ACC ~ Mark 1 v10a

THE DIVINE-HUMAN RECONCILIATION

HIPPOLYTUS [1] : Do you see, beloved, how many and how great blessings we would have lost if the Lord had yielded to the exhortation of John and declined baptism? For the heavens had been shut before this. [2] The region above was inaccessible. We might descend to the lower parts, but not ascend to the upper. So it happened not only that the Lord was being baptized—he also was making new the old creation. He was bringing the alienated under the scepter of adoption. [3] For straightway “the heavens were opened to him.” A reconciliation took place between the visible and the invisible. The celestial orders were filled with joy, the diseases of earth were healed, secret things made known, those at enmity restored to amity. For you have heard the word of the Evangelist, saying, “The heavens were opened to him,” on account of three wonders. [4] At the baptism of Christ the Bridegroom, it was fitting that the heavenly chamber should open its glorious gates. [5] So when the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove, and the Father’s voice spread everywhere, it was fitting that “the gates of heaven should be lifted up.” [6] THE DISCOURSE ON THE HOLY THEOPHANY 106. [7]

[1] The authorship is uncertain, but it is attributed to Hippolytus.

[2] Due to the rejection of sin by the holy God.

[3] Those lost from the family of God are reincluded by adoption; cf. Rom 8:15.

[4] Father, Son and Holy Spirit all appear at the theophany of Jesus’ baptism.

[5] A reconciliation is taking place between the Creator and creation through the Redeemer by the testimony of the Holy Spirit. The bride is welcoming the groom into the bridal chamber. Those alienated from the family of God are being reincluded by adoption.

[6] Ps 24:7.

[7] TLG 2115.026, 6.1-16; ANF 5:236; cf. AEG 1:303.

THE NEW NOAH

GREGORY THAUMATURGUS: And stretching forth slowly his right hand, which seemed both to tremble and to rejoice, John baptized the Lord. Then his detractors who were present, with those in the vicinity and those from a distance, connived together, and spoke among themselves asking: “Was John then superior to Jesus? Was it without cause that we thought John greater, and does not his very baptism attest this? Is not he who baptizes presented as the greater, and he who is baptized as the less important?” But just as they, in their ignorance of the mystery of the divine economy, [1] babbled about with each other, the holy One who alone is Lord spoke. He who by nature is the Father of the only begotten (who alone was begotten in unblemished fashion) instantly rectified their blunted imaginations. He opened the gates of the heavens and sent down the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, lighting upon the head of Jesus, pointing him out right there as the new Noah, even the maker of Noah, and the good pilot of the nature [2] which is in shipwreck. And he himself calls with clear voice out of heaven, and says: “This is my beloved Son,” [3] —Jesus, not John: the One baptized, and not the one baptizing; the One who was begotten of me before all time, and not the one who was begotten of Zechariah; the One who was born of Mary after the flesh, and not the one who was brought forth by Elizabeth beyond all expectation; the One who was the fruit of the virginity which he yet preserved intact, not the one who was the shoot from a sterility removed; the One who had his encounter with you, and not the one brought up in the wilderness. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: my Son, of the same substance with myself, and not of a different; of the same essence with me according to what is unseen, and of the same essence with you according to what is seen, yet without sin. THE FOURTH HOMILY, ON THE HOLY THEOPHANY, OR OF CHRIST’S BAPTISM. [4]

[1] Thomas Torrance describes the divine economy as “the patristic expression for the orderly way in which God communicates himself to us within the structures of space and time, in which he remains what he is eternally in himself while communicating himself to us really and truly and without reserve in Jesus Christ and in his Spirit.” In John Thompson, ed., Modern Trinitarian Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 25.

[2] Of humanity.

[3] Mt 3:17; 17:5; Mk 1:11; 9:7; Lk 9:35.

[4] PG 10.1188; ANF 6:70-71**. The authorship of this work is disputed. It has also been attributed to Gregory of Antioch cf. ANF 10:326; 331.