Paganism Surviving in ChristianityLewis, Abram Herbert
Religion
Paganism Surviving in Christianity
Lewis, Abram Herbert
Christianity and other religions; Paganism
“On the subject of his death, I suppose you endeavor to introduce
a diversity of opinion, simply because you deny that the suffering
of the cross was predicted of the Christ of the Creator, and
because you contend, moreover, that it is not to be believed that
the Creator would expose His son to that kind of death on which He
had Himself pronounced a curse. ‘Cursed,’ says he, ‘is every one
who hangeth on a tree.’ But what is meant by this curse, worthy as
it is of the simple prediction of the cross, of which we are now
mainly inquiring, I defer to consider, because in another passage,
we have given the reason of the thing preceded by proof. First,
I shall offer a full explanation of the types. And no doubt it
was proper that this mystery should be prophetically set forth by
types, and indeed chiefly by that method; for in proportion to its
incredibility would it be a stumbling block, if it were set forth in
bare prophecy; and in proportion, too, to its grandeur, was the need
of obscuring it in shadow, that the difficulty of understanding it
might lead to prayer for the grace of God. First, then, Isaac, when
he was given up by his father, as an offering, himself carried the
wood for his own death. By this act he even then was setting forth
the death of Christ, who was destined by his Father as a sacrifice,
and carried the cross whereon he suffered. Joseph, likewise, was a
type of Christ, not, indeed, on this ground (that I may not delay my
course) that he suffered persecution for the cause of God from his
brethren, as Christ did from his brethren after the flesh, the Jews;
but when he is blessed by his father in these words, ‘His glory is
that of a bullock; his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them
shall he push the nations to the very ends of the earth,’--he was
not, of course, designated as a mere unicorn with its one horn, or
a minotaur with two; but Christ was indicated in him--a bullock in
respect of both His characteristics; to some as severe as a judge,
to others gentle as a Saviour, whose horns were the extremities of
his cross. For of the antenna, which is a part of a cross, the ends
are called horns; while the midway stake of the whole frame is the
unicorn. By this virtue, then, of His cross, and in this manner
horned, He is both now pushing all nations through faith, bearing
them away from earth to heaven; and will then push them through
judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth. He will also,
according to another passage in the same Scripture, be a bullock
when he is spiritually interpreted to be Jacob against Simeon and
Levi, which means against the scribes and the pharisees; for it was
from them that these last derived their origin. [Like] Simeon and
Levi, they consummated their wickedness by their heresy, with which
they persecuted Christ. ‘Into their counsel let not my soul enter;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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