceive yourselves when you suppose that, because you are Abraham’s seed according to the flesh, you will certainly inherit the good things God announced he would give through Christ. No one can get any of those things from anywhere, except those whose mind has been made like Abraham’s faith and who have recognized all the mysteries. By this I mean that some commands were laid down for the reverence of God and for doing what is right, but other commands and practices were spoken either for the mystery of Christ or because of your people’s hardness of heart.

And that this is so, God makes known in Ezekiel, where he said about it: “If Noah and Jacob and Daniel were to beg for sons or daughters, it would not be granted them.” And in Isaiah he spoke this way about the very same thing: “The Lord God said: And they will go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who transgressed; for their worm will not die, and their fire will not be put out, and they will be a sight to all flesh.”

So you must cut this hope out of your souls and hurry to learn by what road forgiveness of sins will come to you, and the hope of inheriting the good things that were announced. And there is no road but this one: to come to know this Christ, to be washed in the washing Isaiah proclaimed for the forgiveness of sins, and from then on to live without sin.

And Trypho said, Even if I seem to be cutting into these matters that you say have to be examined, still the question I want to ask is pressing. Bear with me first. And I replied, Examine whatever you like, as it comes to you. After the questions and answers I will try to take the argument up again and complete it. Then he said, Tell me, then: will those who lived by the law given through Moses live in the same way as Jacob and Enoch and Noah in the resurrection of the dead, or not? [p]

I answered him, When I quoted, sir, what Ezekiel said — that “even if Noah and Daniel and Jacob were to beg for sons and daughters, it would not be granted them,” but that each one, plainly, will be saved by his own righteousness — I also said that those who ordered their lives by the law of Moses would be saved in the same way. For in the law of Moses the things that are good and reverent and right by nature are laid down as law for those who obey them to do; and the things laid down because of the people’s hardness of heart are written down there in the same way, and those under the law did them too.

Since those who did what is good universally, by nature and forever are pleasing to God, they will be saved through this Christ in the resurrection on the same terms as the righteous men before them — Noah and Enoch and Jacob and whoever else there has been — together with those who have come to know this Christ, the Son of God, who was before the morning star and the moon, and who submitted to be made flesh and born through this virgin of David’s family. This was so that by this plan the serpent who did evil from the beginning, and the angels who were made like him, might be brought down; and so that death might be treated with contempt and, at the second coming of the Christ himself, might stop altogether for those who believe in him and live in a way that pleases him, and after that be no more — when some are sent into judgment and the condemnation of fire, to be punished without ceasing, and others are together in freedom from suffering, from decay and from grief, and in immortality.

Then he asked me, But if some people even now want to live keeping what was laid down through Moses, and yet believe in this Jesus who was crucified, recognizing that he is the Christ of God and that it has been given to him to judge everyone, and that the everlasting kingdom is his — can they be saved as well? And I said again, Let us look at that together too: whether it is possible now to keep everything that was laid down through Moses. He answered, No. For we know, as you said, that it is not possible to sacrifice the Passover lamb anywhere else, or to offer the goats commanded for the fast, or, in short, to bring any of the other offerings at all. And I said, Then tell me yourself, please, which ones can be kept. You will be convinced that a person who does not keep the eternal decrees, and never has performed them, can certainly still be saved. Then he replied, Keeping the sabbath, being circumcised, keeping the months, and washing yourself if you have touched anything Moses forbade, or after sexual intercourse. [r]

And I said, Do you think that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah and Job, and any others before them or after them who were equally righteous — and I mean Sarah the wife of Abraham as well, and Rebekah the wife of Isaac, and Rachel the wife of Jacob, and Leah, and all the rest of the women like them down to the mother of Moses the faithful servant — will be saved, when they kept none of these things? And Trypho answered, Were not Abraham and those after him circumcised? And I said, I know that Abraham and those after him were circumcised. Why circumcision was given to them I said at length in what has gone before; and if what was said does not shame you, let us look into the matter again. But you know that up to Moses no righteous person at all kept any of the things we are asking about, or received a command to keep them — except circumcision, which took its start from Abraham. And he replied, We know it, and we admit that they are saved.

Then I answered, So understand that it was because of your people’s hardness of heart that God laid all such commands on you through Moses: so that through the sheer number of them you might keep God before your eyes always, in every action, and never begin to act unjustly or without reverence. He commanded that a scarlet thread be fastened on you, so that forgetting God would not take hold of you. And he ordered you to wear a phylactery — certain characters written on the thinnest of parchments, which we for our part hold to be holy — pressing you by these things to keep the memory of God always, and at the same time putting a reproach in your hearts.

You do not keep even a small memory of reverence for God. Not even so were you persuaded to stop worshiping idols: in the days of Elijah, when God named the number of those who had not bent the knee to Baal, he said the number was seven thousand; and in Isaiah he convicts you of having made your children a sacrifice to idols. But we, because we refuse to sacrifice to the ones we used to sacrifice to long ago, endure the worst punishments; and when we are put to death we rejoice, trusting that God will raise us up through his Christ and will make us free from decay and from suffering, and immortal. And we know that the things laid down because of your people’s hardness of heart contribute nothing toward doing what is right or toward reverence for God.

And Trypho asked again, But if someone knows that this is how things stand, and along with that knows that this man is the Christ and has believed in him and obeys him, and yet wants to keep these practices — will he be saved? I said, In my own opinion, Trypho, I say that such a person will be saved, as long as he does not fight in every way to persuade other people — I mean those from the nations who have been circumcised from error by Christ — to keep the same things he does, telling them they will not be saved unless they keep them. That is exactly what you were doing yourself at the beginning of our conversation, when you declared that I would not be saved unless I kept them. Then he replied, Then why did you say, “In my own opinion such a person will be saved,” unless there are some who say that such people will not be saved? [w]

I answered, There are, Trypho, and they do not even dare to share conversation or a hearth with such people. I do not agree with them. But suppose these people, out of weakness of judgment, want to keep as much as they now can of what comes from Moses — which we understand was laid down because of the people’s hardness of heart — along with hoping in this Christ; and suppose they want to keep the eternal and natural acts of right conduct and reverence, and choose to live with the Christians and the believers, as I said before, without persuading them either to be circumcised as they are, or to keep the sabbath, or to observe any other such things. Then I declare that we ought to take them in and share everything with them, as with kin and brothers.

But if some of your race, Trypho, who say they believe in this Christ, force those from the nations who believe in this Christ to live in every respect by the law given through Moses, or choose not to share that common life with them, then I do not accept them either.

As for those who are persuaded by them into life under the law while still keeping their confession of the Christ of God, I suppose they will probably be saved as well. But those who confessed and recognized this man as the Christ, and then for whatever reason went over to life under the law, denying that this man is the Christ, and did not change their minds before they died — I declare they will not be saved at all. And those of Abraham’s seed who live by the law and do not believe in this Christ before the end of their lives will likewise not be saved, I declare, and above all those who in the synagogues have cursed, and go on cursing, the people who believe in this very Christ so that they may obtain salvation and be delivered from the punishment in the fire.

For the goodness of God and his love for people, and the immeasurable extent of his riches, hold the one who repents of his sins to be righteous and sinless, as he makes known through Ezekiel; and he counts the one who moves from reverence and right conduct over to injustice and godlessness as sinful and unrighteous and irreverent. That is also why our Lord Jesus Christ said: “In whatever I find you, in that I will also judge you.”

And Trypho said, We have heard what you think about these matters too. So take up the argument where you left off and bring it to an end. For some of it seems to me beyond belief and altogether impossible to prove. When you say that this Christ existed beforehand as God before the ages, and then submitted to be born and become a man, and that he is not a man from men — that seems to me not only beyond belief but foolish. And I said in reply, I know the statement seems beyond belief, especially to those of your race, who have never been willing either to understand or to do what belongs to God, but only what belongs to your teachers — as God himself cries out. [z]

All the same, Trypho, the fact that this man is the Christ of God is not lost, even if I am unable to prove that he also existed beforehand as the Son of the Maker of all things, being God, and was born a man through the virgin. Since it is proved in every way that this is the Christ of God, whoever he turns out to be, then if I do not prove that he existed beforehand and submitted, according to the Father’s will, to be born a man with feelings like ours, having flesh, the just thing is to say that I have gone wrong in that one matter alone — and not to deny that this man is the Christ, even if it should appear that he was born a man from men and is shown to have become Christ by being chosen.

For there are some, my friends, of your race, who confess that he is Christ but declare that he was a man born from men. I do not agree with them, and I would not, even if very many who hold the same opinions I do were to say so — since we were commanded by Christ himself not to be persuaded by human teachings, but by what was proclaimed through the blessed prophets and taught by him.