12. And it is not only in the case of the
theology that the use of the terms varies, According to
patristic usage the word “theology” is concerned with
all that relates to the divine and eternal nature of Christ, as
distinguished from the οἰκονομία, which relates to the incarnation, and consequent redemption of
mankind. cf. Bishop Lightfoot’s Apostolic
Fathers, Part II. Vol. ii. p. 75, and Newman’s Arians,
Chapter I. Section iii. but
whenever one of the terms takes the meaning of the other we find them
frequently transferred from the one subject to the other. As, for
instance, Adam says, “I have gotten a man through
God,” Gen. iv. 1, lxx. A.V. renders
“she conceived and bare Cain and said,” and here
St. Basil has been accused of quoting from memory. But in the
Greek of the lxx. the subject to εἶπεν is not expressed, and a
possible construction of the sentence is to refer it to Adam.
In his work adv. Eunom. ii. 20, St. Basil again refers the
exclamation to Adam. meaning to say the
same as from God; and in another passage “Moses
commanded…Israel through the word of the Lord,” Num. xxxvi. 5, lxx. and, again, “Is not the interpretation
through God?” Gen. xl. 8, lxx. Joseph,
discoursing about dreams to the prisoners, instead of saying
“from God” says plainly “through
God.” Inversely Paul uses the term “from
whom” instead of “through whom,” when he says
“made from a woman” (A.V., “of” instead of
“through a woman”). Gal. iv. 4.
And this he has plainly distinguished in another passage, where he says
that it is proper to a woman to be made of the man, and to a man to be
made through the woman, in the words “For as the woman is from
[A.V., of] the man, even so is the man also through [A.V., by] the
woman.” 1 Cor. xi. 12. Nevertheless in
the passage in question the apostle, while illustrating the variety of
usage, at the same time corrects obiter the error of those who
supposed that the body of the Lord was a spiritual body, The
allusion is to the Docetæ. cf.
Luke xxiv.
39. and, to shew that the God-bearing The note of the
Benedictine Editors remarks that the French theologian Fronton du
Duc (Ducæus) accuses Theodoret (on Cyril’s Anath. vii.)
of misquoting St. Basil as writing here “God-bearing
man” instead of “God bearing flesh,” a term of
different signification and less open as a Nestorian
interpretation. “God-bearing,” θεοφόρος, was
an epithet applied to mere men, as, for instance, St.
Ignatius. So Clement of Alexandria, I. Strom. p. 318, and
Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. xxxvii. p. 609. St. Basil does use
the expression Jesus Christ ἄνθρωπον
Θεόν in Hom. on Ps. xlix. flesh was formed out of the
common
lump φυραμα.
cf. Rom. ix.
21. of human nature,
gave precedence to the more emphatic preposition.