Out of the Mouth of God

Now that I have shown that wisdom and religion cannot be pulled apart, what is left is to speak of religion itself, and of wisdom. I know how hard it is to discuss the things of heaven; but the attempt has to be risked, so that the truth may be made plain and brought out into the light, and so that many may be set free from error and from death — people who despise the truth and refuse it while it lies hidden under a covering of folly. Before I begin to speak of God and his works, though, I must first say a few things about the prophets, whose testimony I am now going to use. I held it back in the earlier books. Above everything else, anyone who wants to take in the truth ought not only to bend his mind to understanding what the prophets said, but also to inquire with the greatest care into the times in which each of them lived, so that he may know what future events they predicted and after how many years those predictions came true. There is no difficulty in working the reckoning out, since they themselves recorded under which king each of them received the inspiration of the divine Spirit. [a]

Many writers have put out books about these dates, beginning from the prophet Moses, who lived about seven hundred years before the Trojan war. Moses governed the people for forty years, and was succeeded by Joshua, who held the chief place for twenty-seven years. After that they were under the government of judges for three hundred and seventy years. Then their condition changed and they began to have kings; and when the kings had ruled for four hundred and fifty years, down to the reign of Zedekiah, the Jews were besieged by the king of Babylon and carried off into captivity. They endured a long slavery, until in the seventieth year afterward the captive Jews were restored to their own lands and settlements by Cyrus the elder, who had won supreme power over the Persians, at the time when Tarquinius Superbus was reigning at Rome. So, since the whole run of dates can be gathered both from the Jewish histories and from those of the Greeks and the Romans, the dates of the individual prophets can be gathered too. The last of them was Zechariah, and it is agreed that he prophesied in the time of King Darius, in the second year of his reign, in the eighth month. That is how much older than the Greek writers the prophets turn out to be. I bring all this forward so that those who try to refute the holy Scriptures, as though they were new and recently put together, may see their mistake — for they do not know from what spring the origin of our holy religion flowed. But if anyone will set the dates side by side and examine them, and lay the foundation of learning properly, and get at the truth in full, he will lay his error aside as well, once he has gained the knowledge of the truth.

God, then, the contriver and founder of all things — as I said in the second book — before he began this magnificent work of the world, brought forth a pure and incorruptible Spirit, whom he called his Son. And although he afterwards created by himself countless other beings, whom we call angels, this firstborn was the only one he judged worthy of being called by the divine name, since he was powerful in his Father’s excellence and majesty. That there is a Son of the Most High God, and that he holds the greatest power, is shown not only by the prophets, who all say the same, but also by the declaration of Trismegistus and by the predictions of the Sibyls. Hermes, in the book called The Perfect Word, used these words: “The Lord and Maker of all things, whom we have thought it right to call God, since he made the second God, one who can be seen and perceived. I say ‘perceived’ not because he himself perceives — that is not the question — but because he leads men to perception and to understanding. Since, then, he made him first, and alone, and one only, he appeared to him beautiful and most full of every good thing; and he made him holy, and loved him altogether as his own Son.” [f]

The Erythraean Sibyl, at the beginning of her poem — which she opened with the Supreme God — proclaims the Son of God as the leader and commander of all, in these lines:

And again, at the end of the same poem:

And another Sibyl lays it down that he is to be known:

Beyond question he is the very Son of God who spoke these words through that wisest of kings, Solomon, when Solomon was full of divine inspiration; I add them here: “God founded me at the beginning of his ways, in his work before the ages. He set me up at the beginning, before he made the earth, and before he established the depths, before the springs of water came out. The Lord brought me forth before all the hills. He made the regions, and the uninhabitable boundaries under heaven. When he prepared the heaven, I was beside him; and when he set apart his own seat, when he made the strong clouds above the winds, and when he strengthened the mountains and set them under heaven, when he laid the strong foundations of the earth, I was with him, arranging all things. I was the one he delighted in. Day after day I took delight, when he rejoiced, the world being finished.” It is on this account that Trismegistus spoke of him as God’s craftsman, and that the Sibyl calls him Counselor: because he is furnished by God the Father with such wisdom and strength that God used both his wisdom and his hands in the making of the world.

Someone may perhaps ask who this is who is so powerful and so loved by God, and what name he has — one whose first birth not only came before the world, but who also arranged the world by his wisdom and built it by his might. First of all, it is fitting that we should know that his name is not known even to the angels who live in heaven, but only to himself and to God the Father; and that name will not be published, as the sacred writings say, before God’s purpose is fulfilled. Next, we must know that this name cannot be uttered by a human mouth, as Hermes teaches when he says: “Now the cause of this cause is the will of the divine good, which produced God, whose name cannot be spoken by the mouth of man.” And a little further on, to his son: “There is, my son, a secret word of wisdom, holy, concerning the only Lord of all things and the God first perceived by the mind; to speak of him is beyond a man’s power.” [l]

But although his name — the one the supreme Father gave him at the beginning — is known to no one but himself, still he has one name among the angels and another among men, since among men he is called Jesus. For Christ is not a personal name but a title of power and rule; this is what the Jews were used to calling their kings. The meaning of the name has to be set out, though, because of a mistake the uninstructed make: by changing one letter, they are in the habit of calling him Chrestus. The Jews had been directed long before to make up a sacred oil, and with it those who were called to the priesthood or to the kingship were to be anointed. Just as the purple robe is now a sign among the Romans that royal rank has been taken up, so with them the anointing with the holy oil conferred the title and the power of a king. Now the ancient Greeks used the word chriesthai for the act of anointing, where they now say aleiphesthai, as the line of Homer shows:

That is why we call him Christ, that is, the Anointed — who in Hebrew is called Messiah. And so in some Greek writings that are badly translated out of the Hebrew, the word found written is eleimmenos, from aleiphesthai, to anoint. But either name means a king: not that he has obtained this earthly kingdom, since the time for receiving it has not yet come, but that he holds a heavenly and everlasting kingdom, which I will speak about in the last book. For now, let us speak of his first birth.

We testify above all that he was born twice: first in the spirit, and afterwards in the flesh. That is why it is said by Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” And likewise by the same prophet: “Who was blessed before he was born.” That was true of no one but Christ. For though he was the Son of God from the beginning, he was born a second time, afresh, according to the flesh; and this double birth of his has brought great terror into people’s minds, and has covered over with darkness even those who kept hold of the mysteries of the true religion. But I will set it out plainly and clearly, so that those who love wisdom may be taught more easily and more thoroughly. [s]

Anyone who hears the Son of God spoken of ought not to let his mind fall into such irreverence as to think that God brought him forth by marriage and union with a woman. Nothing does that except a creature with a body, subject to death. And with whom could God unite himself, since he is alone? Or, since his power was so great that he accomplished whatever he wished, he certainly did not need a partner in order to produce offspring. Unless perhaps we are to imagine, as Orpheus supposed, that God is both male and female, on the ground that otherwise he could not have produced offspring unless he had the power of both sexes — as though he could have intercourse with himself, or could produce nothing without it. Hermes was of the same opinion when he calls him “his own father” and “his own mother.” But if that were so, then, just as the prophets call him father, they would call him mother too.

In what way, then, did he bring him forth? First of all, the workings of God cannot be known or explained by anyone. But the sacred writings do teach us; in them it is laid down that this Son of God is the speech, or even the reason, of God, and that the other angels are spirits of God. For speech is breath sent out with a voice that means something. And since breath and speech are sent out from different parts — breath coming through the nostrils, speech through the mouth — the difference between the Son of God and the other angels is great. They came out from God as silent spirits, because they were not made to hand on the knowledge of God but for his service. But though he too is a spirit, he came out from the mouth of God with voice and sound, as the Word — and this precisely because he was going to use his voice to the people; that is, because he was going to be a teacher of the knowledge of God and of the heavenly secret that was to be revealed to man. This word God himself spoke first, so that through him he might speak to us, and so that he might reveal to us the voice and the will of God.

With good reason, then, he is called the Speech and the Word of God. For God, by some power and energy of his majesty that cannot be grasped, enclosed the speaking spirit that came out of his mouth — which he had conceived not in a womb but in his mind — within a form that has life of its own through its own perception and wisdom; and he also shaped other spirits of his into angels. Our own breath can be broken up and dissolved, because we are mortal. But the spirits of God both live and last and perceive, because he himself is immortal, and the giver of both perception and life. Our words, though they are mixed with the air and fade away, still commonly remain set down in letters. How much more, then, must we believe that the voice of God both remains forever and carries perception and power with it, drawn from God the Father as a stream is drawn from its spring!

But if anyone is astonished that God could be produced from God by a sending out of voice and breath, he will stop being astonished once he knows the sacred utterances of the prophets. That Solomon and his father David were the most powerful of kings, and prophets as well, may be known even to people who have never taken up the sacred writings. Solomon, who reigned after his father, came a hundred and forty years before the destruction of the city of Troy. His father, the writer of the sacred hymns, speaks this way in the thirty-second Psalm: “By the word of God the heavens were made firm, and all their power by the breath of his mouth.” And again in the forty-fourth Psalm: “My heart has uttered a good word; I speak of my works toward the king.” He is testifying, in fact, that the works of God are known to no one but the Son alone, who is the Word of God, and who is to reign forever.

Solomon too shows that it is the Word of God, and no one else, by whose hands these works of the world were made. “I came out of the mouth of the Most High before every creature. I made the light that does not fail rise in the heavens, and I covered the whole earth with a cloud. I have lived in the height, and my throne is in the pillar of cloud.” John taught the same thing: “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 were made through him, and without him nothing was made.”

But the Greeks speak of him as the Logos, which fits better than our word or speech. For logos means both speech and reason, since he is both the voice and the wisdom of God. And not even the philosophers were ignorant of this divine speech. Zeno makes the Logos the arranger of the settled order of things and the framer of the universe; and he also calls it Fate, and the necessity of things, and God, and the soul of Jupiter — following the habit they have of taking Jupiter for God. But the words are no obstacle, since the thought agrees with the truth. What he named the soul of Jupiter is in fact the spirit of God. As for Trismegistus, who by some means searched out very nearly the whole truth, he often described the excellence and majesty of the word — as the passage quoted above shows, where he acknowledges that there is a speech, unutterable and holy, the telling of which is beyond a man’s measure. I have spoken about the first birth as briefly as I could. Now I must discuss the second more fully, since that is the point most disputed, so that we may hold up the light of understanding to those who want to know the truth. [ae]