{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/211/2111140.htm","path":"chr/ecf/211/2111140.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/211/2111140.htm","text":"That before His birth in time Christ was always called God by the prophets.\nHe it is then of whom the Prophet says: \u201cFor in Thee is God, and there is no God beside Thee. For Thou art our God and we knew Thee not, O God of Israel the Saviour.\u201d 2503 Who \u201cafterwards appeared on earth and conversed with men.\u201d 2504 Of whom and in whose Person the Prophet David also speaks: \u201cFrom my mother\u2019s womb Thou art my God:\u201d 2505 showing clearly that He who was Lord and man 2506 was never separate from God: in whom even in the Virgin\u2019s womb the fulness of the Godhead dwelt. As elsewhere the same Prophet says: \u201cTruth has sprung from the earth and righteousness hath looked down from heaven,\u201d 2507 that we may know that when the Son of God looked down from heaven (i.e., came and descended), righteousness was born of the flesh of the Virgin, no phantasm of a body, but the Truth: for He is the Truth, according to His own witness of Truth: \u201cI am the Truth and the life.\u201d 2508 And so as we have proved in the earlier books that this Truth; viz., the Lord Jesus Christ, was God when born of the Virgin, let us now do as we determined to do in the book before this, and show that He who was to be born of the Virgin, was always declared to be God beforehand. And so the prophet Isaiah says, \u201cCease ye from the man whose breath is in his nostrils, for it is He in whom he is reputed to be;\u201d or as it is more exactly and clearly in the Hebrew: \u201cfor he is reputed high.\u201d 2509 But by saying \u201ccease ye,\u201d a term which deprecates violence, he admirably denotes the disturbance of persecution. \u201cCease ye,\u201d he says, \u201cfrom the man whose breath is in his nostrils, for he is reputed high.\u201d Does he not in one and the same sentence speak of the taking upon Him of the manhood, and the truth of His Godhead? \u201cCease ye,\u201d he says, \u201cfrom the man whose breath is in his nostrils, for he is reputed high.\u201d Does he not, I ask you, seem plainly to address the Lord\u2019s persecutors, and to say, \u201cCease ye from the man\u201d whom ye are persecuting, for this man is God: and though He appears in the lowliness of human flesh, yet He still continues in the high estate of Divine glory? But by saying \u201cCease ye from the man whose breath is in his nostrils,\u201d he admirably showed His manhood, by the clearest tokens of a human body, and this fearlessly and confidently, as one who would as urgently assert the truth of His humanity as that of His Godhead, for this is the true and Catholic faith, to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ possessed the substance of a true body just as He possessed a true and perfect Divinity. Unless possibly you think that anything can be made out of the fact that he uses the word \u201cHigh\u201d instead of \u201cGod\u201d; whereas it is the habit of holy Scripture to put \u201cHigh\u201d for \u201cGod,\u201d as where the prophet says: \u201cthe Most High uttered His voice and the earth was moved,\u201d 2510 and \u201cThou alone art Most High over all the earth.\u201d 2511 Isaiah too, who says this: \u201cThe High and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity\u201d: 2512 where we are clearly to understand that as he there puts Most High without adding the name of God, so here too he speaks of God by the name of Most High. So then, p. 584 since the Divine word spoken by the prophet clearly announced beforehand that the Lord Jesus Christ would be both God and man, let us now see whether the New Testament corresponds to and harmonizes with the testimony of the Old.\nIsa. 45:14, 15.\n583:2504 583:2505 583:2506\nDominicus Homo, literally \u201cthe Lordly man.\u201d The same title is used again by Cassian in Book VI. cc. xxi., xxii. and in the Conferences XI. xiii. It is however an instance of a title which the mature judgment of the Church has rejected as savouring of an heretical interpretation. We learn from Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. 51) that the Greek equivalent of the title \u1f41 \u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03b9\u03b1\u03ba\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f04\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2, was a favourite term with the Apollinarians, as it might be taken to favour their view that the Divinity supplied the place of a human soul in Christ. It is however freely used by Epiphanius in his Anchoratus, and is also found in the exposition of faith assigned to Athanasius (Migne. Pat. Gr\u00e6c. xxv. p. 197). And Augustine himself actually uses the title Dominicus Homo in his treatise on the Sermon on the Mount, Book II. c. vi., though he afterwards retracted the term, see \u201cRetract,\u201d Book I. c. xx. \u201cNon video utrum recte dicatur Homo Dominicus, qui est mediator Dei et hominum, homo Christus Jesus, cum sit utique Dominus: Dominicus antem homo quis in ejus sancta familia non potest dici? Et hoc quidem ut dicerem, apud quosdam legi tractores catholicos divinorum eloquiorum. Sed ubicunque hoc dici, dixisse me nollem. Postea quippe vidi non esse dicendum, quamvis nonnulla possit ratione defendi.\u201d The question is discussed by S. Thomas, whether the title is rightly applied to Christ and decided by him in the negative. Summa III. Q. vi. art. 3.\n583:2507 583:2508\nS. John xiv. 6.\n583:2509\nIsa. ii. 22. Cf. the note on the Institutes xii. xxxi.\n583:2510 583:2511 583:2512","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XI: The Works of John Cassian.: Chapter V. That before His birth in time Christ was always called God by the prophets.","type":"page"}