Tell me this. Will you still dare
to call him an imposter and lawbreaker? Will you not instead go off and bury
yourselves somewhere, when you look the facts in the face, since their truth is
so obvious? If Jesus were an imposter and lawbreaker, as you say he was, you
should have been held in high honor for putting him to death. Phinehas slew a
man and put an end to all God’s wrath against the people. The Psalmist said:
“Then Phinehas stood up and propitiated him and the slaughter stopped.” He
rescued a great many ungodly men from the wrath of God by slaying a single
lawbreaker. This should have happened all the more in your case, if indeed the
man you crucified was a transgressor of the Law.
(2) Phinehas, then, was held
guiltless after he slew a lawbreaker; indeed, he was honored with the
priesthood. But after you crucified an imposter, as you say, who made himself
equal to God, you did not receive esteem nor were you held in honor. Instead you
suffered a more grievous punishment than you did when you sacrificed your
children to idols. Why is this so? Is it not clear even to the dullest minds?
You committed outrage on him who saved and rules the world; now you are
enduring this great punishment. Is this not the reason? (John
Chrysostom, Discourses Against Judaizing Christians 6.3.1-2 in Discourses
Against Judaizing Christians [trans. Paul W. Harkins; The Fathers of the
Church 68; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1979],
154-55)
