Second Homily on Eutropius (After His Captivity)

⁷ Let the heretic who inquires curiously into the nature of heavenly generation saying “how did the Father beget the Son?” interpret this single fact, ask him how did the Church, being an harlot, become a virgin? And how did she having brought forth children remain a virgin? “For I am jealous over you,” says Paul, “with a godly jealousy, for I espoused you to one husband that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.” What wisdom and understanding! “I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy.”

What means this? “I am jealous,” he says: are you jealous seeing you are a spiritual man? I am jealous he says as God is. And has God jealousy? Yea the jealousy not of passion, but of love, and earnest zeal. I am jealous over you with the jealousy of God. Shall I tell you how He manifests His jealousy? He saw the world corrupted by devils, and He delivered His own Son to save it. For words spoken in reference to God have not the same force as when spoken in reference to ourselves: for instance we say God is jealous, God is angry, God repents, God hates.

These words are human, but they have a meaning which becomes the nature of God. How is God jealous? “I am jealous over you with the jealousy of God.” Is God angry? “O Lord reproach me not in your indignation.” Does God slumber? “Awake, wherefore do you sleep, O Lord?” Does God repent? “I repent that I have made man.” Does God hate? “My soul hates your feasts and your new moons.” Well do not consider the poverty of the expressions: but grasp their divine meaning. God is jealous, for He loves, God is angry, not as yielding to passion, but for the purpose of chastising, and punishing.

God sleeps, not as really slumbering, but as being long-suffering. Choose out the expression. Thus when you hear that God begets the Son, think not of division but of the unity of substance. For God has taken many of these words from us as we also have borrowed others from Him, that we may receive honour thereby.