Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

So He says, “By me if any man enter in, he shall go in and out and shall find pastare.” 856
Again, because to the faithful He is a defence strong, unshaken, and harder to break than
any bulwark, He is a Rock. Among these titles, it is when He is styled Door, or Way, that
the phrase “through Him” is very appropriate and plain. As, however, God and Son, He is
glorified with and together with 857 the Father, in that “at, the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” 858
Wherefore we use both terms, expressing by the one His own proper dignity, and by the
other His grace to usward.
18. For “through Him” comes every succour to our souls, and it is in accordance with
each kind of care that an appropriate title has been devised. So when He presents to Himself
the blameless soul, not having spot or wrinkle, 859 like a pure maiden, He is called Bridegroom,
but whenever He receives one in sore plight from the devil’s evil strokes, healing it in the
heavy infirmity of its sins, He is named Physician. And shall this His care for us degrade
to meanness our thoughts of Him? Or, on the contrary, shall it smite us with amazement
at once at the mighty power and love to man 860 of the Saviour, in that He both endured to
suffer with us 861 in our infirmities, and was able to come down to our weakness? For not
heaven and earth and the great seas, not the creatures that live in the water and on dry land,
not plants, and stars, and air, and seasons, not the vast variety in the order of the universe, 862
so well sets forth the excellency of His might as that God, being incomprehensible, should
have been able, impassibly, through flesh, to have come into close conflict with death, to
the end that by His own suffering He might give us the boon of freedom from suffering. 863
856 John x. 9.
In how many ways “Through whom” is used; and in what sense “with whom” is…
857 cf. note on page 3, on μετά and σόν.
858 Phil. ii. 10, 11.
859 Eph. v. 29.
860 φιλανθρωπία occurs twice in the N.T. (Acts xxviii. 2, and Titus iii. 4) and is in the former passage rendered
by A.V. “kindness,” in the latter by “love to man.” The φιλανθρωπία of the Maltese barbarians corresponds
with the lower classical sense of kindliness and courtesy. The love of God in Christ to man introduces practically
a new connotation to the word and its cognates.
861 Or to sympathize with our infirmities.
862 ποικιλη διακόσμησις. διακόσμησις was the technical term of the Pythagorean philosophy for the orderly
arrangement of the universe (cf. Arist. Metaph. I. v. 2. “ἡ ὅλη διακόσμησις); Pythagoras being credited with the
first application of the word κόσμος to the universe. (Plut. 2, 886 c.) So mundus in Latin, whence Augustine’s
oxymoron, “O munde immunde!” On the scriptural use of κόσμος and ἀιών vide Archbp. Trench’s New Testament
Synonyms, p. 204.
863 In Hom. on Ps. lxv. Section 5, St. Basil describes the power of God the Word being most distinctly shewn
in the œconomy of the incarnation and His descent to the lowliness and the infirmity of the manhood. cf. Ath.
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