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| Chapter II
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Chapter II.
“But that certain Christians and (all) Jews
should maintain, the former that there has already descended,
the latter that there will descend, upon the earth a certain
God, or Son of a God, who will make the inhabitants of the earth
righteous,3687
is a most shameless
assertion, and one the refutation of which does not need many
words.” Now here he appears to pronounce correctly
regarding not “certain” of the Jews, but all of
them, that they imagine that there is a certain (God) who will descend
upon the earth; and with regard to Christians, that certain of
them say that He has already come down. For he means those
who prove from the Jewish Scriptures that the advent of Christ has
already taken place, and he seems to know that there are certain
heretical sects which deny that Christ Jesus was predicted by the
prophets. In the preceding pages, however, we have already
discussed, to the best of our ability, the question of Christ having
been the subject of prophecy, and therefore, to avoid tautology, we do
not repeat much that might be advanced upon this head. Observe,
now, that if he had wished with a kind of apparent force3688
to subvert faith in the prophetic writings,
either with regard to the future or past advent of Christ, he ought to
have set forth the prophecies themselves which we Christians and Jews
quote in our discussions with each other. For in this way he
would have appeared to
turn aside those who are carried away by the plausible
character3689
of the prophetic
statements, as he regards it, from assenting to their truth, and from
believing, on account of these prophecies, that Jesus is the Christ;
whereas now, being unable to answer the prophecies relating to Christ,
or else not knowing at all what are the prophecies relating to Him, he
brings forward no prophetic declaration, although there are countless
numbers which refer to Christ; but he thinks that he prefers an
accusation against the prophetic Scriptures, while he does not even
state what he himself would call their “plausible
character!” He is not, however, aware that it is not at all
the Jews who say that Christ will descend as a God, or the Son of a
God, as we have shown in the foregoing pages. And when he asserts
that “he is said by us to have already come, but by the Jews that
his advent as Messiah3690
| 3690 Δικαιωτής
not Δικαστής. | is still
future,” he appears by the very charge to censure our statement
as one that is most shameless, and which needs no lengthened
refutation.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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