15.
But some one will say to me, You adduce a thing strange to me, when you call the Son the Word. For John indeed speaks of the Word, but it is by a figure of speech. Nay, it is by no figure of speech. 1 For while thus presenting this Word that was from the beginning, and has now been sent forth, he said below in the Apocalypse, "And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He that sat upon him (was) Faithful and True; and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. And His eyes (were) as flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns; and He had a name written that no man knew but He Himself. And He (was) clothed in a vesture dipped in blood: and His name is called the Word of God." 2 See then, brethren, how the vesture sprinkled with blood denoted in symbol the flesh, through which the impassible Word of God came under suffering, as also the prophets testify to me. For thus speaks the blessed Micah: "The house of Jacob provoked the Spirit of the Lord to anger. These are their pursuits. Are not His words good with them, and do they walk rightly? And they have risen up in enmity against His countenance of peace, and they have stripped off His glory." 3 That means His suffering in the flesh. And in like manner also the blessed Paul says, "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be shown in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." 4 What Son of His own, then, did God send through the flesh but the Word, 5 whom He addressed as Son because He was to become such (or be begotten) in the future? And He takes the common name for tender affection among men in being called the Son. For neither was the Word, prior to incarnation and when by Himself, 6 yet perfect Son, although He was perfect Word, only-begotten. Nor could the flesh subsist by itself apart from the Word, because it has its subsistence 7 in the Word. 8 Thus, then, one perfect Son of God was manifested.
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all' allos allegorei. The words in Italics are given only in the Latin. They may have dropped from the Greek text. At any rate, some such addition seems necessary for the sense. ↩
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Apoc. xix. 11-13. ↩
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Mic. ii. 7, 8. doxan: In the present text of the Septuagint it is doran, skin. ↩
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Hippolytus omits the words dia tes sarkos and kai peri hamartias, and reads phanerothe for plerothe. ↩
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hon Huion prosegoreue dia to mellein auton genesthai. ↩
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Hippolytus thus gives more definite expression to this temporality of the Sonship, as Dorner remarks, than even Tertullian. See Dorner's Doctrine of the Person of Christ (T. & T. Clark), div. i. vol. ii. p. 88, etc. [Pearson On the Creed, art. ii. p. 199 et seqq. The patristic citations are sufficient, and Hippolytus may be harmonized with them.] ↩
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ten sustasin. ↩
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"Sustasis," says Dorner, "be it observed, is not yet equivalent to personality. The sense is, it had its subsistence in the Logos; He was the connective and vehicular force. This is thoroughly unobjectionable. He does not thus necessarily pronounce the humanity of Christ impersonal; although in view of what has preceded, and what remains to be adduced, there can be no doubt [?] that Hippolytus would have defended the impersonality, had the question been agitated at the period at which he lived." See Dorner, as above, i. 95. [But compare Burton, Testimonies of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, etc., pp. 60-87, where Tertullian and Hippolytus speak for themselves. Note also what he says of the latter, and his variations of expression, p. 87.] ↩
