Note 9 — Chapter II · BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS.

Even in the early church, the more enlightened fathers adopted the opinion, that the heavenly voices spoken of in the biblical history were not external sounds, the effect of vibrations in the air, but inward impressions produced by God in the minds of those to whom he willed to impart himself: thus of the appearance at the baptism of Jesus, Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia maintain that it was a vision, and not a reality, ὀπτασία, οὐ φύσις.9 To the simple indeed, says Origen, in their simplicity, it is a light thing to set the universe in motion, and to sever a solid mass like the heavens; but those who search more deeply into such matters, will, he thinks, refer to those higher revelations, by means of which chosen persons, even waking, and still more frequently in their dreams, are led to suppose that they perceive something with their bodily senses, while their minds only are affected: so that consequently, the whole appearance in question should be understood, not as an external incident, but as an inward vision sent by God; an interpretation which has also met with much approbation among modern theologians.