Epiphanius on Jesus as the Divine Angel

All right, let’s see whether this is the faith. They say, “We confess that the Son is begotten of the Father, and do not deny it. (3) But,” they say, “we must also confess that he is a creature and a product of creation.”

But nothing could be more pathetic. Nothing created is like anything begotten, and nothing begotten is like anything created, especially in the case of that one, pure and perfect essence. (4)¹¹⁷ For all things have been created by God, but only God’s Son has been begotten, and only the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and received of the Son. All other things are created beings, and neither proceeded from the Father nor received of the Son, but received of the Son’s fullness, as the scripture says, “By the Word of God were all things established, and all the host of them by the Spirit of his mouth.”¹¹⁸

34,5 “But we must confess the creaturehood as well,” says Arius, “since scripture said ‘creature’ in a figurative sense, and ‘offspring’ is meant figuratively. For even if we say, ‘offspring,’ we shall not mean an offspring like any other.”

Well then, they are deceiving the innocent by saying, “offspring,” and the offspring isn’t real. (6) “But we also confess Christ’s creaturehood,” they say. “For Christ is also called door, way, pillar, cloud, rock, lamb,¹¹⁹ lamb,¹²⁰ stream, calf, lion, well-spring, wisdom, Word, Son, angel, Christ, Savior, Lord, man, Son of Man, cornerstone, sun, prophet, bread, king, building, husbandman, shepherd, vine, and all sorts of things like these. In the same way,” they say, “we also use ‘creature’ in an accommodated sense of the word. For we are bound to confess it.”

35,1 Such wicked speculation, and such cunning! May the Lord allow no son of the truth to be brought by such dissimulation to accept “creature” as the Son of God’s title for such reasons, and make that confession. Let them tell us what the use of this is, and we will grant them the conclusion of their reasonings.

(2) For all those things are ways of speaking and do not impair the Son’s divinity, make him defective in comparison with the Father, or < alter him* > from his essential nature. Even if he should be called “door,” it is because we enter by him; if road, it is because we go by him; if “pillar,” because he is the support of the truth.

Even if “cloud,” this is because he overshadowed the children of Israel, if “fire,” because of the brightness of the fire which gave them light in the wilderness. Even if he should be called “manna,” this is because they denied that he was the bread from heaven; if “bread,” because we are strengthened by him.

35,3 Even if “angel,” this is because he is an angel of a great counsel. The word, “angel,” is a synonym. Rahab received the “angels,” and yet the men who had been sent there were not angels, but the persons who brought the report¹²¹ of the place. And so, because he reported the Father’s will to men, the Only-begotten is an “angel of a great counsel,” who reports the great counsel in the world.

35,4 Even if he should be called “stone,” the “stone” is not inanimate; this is a way of speaking, because he has become a stumbling block to the Jews, but a foundation of salvation to us. And he is called “cornerstone” because he unites the Old and the New Testaments, circumcision and uncircumcision, as one body. (5) But he is called “lamb” because of his harmlessness, and because the sin of humankind has been done away by his offering to the Father as a lamb for the slaughter; for the Impassible came to suffer for our salvation. And whatever else in these usages is an aid to human salvation is applied to him by the sacred scripture in some accommodated sense.

36,1 Now what good can “creature” do, or what use is it to our salvation and to the glory and perfect divinity of the incarnate divine Word? How does calling him “creature” help us? What can a creature do for creatures? How does a creature benefit creatures?

(2) Why did God create < a Son > and allow < him > to be worshiped as God, when he says, “Thou shalt not make to thyself any likeness, neither on earth nor in heaven, and thou shalt not worship it?”¹²² Why did he create a Son for himself and order that he be worshiped, particularly when the apostle says, “And they served the creature rather than the creator, and were made fools.”¹²³ It is foolish to treat a creature as God and break the first commandment, which says, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”¹²⁴ (3) And thus God’s holy church worships, not a creature but a begotten Son, the Father in the Son, and the Son in the Father, with the Holy Spirit.

36,4 “Oh, yes!” says Arius. “Unless I say he is a creature, I attribute diminution to the Father. For the creature does not diminish the creator, but by the nature of things the begotten shrinks its begetter, or broadens or lessens or cuts it, or does it some such injury.”¹²⁵

36,5 It is most foolish of those who think such things to imagine Godhead in their likeness—and of those who attribute their frailties to God, since God is wholly impassible, both in begetting and in creating. We are creatures, and as we suffer when we beget, we tire when we create. And if the Father suffers in begetting, then he also tires in creating.

36,6 But how can one speak of suffering in connection with God, and of his tiring if he creates? He does not tire, never think it! The scripture says, “He shall not weary.”¹²⁶ “God is spirit”¹²⁷ and begot the Son spiritual<ly>, without beginning and not in time, “God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made.”¹²⁸

37,1 But I shall pass this text by too, and once more devote my attention to others which they repeat and bandy about in wrong senses, and which I have mentioned earlier. For again, they confusedly misinterpret this one: “Receive your high priest, who is faithful to him that made him.”¹²⁹

(2) In the first place they reject this Epistle, I mean the Epistle to the Hebrews, remove it bodily from the Apostle and say that it is not his. But because of their malady they < turn > the text to their advantage, as I said, take it in a wrong sense, and covertly introduce the Son’s creaturehood, supposedly by means of the words, “faithful to him that made him.”¹³⁰

37,3 But someone with sense might ask them when our Lord adopted the title of “high priest,” and they will be at a loss because they have no answer.

(4) Christ never adopted these names before his incarnation stone, sheep led to the slaughter, man and Son of Man, eagle, lamb and all the rest that are applied to him after his coming in the flesh. Thus he is called “high priest” because of the declaration the Law made of him, “A prophet shall the Lord raise unto you, of your brethren.”¹³¹

(5) The text thus plainly explains “prophet,” “high priest,” and “of them” [as titles given] after his sojourn on earth, and it can be seen at a glance how, once again, God’s unconquerable power and foreknowledge foretold and certified all this by its wondrous light, to the “stopping of every mouth”¹³² that rebels against the truth.

(6) For he says in the same passage, “Every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men to offer gifts and sacrifices, being able to bear with [their infirmities]. For he hath need < to offer > for his own sins. But he that had no sin offered himself to the Father.”¹³³

(7) And “of men” is said because of the earthly sojourn, but “not of men” < and > “that hath no sin” are said because of the divinity. And of his divinity he says, “though he were a son”; but of his humanity, “He learned by the things he suffered.”¹³⁴

38,1 And you see that all of Christ’s titles are simple and have nothing complicated in them. “High priest faithful to him that made him” here describes neither the making of his body here nor of his human nature, nor is it speaking of creation at all, but of the bestowal of his rank after his incarnation, like the text, “He gave him a name which is above every name.”¹³⁵

(2) And this was not done of old in the divine nature, but < in > his current advent, since the human nature he took from Mary received the name above every name, the title “Son of God” in addition to the title of “Divine Word.”

(3) And again, for this reason he has said here, through the apostle himself, “We see Jesus, who for a little was made lower than the angels crowned with glory and honor,”¹³⁶ so that the Master and Maker of the angels would appear lower than they; so that he who inspires the angels with dread and fear and, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, made the angels from nothing, would be called “lower,” and it would be plainly evident that he is not speaking of his Godhead here, but of his flesh.

38,4 For the suffering of death was not counted as the Word’s before he took flesh, but after his incarnation, with the same Word being passible and impassible—impassible in Godhead but suffering in his manhood, just as both titles apply to the one [person]—“Son of Man” to the same person, and “Son of God” to the same. For Christ is called the “Son” in both alike.

39,1 What did God “make” him, then? From all that has been said the trouble-makers should learn that nothing in this text is relevant to the Godhead but to the human nature. And “made him,” does not refer to the making or creating of him, but to his rank after the advent.

39,2 If someone asks a king about his son, and says, “What is he to you?” the king will tell him, “He is my son.”

“Is he your legitimate or your illegitimate son?” The king will say, “He is my legitimate son.”

“Then what did you make him?”

“I made him king.” Plainly, the son’s rank is no different from his father’s. (3) And because he has said, “I made him king,” this surely does not mean that the king is saying, “I created him.” In saying, “I made him,” he has certainly not denied the begetting of him—which he had acknowledged—but has made that plain; “I made him,” however, was a statement of his rank. Thus, by those who wish < to obtain > salvation, the Son is unambiguously believed to be the Son of the Father, and is worshiped.

39,4 But “was made high priest” is said because he offered himself in his body to the Father for mankind, himself the priest, himself the victim; as high priest for all creation he offered himself spiritually and gloriously in his body itself and “sat down at the Father’s right hand,”¹³⁷ after “being made an high priest forever”¹³⁸ and “passing through the heavens”¹³⁹ once and for all. The same holy apostle testifies to this of him in the lines that follow. (5) And once again their ostensible discussion of sacred scripture, which they use as their excuse, has proved a failure, for scripture is life-giving; nothing in it offers an obstacle to the faithful or makes for the downfall of blasphemy against the Word.