“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,[480] 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 force[481] 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 character[482] 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 Messiah[483] 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.
Footnote 480:
δικαιωτὴς.
Footnote 481:
ἀκολουθίας.
Footnote 482:
πιθανότητος.
Footnote 483:
Δικαιωτὴς, not Δικαστής.