Galatians 4:26

2. Now all these things being such as they are, cannot be understood in reference to super-celestial matters; “for God,” it is said, “will show to the whole earth that is under heaven thy glory.” But in the times of the kingdom, the earth has been called again by Christ [to its pristine condition], and Jerusalem rebuilt after the pattern of the Jerusalem above, of which the prophet Isaiah says, “Behold, I have depicted thy walls upon my hands, and thou art always in my sight.” And the apostle, too, writing to the Galatians, says in like manner, “But the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” He does not say this with any thought of an erratic Æon, or of any other power which departed from the Pleroma, or of Prunicus, but of the Jerusalem which has been delineated on [God’s] hands. …

Yes, certainly, you say, I do hope from Him that which amounts in itself to a proof of the diversity (of Christs), God’s kingdom in an everlasting and heavenly possession. Besides, your Christ promises to the Jews their primitive condition, with the recovery of their country; and after this life’s course is over, repose in Hades in Abraham’s bosom. Oh, most excellent God, when He restores in amnesty what He took away in wrath! Oh, what a God is yours, who both wounds and heals, creates evil and makes peace! Oh, what a God, that is merciful even down to Hades! I shall have something to say about Abraham’s bosom in the proper place. …

Now, from whom comes this grace, but from Him who proclaimed the promise thereof? Who is (our) Father, but He who is also our Maker? Therefore, after such affluence (of grace), they should not have returned “to weak and beggarly elements.” By the Romans, however, the rudiments of learning are wont to be called elements . He did not therefore seek, by any depreciation of the mundane elements, to turn them away from their god, although, when he said just before, “Howbeit, then, ye serve them which by nature are no gods,” he censured the error of that physical or natural superstition which holds the elements to be god; but at the God of those elements he aimed not in this censure. …

I shall not be sorry to bestow attention on the shorter epistles also. Even in brief works there is much pungency. The Jews had slain their prophets. I may ask, What has this to do with the apostle of the rival god, one so amiable withal, who could hardly be said to condemn even the failings of his own people; and who, moreover, has himself some hand in making away with the same prophets whom he is destroying? What injury did Israel commit against him in slaying those whom he too has reprobated, since he was the first to pass a hostile sentence on them? But Israel sinned against their own God. He upbraided their iniquity to whom the injured God pertains; and certainly he is anything but the adversary of the injured Deity . …

Thenceforward let matters see to themselves. Figures are one thing; laws another. Images are one thing; statutes another. Images pass away when fulfilled: statutes remain permanently to be fulfilled. Images prophesy: statutes govern. What that digamy of Abraham portends, the same apostle fully teaches, the interpreter of each testament, just as he likewise lays it down that our “seed” is called in Isaac. If you are “of the free woman,” and belong to Isaac, he, at all events, maintained unity of marriage to the last.

From the free woman, joys: (the slave expelled,

22. Being taught, then, by him that there is one Israel according to the flesh, and another according to the Spirit, when the Saviour says, “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” we do not understand these words as those do who savour of earthly things, i.e., the Ebionites, who derive the appellation of “poor” from their very name (for “Ebion” means “poor” in Hebrew); but we understand that there exists a race of souls which is termed “Israel,” as is indicated by the interpretation of the name itself: for Israel is interpreted to mean a “mind,” or “man seeing God.” The apostle, again, makes a similar revelation respecting Jeru­salem, saying, “The Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” And in another of his Epistles he says: “But ye are come unto mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, and to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innume …

22. Now, if the statements made to us regarding Israel, and its tribes and its fam­ilies, are calculated to impress us, when the Saviour says, “I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” we do not understand the expression as the Ebionites do, who are poor in under­standing (deriving their name from the poverty of their intellect, “Ebion” sig­nifying “poor” in Hebrew), so as to sup­pose that the Saviour came specially to the “carnal” Israelites; for “they who are the children of the flesh are not the children of God.” Again, the apostle teaches regarding Jerusalem as follows: “The Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” And in another Epistle: “But ye are come unto mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the gen­eral assembly and to the Church of the first-born which …

This, he says, is ocean, “generation of gods and generation of men” ever whirled round by the eddies of water, at one time upwards, at another time downwards. But he says there ensues a generation of men when the ocean flows downwards; but when upwards to the wall and fortress and the cliff of Luecas, a generation of gods takes place. This, he asserts, is that which has been written: “I said, Ye are gods, and all children of the highest;” “If ye hasten to fly out of Egypt, and repair beyond the Red Sea into the wilderness,” that is, from earthly intercourse to the Jerusalem above, which is the mother of the living; “If, moreover, again you return into Egypt,” that is, into earthly intercourse, “ye shall die as men.” For mortal, he says, is every generation below, but immortal that which is begotten above, for it is born of water only, and of spirit, being spiritual, not carnal. …

Now bring together from the Gospels those who call Him Son of David, as she, and the blind men in Jericho; and who call Him Son of God, and that without the addition “truly” like the demoniacs who say, “What have we to do with Thee, Thou Son of God;” and who call Him so with the addition “truly,” like those in the boat who worshipped Him saying, “Truly Thou art the Son of God.” For the bringing together of these passages will, I think, be useful to you with a view to seeing the difference of those who come (to Jesus); some indeed come as to Him “who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh;” but others come to Him who “was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness;” and of these some with the “truly,” and some without it. …

Only, I have said these things with the view of referring his return when he comes with his kingdom to the consummation, when he commanded the servants to whom he had given the money to be called to him that he might know what they had gained by trading, and from a desire to demonstrate from this, and from the parable of the Talents, that the passage “he who wished to make a reckoning with his own servants” is to be referred to the consummation when now he is king, receiving the kingdom, on account of which, according to another parable, he went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. Therefore, when he returned after receiving the kingdom, he wished to make a reckoning with his own servants. …

20. For although we find no time before it, for wisdom was created before all things, not certainly that Wisdom manifestly co-eternal and equal unto Thee, our God, His Father, and by Whom all things were created, and in Whom, as the Beginning, Thou createdst heaven and earth; but truly that wisdom which has been created, namely, the intellectual nature, which, in the contemplation of light, is light. For this, although created, is also called wisdom. But as great as is the difference between the Light which enlighteneth and that which is enlightened, so great is the difference between the Wisdom that createth and that which hath been created; as between the Righteousness which justifieth, and the righteousness which has been made by justification. …