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Chapter
LXIX.
But we wish to show that His instantaneous bodily
disappearance from the cross was not better fitted to serve the
purposes of the whole economy of salvation (than His remaining upon it
was). For the mere letter and narrative of the events which
happened to Jesus do not present the whole view of the truth. For
each one of them can be shown, to those who have an intelligent
apprehension of Scripture, to be a symbol of something else.
Accordingly, as His crucifixion contains a truth, represented in the
words, “I am crucified with Christ,” and intimated also in
these, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I unto the
world;”3384 and as His death
was necessary, because of the statement, “For in that He died, He
died unto sin once,”3385 and this,
“Being made conformable to His death,”3386 and this, “For if we be dead with Him,
we shall also live with Him:”3387 so also His
burial has an application to those who have been made conformable to
His death, who have been both crucified with Him, and have died with
Him; as is declared by Paul, “For we were buried with Him by
baptism, and have also risen with Him.”3388 These matters, however, which relate
to His burial, and His sepulchre, and him who buried Him, we shall
expound at greater length on a more suitable occasion, when it will be
our professed purpose to treat of such things. But, for the
present, it is sufficient to notice the clean linen in which the pure
body of Jesus was to be enwrapped, and the new tomb which Joseph had
hewn out of the rock, where “no one was yet
lying,”3389 or, as John
expresses it, “wherein was never man yet laid.”3390 And observe whether the harmony of the
three evangelists here is not fitted to make an impression: for
they have thought it right to describe the tomb as one that was
“quarried or hewn out of the rock;” so that he who examines
the words of the narrative may see something worthy of consideration,
both in them and in the newness of the tomb,—a point
mentioned by Matthew and John3391
3391 Cf. Matt. xxvii. 60 with John xix. 41. | —and in the
statement of Luke and John,3392
3392 Cf. Luke xxiii. 53 with John xix. 41. | that no one had
ever been interred therein before. For it became Him, who was
unlike other dead men (but who even in death manifested signs of life
in the water and the blood), and who was, so to speak, a new
dead man, to be laid in a new and clean tomb, in order that, as His
birth was purer than any other (in consequence of His being born, not
in the way of ordinary generation, but of a virgin), His burial also
might have the purity symbolically indicated in His body being
deposited in a sepulchre which was new, not built of stones gathered
from various quarters, and having no natural unity, but quarried and
hewed out of one rock, united together in all its parts.
Regarding the explanation, however, of these points, and the method of
ascending from the narratives themselves to the things which they
symbolized, one might treat more profoundly, and in a manner more
adapted to their divine character, on a more suitable occasion, in a
work expressly devoted to such subjects. The literal narrative,
however, one might thus explain, viz., that it was appropriate for Him
who had resolved to endure suspension upon the cross, to maintain all
the accompaniments of the character He had assumed, in order that He
who as a man had been put to death, and who as a man had died, might
also as a man be buried. But even if it had been related in the
Gospels, according to the view of Celsus, that Jesus had immediately
disappeared from the cross, he and other unbelievers would have found
fault with the narrative, and would have brought against it some such
objection as this: “Why, pray, did he disappear after he
had been put upon the cross, and not disappear before he suffered?” If,
then, after learning from the Gospels that He did not at once disappear
from the cross, they imagine that they can find fault with the
narrative, because it did not invent, as they consider it ought to have
done, any such instantaneous disappearance, but gave a true account of
the matter, is it not reasonable that they should accord their faith
also to His resurrection, and should believe that He, according to His
pleasure, on one occasion, when the doors were shut, stood in the midst
of His disciples, and on another, after distributing bread to two of
His acquaintances, immediately disappeared from view, after He had
spoken to them certain words?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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