Apologetics -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Celsus (Platonic philosopher), active 180; Theology -- History -- Early Church, ca. 30-600
according to the manner of things in this life in all similar matters,
do they desire the fulfilment of all things looked for in the promises,
viz. that what now is should exist again. Such are the views of those
who, while believing in Christ, understand the divine Scriptures in a
sort of Jewish sense, drawing from them nothing worthy of the divine
promises.
3. Those, however, who receive the representations of Scripture
according to the understanding of the apostles, entertain the hope that
the saints will eat indeed, but that it will be the bread of life, which
may nourish the soul with the food of truth and wisdom, and enlighten
the mind, and cause it to drink from the cup of divine wisdom, according
to the declaration of holy Scripture: “Wisdom has prepared her table,
she has killed her beasts, she has mingled her wine in her cup, and she
cries with a loud voice, Come to me, eat the bread which I have prepared
for you, and drink the wine which I have mingled.”[335] By this food of
wisdom, the understanding, being nourished to an entire and perfect
condition like that in which man was made at the beginning, is restored
to the image and likeness of God; so that, although an individual may
depart from this life less perfectly instructed, but who has done works
that are approved of,[336] he will be capable of receiving instruction
in that Jerusalem, the city of the saints, _i.e._ he will be educated
and moulded, and made a living stone, a stone elect and precious,
because he has undergone with firmness and constancy the struggles of
life and the trials of piety; and will there come to a truer and clearer
knowledge of that which here has been already predicted, viz. that “man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth from
the mouth of God.”[337] And they also are to be understood to be the
princes and rulers who both govern those of lower rank, and instruct
them, and teach them, and train them to divine things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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