Scott
Puritan Board Graduate
This is an excerpt from Augustine's City of God, in which he approvingly quotes Ambrose about the spiritual meaning of Gideon's rock. What are people's thoughts?
46. St. Ambrose also, though dealing with a question of very great importance, the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son, employs the subdued style, because the object he has in view demands, not beauty of diction, nor the swaying of the mind by the stir of emotion, but facts and proofs. Accordingly, in the introduction to his work, we find the following passage among others: "œWhen Gideon was startled by the message he had heard from God, that, though thousands of the people failed, yet through one man God would deliver His people from their enemies, he brought forth a kid of the goats, and by direction of the angel laid it with unleavened cakes upon a rock, and poured the broth over it; and as soon as the angel of God touched it with the end of the staff that was in his hand, there rose up fire out of the rock and consumed the offering.1994 Now this sign seems to indicate that the rock was a type of the body of Christ, for it is written, "˜They drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ;´1995 this, of course, referring not to Christ´s divine nature but to His flesh, whose ever-flowing fountain of blood has ever satisfied the hearts of His thirsting people. And so it was at that time declared in a mystery that the Lord Jesus, when crucified, should abolish in His flesh the sins of the whole world, and not their guilty acts merely, but the evil lusts of their hearts. For the kid´s flesh refers to the guilt of the outward act, the broth to the allurement of lust within, as it is written, "˜And the mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting; and the children of Israel also wept again and again and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?´1996 When the angel, then, stretched out his staff and touched the rock, and fire rose out of it, this was a sign that our Lord´s flesh, filled with the Spirit of God, should burn up all the sins of the human race. Whence also the Lord says "˜I am come to send fire on the earth.´"1997 And in the same style he pursues the subject, devoting himself chiefly to proving and enforcing his point.1998
