By the power of the Spirit we have already sufficiently overturned the subtleties and entanglements of our opponents' arguments. We have also answered in general the objections they draw from Holy Scripture—those sacrilegious plunderers of Scripture and thieves of its meaning who win over the crowd and disturb the way of truth.
And, as I think any fair-minded person will admit, we have done this clearly enough: assigning the higher and more divine expressions to the Godhead, and the lower and more human expressions to the One who for our sake became the second Adam—to God in a condition capable of suffering in order to fight against sin.
But because our discussion was moving quickly, we did not go through the passages one by one. Since you now ask for a brief explanation of each, so that plausible arguments do not sweep you away, we will summarize the answers and number them to make them easier to remember.
Their first and most convenient text is: “The Lord created Me as the beginning of His ways for His works.”
How shall we answer?
Should we accuse Solomon, or reject his earlier words because of his later fall? Should we say that Wisdom speaks here in person—as knowledge, or as the creative reason according to which all things were made? Scripture often gives speech to things without life: “The sea said”; “The deep says, It is not in me”; “The heavens declare the glory of God.” A sword receives a command, and mountains and hills are asked why they leap.
Some before us have used such explanations strongly, but we need not rely on them.
Let us grant that the words refer to the Savior Himself, the true Wisdom. Then let us consider one simple distinction.
What among all realities is without cause? The Godhead. No one can name a cause of God; otherwise that cause would be prior to God.
What is the cause of the humanity God assumed for our sake? Surely our salvation. What else?
Now in the same passage we find both “created Me” and “He begets Me.” The rule is simple. Whatever appears with a cause we refer to the humanity; whatever is absolute and without cause we understand with reference to the Godhead.
Does not “created” appear with a cause? “He created Me as the beginning of His ways, for His works.” The works of His hands are truth and judgment, and for their sake the humanity was anointed with Godhead—for the anointing belongs to the humanity.
But “He begets Me” is stated without such a cause. Show me, if you can, one attached to it.
What argument, then, can disprove this: Wisdom is called “created” with reference to the lower, human birth, but “begotten” with reference to the first and more incomprehensible generation?
Next comes His being called a servant, His serving many, and the statement that it is a great thing for Him to be called God's servant or child.
In truth, He served in the flesh: He accepted birth and the conditions of our life for the sake of our freedom and the freedom of all whom He has saved from bondage to sin.
What greater destiny could belong to human lowliness than to be joined to God and, through this union, be deified? What greater visitation than the rising from on high, so that even the holy thing born should be called Son of the Most High, and should receive the name above every name?
And what name can that be except God?
Every knee bows before the One who emptied Himself for us and united the form of God with the form of a servant; and the whole house of Israel is to know that God has made Him both Lord and Christ.
All these things come to pass through the activity of the One begotten and the good pleasure of the One who begot Him.
What is the second of their supposedly irresistible texts?
“He must reign” until a certain time; heaven must receive Him “until the times of restoration”; He must sit at the right hand “until” His enemies are subdued.
What then? After this must He cease to reign or be expelled from heaven? Who would bring His reign to an end, and for what reason? What a reckless and truly kingless interpreter you are.
You have heard that His kingdom will have no end.
Your mistake comes from failing to understand that “until” does not always exclude what follows. It establishes what is true up to a stated point without denying that it continues afterward.
Take one example: “Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Does that mean He will no longer be with us afterward? Why would it?
But that is not your only mistake. You also fail to distinguish two senses of Christ's reign.
In one sense He reigns as Almighty King over both the willing and the unwilling. That kingdom has no end.
In another sense He reigns by bringing us into willing submission, making us acknowledge His sovereignty. What is the “end” of this kind of reign? It is our completed submission in salvation. Once we are already subject, there is no need to keep producing submission in us.
Then He rises to judge the earth and to separate the saved from the lost. Afterward He stands as God in the midst of gods—that is, among the saved—distinguishing and assigning to each the honor and dwelling place appropriate to him.
Consider next the “subjection” by which you try to subject the Son to the Father.
You ask: “Is He not subject now? And if He is God, why should God need to become subject to God?” You speak as though the issue concerned a robber or a rival god.
Understand it this way.
For my sake the One who destroyed my curse was called a curse. The One who takes away the sin of the world was called sin. He became a new Adam in place of the old. In the same way, as Head of the whole body, He makes my disobedience His own.
As long as I remain disobedient and rebellious—through denial of God and through the passions—Christ, in what concerns me, is spoken of under the condition of my unsubdued state.
But when all things are subjected to Him—subjected both through knowledge of Him and through transformation—then He has completed the subjection by bringing me, the one He saved, to the Father.
This, in my understanding, is Christ's subjection: the fulfillment of the Father's will.
The Son subjects all things to the Father, and the Father subjects all things to the Son: the Son acting, the Father approving, as we have already said. Thus the One who subjects presents to God what has been subjected, making our condition His own.
I understand in the same way the cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
He Himself was not abandoned by the Father, nor by His own Godhead, as some suppose—as though the divine nature feared the Passion and therefore withdrew from the suffering humanity. Who forced Him either to be born below in the first place or to ascend the Cross?
Rather, as I have said, He represents us in Himself. We were the ones abandoned and overlooked before; now, through the sufferings of the One who cannot suffer in His Godhead, we have been taken up and saved.
In the same way He makes our folly and our transgressions His own and speaks the words that follow in the Psalm, for the twenty-first Psalm plainly refers to Christ.
The same principle explains the saying that “He learned obedience through what He suffered,” together with His loud cries and tears, His supplications, His being heard, and His reverent submission. All these are wonderfully enacted for our sake, like a drama whose whole action has been woven around us.
As the Word, He was neither obedient nor disobedient. Those terms belong to servants and inferiors: obedience to the better among them, disobedience to those deserving punishment.
But in the form of a servant He descends to the level of fellow servants—indeed, of His own servants—and assumes what is foreign to Him, carrying all of me and all that is mine within Himself. In Himself He consumes what is worse in us, as fire consumes wax or the sun disperses the mist of the earth, so that through union I may share what belongs to Him.
Thus He honors obedience not merely by disposition but by deed, and He experiences it through suffering. A disposition alone would not be enough, just as it is not enough for us unless it is carried into action; action reveals disposition.
Perhaps we may also understand that, by the skill of His love for humanity, He tests and measures our obedience through comparison with His own sufferings. In this way He knows our condition through His own experience and determines how much may rightly be required of us and how much allowance should be made, taking our weakness into account together with our circumstances.
For if the Light, shining through the veil into the darkness of this life, was persecuted by the other darkness—I mean the Evil One and the tempter—how much more will darkness itself be pursued and overtaken, being weaker?
What is remarkable is not that we are in part overtaken, but that He, who entirely escaped capture, was nevertheless pursued.
I will add another passage that clearly belongs to the same line of thought: “Because He Himself suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are tempted.”
And at the time of restoration God will be all in all. This does not mean that only the Father will remain and the Son will be dissolved back into Him like a torch separated for a moment from a great fire and then returned to it—let no Sabellian corrupt the passage in that way.
Rather, the whole Godhead will be all in all when we are no longer divided as we now are by movements and passions, possessing nothing of God or only a little, but are wholly formed in likeness to Him.
Your third proof-text is the word “greater,” and your fourth, “My God and your God.”
If Christ were called only “greater” and Scripture never used language of equality, perhaps you would have gained something. But both are plainly said. What will you do with that? How will you reconcile what appears irreconcilable? The same thing cannot, in the same respect, be both greater than and equal to another.
The clear solution is that “greater” refers to causality, while equality belongs to nature. We gladly confess both.
Someone might even strengthen our reply and say that what comes from such a cause is not inferior to the One without cause. The Son shares the glory of the Uncaused because He comes from the Uncaused. And there is also the glory of generation itself, a mystery universally great and majestic.
As for saying that the Father is greater than the Son considered according to His humanity—that is certainly true, but hardly an impressive discovery. What wonder is there in saying that God is greater than a human being?
That is enough in answer to their argument from “greater.”
As for the words “My God,” they are said with reference not to the Word considered simply in His divinity, but to the visible Word according to His humanity. How could there be a God over the One who is properly God?
In the corresponding way, God is Father properly of the Word according to His divine generation, not Father of the visible humanity in that same sense. Our Lord is from two natures. Therefore in each case one expression is used properly and the other through the union—exactly the reverse of what happens with us. For God is properly our God, but not our Father by nature in the way He is Father of the Son.
This is one source of the heretics' error: they combine the two names without observing that, because of the union of the natures, names belonging properly to one may be spoken of the one Christ.
Paul gives an indication of the distinction when he says, “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.” He is God of Christ with reference to the humanity, but Father of glory with reference to the Son. The expressions belong to one person, not because humanity and divinity are one nature, but because the two are united.
What could be clearer?
Fifth, suppose Scripture says that the Son receives life, judgment, the nations as an inheritance, authority over all flesh, glory, disciples, or anything similar.
These expressions belong to the humanity. Yet even if you referred them to the Godhead, nothing absurd would follow, provided you did not understand them as newly acquired gifts.
You would understand them as belonging to the Son from the beginning by nature, not as favors added to Him later.
Sixth, they quote: “The Son can do nothing of Himself except what He sees the Father doing.”
The words “can” and “cannot” do not have only one meaning.
Sometimes “cannot” refers to lack of strength, sometimes to time, sometimes to a particular object. A child cannot be an athlete; a puppy cannot yet see clearly or fight a certain opponent. Later the child may become an athlete and the puppy may see and fight that opponent, even if not every opponent.
Sometimes “cannot” expresses what is ordinarily or generally the case: “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden,” although one could imagine another higher hill obscuring it.
Sometimes it expresses what is unfitting or unreasonable. “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?” Whether we think of Christ visibly present in the body—when His presence among us was a time of joy, not mourning—or of the Word Himself, why should those purified by the Word mourn as though deprived of Him?
Sometimes “cannot” means contrary to the will: “He could do no mighty work there because of their unbelief.” Healing requires both the patient's faith and the healer's power; where the first is absent, the act becomes impossible—not through weakness in the healer but because healing those who will only be harmed by unbelief is unfitting.
The sayings “The world cannot hate you” and “How can you, being evil, speak good things?” belong to the same kind. Their impossibility is moral, not a lack of power.
There is also the sense in which something impossible by nature remains possible to God if He wills: a person cannot be born a second time; a camel cannot pass through the eye of a needle. Yet what could prevent either if God chose to bring it about?
Beyond all these uses there is also what is absolutely impossible and inadmissible, which is the sense relevant here.
We say it is impossible for God to be evil or not to exist. This does not reveal weakness in God but perfection. In the same way it is impossible for what is nonexistent, precisely as nonexistent, to exist; or for two and two to be both four and ten.
So too it is impossible and inconceivable for the Son to do anything that the Father does not do.
All that the Father has belongs to the Son, and all that belongs to the Son belongs to the Father. Nothing is privately possessed, because all things are common. Their very being is common and equal, though the Son receives His being from the Father.
This is the sense of “I live because of the Father”: not that the Father continually holds the Son's life and existence together as though the Son could fail, but that the Son has His being from the Father beyond time and without any created cause.
But what does it mean that the Son “sees” the Father doing and then does likewise? Is He like someone copying a painting or handwriting, unable to reach the truth except by looking at an original and being guided by it? How could Wisdom need a teacher or be unable to act until instructed?
And when does the Father perform these actions for the Son to imitate? Did the Father first make another world, and then the Son copy it in making this one? Or will the Father make a future world and the Son make another like it? On that reasoning there would be four worlds—two made by the Father and two by the Son. Absurd.
The Son cleanses lepers, casts out demons and diseases, raises the dead, walks on the sea, and performs His other works. When and where did the Father first perform these actions before Him?
The point is not that the Son imitates an external model, but that the Father's will and action are one with the Son's. The Father wills and the Word brings the same divine acts to fulfillment—not slavishly or as an unskilled learner, but knowingly and sovereignly, or rather in the manner proper to the Father.
This is how I understand, “Whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise”: the likeness concerns authority and divine action, not a sequence of copied performances.
The same applies to, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” It refers not only to creating but also to governing and preserving what has been made. Scripture can say that God “makes His angels spirits,” that the earth is established, that thunder is strengthened, and that wind is created, even though these realities were once brought into being, because God's sustaining action continues.
The creative word was spoken once; the divine activity remains at work.
Seventh, they quote: “I came down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”
If these words had been spoken by someone other than the One who came down, we might simply assign them to the humanity. Christ's human will, considered in the union, is not opposed to God; yet human willing considered according to our common condition often struggles against and resists the divine will.
This is how we understand, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.” It is not that Christ did not know whether the Passion was possible, nor that one divine will fought another.
But because the words “I came down” are spoken by the person of the Son who assumed our nature, not by the nature assumed as though it were a separate subject, the saying can also be read in relation to the unity of divine willing.
It does not mean that the Son possesses some private divine will over against the Father's. Rather: “I do not do a will that is Mine apart from Yours, because there is no such separate will. What I will is the will common to You and Me; as we have one Godhead, so we have one divine will.”
Scripture often uses negative expressions of this kind to safeguard what is common. “God does not give the Spirit by measure” does not imply that God gives the Spirit to the Son as though God measured God; it denies measurement. “Not My transgression, nor My sin” does not mean Christ possesses transgression and sin; it denies them. “Not because of our righteousness which we have done” is said because no such righteousness exists in us.
The words that follow make the sense plain. What is the Father's will? That everyone who believes in the Son should be saved and receive the final resurrection.
Is this the Father's will but not the Son's? Does the Son preach the Gospel and receive faith against His will? Who could believe such a thing?
The same force belongs to the saying that the word heard is “not Mine but the Father's.” What is common to the two is not thereby separated and assigned exclusively to one.
If you understand the Son's will in this way, your understanding will be reverent and right, as I and every sound-minded person judge.
Eighth come the sayings: “That they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent,” and, “No one is good except one, God.”
The answer is easy.
If “only true God” is taken to exclude the Son, what will you do with the Son as Truth itself? And if expressions such as “the only wise God,” “who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light,” or “the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only wise God” exclude the Son, then by the same logic the Son must be mortal, in darkness, unwise, not King, not invisible—and finally not God at all.
And what becomes of His goodness, which especially belongs to God?
I think the words “that they may know You, the only true God” are spoken against gods falsely called gods. The sentence immediately adds, “and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” It would not add the Son in this way if “only true God” were meant to contrast the Father with Him rather than to confess the common Godhead against false gods.
Likewise, “No one is good except one, God,” answers the man who addressed Christ merely as a good human teacher. Perfect goodness belongs properly to God. Yet Scripture also calls human beings good by participation: “A good man brings good things out of the good treasure of his heart”; “I will give the kingdom to one better than you”; “Do good, Lord, to those who are good.” Such goodness flows from the supreme Good and is possessed in a secondary way.
If this persuades you, excellent. If not, hear the argument turned around.
Scripture can also speak of the Son as though He were the only God: “This is our God; no other shall be accounted beside Him,” and shortly afterward, “Afterward He appeared on earth and lived among human beings.” The second statement clearly points to the Son, who appeared bodily and lived among us.
If you insist on taking such exclusive language as opposed to the Father rather than to false gods, then the same weapon you used against the Son destroys the Father.
What victory could be more disastrous?
Ninth, they quote that Christ “always lives to make intercession for us.”
What a beautiful, mysterious, and loving expression.
To intercede does not mean that the Son begs for mercy as though the Father were hostile or needs to be persuaded by servile pleading. Intercession belongs to Christ's mediation, just as the Spirit also is said to intercede for us.
“There is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus.”
He continues to represent our salvation according to the humanity He assumed, for He still bears the body He took until the purpose of the Incarnation is brought to completion in us and I am made god by its power. Yet He is no longer known “according to the flesh,” meaning according to the passions and limitations of our mortal condition, apart from sin.
In the same sense “we have an Advocate, Jesus Christ.” Do not imagine Him lying prostrate before the Father in slavish fashion, pleading as a servant before a master. Cast away so servile and unspiritual a suspicion.
It would be unworthy to suppose either that the Father requires this humiliation or that the Son must submit to it.
Rather, by the humanity He assumed and by what He suffered for us, the Word Himself stands as our mediator and advocate. The saving work He has accomplished is the plea.
That, I think, is the meaning of His advocacy.
Their tenth objection concerns Christ's “ignorance”: “Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the Son, but the Father.”
How can Wisdom be ignorant of anything—Wisdom through whom the ages were made, who brings them to completion, renews them, and is the goal of all created things? He knows the things of God as a human spirit knows what belongs to the human being. What knowledge could be more complete?
How can you say that He knows accurately everything before the final hour, and everything connected with the end, yet is ignorant of the hour itself? It would be like saying someone knew perfectly everything in front of a wall but did not know the wall, or knew the end of the day but not the beginning of the night, when knowledge of one necessarily includes the other.
It is therefore clear that He knows according to the Godhead and is spoken of as not knowing according to the humanity—if, for analysis, we distinguish what is visible from what is apprehended by the mind.
The unqualified use of the title “Son” in the passage does not force us to assign ignorance to the divine nature. We should understand the saying reverently, with reference to the human condition He assumed, not to the Godhead.
If this answer is enough, we may stop here. If not, consider another.
As in many other cases, let us honor the Father as cause by referring the Son's knowledge of the greatest realities to Him. The meaning may be: the Son does not know the day or hour in any way other than as the Father knows it. Since the Father knows, the Son knows from the Father; and this knowledge belongs to the first nature, beyond the grasp of any creature.
There remain the sayings that He received commandments, kept the Father's commandments, and always did what pleased Him; that He was perfected and exalted; that He learned obedience through suffering; together with His high priesthood, His offering, His betrayal, His prayer to the One able to save Him from death, His agony, bloody sweat, prayer, and similar things.
But it should be obvious to everyone that these expressions concern not the unchangeable nature above suffering, but the humanity capable of suffering.
This is enough concerning the objections, as a foundation and memorandum for those better able to pursue each question more fully.
Yet, since it fits what we have been saying, it is worth pausing over the titles of the Son themselves. They are many and reveal many aspects of Him. Let us set out what each means and uncover, as far as we can, the mystery contained in the names.
Let us begin from this principle: the divine nature cannot be contained in words.
This is shown not only by reasoning but by the practice of the wisest and most ancient Hebrews, as far as their custom allows us to infer. They set apart particular written characters for the divine name and would not allow anything inferior to God to be written with the same sacred designation. They judged it improper for the Godhead to share even that much with creatures.
How, then, could the invisible and transcendent nature be fully explained by divisible human words?
No one has ever inhaled all the air. In the same way no mind has wholly comprehended God's being, and no speech has enclosed it completely.
We trace God through His attributes and from them gather a faint, weak, partial conception.
The best theologian is therefore not the one who has discovered the whole—for our present condition does not permit that—but the one who has conceived more than another and has gathered within himself a fuller likeness, shadow, or impression of the truth, whatever term we use for it.
As far as we can reach, “The One Who Is” and “God” are especially names pointing toward the divine essence, and “The One Who Is” is the more proper of the two.
When God spoke to Moses on the mountain and Moses asked His name, this is how He named Himself: “I Am has sent Me.”
The title is appropriate because being, in the proper and absolute sense, belongs to God.
Even the word “God,” whether those skilled in etymology derive it from a verb meaning “to run” because of ceaseless activity, or “to burn” because God consumes evil and is therefore called a consuming fire, still has a relational or descriptive character. The same is true of “Lord,” another divine title: “I am the Lord your God; this is My name,” and, “The Lord is His name.”
But here we are seeking the nature whose being is absolute, not being defined by relation to something else.
Being in the proper sense belongs wholly to God. It is not limited or cut short by any “before” or “after,” for in Him there is no past or future.
Among the other divine titles, some clearly express authority, while others express providential government of the world, including its relation to us before and through the Incarnation.
Titles such as Almighty, King of Glory, King of the Ages, King of the Powers, King of the beloved, King of kings, and Lord of Hosts—whether “hosts” means armies, powers, or lordships—clearly speak of authority.
Other titles speak of providential government: God of salvation, God of vengeance, God of peace, God of righteousness, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God of the whole spiritual Israel that sees God.
We are guided especially by three things: fear of punishment, hope of salvation and glory, and the practice of virtue by which we advance toward them.
“God of vengeance” governs our fear; “God of salvation” directs our hope; and “God of virtues” governs our practice. Whoever attains any of these and thus bears God within himself may press onward toward perfection and toward the likeness and kinship that arise from virtue.
These names are common to the Godhead.
But the proper name of the One without origin is Father; of the One eternally begotten from Him, Son; and of the One who proceeds without being begotten, Holy Spirit.
Let us now return to the titles of the Son, which were the starting point of this part of our argument.
In my judgment He is called Son because He is one in essence with the Father, and also because He is from the Father.
He is called Only-begotten not simply because He alone is Son of the Father alone, but because His manner of sonship is unique and is not shared by bodily generation.
He is called Word because He is related to the Father as word to mind—not only because His generation is without passion, but because of their union and because He makes the Father known. Perhaps we may also compare this relation to that between a definition and what it defines, since “logos” can bear that sense too.
“He who has seen Me has seen the Father”: to perceive the Son is to perceive the Father. The Son is a concise and clear manifestation of the Father's nature. Every offspring is in some sense a silent word of the one who begets it.
Nor would someone be wrong to say that He is called Word because He is present in all things that exist. What exists apart from the Word?
He is Wisdom, because He is knowledge of divine and human things. How could the Maker of all things be ignorant of the reasons of what He made?
He is Power, because He sustains all created things and gives them the power by which they hold together.
He is Truth, because by nature He is one and not many—for truth is one, while falsehood takes many forms—and because He is the pure seal of the Father and His unerring imprint.
He is Image because He is of one essence with the Father and is from the Father, not the Father from Him. An image reproduces its archetype and bears its likeness. Yet here the reality is greater than ordinary images: an ordinary image is motionless while its original lives; the Son is the living image of the living Father, more perfectly corresponding to Him than Seth to Adam or any human son to his father.
Simple divine realities are not partly alike and partly unlike. Their likeness is complete; indeed “identical in nature” is more fitting than merely “similar.”
He is Light because He is the brightness of souls purified by word and life. If ignorance and sin are darkness, knowledge and a godly life are light.
He is Life because He is Light and because He is the constituting and life-giving power of every rational soul. “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Through Him the breath of life was given to us, and those capable of receiving more, as they open the mouth of the mind, receive God the Holy Spirit.
He is Righteousness because He distributes according to what is fitting and judges rightly both those under Law and those under Grace; He orders soul and body so that the higher rules and the lower obeys, and the worse does not rebel against the better.
He is Sanctification because He is purity, so that what is purified may receive Purity.
He is Redemption because He frees us who were held captive under sin, giving Himself as ransom for us and as the sacrifice that makes atonement for the world.
He is Resurrection because He raises us from here and restores to life those slain by sin.
These titles still belong both to the One who is above us and to the One who came for our sake. Other titles belong especially to what He assumed from us.
He is called Human Being because He truly became human—not merely so that, through a body, the incomprehensible might become accessible to embodied creatures, but so that through Himself He might sanctify humanity. He became like leaven for the whole lump, united to Himself the whole condemned nature, and freed it from condemnation. He became for all of us all that we are, except sin: body, soul, mind, everything through which death had entered. The whole formed from these is a human being; and this human being is God made visible because of the invisible Godhead within.
He is Son of Man because of Adam and because of the Virgin from whom He came: Adam as forefather, the Virgin as Mother, according to the law of generation and yet beyond ordinary generation.
He is Christ because of the Godhead. The Godhead is the anointing of the humanity—not sanctifying it by an external operation as with other anointed persons, but by the personal presence of the whole Anointer. Through this union the One who anoints is called human, and what is anointed is made God.
He is Way because through Himself He leads us.
Door because He admits us.
Shepherd because He makes us dwell in green pastures, nourishes us beside restful waters, guides us from here, fights the wild beasts before us, turns back the wandering, restores the lost, binds the broken, guards the strong, and gathers all into the fold above by words of pastoral wisdom.
He is Sheep because He is the victim; Lamb because He is perfect.
High Priest because He offers and brings us near.
Melchizedek because in His divine nature He is without mother, and in His human birth without human father; above, He is without genealogy—for “who will declare His generation?” He is also King of Salem, that is, of peace; King of righteousness; and the One who receives tithes from patriarchs victorious over the powers of evil.
These are the titles of the Son.
Walk through them. Understand the lofty titles in a manner worthy of God; understand those connected with the body in a manner worthy of the mystery—or rather, understand all of them with a godly mind, so that you yourself may be made god, ascending from below because of the One who came down from above for us.
Above all, hold fast to this rule and you will not go astray in either the lofty or the lowly names: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today according to the Incarnation, and spiritually forever and ever. Amen.