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| This twelfth book gives a notable interpretation of the words of the Lord to Mary, “Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father.”
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Book
XII.
§1. This twelfth book
gives a notable interpretation of the words of the Lord to Mary,
“Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My
Father.”
But let
us see what is the next addition that follows upon this profanity, an
addition which is in fact the key of their defence of their doctrine.
For those who would degrade the majesty of the glory of the
Only-begotten to slavish and grovelling conceptions think that they
find the strongest proof of their assertions in the words of the Lord
to Mary, which He uttered after His resurrection, and before His
ascension into heaven, saying, “Touch Me not, for I am not yet
ascended to My Father: but go to My brethren and say unto them, I
ascend unto My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God1020
.” The orthodox interpretation of these
words, the sense in which we have been accustomed to believe that they
were spoken to Mary, is I think manifest to all who have received the
faith in truth. Still the discussion of this point shall be given by us
in its proper place; but meantime it is worth while to inquire from
those who allege against us such phrases as “ascending,”
“being seen,” “being recognized by touch,” and
moreover “being associated with men by brotherhood,”
whether they consider them to be proper to the Divine or to the Human
Nature. For if they see in the Godhead the capacity of being seen and
touched, of being supported by meat and drink, kinship and brotherhood
with men, and all the attributes of corporeal nature, then let them
predicate of the Only-begotten God both these and whatsoever else they
will, as motive energy and local change, which are peculiar to things
circumscribed by a body. But if He by Mary is discoursing with His
brethren, and if the Only-begotten has no brethren, (for how, if He had
brethren, could the property of being Only-begotten be preserved?) and
if the same Person Who said, “God is a Spirit1021
,” says to His disciples, “Handle
Me1022
,” that He may show that while the
Human Nature is capable of being handled the Divinity is intangible,
and if He Who says, “I go,” indicates local change, while
He who contains all things, “in Whom,” as the Apostle says,
“all things were created, and in Whom all things consist1023
,” has nothing in existent things
external to Himself to which removal could take place by any kind of
motion, (for motion cannot otherwise be effected than by that which is
removed leaving the place in which it is, and occupying another place
instead, while that which extends through all, and is in all, and
controls all, and is confined by no existent thing, has no place to
which to pass, inasmuch as nothing is void of the Divine fulness,) how
can these men abandon the belief that such expressions arise from that
which is apparent, and apply them to that Nature which is Divine and
which surpasseth all understanding, when the Apostle has in his speech
to the Athenians plainly forbidden us to imagine any such thing of God,
inasmuch as the Divine power is not discoverable by touch1024
| 1024 Cf. Acts xvii. The precise reference
is perhaps to verse 27. | , but by intelligent contemplation and faith?
Or, again, whom does He Who did eat before the eyes of His disciples,
and promised to go before them into Galilee and there be seen of
them,—whom does He reveal Him to be Who should so appear to them?
God, Whom no man hath seen or can see1025
?
or the bodily image, that is, the form of a servant in which God was?
If then what has been said plainly proves that the meaning of the
phrases alleged refers to that which is visible, expressing shape, and
capable of motion, akin to the nature of His disciples, and none of
these properties is discernible in Him Who is invisible, incorporeal,
intangible, and formless, how do they come to degrade the very
Only-begotten God, Who was in the beginning, and is in the Father, to a
level with Peter, Andrew, John, and the rest of the Apostles, by
calling them the brethren and fellow-servants of the Only-begotten? And
yet all their exertions are directed to this aim, to show that in
majesty of nature there is as great a distance between the Father and the
dignity, power, and essence of the Only-begotten, as there is between
the Only-begotten and humanity. And they press this saying into the
support of this meaning, treating the name of the God and Father as
being of common significance in respect of the Lord and of His
disciples, in the view that no difference in dignity of nature is
conceived while He is recognized as God and Father both of Him and of
them in a precisely similar manner.
And the mode in which they
logically maintain their profanity is as follows;—that either by
the relative term employed there is expressed community of essence also
between the disciples and the Father, or else we must not by this
phrase bring even the Lord into communion in the Father’s Nature,
and that, even as the fact1026
| 1026 The
grammar of the passage is simplified if we read τὸ θεὸν
αὐτῶν
ὀνομασθῆναι, but the sense, retaining Oehler’s reading
τὸν
θεὸν, is probably the
same. | that the God over
all is named as their God implies that the disciples are His servants
so by parity of reasoning, it is acknowledged, by the words in
question, that the Son also is the servant of God. Now that the words
addressed to Mary are not applicable to the Godhead of the
Only-begotten, one may learn from the intention with which they were
uttered. For He Who humbled Himself to a level with human littleness,
He it is Who spake the words. And what is the meaning of what He then
uttered, they may know in all its fulness who by the Spirit search out
the depths of the sacred mystery. But as much as comes within our
compass we will set down in few words, following the guidance of the
Fathers. He Who is by nature Father of existent things, from Whom all
things have their birth, has been proclaimed as one, by the sublime
utterance of the Apostle. “For there is one God,” he says,
“and Father, of Whom are all things1027
.” Accordingly human nature did not
enter into the creation from any other source, nor grow spontaneously
in the parents of the race, but it too had for the author of its own
constitution none other than the Father of all. And the name of Godhead
itself, whether it indicates the authority of oversight or of
foresight1028
| 1028 There
seems here to be an allusion to the supposed derivation of θεός from θεάομαι, which is also the basis of an argument in the treatise “On
‘Not three Gods,’” addressed to Ablabius. | , imports a certain relation to
humanity. For He Who bestowed on all things that are, the power of
being, is the God and overseer of what He has Himself produced. But
since, by the wiles of him that sowed in us the tares of disobedience,
our nature no longer preserved in itself the impress of the
Father’s image, but was transformed into the foul likeness of
sin, for this cause it was engrafted by virtue of similarity of will
into the evil family of the father of sin: so that the good and true
God and Father was no longer the God and Father of him who had been
thus outlawed by his own depravity, but instead of Him Who was by
Nature God, those were honoured who, as the Apostle says, “by
nature were no Gods1029
,” and in the
place of the Father, he was deemed father who is falsely so called, as
the prophet Jeremiah says in his dark saying, “The partridge
called, she gathered together what she hatched not1030
.” Since, then, this was the sum of our
calamity, that humanity was exiled from the good Father, and was
banished from the Divine oversight and care, for this cause He Who is
the Shepherd of the whole rational creation, left in the heights of
heaven His unsinning and supramundane flock, and, moved by love, went
after the sheep which had gone astray, even our human nature1031
| 1031 Cf.
Book IV. §3 (p. 158 sup.). With the general statement may
be compared the parallel passage in Book II. §8. | . For human nature, which alone, according to
the similitude in the parable, through vice roamed away from the
hundred of rational beings, is, if it be compared with the whole, but
an insignificant and infinitesimal part. Since then it was impossible
that our life, which had been estranged from God, should of itself
return to the high and heavenly place, for this cause, as saith the
Apostle, He Who knew no sin is made sin for us1032
,
and frees us from the curse by taking on Him our curse as His own1033
, and having taken up, and, in the language
of the Apostle, “slain” in Himself “the enmity1034
” which by means of sin had come
between us and God,—(in fact sin was “the
enmity”)—and having become what we were, He through Himself
again united humanity to God. For having by purity brought into closest
relationship with the Father of our nature that new man which is
created after God1035
, in Whom dwelt all
the fulness of the Godhead bodily1036
, He drew with
Him into the same grace all the nature that partakes of His body and is
akin to Him. And these glad tidings He proclaims through the woman, not
to those disciples only, but also to all who up to the present day
become disciples of the Word,—the tidings, namely, that man is no
longer outlawed, nor cast out of the kingdom of God, but is once more a
son, once more in the station assigned to him by his God, inasmuch as
along with the first-fruits of humanity the lump also is hallowed1037
. “For behold,” He says, “I
and the children whom God hath given Me1038
.” He Who for our sakes was partaker of
flesh and blood has recovered you, and brought you back to the place whence
ye strayed away, becoming mere flesh and blood by sin1039
. And so He from Whom we were formerly
alienated by our revolt has become our Father and our God. Accordingly
in the passage cited above the Lord brings the glad tidings of this
benefit. And the words are not a proof of the degradation of the Son,
but the glad tidings of our reconciliation to God. For that which has
taken place in Christ’s Humanity is a common boon bestowed on
mankind generally. For as when we see in Him the weight of the body,
which naturally gravitates to earth, ascending through the air into the
heavens, we believe according to the words of the Apostle, that we also
“shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air1040
,” even so, when we hear that the true
God and Father has become the God and Father of our First-fruits, we no
longer doubt that the same God has become our God and Father too,
inasmuch as we have learnt that we shall come to the same place whither
Christ has entered for us as our forerunner1041
.
And the fact too that this grace was revealed by means of a woman,
itself agrees with the interpretation which we have given. For since,
as the Apostle tells us, “the woman, being deceived, was in the
transgression1042
,” and was by
her disobedience foremost in the revolt from God, for this cause she is
the first witness of the resurrection, that she might retrieve by her
faith in the resurrection the overthrow caused by her disobedience, and
that as, by making herself at the beginning a minister and advocate to
her husband of the counsels of the serpent, she brought into human life
the beginning of evil, and its train of consequences, so, by
ministering1043
| 1043 Reading διακονήσασα
for the διακομίσασα
of the Paris ed. and διακομήσασα
of Oehler’s text, the latter of which is
obviously a misprint, but leaves us uncertain as to the reading which
Oehler intended to adopt. The reading διακονήσασα
answers to the διάκονος
γενομένη above, and is to some extent confirmed by διακονήσαι
occurring again a few lines further on. S. Gregory,
when he has once used an unusual word or expression, very frequently
repeats it in the next few sentences. | to His disciples the words of Him Who
slew the rebel dragon, she might become to men the guide to faith,
whereby with good reason the first proclamation of death is annulled.
It is likely, indeed, that by more diligent students a more profitable
explanation of the text may be discovered. But even though none such
should be found, I think that every devout reader will agree that the
one advanced by our opponents is futile, after comparing it with that
which we have brought forward. For the one has been fabricated to
destroy the glory of the Only-begotten, and nothing more: but the other
includes in its scope the aim of the dispensation concerning man. For
it has been shown that it was not the intangible, immutable, and
invisible God, but the moving, visible, and tangible nature which is
proper to humanity, that gave command to Mary to minister the word to
His disciples.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
