We do not abolish the Law; we establish it

Cyril said: And yet, my friend, you are carried a long way from what is fitting. For you think the Law has been overthrown, as if we had no profit from what is his, and as if it were wholly useless for showing anything of the things we need — not rather that it has been turned toward a showing of the truth, though the blessed Paul writes: 'Do we then abolish the Law through faith? By no means! Rather we establish the Law.' For the Law tutors, and carries us well toward the mystery that is in Christ. And we say that the things of old decreed through Moses to the more ancient people are the first elements of the oracles of God. And if we push aside the tutor, who will still convey us to the mystery of Christ? And if we refuse to learn the first elements of the oracles of God, how, or from where, shall we still arrive at the end? Or is Christ not, according to the Scriptures, the fullness of Law and prophets?

Palladius: Yes.

Cyril: For it is written so. And the fullness of Law and prophets would be this: that every prophetic and legal decree looks, I think, and is turned toward him. That is why, putting the Jews' unbelief to shame, he said: 'Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you have hoped. For if you believed Moses, you would have believed me; for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?' If then he should say he has come not at all to destroy the Law, but rather to bring it to its end, do not think he has worked a total overturning of what was decreed of old; rather a kind of remaking, and, so to speak, a recutting of the things in types toward the true.

Palladius: You have spoken rightly.

Cyril: And this is the sort of thing that had to be done by Christ. Those who have practiced the skill in panels and paintings do not, as soon as they begin to paint, bring upon the pictures the form that lacks nothing and is finished in every part. First they sketch well in a form and in a less beautiful color, and they show beforehand the types of whatever they may have chosen, still rather dim; then, laying over the shadows the shape that is fitting and most suitable to each, they transfer the types into the form that is manifest, and incomparably better than what was at the start. Or is it not so?

Palladius: I say so.

Cyril: And those who practice the bronze-worker's craft, if they should wish to cast a statue, first bring it in wax into a weak form; then, melting it with fire, they pour on the bronze, and so they bring the thing being crafted to a form that is complete and to a beauty that is very fine. And when the many kinds of colors have been thrown upon the shadows, and the bronze also has melted the things of wax, the first shapes, the ones at the beginning, might seem for a little to have been set aside and overthrown. But the thing is not so by nature.