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| The Three Days of the Resurrection, in Which Also the Ratio of Single to Double is Apparent.
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Chapter 6.—The Three Days of the Resurrection, in
Which Also the Ratio of Single to Double is Apparent.
10. Scripture again witnesses that
the space of those three days themselves was not whole and entire,
but the first day is counted as a whole from its last part, and the
third day is itself also counted as a whole from its first part;
but the intervening day, i.e. the second day, was absolutely
a whole with its twenty-four hours, twelve of the day and twelve of
the night. For He was crucified first by the voices of the Jews in
the third hour, when it was the sixth day of the week. Then He hung
on the cross itself at the sixth hour, and yielded up His spirit at
the ninth hour.487
But He was
buried, “now when the even was come,” as the words of the
evangelist express it;488
which means, at the end of the day.
Wheresoever then you begin,—even if some other explanation can be
given, so as not to contradict the Gospel of John,489
but to
understand that He was suspended on the cross at the third
hour,—still you cannot make the first day an entire day. It will
be reckoned then an entire day from its last part, as the third
from its first part. For the night up to the dawn, when the
resurrection of the Lord was made known, belongs to the third day;
because God (who commanded the light to shine out of
darkness,490
that through
the grace of the New Testament and the partaking of the
resurrection of Christ the words might be spoken to us “For ye
were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord”491
) intimates
to us in some way that the day takes its beginning from the night.
For as the first days of all were reckoned from light to night, on
account of the future fall of man;492
so these on account of the
restoration of man, are reckoned from darkness to light. From the
hour, then, of His death to the dawn of the resurrection are forty
hours, counting in also the ninth hour itself. And with this number
agrees also His life upon earth of forty days after His
resurrection. And this number is most frequently used in Scripture
to express the mystery of perfection in the fourfold world. For the
number ten has a certain perfection, and that multiplied by four
makes forty. But from the evening of the burial to the dawn of the
resurrection are thirty-six hours which is six squared. And this is
referred to that ratio of the single to the double wherein there is
the greatest consonance of co-adaptation. For twelve added to
twenty-four suits the ratio of single added to double and makes
thirty-six: namely a whole night with a whole day and a whole
night, and this not without the mystery which I have noticed above.
For not unfitly do we liken the spirit to the day and the body to
the night. For the body of the Lord in His death and resurrection
was a figure of our spirit and a type of our body. In this way,
then, also that ratio of the single to the double is apparent in
the thirty-six hours, when twelve are added to twenty-four. As to
the reasons, indeed, why these numbers are so put in the Holy
Scriptures, other people may trace out other reasons, either such
that those which I have given are to be preferred to them, or such
as are equally probable with mine, or even more probable than they
are; but there is no one surely so foolish or so absurd as to
contend that they are so put in the Scriptures for no purpose at
all, and that there are no mystical reasons why those numbers are
there mentioned. But those reasons which I have here given, I have
either gathered from the authority of the church, according to the
tradition of our forefathers, or from the testimony of the divine
Scriptures, or from the nature itself of numbers and of
similitudes. No sober person will decide against reason, no
Christian against the Scriptures, no peaceable person against the
church.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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