Light of the Gospel, Image of the Father

…of the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 5:5) as His gift, will at that time add what is still lacking, and “will transform the body of our lowliness, to be conformed to the body of His glory” (Philippians 3:21).

Since our guide into the mysteries says, “just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18), and, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17), we will not tolerate the slander of the unholy heretics, who count the Spirit among created things. For if wherever the Spirit is, there freedom surely is as well, how is the Spirit not free by nature? And if that is so, the Spirit stands above the bounds of slavery. For the Spirit is the Spirit of the Father, reaching out from Him to the creation in Christ.

“So that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Since the holy preaching shines out like the sun, and every believer with unveiled face beholds “the glory of the Lord” as in a mirror (2 Corinthians 3:18), no one who thinks rightly would lay the ignorance of some to the charge of the divine preaching. For what does it matter if some, though they could know, shake off knowledge, their minds hardened by the devil’s deceit? Those who rise above his perversity, being wise and more discerning, have grown rich in knowledge.

For suppose barbarians had taken some people captive and put them under the yoke of slavery, and someone else offered those who had fallen into this misery release from what had befallen them. Suppose they then preferred to stay under the yoke rather than be free, and so made their misfortune one they could never escape. Tell me, would anyone blame the one who generously offered them leave to go free, or would he not rather charge them with bad judgment?

So the God of all has set before those who are willing to believe in the Son that they may behold His glory with bare and unveiled face. But those who keep the devil’s darkness, which they ought to cast off, and senselessly refuse to admit the light of the gospel’s oracles, have missed the grace. For the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, would have shone on them as well (2 Corinthians 4:4).

He names Satan “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4), not because he is God by nature, but because he has been thought to be so by those who do not know who is God by nature and in truth. Yet this too is worth our wonder: Paul speaks of the Godhead, and makes plain the mystery of the Only-begotten’s dispensation in the flesh. For see, he plainly calls the apostolic preaching “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” And yet it was at the time of His anointing that the One who is by nature the Son from God was called Christ; at that time, though He Himself is the Giver of the Holy Spirit, He is said to have been anointed by God the Father “with the oil of gladness” (Psalm 45:7).

So it is when the Only-begotten Word of God had come to be in our form and was seen as a man on earth that then, and only then, He is understood and called Christ, and most rightly. The faith, then, is not proclaimed to the world by those who bear the Spirit as faith in one of us, a mere man; rather they proclaim the Word from God who appeared in human form, and the Only-begotten as “the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29). For how else could we understand the light of the gospel of His glory, unless He is understood to be God and the image of the Father, not in the way that we are, but rather in essence and by nature?

We certainly do not say that the Father Himself must therefore also be thought to have come in the flesh, for the beauty of the image does not lie in these things. Rather, this is worth pondering: that “the Word was God” (John 1:1), and even before the flesh was the exact imprint (Hebrews 1:3) and natural likeness of the One who begot Him; and again, that when He had become as we are, He is to be thought of as in the form of the Father, while the human belongs to Him by the dispensation. He is therefore reckoned as one with His own flesh, and even so He is the image of the Father, in that He is God and has been begotten from Him by nature.

“Who has shone in …” (2 Corinthians 4:6)