Chapter 30 [XXVI]--Pelagius and Coelestius Deny that the Ancient Saints Were Saved by Christ.
We must not therefore divide the times, as Pelagius and his disciples do, who say that men first lived righteously by nature, then under the law, thirdly under grace,--by nature meaning all the long time from Adam before the giving of the law. "For then," say they, "the Creator was known by the guidance of reason; and the rule of living rightly was carried written in the hearts of men, not in the law of the letter, but of nature. But men's manners became corrupt; and then," they say, "when nature now tarnished began to be insufficient, the law was added to it whereby as by a moon the original lustre was restored to nature after its blush was impaired. But after the habit of sinning had too much prevailed among men, and the law was unequal to the task of curing it, Christ came; and the Physician Himself, through His own self, and not through His disciples, brought relief to the malady at its most desperate development."
Chapter 31.--Christ's Incarnation Was of Avail to the Fathers, Even Though It Had Not Yet Happened.
By disputation of this sort, they attempt to exclude the ancient saints from the grace of the Mediator, as if the man Christ Jesus were not the Mediator between God and those men; on the ground that, not having yet taken flesh of the Virgin's womb, He was not yet man at the time when those righteous men lived. If this, however, were true, in vain would the apostle say: "By man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." [1986] For inasmuch as those ancient saints, according to the vain conceits of these men, found their nature self-sufficient, and required not the man Christ to be their Mediator to reconcile them to God, so neither shall they be made alive in Him, to whose body they are shown not to belong as members, according to the statement that it was on man's account that He became man. If, however, as the Truth says through His apostles, even as all die in Adam, even so shall all be made alive in Christ; forasmuch as the resurrection of the dead comes through the one man, even as death comes through the other man; what Christian man can be bold enough to doubt that even those righteous men who pleased God in the more remote periods of the human race are destined to attain to the resurrection of eternal life, and not eternal death, because they shall be made alive in Christ? that they are made alive in Christ, because they belong to the body of Christ? that they belong to the body of Christ, because Christ is the head even to them? [1987] and that Christ is the head even to them, because there is but one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus? But this He could not have been to them, unless through His grace they had believed in His resurrection. And how could they have done this, if they had been ignorant that He was to come in the flesh, and if they had not by this faith lived justly and piously? Now, if the incarnation of Christ could be of no concern to them, on the ground that it had not yet come about, it must follow that Christ's judgment can be of no concern to us, because it has not yet taken place. But if we shall stand at the right hand of Christ through our faith in His judgment, which has not yet transpired, but is to come to pass, it follows that those ancient saints are members of Christ through their faith in His resurrection, which had not in their day happened, but which was one day to come to pass.
[1986] 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22.
[1987] 1 Cor. xi. 3.
Chapter 32 [XXVII.]--He Shows by the Example of Abraham that the Ancient Saints Believed in the Incarnation of Christ.
For it must not be supposed that those saints of old only profited by Christ's divinity, which was ever existent, and not also by the revelation of His humanity, which had not yet come to pass. What the Lord Jesus says, "Abraham desired to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad," [1988] meaning by the phrase his day to understand his time, affords of course a clear testimony that Abraham was fully imbued with belief in His incarnation. It is in respect of this that He has a "time;" for His divinity exceeds all time, for it was by it that all times were created. If, however, any one supposes that the phrase in question must be understood of that eternal "day" which is limited by no morrow, and preceded by no yesterday,--in a word, of the very eternity in which He is co-eternal with the Father,--how would Abraham really desire this, unless he was aware that there was to be a future mortality belonging to Him whose eternity he wished for? Or, perhaps, some one would confine the meaning of the phrase so far as to say, that nothing else is meant in the Lord's saying, "He desired to see my day," than "He desired to see me," who am the never-ending Day, or the unfailing Light, as when we mention the life of the Son, concerning which it is said in the Gospel: "So hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself." [1989] Here the life is nothing less than Himself. So we understand the Son Himself to be the life, when He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life;" [1990] of whom also it was said, "He is the true God, and eternal life." [1991] Supposing, then, that Abraham desired to see this equal divinity of the Son's with the Father, without any precognition of His coming in the flesh--as certain philosophers sought Him, who knew nothing of His flesh--can that other act of Abraham, when he orders his servant to place his hand under his thigh, and to swear by the God of heaven, [1992] be rightly understood by any one otherwise than as showing that Abraham well knew that the flesh in which the God of heaven was to come was the offspring of that very thigh? [1993]
[1988] John viii. 56.
[1989] John v. 26.
[1990] John xiv. 6.
[1991] 1 John v. 20.
[1992] Gen. xxiv. 2, 3.
[1993] The word "thigh," kry, occurs in the phrase, "to come out from the thigh of any one," in the sense of being begotten by any one, or descended from him, in several passages: see Gen. xlvi. 26; Ex. i. 5; Judg. viii. 30. In the last of these passages, the A.V. phrase, "of his body begotten," is vkry y'tsy, the offspring of his thigh. Abraham was the first to use this form of adjuration; after him his grandson Jacob, Gen. xlvii. 29. The comment of Augustin in the text, which he repeats elsewhere (see his Sermon 75), occurs also in other Fathers, e.g. Jerome, Theodoret, Ambrose (De Abrahamo, i. cap. ult.), Prosper (Prædicat. i. 7), and Gregory the Great, who says: "He orders him to put his hand under his thigh, since through that member would descend the flesh of Him who was Abraham's son according to the flesh, and his Lord owing to His divinity."