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WHATEVER then you say of the Lord Jesus Christ, you say of the whole
person, and in mentioning the Son of God you mention the Son of man, and in
mentioning the Son of man you mention the Son of God: by the grammatical
trope synecdoche in which you understand the whole from the parts, and a
part is put for the whole: and the holy Scriptures certainly show this, as
in them the Lord often uses this trope, and teaches in this way about
others and would have us understand about Himself in the same way. For
sometimes days, and things, and men, and times are denoted in holy
Scripture in no other fashion. As in this case where God declares that
Israel shall serve the Egyptians for four hundred years, and says to
Abraham: "Know thou that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land not theirs,
and they shall bring them under bondage and afflict them four hundred
years." Whereas if you take into account the whole time after that God
spoke, they are more than four hundred: but if you only reckon the time in
which they were in slavery, they are less. And in giving this period
indeed, unless you understand it in this way, we must think that the Word
of God lied (and away with such a thought from Christian minds!). But since
from the time of the Divine utterance, the whole period of their lives
amounted to more than four hundred years, and their bondage endured for not
nearly four hundred, you must understand that the part is to be taken for
the whole, or the whole for the part. There is also a similar way of
representing days and nights, where, when in the case of either division of
time one day is meant, either period is shown by a portion of a single
period. And indeed in this way the difficulty about the time of our Lord's
Passion is cleared up: for whereas the Lord prophesied that after the model
of the prophet Jonah, the Son of man would be three days and three nights
in the heart of the earth, and whereas after the sixth day of the week
on which He was crucified, He was only in hell for one day and two
nights, how can we show the truth of the Divine words? Surely by the trope
of Synecdoche, i.e., because to the day on which He was crucified the
previous night belongs, and to the night on which He rose again, the coming
day; and so when there is added the night which preceded the day belonging
to it, and the day which followed the night belonging to it, we see that
there is nothing lacking to the whole period of time, which is made up of
its portions. The holy Scriptures abound in such instances of ways of
speaking: but it would take too long to relate them all. For so when the
Psalm says, "What is a man that Thou art mindful of Him," from the hart
we understand the whole, as while only one man is mentioned the whole human
race is meant. So also where Ahab sinned we are told that the people
sinned. Where -- though all are mentioned, a part is to be understood from
the whole. John also the Lord's forerunner says: "After me cometh a man who
is preferred before me for He was before me." How then does He mean
that He would come after Him, whom He shows to be before Him? For if this
is understood of a man who was afterwards born, how was he before him? But
if it is taken of the Word how is it, "a man cometh after me?" Except that
in the one Lord Jesus Christ is shown both the posteriority of the manhood
and the precedence of the Godhead. And so the result is that one and the
same Lord was before him and came after him: for according to the flesh He
was posterior in time to John; and according to His Deity was before all
men. And so he, when he named that man, denoted both the manhood and the
Word, for as the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God was complete in both
manhood and Divinity in mentioning one of these natures in Him he
denoted the whole person. And what need is there of anything further? I
think that the day would fail me if I were to try to collect or to tell
everything that could be said on this subject. And what we have already
said is enough, at any rate on this part of the subject, both for the
exposition of the Creed, and for the requirements of our case, and for the
limits of our book.
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