The God beside the Creator
What in the Apology is a bare outline, is developed at great length and with amazing ingenuity in the dialogue with Trypho. We may begin with the question of a "God beside the Creator."
When Moses wrote in Genesis (1, 26) "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image after our likeness,'" and again (3, 22) "And the Lord God said, 'Behold the man is become as one of us,'"[[52]] why did he use the plural, unless there is a God beside God? Again, when Sodom is destroyed why does the holy text say "The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha sulphur and fire from the Lord from heaven"?[[53]] And again in the Psalms (110) what is meant by "The Lord said unto my Lord"?[[54]] and by "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever ... therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows?"[[55]]
The Old Testament abounds in theophanies, which are brought up in turn. Justin cites the three men who appeared to Abraham—"they were angels," says Trypho, and a long argument follows to show from the passage that one of them is not to be explained as an angel,[[56]] nor of course as the Creator of all things. Trypho owns this. Justin pauses at his suggestion to discuss the meal which Abraham had served, but is soon caught up with the words: "Now, come, show us that this God who appeared to Abraham and is the servant of God, the Maker of all, was born of a virgin, and became, as you said, a man of like passions with all men." But Justin has more evidence to unfold before he reaches that stage. Without following the discussion as it sways from point to point, we may take the passage in which he recapitulates this line of argument. "I think I have said enough, so that, when my God says 'God went up from Abraham,' or 'The Lord spoke to Moses,' or 'The Lord descended to see the tower which the sons of men had built,' or 'The Lord shut the ark of Noah from without,' you will not suppose the unbegotten God Himself went down or went up. For the ineffable Father and Lord of all neither comes anywhere, nor 'walks' [as in the garden of Eden], nor sleeps, nor rises, but abides in his own region wherever it is, seeing keenly and hearing keenly, but not with eyes or ears, but by power unspeakable; and he surveys all things and knows all things, and none of us escapes his notice; nor does he move, nor can space contain him, no, nor the whole universe, him, who was before the universe was made."[[57]]
The virgin-birth
Who then was it who walked in the garden, who wrestled with Jacob, who appeared in arms to Joshua, who spoke with Moses and with Abraham, who shut Noah into the ark, who was the fourth figure in the fiery furnace? Scripture gives us a key. Can the Jew say, who it is whom Ezekiel calls the "angel of great counsel;" and the "man"; whom Daniel describes "as the Son of man"; whom Isaiah called "child," and David "Christ" and "God adored"; whom Moses called "Joseph" and "Jacob" and "the star"; whom Zechariah called "the daystar"; whom Isaiah again called the "sufferer" (pathêtós), "Jacob" and "Israel"; whom others have named "the Rod," "the Flower," "the Chief Corner-stone" and "the Son of God"?[[58]] The answer is more clearly given by Solomon in the eighth chapter of Proverbs—it is the Divine Wisdom, to whom all these names apply. When it is said "Let us make man," it is to be understood that the Ineffable communicated his design to his Wisdom, his Logos or Son, and the Son made man. The Son rained upon Sodom the fire and brimstone from the Father. It was the Son who appeared to men in all the many passages cited—the Son, Christ the Lord, God and Son of God—inseparable and unseverable from the Father, His Wisdom and His Word and His Might (dynamis).[[59]]
But, while all this might be accepted by a Jew, it still seemed to Trypho that it was "paradoxical, and foolish, too," to say that Christ could be God before all the ages, and then tolerate to be born a man, and yet "not a man of men." The offence of the Cross also remained. The Apologist began by explaining the mysteries of the two comings of Christ, first in humiliation, and afterwards in glory, as Jacob prophesied in his last words.[[60]] For the First Coming Tertullian quotes Isaiah—"he is led as a sheep to the slaughter"; and the Psalms—"made a little lower than the angels," "a worm and not a man"; while the Second Coming is to be read of in Daniel and the forty-fifth Psalm, and in the more awful passage of Zechariah "and then they shall know him whom they pierced."[[61]] The paschal lamb is a type of the First Coming—especially as it was to be roasted whole and trussed like a cross; and the two goats of Leviticus (16) are types of the two Comings.[[62]]
"And now," says Justin, "I took up the argument again to show that he was born of a virgin, and that it had been prophesied by Isaiah that he should be born of a virgin; and I again recited the prophecy itself. This is it: 'And the Lord said moreover unto Ahaz, saying: 'Ask for thyself a sign from the Lord thy God in the depth or in the height. And Ahaz said: I will not ask nor tempt the Lord. And Isaiah said: Hear ye then, O house of David! Is it a little thing with you to strive with men? and how will ye strive with the Lord? Therefore shall the Lord himself give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat. Before he shall either have knowledge or choose evil, he shall choose good; because, before the child knows evil or good, he refuses evil to choose good. Because, before the child knows to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria before the King of the Assyrians. And the land shall be taken, which thou shalt bear hardly from before the face of two kings. But God will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon the house of thy father, days which have never come, from the day when Ephraim removed from Judah the King of the Assyrians.' And I added, 'That, in the family of Abraham according to the flesh, none has ever yet been born of a virgin, or spoken of as so born, except our Christ, is manifest to all.'" It may be noted that the passage is not only misquoted, but is a combination of clauses from two distinct chapters.[[63]] The explanation is perhaps that Justin found it so in a manual of proof-texts and did not consult the original. Similar misquotations in other authors have suggested the same explanation.
"Trypho rejoined: 'The scripture has not: Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son; but: Behold the young woman shall conceive and bear a son: and the rest as you said. The whole prophecy was spoken of Hezekiah and was fulfilled of him. In the myths of the Greeks it is said that Perseus was born of Danae, when she was a virgin—after their so-called Zeus had come upon her in the form of gold. You ought to be ashamed to tell the same story as they do. You would do better to say this Jesus was born a man of men, and—if you show from the Scriptures that he is the Christ—say that it was by his lawful and perfect life that he was counted worthy of being chosen as Christ. Don't talk miracles of that kind, or you will be proved to talk folly beyond even that of the Greeks."'[[64]]
Trypho has the Hebrew text behind him, which says nothing about a virgin, though the Septuagint has the word. The sign given to Ahaz has a close parallel in a prophecy of Muhammad. Before he became known, an old man foretold that a great prophet should come, and on being challenged for a sign he pointed to a boy lying in rugs by the camp-fire—"That boy should see the prophet"; and he did. Isaiah's sign is much the same; a young woman shall conceive and have a son, and before that son is two or three years old, Damascus and Syria will fall before the King of Assyria.