flesh or blood that disclosed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”

Luke, in his Gospel, reports the same incident and says:

“Simon answered him, ‘You are the Messiah of God,’”

and he did not say, “the Son of God.” Such, then, are the very words of his chief disciple concerning him, and Jesus approved what he said.

As for his remark that Simon pronounced only what God had inspired in his heart, we have never contested your claim that he is the Messiah of God, nor—even in the idiom of your own language—that he is the Son of God in the sense of mercy and divine favor, despite the divergence between the two Gospels on this point.

Indeed, he declared the same about all of you: “God is my God and your God, and my Father and your Father.” We therefore proceed with your line of argument that he is not like you in the sense