The answer
Isaiah the prophet says, “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this” (Isa. 9:6–7). St. John Chrysostom says, “‘Messenger’ of great counsel (Isa. 9:6 LXX), the Son of God is called, because of the other things which He taught, and principally because He announced the Father to men, as also now He says, I have manifested Your Name unto the men … But He ‘manifested His Name’ both by words and actions.”722
St. Clement of Alexandria also says, “Now neither is knowledge without faith, nor faith without knowledge … And the Son is the true teacher respecting the Father; and that we may believe in the Son, we must know the Father, with whom also is the Son. Again, in order that we may know the Father, we must believe in the Son, that it is the Son of God who teaches; for from faith to knowledge by the Son is the Father. And the knowledge of the Son and Father, which is according to the gnostic rule—that which in reality is gnostic—is the attainment and comprehension of the truth by the truth.”723
And the scholar Origen says, “God the Word was sent, indeed, as a physician to sinners, but as a teacher of divine mysteries to those who are already pure and who sin no more.”724
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
722 St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on John, 81.1 (NPNF I/14:297).
723 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 5.1 (ANF 2:444).
724 Origen, Against Celsus 6.62 (ANF 4:488).