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| Chapter XXIII
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Chapter
XXIII.
What,
then, was it likely that the master of the slave would choose to
receive in his stead? It is possible in the way of inference to make a
guess as to his wishes in the matter, if, that is, the manifest
indications of what we are seeking for should come into our hands. He
then, who, as we before stated in the beginning of this treatise, shut
his eyes to the good in his envy of man in his happy condition, he who
generated in himself the murky cloud of wickedness, he who suffered
from the disease of the love of rule, that primary and fundamental
cause of propension to the bad and the mother, so to speak, of all the
wickedness that follows,—what would he accept in exchange for the
thing which he held, but something, to be sure, higher and better, in
the way of ransom, that thus, by receiving a gain in the exchange, he
might foster the more his own special passion of pride? Now
unquestionably in not one of those who had lived in history from the
beginning of the world had he been conscious of any such circumstance
as he observed to surround Him Who then manifested Himself, i.e.
conception without carnal connection, birth without impurity,
motherhood with virginity, voices of the unseen testifying from above
to a transcendent worth, the healing of natural disease, without the
use of means and of an extraordinary character, proceeding from Him by
the mere utterance of a word and exercise of His will, the restoration
of the dead to life, the absolution of the damned1998
| 1998 the absolution of the damned. These
words, wanting in all others, Krabinger has restored from the Codex B.
Morell translates “damnatorum absolutio.” The Greek
is τὴν
τῶν
καταδίκων
ἀνά&
207·ῥυσιν.
“Hæc Origenem sapiunt, qui damnatorum pœnis finem
statuit:” Krabinger. But here at all events it is not necessary
to accuse Gregory of this, since he is clearly speaking only of
Christ’s forgiveness of sins during His earthly
ministry. | , the fear with which He inspired devils, His
power over tempests, His walking through the sea, not by the waters
separating on either side, and, as in the case of Moses’
miraculous power, making bare its depths for those who passed through,
but by the surface of the water presenting solid ground for His feet,
and by a firm and hard resistance supporting His steps; then, His
disregard for food as long as it pleased Him to abstain, His abundant
banquets in the wilderness wherewith many thousands were fully fed
(though neither did the heavens pour down manna on them, nor was their
need supplied by the earth producing corn for them in its natural way,
but that instance of munificence1999
came out of
the ineffable store-houses of His Divine power), the bread ready in the
hands of those who distributed it, as if they were actually reaping it,
and becoming more, the more the eaters were filled; and then, the
banquet on the fish; not that the sea supplied their need, but He Who
had stocked the sea with its fish. But how is it possible to narrate in
succession each one of the Gospel miracles? The Enemy, therefore,
beholding in Him such power, saw also in Him an opportunity for an
advance, in the exchange, upon the value of what he held. For this
reason he chooses Him as a ransom2000
| 2000 he
chooses Him as a ransom. This peculiar
teaching of Gregory of Nyssa, that it was to the Devil, not God the
Father, that the ransom, i.e. Christ’s blood, was paid, is
shared by Origen, Ambrose, and Augustine. The latter says,
“Sanguine Christi diabolus non ditatus est, sed ligatus,”
i.e. bound by compact. On the other hand Gregory Naz. (tom. I.
Orat. 42) and John Damascene (De Fid. Orthod. iii. c. 27)
give the ransom to the Father. | for those who
were shut up in the prison of death. But it was out of his power to
look on the unclouded aspect of God; he must see in Him some portion of
that fleshly nature which through sin he had so long held in bondage.
Therefore it was that the Deity was invested with the flesh, in order,
that is, to secure that he, by looking upon something congenial and
kindred to himself, might have no fears in approaching that
supereminent power; and might yet by perceiving that power, showing as
it did, yet only gradually, more and more splendour in the miracles,
deem what was seen an object of desire rather than of fear. Thus, you
see how goodness was conjoined with justice, and how wisdom was not
divorced from them. For to have devised that the Divine power should
have been containable in the envelopment of a body, to the end that the
Dispensation in our behalf might not be thwarted through any fear
inspired by the Deity actually appearing, affords a demonstration of
all these qualities at once—goodness, wisdom, justice. His
choosing to save man is a testimony of his goodness; His making the
redemption of the captive a matter of exchange exhibits His justice,
while the invention whereby He enabled the Enemy to apprehend that of which
he was before incapable, is a manifestation of supreme
wisdom.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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