By Water & Blood

Book 3, Chapter 13: How he affirmed that Christ’s kingdom began about four hundred years ago and will end at the consummation, making distorted interpretations of the divine Scriptures

For instance, when Peter in the Acts of the Apostles had said of our Saviour, “Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration (ἀποκατάστασις),” he, not understanding the sense of the saying, tries from this to circumscribe the kingdom of Christ, saying that a limit and fixed term of his kingdom is indicated by the words “until the times of restoration.”

And he says that this same thing is established also by the Psalm which says, “Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool,” and that Paul the apostle said for this reason, “For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet”; for he supposed that “until” (ἕως) and “till” (ἄχρι) signify a limited time. Hear, at any rate, how he writes word for word, saying (Nr. 104):

“For this reason, it seems to me, God Almighty, the Master, also says to him, ‘Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool’—seeming to separate him by activity alone on account of the human flesh, and, as it were, defining for him a stated time of sitting at the right hand, he says to him, ‘until I make thine enemies thy footstool.’

“This prophetic saying of David the holy apostle interpreted for us more clearly, speaking somewhat as follows: ‘For he must reign, till he hath put his enemies as the footstool of his feet.’ His economy and kingdom according to man, then, seems to have a certain limit.”

And after other things he adds (Nr. 104):

“And for this reason the Acts of the Apostles teach thus concerning this man, whom the Word of God assumed and, having assumed, sits at the right hand of the Father, saying, ‘Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration’—these too, as it were, defining a certain limit and fixed term.”

To which, after other things, he adds (Nr. 104):

“How could the form of the servant which the Word assumed, being the form of a servant, still be with the Word? Clearly, at any rate, and expressly, the divine Paul has said that the Word’s economy according to the flesh came about for our sake within a brief time between the past and the future ages, and that just as it has a beginning, so also it has an end, saying something like this: ‘Then cometh the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father.’”