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| Further objections anticipated. He did not choose His manner of death; for He was to prove Conqueror of death in all or any of its forms: (simile of a good wrestler). The death chosen to disgrace Him proved the Trophy against death: moreover it preserved His body undivided.
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§24. Further
objections anticipated. He did not choose His manner of death; for He
was to prove Conqueror of death in all or any of its forms: (simile of
a good wrestler). The death chosen to disgrace Him proved the Trophy
against death: moreover it preserved His body undivided.
But what others also might have said, we must
anticipate in reply. For perhaps a man might say even as follows: If it
was necessary for His death to take place before all, and with
witnesses, that the story of His Resurrection also might be believed,
it would have been better at any rate for Him to have devised for
Himself a glorious death, if only to escape the ignominy of the Cross.
2. But had He done even this, He would give ground for suspicion
against Himself, that He was not powerful against every death, but only
against the death devised for265
| 265 i.e. suggested as ἔνδοξον (supra, 1); a reading παρ᾽
ἐαυτοῦ has been
suggested: (devised) “by Himself.” | Him; and so again
there would have been a pretext for disbelief about the Resurrection
all the same. So death came to His body, not from Himself, but from
hostile counsels, in order that whatever death they offered to the
Saviour, this He might utterly do away. 3. And just as a noble
wrestler, great in skill and courage, does not pick out his antagonists
for himself, lest he should raise a suspicion of his being afraid of
some of them, but puts it in the choice of the onlookers, and
especially so if they happen to be his enemies, so that against
whomsoever they match him, him he may throw, and be believed superior
to them all; so also the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, even
Christ, did not devise a death for His own body, so as not to appear to
be fearing some other death; but He accepted on the Cross, and endured,
a death inflicted by others, and above all by His enemies, which they
thought dreadful and ignominious and not to be faced; so that this also
being destroyed, both He Himself might be believed to be the Life, and
the power of death be brought utterly to nought. 4. So something
surprising and startling has happened; for the death, which they
thought to inflict as a disgrace, was actually a monument of victory
against death itself. Whence neither did He suffer the death of John,
his head being severed, nor, as Esaias, was He sawn in sunder; in order
that even in death He might still keep His body undivided and in
perfect soundness, and no pretext be afforded to those that would
divide the Church.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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