{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-5462","native_reference":{"book_number":550,"chapter_from":3,"chapter_to":3,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":19,"verse_to":19},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Ambrosiaster</b>: By \"angels\" he means God's messengers—that is, Moses, [Joshua] son of Nun and the other prophets up to John the Baptist. … Through these, therefore, the Law and Prophets are ordained and disposed by God in the hand, that is, the power, of the Savior. For he is the Mediator, the reconciler of God and humanity, so that he may save whom he will out of those who have received the law from the angels.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 3.19.1-2</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: Here arises a rather pertinent question: if faith justifies and even the former saints, who were justified before God, were justified through it, what need was there for the law to be given?… The law was given to a proud people, but the grace of love cannot be received by any but the humble. Without this grace the precepts of the law cannot possibly be fulfilled. Israel was rendered humble by transgression, so that it might seek grace and might not arrogantly suppose itself to be saved by its own merits; and so it would be righteous, not in its own power and might but by the hand of the Mediator who justifies the ungodly.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 24 [1B.3.19-20]</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: Now every dispensation of the Old Testament was given through angels, the Holy Spirit working in them and in the very Word of truth, though not yet incarnate, yet never departing from some true ordering of providence. This law was given through angels, sometimes acting in their own person, sometimes in that of God, as was also the way of the prophets.… The children [of Abraham] were put in the hand of [Christ] the Mediator so that he himself might liberate them from sin when they were forced by their transgression of the law to admit that they needed grace and mercy from the Lord.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 24 [1B.3.19-20]</i></p><p><b>Clement of Alexandria</b>: Whence the law was rightly said to have been given by Moses, being a rule of right and wrong; and we may call it with accuracy the divine ordinance, inasmuch as it was given by God through Moses. It accordingly conducts to the divine. Paul says: \"The law was instituted because of transgressions, till the seed should come, to whom the promise was made.\" Then, as if in explanation of his meaning, he adds: \"But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up,\" manifestly through fear, in consequence of sins, \"unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed; so that the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we should be justified by faith.\"<br/><i>— The Stromata Book 1</i></p><p><b>Cosmas Indicopleustes</b>: as if in answer to the question What then is the law? meaning, Why was the law given? he at once replies and says: It was added because of transgressions till the seed should come to whom the promise hath been made; and it was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator; whereby he means, that the reason why the law was added was this, that by means of it and of the priesthood the people which had received the promise should be under safe guardianship—the people, namely, sprung from Abraham—and that there should be no intermixture of this people with any other; so that thereby he who had been foretold might be recognisable by all—he, by whom the world is being renovated, and by whom also the purpose and economy which God had from the first designed is being fulfilled.<br/><i>— The Christian Topography, Book 5</i></p><p><b>Hippolytus of Rome</b>: Marcion, adopting these sentiments, rejected altogether the generation of our Saviour. He considered it to be absurd that under the (category of a) creature fashioned by destructive Discord should have been the Logos that was an auxiliary to Friendship-that is, the Good Deity. (His doctrine,) however, was that, independent of birth, (the Logos) Himself descended from above in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, and that, as being intermediate between the good and bad Deity, He proceeded to give instruction in the synagogues. For if He is a Mediator, He has been, he says, liberated from the entire nature of the Evil Deity. Now, as he affirms, the Demiurge is evil, and his works. For this reason, he affirms, Jesus came down unbegotten, in order that He might be liberated from all (admixture of) evil. And He has, he says, been liberated from the nature of the Good One likewise, in order that He may be a Mediator, as Paul states, and as Himself acknowledges: \"Why call ye me good? there is one good.\" These, then, are the opinions of Marcion, by means of which he made many his dupes, employing the conclusions of Empedocles. And he transferred the philosophy invented by that (ancient speculator) into his own system of thought, and (out of Empedocles) constructed his (own) impious heresy.<br/><i>— Hippolytus Refutation of All Heresies Book VII</i></p><p><b>Irenaeus</b>: From many other instances also, we may discover that the apostle frequently uses a transposed order in his sentences, due to the rapidity of his discourses, and the impetus of the Spirit which is in him. An example occurs in the [Epistle] to the Galatians, where he expresses himself as follows: \"Wherefore then the law of works? It was added, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made; [and it was] ordained by angels in the hand of a Mediator.\" For the order of the words runs thus: \"Wherefore then the law of works? Ordained by angels in the hand of a Mediator, it was added until the seed should come to whom the promise was made,\"-man thus asking the question, and the Spirit making answer.<br/><i>— Against Heresies Book III</i></p><p><b>Irenaeus</b>: He has therefore, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy, and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam, and trampled upon his head, as thou canst perceive in Genesis that God said to the serpent, \"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; He shall be on the watch for (observabit) thy head, and thou on the watch for His heel.\" For from that time, He who should be born of a woman, [namely] from the Virgin, after the likeness of Adam, was preached as keeping watch for the head of the serpent. This is the seed of which the apostle says in the Epistle to the Galatians, \"that the law of works was established until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.\" This fact is exhibited in a still clearer light in the same Epistle, where he thus speaks: \"But when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman.\" For indeed the enemy would not have been fairly vanquished, unless it had been a man [born] of a woman who conquered him. For it was by means of a woman that he got the advantage over man at first, setting himself up as man's opponent. And therefore does the Lord profess Himself to be the Son of man, comprising in Himself that original man out of whom the woman was fashioned (ex quo ea quae secundum mulierem est plasmatio facta est), in order that, as our species went down to death through a vanquished man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one; and as through a man death received the palm [of victory] against us, so again by a man we may receive the palm against death.<br/><i>— Against Heresies Book V</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: (Verse 19, 20.) What then? The law was added because of transgressions until the seed should come to whom the promise was made; ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. For indeed the law was not given for the righteous but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners (I Tim. II, 9): and to go deeper, after the idolatry to which they were enslaved in Egypt, so that they forgot the God of their fathers, and subsequently said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt'; the ritual of worshiping God and the punishment of sinners was established by the hand of the mediator Christ Jesus, for all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made: not only the heavens, earth, sea, and all that we see, but also those things which were imposed on the stubborn people as the yoke of the Law through Moses (John I). And it is written to Timothy: For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (I Tim. II, 5). After He deigned to be born for our salvation from the Virgin's womb, He is called mediator of God and men, being a separate person. But before He assumed a human body, and when He was with the Father in the beginning, He is called the Word of God made flesh, to all the holy ones to whom the word of God was made, namely Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and later Moses and all the Prophets, whom Scripture relates, without the addition of man whom He had not yet assumed, He is called only mediator. But when he says: The law was ordained by angels, this is to be understood, that in every Old Testament, where an angel is first seen and afterwards introduced as speaking as God: The angel indeed among the many ministers who may have been seen truly, but it is in this mediator that he speaks who says: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Exodus 3:6). And it is not surprising if God speaks in angels, since He also speaks through angels who are in human beings, as Zechariah says. And the angel who was speaking with me said (Zech. II, 3); and afterwards adding: Thus saith the Lord almighty. For the angel who was said to be in the prophet did not dare to speak in his own person: Thus saith the Lord almighty. The hand of the mediator, we must understand, is the power and might of him. He, being one with the Father according to his Godhood, is understood to be distinct from him according to his office as mediator. But since the order of the reading is confused and disordered by a hyperbaton, it seems that it should be rendered to us thus: The Law was given through angels into the hand of the mediator, ordained by angels because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made. But there is no doubt that the seed signifies Christ, who is also proven to be the son of Abraham from the beginning of Matthew, as Scripture testifies: The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.<br/><i>— Commentary on Galatians</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: It was after the offense of the people in the wilderness, after the adoration of the calf and their murmurings against God, that the law came to forbid transgressions.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 2.3.19-20</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: This remark again is not superfluous; observe too how he glances round at every thing, as if he had an hundred eyes. Having exalted Faith, and proved its elder claims, that the Law may not be considered superfluous, he sets right this side of the doctrine also, and proves that the Law was not given without a view, but altogether profitably. \"Because of transgressions;\" that is to say, that the Jews might not be let live carelessly, and plunge into the depth of wickedness, but that the Law might be placed upon them as a bridle, guiding, regulating, and checking them from transgressing, if not all, at least some of the commandments. Not slight then was the advantage of the Law; but for how long?</p><p>\"Till the seed should come to whom the promise hath been made.\"</p><p>This is said of Christ; if then it was given until His advent, why do you protract it beyond its natural period?</p><p>\"And it was ordained through Angels by the hand of a Mediator.\"</p><p>He either calls the priests Angels, or he declares that the Angels themselves ministered to the delivery of the Law. By Mediator here he means Christ, and shows that He was before it, and Himself the Giver of it.<br/><i>— Homily on Galatians 3</i></p><p><b>Oecumenius</b>: \"What then is the law?\" As it was said by way of contrast to it. Why then was the law given, he says, if it cannot save?</p><p>\"It was added because of transgressions.\" It was not given in vain, he says, but in order that what appears to be from God may not be transgressed, so that even small faults may be prevented. \"added.\" He rightly says \"added\" to show that the law is not original, as the promises are, but was given as something following arising from what preceded.</p><p>\"until the seed to whom the promise referred should come.\" But the law was not given for eternity, he says, but until Christ comes, to whom it has been promised that all the nations will be blessed.</p><p>\"administered through angels.\" The law was given, that is, enjoined, served and commanded through the intervention of messengers, whether of the priests or indeed of angels.</p><p>It is said to have been given into the hand of a mediator, that is, of Christ. For he wishes to show that the law was given under Christ, so that he might also be the Lord to abolish it. For the one who gives also has power to abolish. He calls Christ a mediator because he mediates to the Father and to men, as it were toward friendship, and reconciles us to God, to whom we were at enmity.</p><p>— [CHRYSOSTOM] \"by the hand of a mediator.\" Here he calls Christ the Mediator, showing that he also gave the law beforehand.<br/><i>— Commentary on Galatians</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: For he, too, says that the world was originated by those angels; and sets forth Christ as born of the seed of Joseph, contending that He was merely human, without divinity; affirming also that the Law was given by angels; representing the God of the Jews as not the Lord, but an angel.<br/><i>— Pseudo-Tertullian Against All Heresies</i></p><p><b>Theodoret of Cyrus</b>: This question should be read as a personification. \"What you want to know,\" he says, \"is why the law was imposed. I shall tell you.… It was imposed for the tutelage of the race from which that offspring was going to sprout according to the flesh.\"<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 3.19</i></p><p><b>Theodoret of Cyrus</b>: It was imposed through the ministry of angels, and Moses assisted in this imposition. For Moses is the one that is called an intermediary. … For the God of all set Michael over them, as taught by the blessed Daniel. And to the great Moses he promised to send with him an angel to the people.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 3.19</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"3614822b300e7af1ba0ffd6e125a5a05e6bf055f5f393c6470944520c4d30d9e","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":5462,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"df512aadafda331eb039fdaaa4ff00efc784ad9ef51c8f709cf29e3a279c34ff","translator":null,"work":null}