The Economy of Christ and the Seed of Truth

Such a display of a great work surpasses the lowly nature of creation, just as it seems to David, the best of the prophets. For he also, in one of the psalms, while hymnologizing God and explaining His unsearchable and incomprehensible nature, said with power those things which you know from the usual chanting: 'Your way is in the sea, and your paths are in many waters, and your tracks will not be known' (Ps 77:19).

Therefore, what the Master had for His own in the exceptional knowledge of divinity, He made common to the servant, judging him worthy of such honor. Indeed, the zealous and great John was resting on the Lord's bosom; great was also James, being called the son of thunder; and glorious in honors was Philip, who, having been snatched away by the Spirit, initiated the Ethiopian to the knowledge of the Savior. Nevertheless, let all yield to Peter and confess him to be second, when the comparison of gifts tests who is preferred.

But reviewing all things individually and examining, I find this man leaping ahead of all the other disciples everywhere, both in logical discourses and in practical activities, and standing out, and afterwards leaving behind those running the same stage of life. For the Lord once asked the Twelve, testing how they might have certainty and opinion regarding their assumption of Him, and commanding them to speak clearly what they say He is, while all the others were deliberating in silence, being slow and showing that they were agonizing over the response due to some hesitation; he, opening his mouth quickly, bearing the coal of faith upon his soul which previously purified Isaiah's lips, truly confessed that blessed and wise utterance: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God' (Mt 16:16).

Who then would marvel at anyone worthy of these words, having become a reliable interpreter of the greatest of the apostles? For see first how the word is concise and brief, expressing the power of myriads of things in a short exclamation. For every such word is excellent, which is appropriate and whose phrasing does not overflow, being concise in its meaning. On the contrary, a multitude of things...

In brief, it signifies according to the likeness of a mustard seed, which is very small when being held and looked at, but if you bring it to the sense of the mouth, the whole animal is drawn from feet to head toward its home by heat.

You are the Christ, the Son of the living God (1 John 5:20). Every word contributing to the knowledge of God and our Savior is viewed and directed toward these two things: one is that of the primordial deity, which is the Word in the beginning, who is always and being with the Father and being God (John 1:1), just as the great John the Theologian initiated us, like a sponge lying against the breast of the Only-begotten and from there drawing out the knowledge of the hidden truth; the other is that of the economy, which the good God accepted for the condescension of our weakness.

It is therefore worthy to observe the response, how in brevity and conciseness he most accurately revealed the mind in a few words, beginning from the lower things and leading the mind upward toward the high things step by step.

You are the Christ. This is a declaration of the economy and an explanation of the incarnate theophany. For this is not the name of the pre-eternal Word, but the message of the graces being used. Therefore also our Lord, having accepted entirely to become man and all the other things that turn toward the flesh, condescends and is called Christ as one anointed for king, not with the oil of the horn like Samuel and David and the men following them (1 Sam 16:13), but by the energy of the Spirit, by which also the Lord is anointed. For thus Jesus was marvelously made known and paradoxically presented to many to commune with, in the womb of the Virgin.

Having confessed Jesus, the man who became for our sake, he did not set this word until this point, but having ascended toward heaven by the intellectual Jacob's ladder (Gen 28:12) and having become in the vision of the God-Word in the beginning, he added to him the exceptional and true dignity, addressing him as Son of the living God. And precisely thus and not otherwise: he himself, having confessed the straight and incorruptible rule of faith and having handed to us all an unshakeable law of piety, did not depart unrewarded or unhonored; but blessed is the name...