Out of whose womb came the ice? and the frost from heaven, who has given it birth?
Read Chapter 38
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
55. For what else do we understand by ‘frost’ or ‘ice,’ but the hearts of the Jews frozen and bound with the torpor of unbelief? Who formerly by the receiving of the Law, by the keeping of the commandments, by the ministry of sacrifice, by the mysteries of prophecy, were so kept within the bosom of grace, as if within the womb of the Creator. But because, on the coming of the Lord, being hard bound with the frost of unbelief, they lost the warmth of faith and charity, being cast forth from the secret bosom of grace, they came forth like ice from the womb of the Creator. And the frost from heaven, who hath gendered it What else ought ‘heaven’ to be here understood to mean but the lofty life of the saints? To which heaven it is said, Give ear, O heaven, and I will speak. [Deut. 32, 1] Of which abode it is elsewhere written, The soul of the just is the seat of wisdom [Perhaps Prov. 12, 23. LXX. where it is read, A prudent man is the throne of sense, In the Syriac version, A cautious man is the seat of wisdom. Ben. On Hom. 38, in Ev. they suggest Wisd. 7, 7, or 27.]. Because then God is wisdom, if the abode of God is heaven, and the soul of the just is the seat of wisdom, the soul of the just is certainly heaven. Abraham was heaven, Isaac was heaven, Jacob was heaven. But because the persecutors of the Lord, the high priests of the Jews, who were frozen with the torpor of unbelief, sprang from the race of those ancestors, the frost came, as it were, from heaven, because the frozen herd of unbelievers came forth from the lofty offspring of the saints. For when Caiaphas was born from Abraham, what else was it, but that ice came forth from heaven? Yet this frost the Lord says that He had gendered, for this reason, because He permitted the Jews, whom He Himself naturally created good, to go forth from Him, by a just judgment, frozen through their wickedness. For the Lord is the Author of nature, not of sin. He engendered therefore, by naturally creating, those whom He suffered, by patiently enduring, to remain in sin. And because those hearts of the Jews, which before were tender, and easily penetrated by faith, were afterwards hardened in the obstinacy of unbelief.
