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Book
X.
1. It is manifest
that there is nothing which men have ever said which is not liable to
opposition. Where the will dissents the mind also dissents:
under the bias of opposing judgment it joins battle, and denies the
assertions to which it objects. Though every word we say be
incontrovertible if gauged by the standard of truth, yet so long as men
think or feel differently, the truth is always exposed to the cavils of
opponents, because they attack, under the delusion of error or
prejudice, the truth they misunderstand or dislike. For decisions
once formed cling with excessive obstinacy: and the passion of
controversy cannot be driven from the course it has taken, when the
will is not subject to the reason. Enquiry after truth gives way
to the search for proofs of what we wish to believe; desire is
paramount over truth. Then the theories we concoct build
themselves on names rather than things: the logic of truth gives
place to the logic of prejudice: a logic which the will adjusts
to defend its fancies, not one which stimulates the will through the
understanding of truth by the reason. From these defects of
partisan spirit arise all controversies between opposing
theories. Then follows an obstinate battle between truth
asserting itself, and prejudice defending itself: truth maintains
its ground and prejudice resists. But if desire had not
forestalled reason: if the understanding of the truth had moved
us to desire what was true: instead of trying to set up our
desires as doctrines, we should let our doctrines dictate our desires;
there would be no contradiction of the truth, for every one would begin
by desiring what was true, not by defending the truth of that which he
desired.
2. Not unmindful of this sin of wilfulness,
the Apostle, writing to Timothy, after many injunctions to bear witness
to the faith and to preach the word, adds, For the time will come
when they will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears will
heap up teachers to themselves after their own lusts, and will turn
away their ears from the truth, and turn aside unto fables1095
. For when their unhallowed zeal shall
drive them beyond the endurance of sound doctrine, they will heap up
teachers for their lusts, that is, construct schemes of doctrine to
suit their own desires, not wishing to be taught, but getting together
teachers who will tell them what they wish: that the crowd of
teachers whom they have ferreted out and gathered together, may satisfy
them with the doctrines of their own tumultuous desires. And if
these madmen in their godless folly do not know with what spirit they
reject the sound, and yearn after the corrupt doctrine, let them hear
the words of the same Apostle to the same Timothy, But the Spirit
saith expressly that in the last days some shall away from the faith,
giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils through the
hypocrisy of lying talk1096
. What
advancement of doctrine is it to discover what one fancies, and not
what one ought to learn? Or what piety in doctrine is it not to
desire what one ought to learn, but to heap up doctrine after our
desires? But this is what the promptings of seducing spirits
supply. They confirm the falsehoods of pretended godliness, for a
canting hypocrisy always succeeds to defection from the faith: so
that at least in word the reverence is retained, which the conscience
has lost. Even that pretended piety they make impious by all
manner of lies, violating by schemes of false doctrine the sacredness
of the faith: for they pile up doctrines to suit their desires,
and not according to the faith of the Gospel. They delight, with
an uncontrollable pleasure, to have their itching ears tickled by the
novelty of their favourite preaching; they estrange themselves utterly
from the hearing of the truth, and surrender themselves entirely to
fables: so that their incapacity for either speaking or
understanding the truth invests their discourse with what is, to them,
a semblance of truth.
3. We have clearly fallen on the evil times
prophesied by the Apostle; for nowadays teachers are sought after who
preach not God but a creature1097
| 1097 i.e. the
Arians, who maintained that Jesus was created (creatura) and not
God. | . And men
are more zealous for what they themselves desire, than for what the
sound faith teaches. So far have their itching ears stirred them
to listen to what they desire, that for the moment that
preaching alone rules among
their crowd of doctors which estranges the Only-begotten God from the
power and nature of God the Father, and makes Him in our faith either a
God of the second order, or not a God at all; in either case a damning
profession of impiety, whether one profess two Gods by making different
grades of divinity; or else deny divinity altogether to Him Who drew
His nature by birth from God. Such doctrines please those whose
ears are estranged from the hearing of the truth and turned to fables,
while the hearing of this our sound faith is not endured, and is driven
bodily into exile with its preachers.
4. But though many may heap up teachers
according to their desires, and banish sound doctrine, yet from the
company of the Saints the preaching of truth can never be exiled.
From our exile we shall speak by these our writings, and the Word of
God which cannot be bound will run unhindered, warning us of this time
which the Apostle prophesied. For when men shew themselves
impatient of the true message, and heap up teachers according to their
own human desires, we can no longer doubt about the times, but know
that while the preachers of sound doctrine are banished1098
| 1098 Reading
“exsulantibus” with the Benedictine Edition (Paris, 1693);
Migne (Paris, 1844), “exultantibus.” | truth is banished too. We do not
complain of the times: we rejoice rather, that iniquity has
revealed itself in this our exile, when, unable to endure the truth, it
banishes the preachers of sound doctrine, that it may heap up for
itself teachers after its own desires. We glory in our exile, and
rejoice in the Lord that in our person the Apostle’s prophecy
should be fulfilled.
5. In the earlier books, then, while
maintaining the profession of a faith, I trust, sincere, and a truth
uncorrupted, we arranged the method of our answer throughout, so that
(though such are our limitations, that human language can never be safe
from exception) no one could contradict us without an open profession
of godlessness. For so completely have we demonstrated the true
meaning of those texts which they cunningly filch from the Gospels and
appropriate for their own teaching, that if any one denies it, he
cannot escape on the plea of ignorance, but is condemned out of his own
mouth of godlessness. Further, we have, according to the gift of
the Holy Ghost, so cautiously proceeded throughout in our proof of the
faith, that no charge could possibly be trumped up against us.
For it is their way to fill the ears of the unwary with declarations
that we deny the birth of Christ1099
| 1099 i.e. The generation
of the second Person from the first Person of the Trinity. | , when we
preach the unity of the Godhead; and they say that by the text, I
and the Father are one1100
, we confess that God
is solitary: thus, according to them, we say that the Unbegotten
God descended into the Virgin, and was born man, and that He
refers1101
the opening word
‘I’ to the dispensation of His flesh, but adds to it the
proof of His divinity, And the Father, as being the Father of
Himself as man; and further, that, consisting of two Persons, human and
divine, He said of Himself, We are one1102
| 1102 The Arians accused the
Catholics of a Sabellian denial of the Trinity and a Patripassian view
of the Incarnation, i.e. that the unborn God became man. | .
6. But we have always maintained the birth
existing out of time: we have taught that God the Son is God of
the same nature with God the Father, not co-equal with the Unbegotten,
for He was not Himself Unbegotten, but, as the Only-begotten, not
unequal because begotten; that the Two are One, not by the giving of a
double name to one Person, but by a true begetting and being begotten;
that neither are there two Gods, different in kind, in our faith, nor
is God solitary because He is one, in the sense in which we confess the
mystery of the Only-begotten God: but that the Son is both
indicated in the name of, and exists in, the Father, Whose name and
Whose nature are in Him, while the Father by His name implies, and
abides in, the Son, since a son cannot be spoken of, or exist, except
as born of a father. Further, we say that He is the living copy
of the living nature, the impression of the divine seal upon the divine
nature, so undistinguished from God in power and kind, that neither His
works nor His words nor His form are other than the
Father’s: but that, since the image by nature possesses the
nature of its author, the Author also has worked and spoken and
appeared through His natural image.
7. But by the side of this timeless and ineffable
generation of the Only-begotten, which transcends the perception of
human understanding, we taught as well the mystery of God born to be
man from the womb of the Virgin, shewing how according to the plan of
the Incarnation, when He emptied Himself of the form of God and took
the form of a servant, the weakness of the assumed humanity did not
weaken the divine nature, but that Divine power was imparted to
humanity without the virtue of divinity being lost in the human
form. For when God was born to be man the purpose was not that
the Godhead should be lost, but that, the Godhead remaining, man should
be born to be God. Thus
Emmanuel is His name, which is God with us1103
, that God might not be lowered to the level
of man, but man raised to that of God. Nor, when He asks that He
may be glorified1104
, is it in any way a
glorifying of His divine nature, but of the lower nature He
assumed: for He asks for that glory which He had with God before
the world was made.
8. As we are answering all, even their most
insensate statements, we come now to the discussion of the unknown
hour1105
. Now, even if, as they say, the Son had
not known it, this could give no ground for an attack upon His Godhead
as the Only-begotten. It was not in the nature of things that His
birth should avail to put His beginning back, until it was equivalent
to the existence which is unbegotten, and had no beginning; and the
Father reserves as His prerogative, to demonstrate His authority as the
Unbegotten, the fixing of this still undetermined day. Nor may we
conclude that in His Person there is any defect in that nature which
contained by right of birth all the fulness of that nature which a
perfect birth could impart. Nor again could the ignorance of day
and hour be imputed in the Only-begotten God to a lower degree of
Divinity. It is to demonstrate against the Sabellian heretics
that the Father’s authority is without birth or beginning, that
this prerogative of unbegotten authority is not granted to the
Son1106
| 1106 Hilary is
granting for the moment that the Son really was ignorant of the day and
hour; this, he says, could be not argument for the inequality of the
Son: it would serve, however, to disprove the Sabellian
identification of the Son and the Father by shewing that this knowledge
was the possession of the Father only. Erasmus inserted here a
passage which he found in a ms.;—“and this shews us that the saying of the
Word referred to the mystery of human perfection: that He, Who
bore our infirmities, should take upon Himself also the infirmity of
human ignorance, and that He should say He knew not the day, just as He
knew not where they had laid Lazarus, or who it was when the woman
touched the hem of His garment: being infirm in knowledge as He
was infirm in weeping, in the endurance of weariness, hunger, and
thirst, He did not disdain even the error of ignorance:
especially when we consider how, when He rose from the dead, and was
about to ascend up to, and above, the heavens, the Apostles approached
Him as no longer ignorant, but knowing, and determining this His day,
and put exactly the same question to Him of which He was silent during
the dispensation of His humanity: that it might be made plain by
their repeated question, that they understood His statement, ‘I
know not,’ of an ignorance which He took upon Himself, not
essential to His nature.” The passage is utterly
inconsistent with Hilary’s teaching both here and in ix. 58 f.,
and is an obvious and clumsy interpolation. | . But if, as we have maintained, when
He said that He knew not the day, He kept silence not from ignorance,
but in accordance with the Divine Plan, all occasion for irreverent
declarations must be removed, and the blasphemous teachings of heresy
thwarted, that the truth of the Gospel may be illustrated by the very
words which seem to obscure it.
9. Thus the greater number of them will not
allow Him to have the impossible nature of God because He feared His
Passion and shewed Himself weak by submitting to suffering1107
| 1107 Throughout the
whole of this discussion of Christ’s sufferings, Hilary
distinguishes the feeling of pain (dolere, dolor) from the
physical cause of pain, i.e. the cutting and piercing of the body
(pati, passio). Christ’s body suffered (pati)
but He could not feel pain (dolere): see c. 23. | . They assert that He Who feared and
felt pain could not enjoy that confidence of power which is above fear,
or that incorruption of spirit which is not conscious of
suffering: but, being of a nature lower than God the Father, He
trembled with fear at human suffering, and groaned before the violence
of bodily pain. These impious assertions are based on the words,
My soul is sorrowful even unto death1108
,
and “Father if it be possible let this cup pass away from
Me”1109
, and also, My
God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me1110
? to which they also add, Father
into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.1111
All these words of our holy faith they
appropriate to the use of their unholy blasphemy: that He feared,
Who was sorrowful, and even prayed that the cup might be taken away
from Him; that He felt pain, because He complained that God had
deserted Him in His suffering; that He was infirm, because He commended
His Spirit to the Father. His doubts and anxieties preclude us,
they say, from assigning to Him that likeness to God which would belong
to a nature equal to God as being born His Only-begotten. He
proclaims His own weakness and inferiority by the prayer to remove the
cup, by the complaint of desertion and the commending of His
Spirit.
10. Now first of all, before we shew from
these very texts, that He was subject to no infirmity of fear or sorrow
on His own account, let us ask, “What can we find for Him to
fear, that the dread of an unendurable pain should have seized
Him?” The objects of His fear, which they allege, are, I
suppose, suffering and death. Now I ask those who are of this
opinion, “Can we reasonably suppose that He feared death, Who
drove away the terrors of death from His Apostles, exhorting them to
the glory of martyrdom with the words, He that doth not take his
cross and follow after Me is not worth of Me; and, He that
findeth his life shall lose it, and he that hath lost his life for My
sake shall find it1112
? If
to die for Him is life, what pain can we think He had to suffer in the
mystery of death, Who rewards with life those who die for Him? Could death make
Him fear what could be done to the body, when He exhorted the
disciples, Fear not those which kill the body1113
?
11. Further, what terror had the pain of
death for Him, to Whom death was an act of His own free will? In
the human race death is brought on either by an attack upon the body of
an external enemy, such as fever wound, accident or fall: or our
bodily nature is overcome by age, and yields to death. But the
Only-begotten God, Who had the power of laying down His life, and of
taking it up again1114
, after the drought
of vinegar, having borne witness that His work of human suffering was
finished, in order to accomplish in Himself the mystery of death, bowed
His head and gave up His Spirit1115
. If it
has been granted to our mortal nature of its own will to breathe its
last breath, and seek rest in death; if the buffeted soul may depart,
without the breaking up of the body, and the spirit burst forth and
flee away, without being as it were violated in its own home by the
breaking and piercing and crushing of limbs; then fear of death might
seize the Lord of life; if, that is, when He gave up the ghost and
died, His death were not an exercise of His own free will. But if
He died of His own will, and through His own will gave back His Spirit,
death had no terror; because it was in His own power.
12. But perchance with the fearfulness of
human ignorance, He feared the very power of death, which He possessed;
so, though He died of His own accord, He feared because He was to
die. If any think so, let them ask “To which was death
terrible, to His Spirit or to His body?” If to His body,
are they ignorant that the Holy One should not see corruption1116
, that within three days He was to revive
the temple of His body1117
| 1117 St. John ii. 19; St. Matt. xxvi. 16, xxvii. 40; St.
Mark xiv. 58. | ? But if
death was terrible to His Spirit, should Christ fear the abyss of hell,
while Lazarus was rejoicing in Abraham’s bosom? It is
foolish and absurd, that He should fear death, Who could lay down His
soul, and take it up again, Who, to fulfil the mystery of human life,
was about to die of His own free will. He cannot fear death Whose
power and purpose in dying is to die but for a moment: fear is
incompatible with willingness to die, and the power to live again, for
both of these rob death of his terrors.
13. But was it perhaps the physical pain of
hanging on the cross, or the rough cords with which He was bound, or
the cruel wounds, where the nails were driven in, that dismayed
Him? Let us see of what body the Man Jesus was, that pain should
dwell in His crucified, bound, and pierced body.
14. The nature of our bodies is such, that when
endued with life and feeling by conjunction with a sentient soul, they
become something more than inert, insensate matter. They feel
when touched, suffer when pricked, shiver with cold, feel pleasure in
warmth, waste with hunger, and grow fat with food. By a certain
transfusion of the soul, which supports and penetrates them, they feel
pleasure or pain according to the surrounding circumstances. When
the body is pricked or pierced, it is the soul which pervades it that
is conscious, and suffers pain. For instance a flesh-wound is
felt even to the bone, while the fingers feel nothing when we cut the
nails which protrude from the flesh. And if through some disease
a limb becomes withered, it loses the feeling of living flesh: it
can be cut or burnt, it feels no pain whatever, because the soul is no
longer mingled with it. Also when through some grave necessity
part of the body must be cut away, the soul can be lulled to sleep by
drugs, which overcome the pain, and produce in the mind a death-like
forgetfulness of its power of sense. Then limbs can be cut off
without pain: the flesh is dead to all feeling, and does not heed
the deep thrust of the knife, because the soul within it is
asleep. It is, therefore, because the body lives by admixture
with a weak soul, that it is subject to the weakness of pain.
15. If the Man Jesus Christ began His bodily life
with the same beginning as our body and soul, if He were not, as God,
the immediate Author of His own body and soul alike, when He was
fashioned in the likeness and form of man, and born as man, then we may
suppose that He felt the pain of our body; since by His beginning, a
conception like ours, He had a body animated with a soul like our
own. But if through His own act He took to Himself flesh from the
Virgin, and likewise by His own act joined a soul to the body thus
conceived, then the nature of His suffering must have corresponded with
the nature of His body and soul. For when He emptied Himself of
the form of God and received the form of a servant when the Son of God
was born also Son of Man, without losing His own self and power, God
the Word formed the perfect living Man. For how was the Son of
God born Son of Man, how did He receive the form of a servant, still
remaining in the form of God, unless (God the Word being able of Himself to take flesh from the
Virgin and to give that flesh a soul, for the redemption of our soul
and body), the Man Christ Jesus was born perfect, and made in the form
of a servant by the assumption of the body, which the Virgin
conceived? For the Virgin conceived, what she conceived, from the
Holy Ghost alone1118
| 1118 Omitting
‘suo:” or retaining it ‘His (i.e. the
Word’s) Holy Spirit.’ | , and though for
His birth in the flesh she supplied from herself that element, which
women always contribute to the seed planted in them, still Jesus Christ
was not formed by an ordinary human conception. In His birth, the
cause of which was transmitted solely by the Holy Ghost, His mother
performed the same part as in all human conceptions: but by
virtue of His origin He never ceased to be God.
16. This deep and beautiful mystery of His
assumption of manhood the Lord Himself reveals in the words, No man
hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended from heaven, even the
Son of Man which is in heaven1119
.
‘Descended from heaven’ refers to His origin from the
Spirit: for though Mary contributed to His growth in the womb and
birth all that is natural to her sex, His body did not owe to her its
origin. The ‘Son of Man’ refers to the birth of the
flesh conceived in the Virgin; ‘Who is in heaven’ implies
the power of His eternal nature: an infinite nature, which could
not restrict itself to the limits of the body, of which it was itself
the source and base. By the virtue of the Spirit and the power of
God the Word, though He abode in the form of a servant, He was ever
present as Lord of all, within and beyond the circle of heaven and
earth. So He descended from heaven and is the Son of Man, yet is
in heaven: for the Word made flesh did not cease to be the
Word. As the Word, He is in heaven, as flesh He is the Son of
Man. As Word made flesh, He is at once from heaven, and Son of
Man, and in heaven, for the power of the Word, abiding eternally
without body, was present still in the heaven He had left: to Him
and to none other the flesh owed its origin. So the Word made
flesh, though He was flesh, yet never ceased to be the Word.
17. The blessed Apostle also perfectly
describes this mystery of the ineffable birth of Christ’s body in
the words, The first man was from the soil of the ground, the second
man from heaven1120
. Calling Him
‘Man’ he expresses His birth from the Virgin, who in the
exercise of her office as mother, performed the duties of her sex in
the conception and birth of man. And when he says, The second
man from heaven he testifies His origin from the Holy Ghost, Who
came upon the Virgin1121
. As He is
then man, and from heaven, this Man was born of the Virgin, and
conceived of the Holy Ghost. So speaks the Apostle.
18. Again the Lord Himself revealing this
mystery of His birth, speaks thus: I am the living bread Who
have descended from Heaven: if any one shall eat of My bread he
shall live for ever1122
:
calling Himself the Bread since He is the origin of His own body.
Further, that it may not be thought the Word left His own virtue and
nature for the flesh, He says again that it is His bread; since He is
the bread which descends from heaven, His body cannot be regarded as
sprung from human conception, because it is shewn to be from
heaven. And His language concerning His bread is an assertion
that the Word took a body, for He adds, Unless ye eat the flesh of
the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have not life in
you1123
. Hence,
inasmuch as the Being Who is Son of Man descended also as bread from
heaven, by the ‘Bread descending from heaven’ and by the
‘Flesh and Blood of the Son of Man’ must be understood His
assumption of the flesh, conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the
Virgin.
19. Being, then, Man with this body, Jesus Christ
is both the Son of God and Son of Man, Who emptied Himself of the form
of God, and received the form of a servant. There is not one Son
of Man and another Son of God; nor one in the form of God, and another
born perfect man in the form of a servant: so that, as by the
nature determined for us by God, the Author of our being, man is born
with body and soul, so likewise Jesus Christ, by His own power, is God
and Man with flesh and soul, possessing in Himself whole and perfect
manhood, and whole and perfect Godhead.
20. Yet many, with the art by which they
seek to prove their heresy, are wont to delude the ears of the
unlearned with the error, that as the body and soul of Adam both
sinned, so the Lord must have taken the soul and body of Adam from the
Virgin, and that it was not the whole Man that she conceived from the
Holy Ghost1124
| 1124 Apollinaris argued
that if Christ were perfect God and perfect man, there would be two
Christs, the Son of God by nature and the Son of God by adoption.
Hence He taught that Christ was partly God and partly man; that He
received from the Virgin His body and the lower, irrational soul which
is the condition of bodily life; while His rational Spirit was
Divine. On this theory the ‘whole man,’ as Hilary
says, was not born of the Virgin. Hilary denies the threefold
division. The soul in every case, Christ’s included, is, he
says, the immediate work of God. | . If they
had understood the mystery
of the Incarnation, these men would have understood at the same time
the mystery that the Son of Man is also Son of God. As if in
receiving so much from the Virgin, He received from her His soul also;
whereas though flesh is always born of flesh, every soul is the direct
work of God.
21. With a view to deprive of substantive divinity
the Only-begotten God, Who was God the Word with God in the beginning,
they make Him merely the utterance of the voice of God. The Son
is related to God His Father, they say, as the words to the
speaker. They are trying to creep into the position, that it was
not God the eternal Word, abiding in the form of God, Who was born as
Christ the Man, Whose life therefore springs from a human origin, not
from the mystery of a spiritual conception; that He was not God the
Word, making Himself man by birth from the Virgin, but the Word of God
dwelling in Jesus as the spirit of prophecy dwelt in the
prophets. They accuse us of saying that Christ was born man with
body and soul different from ours. But we preach the Word made
flesh, Christ emptying Himself of the form of God and taking the form
of a servant, perfect according to the fashion of human form, born a
man after the likeness of ourselves: that being true Son of God,
He is indeed true Son of Man, neither the less Man because born of God,
nor the less God because Man born of God.
22. But as He by His own act assumed a body
from the Virgin, so He assumed from Himself a soul; though even in
ordinary human birth the soul is never derived from the parents.
If, then, the Virgin received from God alone the flesh which she
conceived, far more certain is it that the soul of that body can have
come from God alone. If, too, the same Christ be the Son of Man,
Who is also the Son of God (for the whole Son of Man is the whole Son
of God), how ridiculous is it to preach besides the Son of God, the
Word made flesh, another I know not whom, inspired, like a prophet, by
God the Word; whereas our Lord Jesus Christ is both Son of Man and Son
of God. Yet because His soul was sorrowful unto death, and
because He had the power to lay down His soul and the power to take it
up again, they want to derive it from some alien source, and not from
the Holy Ghost, the Author of His body’s conception: for
God the Word became man without departing from the mystery of His own
nature. He was born also not to be at one time two separate
beings, but that it might be made plain, that He Who was God before He
was Man, now that He has taken humanity, is God and Man. How
could Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have been born of Mary, except by
the Word becoming flesh: that is by the Son of God, though in the
form of God, taking the form of a slave? When He Who was in the
form of God took the form of a slave, two contraries were brought
together1125
. Thus it was
just as true, that He received the form of a slave, as that He remained
in the form of God. The use of the one word ‘form’ to
describe both natures compels us to recognise that He truly possessed
both. He is in the form of a servant, Who is also in the
form of God1126
| 1126 Form since
the time of Aristotle meant the qualities which constituted the
distinctive essence of a thing. | . And though
He is the latter by His eternal nature, and the former in accordance
with the divine Plan of Grace, the word has its true significance
equally in both cases, because He is both: as truly in the form
of God as in the form of Man. Just as to take the form of a
servant is none other than to be born a man, so to be in the form of
God is none other than to be God: and we confess Him as one and
the same Person, not by loss of the Godhead, but by assumption of the
manhood: in the form of God through His divine nature, in the
form of man from His conception by the Holy Ghost, being found in
fashion as a man. That is why after His birth as Jesus Christ,
His suffering, death, and burial, He also rose again. We cannot
separate Him from Himself in all these diverse mysteries, so that He
should be no longer Christ; for Christ, Who took the form of a servant,
was none other than He Who was in the form of God: He Who died
was the same as He Who was born: He Who rose again as He Who
died; He Who is in heaven as He Who rose again; lastly, He Who is in
heaven as He Who before descended from heaven.
23. So the Man Jesus Christ, Only-begotten God, as
flesh and as Word at the same time Son of Man and Son of God, without
ceasing to be Himself, that is, God, took true humanity after the
likeness of our humanity. But when, in this humanity, He was
struck with blows, or smitten with wounds, or bound with ropes, or
lifted on high, He felt the force of suffering, but without its
pain. Thus a dart passing through water, or piercing a flame, or
wounding the air, inflicts all that it is its nature to do: it
passes through, it pierces,
it wounds; but all this is without effect on the thing it strikes;
since it is against the order of nature to make a hole in water, or
pierce flame, or wound the air, though it is the nature of a dart to
make holes, to pierce and to wound. So our Lord Jesus Christ
suffered blows, hanging, crucifixion and death: but the suffering
which attacked the body of the Lord, without ceasing to be suffering,
had not the natural effect of suffering. It exercised its
function of punishment with all its violence; but the body of Christ by
its virtue suffered the violence of the punishment, without its
consciousness. True, the body of the Lord would have been capable
of feeling pain like our natures, if our bodies possessed the power of
treading on the waters, and walking over the waves without weighing
them down by our tread or forcing them apart by the pressure of our
steps, if we could pass through solid substances, and the barred doors
were no obstacle to us. But, as only the body of our Lord could
be borne up by the power of His soul in the waters, could walk upon the
waves, and pass through walls, how can we judge of the flesh conceived
of the Holy Ghost on the analogy of a human body? That flesh,
that is, that Bread, is from Heaven; that humanity is from God.
He had a body to suffer, and He suffered: but He had not a
nature1127
| 1127 Erasmus
mentions an insertion in one ms. here, which
explains what Hilary implies throughout the chapter: ‘weak
as ours from sin,’ i.e. weakness is the proper penalty for
sin: pain is only a secondary and adventitious effect of the
weakness of human nature brought on by sin. Christ then atoned
completely for sin, by suffering, without feeling pain. | which could feel
pain. For His body possessed a unique nature of its own; it was
transformed into heavenly glory on the Mount, it put fevers to flight
by its touch, it gave new eyesight by its spittle.
24. It may perhaps be said, ‘We find
Him giving way to weeping, to hunger and thirst: must we not
suppose Him liable to all the other affections of human
nature?’ But if we do not understand the mystery of His
tears, hunger, and thirst, let us remember that He Who wept also raised
the dead to life: that He did not weep for the death of Lazarus,
but rejoiced1128
| 1128 St. John xi. 15, ‘Lazarus is dead. And I am
glad for your sakes, that I was not there, to the intent that ye may
believe.’ | ; that He Who
thirsted, gave from Himself rivers of living water1129
. He could not be parched with
thirst, if He was able to give the thirsty drink. Again, He Who
hungered could condemn the tree which offered no fruit for His
hunger1130
| 1130 St. Matt. xxi. 19 and St. Mark xi. 3. | : but how could His
nature be overcome by hunger if He could strike the green tree barren
by His word? And if, beside the mystery of weeping, hunger and
thirst, the flesh He assumed, that is His entire manhood, was exposed
to our weaknesses: even then it was not left to suffer from their
indignities. His weeping was not for Himself; His thirst needed
no water to quench it; His hunger no food to stay it. It is never
said that the Lord ate or drank or wept when He was hungry, or thirsty,
or sorrowful. He conformed to the habits of the body to prove the
reality of His own body, to satisfy the custom of human bodies by doing
as our nature does. When He ate and drank, it was a concession,
not to His own necessities, but to our habits.
25. For Christ had indeed a body, but
unique, as befitted His origin. He did not come into existence
through the passions incident to human conception: He came into
the form of our body by an act of His own power. He bore our
collective humanity in the form of a servant, but He was free from the
sins and imperfections of the human body: that we might be in
Him, because He was born of the Virgin, and yet our faults might not be
in Him, because He is the source of His own humanity, born as man but
not born under the defects of human conception. It is this
mystery of His birth which the Apostle upholds and demonstrates, when
he says, He humbled Himself, taking the form of a servant, being
made in the likeness of a man and being formed in fashion as a
man1131
: that is,
in that He took the form of a servant, He was born in the form of a
man: in that He was made in the likeness of a man, and formed in
fashion as a man, the appearance and reality of His body testified His
humanity, yet, though He was formed in fashion as a man, He knew not
what sin was. For His conception was in the likeness of our
nature, not in the possession of our faults. For lest the words,
He took the form of a servant, might be understood of a natural
birth, the Apostle adds, made in the likeness of a man, and formed
in fashion as a man. The truth of His birth is thus prevented
from suggesting the defects incident to our weak natures, since the
form of a servant implies the reality of His birth, and found in
fashion as a man, the likeness of our nature. He was of Himself
born man through the Virgin, and found in the likeness of our
degenerate body of sin: as the Apostle testifies in his letter to
the Romans, For what the law could not do, in that it was weak
through the flesh, God sending His Son in the likeness of flesh of sin,
condemned sin of sin1132
. He was
not found in the fashion of a man: but found in fashion
as a man: nor was His flesh the flesh of sin, but the
likeness of the flesh of sin. Thus the fashion of flesh implies
the truth of His birth, and the likeness of the flesh of sin removes
Him from the imperfections of human weakness. So the Man Jesus
Christ as man was truly born, as Christ had no sin in His nature:
for, on His human side, He was born, and could not but be a man; on His
divine side, He could never cease to be Christ. Since then Jesus
Christ was man, He submitted as man to a human birth: yet as
Christ He was free from the infirmity of our degenerate race.
26. The Apostles’ belief prepares us for the
understanding of this mystery; when it testifies that Jesus Christ was
found in fashion as a man and was sent in the likeness of the flesh of
sin. For being fashioned as a man, He is in the form of a
servant, but not in the imperfections of a servant’s nature; and
being in the likeness of the flesh of sin, the Word is indeed flesh,
but is in the likeness of the flesh of sin and not the flesh of sin
itself. In like manner Jesus Christ being man is indeed human,
but even thus cannot be aught else but Christ, born as man by the birth
of His body, but not human in defects, as He was not human in
origin. The Word made flesh could not but be the flesh that He
was made; yet He remained always the Word, though He was made
flesh. As the Word made flesh could not vacate the nature of His
Source, so by virtue of the origin of His nature He could not but
remain the Word: but at the same time we must believe that the
Word is that flesh which He was made; always, however, with the
reserve, that when He dwelt among us, the flesh was not the Word, but
was the flesh of the Word dwelling in the flesh.
Though we have proved this, still we will see whether in
the whole range of suffering, which He endured, we can anywhere detect
in our Lord the weakness of bodily pain. We will put off for a
time the discussion of the passages on the strength of which heresy has
attributed fear to our Lord; now let us turn to the facts
themselves: for His words cannot signify fear if His actions
display confidence.
27. Do you suppose, heretic, that the Lord
of glory feared to suffer? Why, when Peter made this error
through ignorance, did He not call him ‘Satan’ and a
‘stumbling-block1133
?’
Thus was Peter, who deprecated the mystery of the Passion, established
in the faith by so sharp a rebuke from the lips of the gentle Christ,
Whom not flesh and blood, but the Father in Heaven had revealed to
him1134
.
What phantom hope are you chasing when you deny that
Christ is God, and attribute to Him fear of suffering? He afraid,
Who went forth to meet the armed bands of His captors? Weakness
in His body, at Whose approach the pursuers reeled and broke their
ranks and fell prone, unable to endure His Majesty as He offered
Himself to their chains? What weakness could enthral His body,
Whose nature had such power?
28. But perhaps He feared the pain of
wounds. Say then, What terror had the thrust of the nail for Him
Who merely by His touch restored the ear that was cut off? You
who assert the weakness of the Lord, explain this work of power at the
moment when His flesh was weak and suffering. Peter drew his
sword and smote: the High Priest’s servant stood there,
lopped of his ear. How was the flesh of the ear restored from the
bare wound by the touch of Christ? Amidst the flowing blood, and
the wound left by the cleaving sword, when the body was so maimed,
whence sprang forth an ear which was not there? Whence came that
which did not exist before? Whence was restored that which was
wanting? Did the hand, which created an ear, feel the pain of the
nails? He prevented another from feeling the pain of a
wound: did He feel it Himself? His touch could restore the
flesh that was cut off; was He sorrowful because He feared the piercing
of His own flesh? And if the body of Christ had this virtue, dare
we allege infirmity in that nature, whose natural force could
counteract all the natural infirmities of man?
29. But, perhaps, in their misguided and
impious perversity, they infer His weakness from the fact that His soul
was sorrowful unto death1135
. It is not
yet the time to blame you, heretic, for misunderstanding the
passage. For the present I will only ask you, Why do you forget
that when Judas went forth to betray Him, He said, Now is the Son of
Man glorified1136
? If
suffering was to glorify Him, how could the fear of it have made Him
sorrowful? How, unless He was so void of reason, that He feared
to suffer when suffering was to glorify Him?
30. But perhaps He may be thought to have
feared to the extent that He prayed that the cup might be removed from
Him: Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee:
remove this cup from Me1137
. To take
the narrowest ground of argument, might you not have refuted for
yourself this dull impiety by your own reading of the words, Put up
thy sword into its sheath: the cup which My Father hath given Me,
shall I not drink it1138
?
Could fear induce Him to
pray for the removal from Him of that which, in His zeal for the Divine
Plan, He was hastening to fulfil? To say He shrank from the
suffering He desired is not consistent. You allow that He
suffered willingly: would it not be more reverent to confess that
you had misunderstood this passage, than to rush with blasphemous and
headlong folly to the assertion that He prayed to escape suffering,
though you allow that He suffered willingly?
31. Yet, I suppose, you will arm yourself
also for your godless contention with these words of the Lord, My
God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me1139
? Perhaps you think that
after the disgrace of the cross, the favour of His Father’s help
departed from Him, and hence His cry that He was left alone in His
weakness. But if you regard the contempt, the weakness, the cross
of Christ as a disgrace, you should remember His words, Verily I say
unto you, From henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the
right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of Heaven1140
.
32. Where, pray, can you see fear in His
Passion? Where weakness? Or pain? Or dishonour?
Do the godless say He feared? But He proclaimed with His own lips
His willingness to suffer. Do they maintain that He was
weak? He revealed His power, when His pursuers were stricken with
panic and dared not face Him. Do they contend that He felt the
pain of the wounds in His flesh? But He shewed, when He restored
the wounded flesh of the ear, that, though He was flesh, He did not
feel the pain of fleshly wounds. The hand which touched the
wounded ear belonged to His body: yet that hand created an ear
out of a wound: how then can that be the hand of a body which was
subject to weakness?
33. But, they say, the cross was a dishonour to
Him; yet it is because of the cross that we can now see the Son of Man
sitting on the right hand of power, that He Who was born man of the
womb of the Virgin has returned in His Majesty with the clouds of
heaven. Your irreverence blinds you to the natural relations of
cause and event: not only does the spirit of godlessness and
error, with which you are filled, hide from your understanding the
mystery of faith, but the obtuseness of heresy drags you below the
level of ordinary human intelligence. For it stands to reason
that whatever we fear, we avoid: that a weak nature is a prey to
terror by its very feebleness: that whatever feels pain possesses
a nature always liable to pain: that whatever dishonours is
always a degradation. On what reasonable principle, then, do you
hold that our Lord Jesus Christ feared that towards which He
pressed: or awed the brave, yet trembled Himself with
weakness: or stopped the pain of wounds, yet felt the pain of His
own: or was dishonoured by the degradation of the cross, yet
through the cross sat down by God on high, and returned to His
Kingdom?
34. But perhaps you think your impiety has
still an opportunity left to see in the words, Father, into Thy
hands I commend My Spirit1141
, a proof that He
feared the descent into the lower world, and even the necessity of
death. But when you read these words and could not understand
them, would it not have been better to say nothing, or to pray devoutly
to be shewn their meaning, than to go astray with such barefaced
assertions, too mad with your own folly to perceive the truth?
Could you believe that He feared the depths of the abyss, the scorching
flames, or the pit of avenging punishment, when you listen to His words
to the thief on the cross, Verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt
thou be with Me in Paradise1142
? Such a nature with such
power could not be shut up within the confines of the nether world, nor
even subjected to fear of it. When He descended to Hades, He was
never absent from Paradise (just as He was always in Heaven when He was
preaching on earth as the Son of Man), but promised His martyr1143
a home there, and held out to him the
transports of perfect happiness. Bodily fear cannot touch Him Who
reaches indeed down as far as Hades, but by the power of His nature is
present in all things everywhere. As little can the
abyss1144
| 1144 In Biblical
and Patristic Latin chaos had acquired the sense of
χάσμα; cf.
Rönsch, Itala u. Vulgata, p. 250. | of Hell and the terrors of death lay hold
upon the nature which rules the world, boundless in the freedom of its
spiritual power, confident of the raptures of Paradise; for the Lord
Who was to descend to Hades, was also to dwell in Paradise.
Separate, if you can, from His indivisible nature a part which could
fear punishment: send the one part of Christ to Hades to suffer
pain, the other, you must leave in Paradise to reign: for the
thief says, Remember me when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom.
It was the groan he heard, I suppose, when the nails pierced the hands
of our Lord, which provoked in him this blessed confession of
faith: he learnt the Kingdom of Christ from His weakened and
stricken body! He begs that Christ will remember him when He
comes in His Kingdom: you say that Christ feared as He
hung dying upon the cross. The Lord promises him, To-day shalt
thou be with Me in Paradise; you would subject Christ to Hades and
fear of punishment. Your faith has the opposite
expectation. The thief confessed Christ in His Kingdom as He hung
on the cross, and was rewarded with Paradise from the cross: you
who impute to Christ the pain of punishment and the fear of death, will
fail of Paradise and His Kingdom.
35. We have now seen the power that lay in
the acts and words of Christ. We have incontestably proved that
His body did not share the infirmity of a natural body, because its
power could expel the infirmities of the body that when He suffered,
suffering laid hold of His body, but did not inflict upon it the nature
of pain: and this because, though the form of our body was in the
Lord, yet He by virtue of His origin was not in the body of our
weakness and imperfection. He was conceived of the Holy Ghost and
born of the Virgin, who performed the office of her sex, but did not
receive the seed of His conception from man1145
| 1145 Reading
‘susceptis elementis.’ | . She brought forth a body, but one
conceived of the Holy Ghost; a body possessing inherent reality, but
with no infirmity in its nature. That body was truly and indeed
body, because it was born of the Virgin: but it was above the
weakness of our body, because it had its beginning in a spiritual
conception.
36. But even now that we have proved what
was the faith of the Apostle, the heretics think to meet it by the
text, My soul is sorrowful even unto death1146
. These words, they say, prove the
consciousness of natural infirmity which made Christ begin to be
sorrowful. Now, first, I appeal to common intelligence:
what do we mean by sorrowful unto death? It cannot signify
the same as ‘to be sorrowful because of death:’ for
where there is sorrow because of death, it is the death that is the
cause of the sadness. But a sadness even to death1147
| 1147 Usque ad
mortem: up to, as far as death. The Latin gives more
colour to this interpretation of Hilary than the English translation
‘even unto death.’ | implies that death is the finish, not the
cause, of the sadness. If then He was sorrowful even to
death, not because of death, we must enquire, whence came His
sadness? He was sorrowful, not for a certain time, or for a
period which human ignorance could not determine, but even unto
death. So far from His sadness being caused by His death, it was
removed by it.
37. That we may understand what was the
cause of His sadness, let us see what precedes and follows this
confession of sadness: for in the Passover supper our Lord
completely signified the whole mystery of His Passion and our
faith. After He had said that they should all be offended in
Him1148
| 1148 St. Matt. xxvi. 31; St. Mark xiv. 27; cf. St. John
xvi. 32. | , but promised that He would go before
them into Galilee1149
| 1149 St. Matt. xxvi. 32; St. Mark xiv. 28; cf. xvi.
7. | , Peter protested
that though all the rest should be offended, he would remain faithful
and not be offended1150
. But the Lord
knowing by His Divine Nature what should come to pass, answered that
Peter would deny Him thrice: that we might know from Peter how
the others were offended, since even he lapsed into so great peril to
his faith by the triple denial. After that, He took Peter, James
and John, chosen, the first two to be His martyrs, John to be
strengthened for the proclamation of the Gospel, and declared that He
was sorrowful unto death. Then He went before, and prayed,
saying, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me;
yet, not as I will, but as Thou wilt1151
| 1151 St. Matt. xxvi. 39; St. Mark xiv. 36; St. Luke xxii.
42. | . He prays that the cup may pass from
Him, when it was certainly already before Him: for even then was
being fulfilled that pouring forth of His blood of the New Testament
for the sins of many. He does not pray that it may not be with
Him; but that it may pass away from Him. Then He prays that His
will may not be done, and wills that what He wishes to be effected, may
not be granted Him. For He says, Yet not as I will, but as
Thou wilt: signifying by His spontaneous prayer for the
cup’s removal His fellowship with human anxiety, yet associating
Himself with the decree of the Will which He shares inseparably with
the Father. To shew, moreover, that He does not pray for Himself,
and that He seeks only a conditional fulfilment of what He desires and
prays for, He prefaces the whole of this request with the words, My
Father, if it is possible. Is there anything for the Father
the possibility of which is uncertain? But if nothing is
impossible to the Father, we can see on what depends this condition,
if it is possible1152
| 1152 i.e. the possibility
that the disciples may not endure the temptation of the cup: that
it might abide with them instead of passing away. See the
explanation in the next chapter. | : for this
prayer is immediately followed by the words, And He came to His
disciples and findeth them sleeping, and saith to Peter, Could ye not
watch one hour with Me? Watch and pray that ye enter not into
temptation: for the spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is
weak1153
| 1153 St. Matt. xxvi. 40, 41; St. Mark xiv. 37, 38; cf.
St. Luke xxii. 45, 46. | . Is
the cause of this sadness and this prayer any longer doubtful? He
bids them watch and pray with Him for this purpose, that they may not
enter into temptation; for the spirit indeed is willing, but the
flesh is weak. They were under the promise made in the
constancy of faithful souls not to be offended, yet, through weakness
of the flesh, they were to be offended. It is not, therefore, for
Himself that He is sorrowful and prays: it is for those whom He
exhorts to watchfulness and prayer, lest the cup of suffering should be
their lot: lest that cup which He prays may pass away from Him,
should abide with them.
38. And the reason He prayed that the cup
might be removed from Him, if that were possible, was that, though with
God nothing is impossible, as Christ Himself says, Father, all
things are possible to Thee1154
, yet for man
it is impossible to withstand the fear of suffering, and only by trial
can faith be proved. Wherefore, as Man He prays for men that the
cup may pass away, but as God from God, His will is in unison with the
Father’s effectual will. He teaches what He meant by If
it is possible, in His words to Peter, Lo, Satan hath sought you
that He might sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee that
thy faith may not fail1155
. The cup of
the Lord’s Passion was to be a trial for them all, and He prays
the Father for Peter that his faith may not fail: that when he
denied through weakness, at least he might not fail of penitential
sorrow, for repentance would mean that faith survived.
39. The Lord was sorrowful then unto death
because in presence of the death, the earthquake, the darkened day, the
rent veil, the opened graves, and the resurrection of the dead, the
faith of the disciples would need to be established which had been so
shaken by the terror of the night arrest, the scourging, the striking,
the spitting upon, the crown of thorns, the bearing of the cross, and
all the insults of the Passion, but most of all by the condemnation to
the accursed cross. Knowing that all this would be at an end
after His Passion, He was sad unto death. He knew, too, that the
cup could not pass away unless He drank it, for He said, My Father,
this cup cannot pass from Me unless I drink it: Thy will be
done1156
: that is,
with the completion of His Passion, the fear of the cup would pass away
which could not pass away unless He drank it: the end of that
fear would follow only when His Passion was completed and terror
destroyed1157
| 1157 Reading ‘non
nisi finito.’ | , because after
His death, the stumbling-block of the disciples’ weakness would
be removed by the glory of His power.
40. Although by His words, Thy will be
done, He surrendered the Apostles to the decision of His
Father’s will, in regard to the offence of the cup, that is, of
His Passion, still He repeated His prayer a second and a third
time. After that He said, Sleep on now, and take your
rest1158
. It is not
without the consciousness of some secret reason that He Who had
reproached them for their sleep, now bade them sleep on, and take their
rest. Luke is thought to have given us the meaning of this
command. After He had told us how Satan had sought to sift the
Apostles as it were wheat, and how the Lord had been entreated that the
faith of Peter might not fail1159
| 1159 This is a
mistranslation of St. Luke
xxii. 32, ἐδεήθην being taken as
passive. | , he adds that the
Lord prayed earnestly, and then that an angel stood by Him comforting
Him, and as the angel stood by Him, He prayed the more earnestly, so
that the sweat poured from His body in drops of blood1160
. The Angel was sent, then, to watch
over the Apostles, and when the Lord was comforted by him, so that He
no longer sorrowed for them, He said, without fear of sadness, Sleep
on now, and take your rest. Matthew and Mark are silent about
the angel, and the request of the devil: but after the
sorrowfulness of His soul, the reproach of the sleepers, and the prayer
that the cup may be taken away, there must be some good reason for the
command to the sleepers which follows; unless we assume that He Who was
about to leave them, and Himself had received comfort from the Angel
sent to Him, meant to abandon them to their sleep, soon to be arrested
and kept in durance.
41. We must not indeed pass over the fact that in
many manuscripts, both Latin and Greek, nothing is said of the
angel’s coming or the Bloody Sweat. But while we suspend
judgment, whether this is an omission, where it is wanting, or an
interpolation, where it is found (for the discordance of the copies
leaves the question uncertain), let not the heretics encourage
themselves that herein lies a confirmation of His weakness, that He
needed the help and comfort of an angel. Let them remember the
Creator of the angels needs not the support of His creatures.
Moreover His comforting must be explained in the same way as His sorrow. He
was sorrowful for us, that is, on our account; He must also have been
comforted for us, that is, on our account. If He sorrowed
concerning us, He was comforted concerning us. The object of His
comfort is the same as that of His sadness. Nor let any one dare
to impute the Sweat to a weakness, for it is contrary to nature to
sweat blood1161
| 1161 The Greek is
ἐγένετο δὲ ὁ
ἵδρως αὐτοῦ
ὥσει θρόμβοι
αἵματος.
‘His sweat became as it were great drops of blood’
(R.V.): see supra. | . It was no
infirmity, for His power reversed the law of nature. The bloody
sweat does not for one moment support the heresy of weakness, while it
establishes against the heresy which invents an apparent body1162
| 1162 i.e. all sects with
Docetic tenets, who would not allow Christ to have had a real human
body, but only to have appeared in bodily shape, like a ghost. | , the reality all His body. Since,
then, His fear was concerning us, and His prayer on our behalf, we are
forced to the conclusion that all this happened on our account, for
whom He feared, and for whom He prayed.
42. Again the Gospels fill up what is
lacking in one another: we learn some things from one, some from
another, and so on, because all are the proclamation of the same
spirit. Thus John, who especially brings out the working of
spiritual causes in the Gospel, preserves this prayer of the Lord for
the Apostles, which all the others passed over: how He prayed,
namely, Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name.…while I was them I
kept them in Thy Name: those whom Thou gavest Me I have
kept1163
| 1163 St. John xvii. 11, 12. Hilary omits after ‘keeping
them in Thy Name,’ the words ‘which Thou hast given Me,
that they may be one even as We are One.’ | . That
prayer was not for Himself but for His Apostles; nor was He sorrowful
for Himself, since He bids them pray that they be not tempted; nor is
the angel sent to Him, for He could summon down from Heaven, if He
would, twelve thousand angels1164
; nor did He fear
because of death when He was troubled unto death. Again, He does
not pray that the cup may pass over Himself, but that it may pass away
from Himself, though before it could pass away He must have drunk
it. But, further, ‘to pass away’ does not mean merely
‘to leave the place,’ but ‘not to exist any more at
all:’ which is shewn in the language of the Gospels and
Epistles: for example, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but
My word shall not perish1165
| 1165 St. Mark xiii. 31. In the Greek the same word
παρέρχεσθαι
is used in both cases, but Hilary uses transire in the
first, praeterire in the second instance. | : also the
Apostle says, Behold the old things are passed away; they are become
new1166
. And again,
The fashion of this world shall pass away1167
. The cup, therefore, of which He
prays to the Father, cannot pass away unless it be drunk; and when He
prays, He prays for those whom He preserved, so long as He was with
them, whom He now hands over to the Father to preserve. Now that
He is about to accomplish the mystery of death He begs the Father to
guard them. The presence of the angel who was sent to Him (if this
explanation be true) is not of doubtful significance. Jesus
shewed His certainty that the prayer was answered when, at its close,
He bade the disciples sleep on. The effect of this prayer and the
security which prompted the command, ‘sleep on,’ is noticed
by the Evangelist in the course of the Passion, when he says of the
Apostles just before they escaped from the hands of the pursuers,
That the word might be fulfilled which He had spoken, Of those whom
Thou hast given Me I lost not one of them1168
. He fulfils Himself the petition
of His prayer, and they are all safe; but He asks that those whom He
has preserved the Father will now preserve in His own Name. And
they are preserved: the faith of Peter does not fail: it
cowered, but repentance followed immediately.
43. Combine the Lord’s prayer in John,
the request of the devil in Luke, the sorrowfulness unto death, and the
protest against sleep, followed by the command, Sleep on, in
Matthew and Mark, and all difficulty disappears. The prayer in
John, in which He commends the Apostles to His Father, explains the
cause of His sorrowfulness, and the prayer that the cup may pass
away. It is not from Himself that the Lord prays the suffering
may be taken away. He beseeches the Father to preserve the
disciples during His coming passion. In the same way, the prayer
against Satan1169
in St. Luke
explains the confidence with which He permitted the sleep He had just
forbidden.
44. There was, then, no place for human anxiety
and trepidation in that nature, which was more than human. It was
superior to the ills of earthly flesh; a body not sprung from earthly
elements, although His origin as Son of Man was due to the mystery of
the conception by the Holy Ghost. The power of the Most High
imparted its power to the body which the Virgin bare from the
conception of the Holy Ghost. The animated body derives its
conscious existence from association with a soul, which is diffused
throughout it, and quickens it to perceive pains inflicted from
without. Thus the soul, warned by the happy glow of its own heavenly faith and hope,
soars above its own origin in the beginnings of an earthly body, and
raises1170
that body to union
with itself in thought and spirit, so that it ceases to feel the
suffering of that which, all the while, it suffers. Why need we
then say more about the nature of the Lord’s body, that of the
Son of Man Who came down from heaven? Even earthly bodies can
sometimes be made indifferent to the natural necessities of pain and
fear.
45. Did the Jewish children fear the flames
blazing up with the fuel cast upon them in the fiery furnace at
Babylon? Did the terror of that terrible fire prevail over their
nature, conceived though it was like ours1171
? Did they feel pain, when the flames
surrounded them? Perhaps, however, you may say they felt no pain,
because they were not burnt: the flames were deprived of their
burning nature. To be sure it is natural to the body to fear
burning, and to be burnt by fire. But through the spirit of faith
their earthly bodies (that is, bodies which had their origin according
to the principles of natural birth) could neither be burnt nor made
afraid. What, therefore, in the case of men was a violation of
the order of nature, produced by faith in God, cannot be judged in
God’s case natural, but as an activity of the Spirit commencing
with His earthly origin. The children were bound in the midst of
the fire; they had no fear as they mounted the blazing pile: they
felt not the flame as they prayed: though in the midst of the
furnace, they could not be burnt. Both the fire and their bodies
lost their proper natures; the one did not burn, the others were not
burnt. Yet in all other respects, both fire and bodies retained
their natures: for the bystanders were consumed, and the
ministers of punishment were themselves punished. Impious
heretic, you will have it that Christ suffered pain from the piercing
of the nails, that He felt the bitterness of the wound, when they were
driven through His hands: why, pray, did not the children fear
the flames? Why did they suffer no pain? What was the
nature in their bodies, which overcame that of fire? In the zeal
of their faith and the glory of a blessed martyrdom they forgot to fear
the terrible; should Christ be sorrowful from fear of the cross,
Christ, Who even if He had been conceived with our sinful origin, would
have been still God upon the cross, Who was to judge the world and
reign for ever and ever? Could He forget such a reward, and
tremble with the anxiety of dishonourable fear?
46. Daniel, whose meat was the scanty
portion of a prophet1172
, did not fear
the lions’ den. The Apostles rejoiced in suffering and
death for the Name of Christ. To Paul his sacrifice was the crown
of righteousness1173
. The
Martyrs sang hymns as they offered their necks to the executioner, and
climbed with psalms the blazing logs piled for them. The
consciousness of faith takes away the weakness of nature, transforms
the bodily senses that they feel no pain, and so the body is
strengthened by the fixed purpose of the soul, and feels nothing except
the impulse of its enthusiasm. The suffering which the mind
despises in its desire of glory, the body does not feel, so long as the
soul invigorates it. It is, then, a natural effect in man, that
the zeal of the soul glowing for glory should make him unconscious of
suffering, heedless of wounds, and regardless of death. But Jesus
Christ the Lord of glory, the hem of Whose garment can heal, Whose
spittle and word can create; for the man with the withered hand at His
command stretched it forth whole, he who was born blind felt no more
the defect of his birth, and the smitten ear was made sound as the
other; dare we think of His pierced body in that pain and weakness,
from which the spirit of faith in Him rescued the glorious and blessed
Martyrs?
47. The Only-begotten God, then, suffered in
His person the attacks of all the infirmities to which we are subject;
but He suffered them in the power of His own nature, just as He was
born in the power of His own nature, for at His birth He did not lose
His omnipotent nature by being born. Though born under human
conditions, He was not so conceived: His birth was surrounded by
human circumstances, but His origin went beyond them. He suffered
then in His body after the manner of our infirm body, yet bore the
sufferings of our body in the power of His own body. To this
article of our faith the prophet bears witness when he says, He
beareth our sins and grieveth for us: and we esteemed Him
stricken, smitten, and afflicted: He was wounded for our
transgressions and made weak for our sins1174
| 1174 Isai. liii. 4, 5. Hilary translates from the
Septuagint. The Hebrew and the Vulgate differ, cf. the English
Version, “Surely He hath borne our griefs” (instead of
“our sins”). | . It is then a mistaken opinion of
human judgment, which thinks He felt pain because He suffered. He
bore our sins, that is, He assumed our body of sin, but was Himself
sinless. He was sent in the likeness of the flesh of sin, bearing
sin indeed in His flesh but our sin. So too He felt pain
for us, but not with our senses; He was found in fashion as a man, with
a body which could feel
pain, but His nature could not feel pain; for, though His fashion was
that of a man, His origin was not human, but He was born by conception
of the Holy Ghost.
For the reasons mentioned, He was esteemed
‘stricken, smitten and afflicted.’ He took the form
of a servant: and ‘man born of a Virgin’ conveys to
us the idea of One Whose nature felt pain when He suffered. But
though He was wounded it was ‘for our
transgressions.’ The wound was not the wound of His own
transgressions: the suffering not a suffering for Himself.
He was not born man for His own sake, nor did He transgress in His own
action. The Apostle explains the principle of the Divine Plan
when he says, We beseech you through Christ to be reconciled to
God. Him, Who knew no sin, He made to be sin on our
behalf1175
. To condemn
sin through sin in the flesh, He Who knew no sin was Himself made sin;
that is, by means of the flesh to condemn sin in the flesh, He became
flesh on our behalf but knew not flesh1176
: and therefore was wounded because
of our transgressions.
48. Again, the Apostle knows nothing in
Christ about fear of pain. When He wishes to speak of the
dispensation of the Passion, He includes it in the mystery of
Christ’s Divinity. Forgiving us all our trespasses,
blotting out the bond written in ordinances, that was against us, which
was contrary to us: taking it away, and nailing it to the cross;
stripping off from Himself His flesh, He made a shew of principalities
and powers openly triumphing over them in Himself1177
. Was that the power, think you, to
yield to the wound of the nail, to wince under the piercing blow, to
convert itself into a nature that can feel pain? Yet the Apostle,
who speaks as the mouthpiece of Christ1178
, relating the work of our salvation
through the Lord, describes the death of Christ as ‘stripping off
from Himself His flesh, boldly putting to shame the powers and
triumphing over them in Himself.’ If His passion was a
necessity of nature and not the free gift of your salvation: if
the cross was merely the suffering of wounds, and not the fixing upon
Himself of the decree of death made out against you: if His dying
was a violence done by death, and not the stripping off of the flesh by
the power of God: lastly, if His death itself was anything but a
dishonouring of powers, an act of boldness, a triumph: then
ascribe to Him infirmity, because He was therein subject to necessity
and nature, to force, to fear and disgrace. But if it is the
exact opposite in the mystery of the Passion, as it was preached to us,
who, pray, can be so senseless as to repudiate the faith taught by the
Apostles, to reverse all feelings of religion, to distort into the
dishonourable charge of natural weakness, what was an act of free-will,
a mystery, a display of power and boldness, a triumph? And what a
triumph it was, when He offered Himself to those who sought to crucify
Him, and they could not endure His presence: when He stood under
sentence of death, Who shortly was to sit on the right hand of
power: when He prayed for His persecutors while the nails were
driven through Him: when He completed the mystery as He drained
the draught of vinegar; when He was numbered among the transgressors
and meanwhile granted Paradise: that when He was lifted on the
tree, the earth quaked: when He hung on the cross, sun and day
were put to flight: that He left His own body, yet called life
back to the bodies of others1179
: was buried a
corpse and rose again God: as man suffered all weaknesses for our
sakes, as God triumphed in them all.
49. There is still, the heretics say,
another serious and far reaching confession of weakness, all the more
so because it is in the mouth of the Lord Himself, My God, My God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me1180
? They
construe this into the expression of a bitter complaint, that He was
deserted and given over to weakness. But what a violent
interpretation of an irreligious mind! how repugnant to the whole tenor
of our Lord’s words! He hastened to the death, which was to
glorify Him, and after which He was to sit on the right hand of power;
with all those blessed expectations could He fear death, and therefore
complain that His God had betrayed Him to its necessity, when it was
the entrance to eternal blessedness?
50. Further their heretical ingenuity
presses on in the path prepared by their own godlessness, even to the
entire absorption of God the Word into the human soul, and consequent
denial that Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, was the same as the Son of
God. So either God the Word ceased to be Himself while He
performed the function of a soul in giving life to a body1181
| 1181 Apollinaris’
heresy that in Christ the place of the ordinary human soul was supplied
by the Logos, the second Person in the Trinity. | , or the man who was born was not the
Christ at all, but the Word dwelt in him, as the Spirit dwelt in the
prophets1182
| 1182 This
doctrine was held by Marcellus of Ancyra (Sozomen, H.E. II. 33),
and Photinus: cp. also what Sozomen (VII. 7) says of
Hebion. | .
These absurd and perverse
errors have grown in boldness and godlessness till they assert that
Jesus Christ was not Christ until He was born of Mary. He Who was
born was not a pre-existent Being, but began at that moment to
exist1183
| 1183 This
doctrine was held by Marcellus of Ancyra (Sozomen, H.E. II. 33),
and Photinus: cp. also what Sozomen (VII. 7) says of
Hebion. | .
Hence follows also the error that God the Word, as
it were some part of the Divine power extending itself in unbroken
continuation, dwelt within that man who received from Mary the
beginning of his being, and endowed him with the power of Divine
working: though that man lived and moved by the nature of his own
soul1184
| 1184 The
preaching of Sabellius, cf. I. 16, protensio sit potius quam
descensio, ‘an extension rather than a
descent.’ | .
51. Through this subtle and mischievous
doctrine they are drawn into the error that God the Word became soul to
the body, His nature by self-humiliation working the change upon
itself, and thus the Word ceased to be God; or else, that the Man
Jesus, in the poverty and remoteness from God of His nature, was
animated only by the life and motion of His own human soul, wherein the
Word of God, that is, as it were, the might of His uttered voice,
resided. Thus the way is opened for all manner of irreverent
theorising: the sum of which is, either that God the Word was
merged in the soul and ceased to be God: or that Christ had no
existence before His birth from Mary, since Jesus Christ, a mere man of
ordinary body and soul, began to exist only at His human birth and was
raised to the level of the Power, which worked within Him, by the
extraneous force of the Divine Word extending itself into Him.
Then when God the Word, after this extension, was withdrawn, He cried,
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? or at least when the
divine nature of the Word once more gave place within Him to a human
soul, He Who had hitherto relied on His Father’s help, now
separated from it, and abandoned to death, bemoaned His solitude and
chid His deserter. Thus in every way arises a deadly danger of
error in belief, whether it be thought that the cry of complaint
denotes a weakness of nature in God the Word, or that God the Word was
not pre-existent because the birth of Jesus Christ from Mary was the
beginning of His being.
52. Amid these irreverent and ill-grounded
theories the faith of the Church, inspired by the teaching of the
Apostles, has recognised a birth of Christ, but no beginning. It
knows of the dispensation, but of no division1185
| 1185 i.e. it realizes
the plan by which the second Person of the Trinity chose to take a
human form, but refuses to separate the Divine from the human in
Jesus. | : it refuses to make a separation in
Jesus Christ1186
| 1186 Reading
partitur for Mss.
patitur. | ; whereby Jesus
is one and Christ another; nor does it distinguish the Son of Man from
the Son of God, lest perhaps the Son of God be not regarded as Son of
Man also. It does not absorb the Son of God in the Son of Man;
nor does it by a tripartite belief1187
tear
asunder Christ, Whose coat woven from the top throughout was not
parted, dividing Jesus Christ into the Word, a body and a soul; nor, on
the other hand, does it absorb the Word in body and soul. To it
He is perfectly God the Word, and perfectly Christ the Man. To
this alone we hold fast in the mystery of our confession, namely, the
faith that Christ is none other than Jesus, and the doctrine that Jesus
is none other than Christ.
53. I am not ignorant how much the grandeur
of the divine mystery baffles our weak understanding, so that language
can scarcely express it, or reason define it, or thought even embrace
it. The Apostle, knowing that the most difficult task for an
earthly nature is to apprehend, unaided, God’s mode of action
(for then our judgment were keener to discern than God is mighty to
effect), writes to his true son according to the faith, who had
received the Holy Scripture from his childhood, As I exhorted thee
to tarry at Ephesus, when I was going into Macedonia, that thou
mightest charge certain men not to teach a different doctrine, neither
to give heed to fables and endless genealogies, the which minister
questionings, rather than the edification of God which is in
faith1188
. He
bids him forbear to handle wordy genealogies and fables, which minister
endless questionings. The edification of God, he says, is in
faith: he limits human reverence to the faithful worship of the
Almighty, and does not suffer our weakness to strain itself in the
attempt to see what only dazzles the eye. If we look at the
brightness of the sun, the sight is strained and weakened: and
sometimes when we scrutinise with too curious gaze the source of the
shining light, the eyes lose their natural power, and the sense of
sight is even destroyed. Thus it happens that through trying to
see too much we see nothing at all. What must we then expect in
the case of God, the Sun of Righteousness? Will not foolishness
be their reward, who would be over wise? Will not dull and
brainless stupor usurp the place of the burning light of
intelligence? A lower nature cannot understand the principle of a
higher: nor can Heaven’s mode of thought be revealed to
human conception, for whatever is within the range of a limited
consciousness, is
itself limited. The divine power exceeds therefore the capacity
of the human mind. If the limited strains itself to reach so far,
it becomes even feebler than before. It loses what certainty it
had: instead of seeing heavenly things it is only blinded by
them. No mind can fully comprehend the divine: it punishes
the obstinacy of the curious by depriving them of their power.
Would we look at the sun we must remove as much of his brilliancy as we
need, in order to see him: if not, by expecting too much, we fall
short of the possible. In the same way we can only hope to
understand the purposes of Heaven, so far as is permitted. We
must expect only what He grants to our apprehension: if we
attempt to go beyond the limit of His indulgence, it is withdrawn
altogether. There is that in God which we can
perceive: it is visible to all if we are content with the
possible. Just as with the sun we can see something, if we are
content to see what can be seen, but if we strain beyond the possible
we lose all: so is it with the nature of God. There is that
which we can understand if we are content with understanding
what we can: but aim beyond your powers and you will lose even
the power of attaining what was within your reach.
54. The mystery of that other timeless birth
I will not yet touch upon: its treatment demands an ampler space
than this. For the present I will speak of the Incarnation
only. Tell me, I pray, ye who pry into secrets of Heaven, the
mystery of Christ born of a Virgin and His nature; whence will you
explain that He was conceived and born of a Virgin? What was the
physical cause of His origin according to your disputations? How
was He formed within His mother’s womb? Whence His body and
His humanity? And lastly, what does it mean that the Son of
Man descended from heaven Who remained in heaven1189
? It is not possible by the laws of
bodies for the same object to remain and to descend: the one is
the change of downward motion; the other the stillness of being at
rest. The Infant wails but is in Heaven: the Boy grows but
remains ever the immeasurable God. By what perception of human
understanding can we comprehend that He ascended where He was before,
and He descended Who remained in heaven? The Lord says, What
if ye should behold the Son of Man ascending thither where He was
before1190
? The
Son of Man ascends where He was before: can sense apprehend
this? The Son of Man descends from heaven, Who is in
heaven: can reason cope with this? The Word was made
flesh: can words express this? The Word becomes flesh, that
is, God becomes Man: the Man is in heaven: the God is from
heaven. He ascends Who descended: but He descends and yet
does not descend. He is as He ever was, yet He was not ever what
He is. We pass in review the causes, but we cannot explain the
manner: we perceive the manner, and we cannot understand the
causes. Yet if we understand Christ Jesus even thus, we shall
know Him: if we seek to understand Him further we shall not know
Him at all.
55. Again, how great a mystery of word and
act it is that Christ wept, that His eyes filled with tears from the
anguish of His mind1191
. Whence came
this defect in His soul that sorrow should wring tears from His
body? What bitter fate, what unendurable pain, could move to a
flood of tears the Son of Man Who descended from heaven? Again,
what was it in Him which wept? God the Word? or His human
soul? For though weeping is a bodily function, the body is but a
servant; tears are, as it were, the sweat of the agonised soul.
Again, what was the cause of His weeping? Did He owe to Jerusalem
the debt of His tears, Jerusalem, the godless parricide, whom no
suffering could requite for the slaughter of Apostles and Prophets, and
the murder of her Lord Himself? He might weep for the disasters
and death which befall mankind: but could He grieve for the fall
of that doomed and desperate race? What, I ask, was this mystery
of weeping? His soul wept for sorrow; was not it the soul which
sent forth the Prophets? Which would so often have gathered the
chickens together under the shadow of His wings1192
? But God the Word cannot grieve, nor
can the Spirit weep: nor could His soul possibly do anything
before the body existed. Yet we cannot doubt that Jesus Christ
truly wept1193
| 1193 The human soul in
Jesus alone could feel grief and weep: yet it was the divine
Spirit which sent forth the prophets: for the human soul began to
exist only in conjunction with His human body. | .
56. No less real were the tears He shed for
Lazarus1194
. The first
question here is, What was there to weep for in the case of
Lazarus? Not his death, for that was not unto death, but for the
glory of God: for the Lord says, That sickness is not unto
death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be honoured
through him1195
| 1195 Ib.
4. The Greek is
δι᾽
αὐτῆς, through it. | . The death
which was the cause of
God’s being glorified could not bring sorrow and tears. Nor
was there any occasion for tears in His absence from Lazarus at the
time of his death. He says plainly, Lazarus is dead, and I
rejoice for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent that ye may
believe1196
. His
absence then, which aided the Apostles’ belief, was not the cause
of His sorrow: for with the knowledge of Divine omniscience, He
declared the death of the sick man from afar. We can find, then,
no necessity for tears, yet He wept. And again I ask, To whom
must we ascribe the weeping? To God, or the soul, or the
body? The body, of itself, has no tears except those it sheds at
the command of the sorrowing soul. Far less can God have wept,
for He was to be glorified in Lazarus. Nor is it reason to say
His soul recalled Lazarus from the tomb: can a soul linked to a
body, by the power of its command, call another soul back to the dead
body from which it has departed? Can He grieve Who is about to be
glorified? Can He weep Who is about to restore the dead to
life? Tears are not for Him Who is about to give life, or grief
for Him Who is about to receive glory. Yet He Who wept and
grieved was also the Giver of life.
57. If there are many points which we treat
scantily it is not because we have nothing to say, or do not know what
has already been said; our purpose is, by abstaining from too laborious
a process of argument, to render the results as attractive as possible
to the reader. We know the deeds and words of our Lord, yet we
know them not: we are not ignorant of them, yet they cannot be
understood. The facts are real, but the power behind them is a
mystery. We will prove this from His own words, For this
reason doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life that I may
take it up again. No one taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of
Myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it
up again. This commandment received I from the
Father1197
. He lays
down His life of Himself, but I ask who lays it down? We
confess without hesitation, that Christ is God the Word: but on
the other hand, we know that the Son of Man was composed of a soul and
a body: compare the angel’s words to Joseph, Arise and
take the child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for they
are dead who sought the soul of the child1198
. Whose soul is it?
His body’s, or God’s? If His body’s, what power
has the body to lay down the soul, when it is only by the working of
the soul that it is quickened into life? Again, how could the
body, which apart from the soul is inert and dead, receive a command
from the Father? But if, on the other hand, any man suppose that
God the Word laid aside His soul, that He might take it up again, he
must prove that God the Word died, that is, remained without life and
feeling like a dead body, and took up His soul again to be quickened
once more into life by it.
58. But, further, no one who is endued with
reason can impute to God a soul; though it is written in many places
that the soul of God hates sabbaths and new moons: and also that
it delights in certain things1199
. But this
is merely a conventional expression to be understood in the same way as
when God is spoken of as possessing body, with hands, and eyes, and
fingers, and arms, and heart. As the Lord said, A Spirit hath
not flesh and bones1200
: He then Who
is, and changeth not1201
, cannot have the
limbs and parts of a tangible body. He is a simple and blessed
nature, a single, complete, all-embracing Whole. God is therefore
not quickened into life, like bodies, by the action of an indwelling
soul, but is Himself His own life.
59. How does He then lay down His soul, or
take it up again? What is the meaning of this command He
received? God could not lay it down, that is, die, or take it up
again, that is, come to life. But neither did the body receive
the command to take it up again; it could not do so of itself, for He
said of the Temple of His body, Destroy this temple and after three
days I will raise it up1202
. Thus it is
God Who raises up the temple of His body. And Who lays down His
soul to take it again? The body does not take it up again of
itself: it is raised up by God. That which is raised up
again must have been dead, and that which is living does not lay down
its soul. God then was neither dead nor buried: and yet He
said, In that she has poured this ointment upon My body she did it
for My burial1203
. In that it
was poured upon His body it was done for His burial: but the
His is not the same as Him. It is quite another use
of the pronoun when we say, ‘it was done for the burial of
Him,’ and when we say, ‘His body was
anointed:’ nor is the sense the same in ‘His
body was buried,’ and ‘He was
buried.’
60. To grasp this divine mystery we must see the
God in Him without ignoring the Man; and the Man without ignoring the
God. We must not divide Jesus Christ, for the Word was made
flesh: yet we must not call Him buried, though we know He raised Himself
again: must not doubt His resurrection, though we dare not deny
He was buried1204
| 1204 Hilary is playing on
the mystery of the two natures in one Person. We cannot say the
God-nature was buried: nor that the human nature brought itself
back to life: yet Jesus Christ died, was buried, and rose
again. | . Jesus
Christ was buried, for He died: He died, and even cried out at
the moment of death, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me? Yet He, Who uttered these words, said also:
Verily I say unto thee, This day shalt thou be with Me in
Paradise1205
, and He Who
promised Paradise to the thief cried aloud, Father, into Thy hands I
commend My Spirit; and having said this He gave up the
Ghost1206
.
61. Ye who trisect Christ into the Word, the
soul and the body, or degrade the whole Christ, even God the Word, into
a single member of our race, unfold to us this mystery of great
godliness which was manifested in the flesh1207
. What Spirit did Christ give
up? Who commended His Spirit into the hands of His Father?
Who was to be in Paradise that same day? Who complained that He
was deserted of God? The cry of the deserted betokens the
weakness of the dying: the promise of Paradise the sovereign
power of the living God. To commend His Spirit denoted
confidence: to give up His Spirit implied His departure by
death. Who then, I demand, was it Who died? Surely He Who
gave up His Spirit? but Who gave up His Spirit? Certainly He Who
commended it to His Father. And if He Who commended His Spirit is
the same as He Who gave it up and died, was it the body which commended
its soul, or God Who commended the body’s soul? I say
‘soul,’ because there is no doubt it is frequently
synonymous with ‘spirit,’ as might be gathered merely from
the language here: Jesus gave up His ‘Spirit’ when He
was on the point of death. If, therefore, you hold the conviction
that the body commended the soul, that the perishable commended the
living, the corruptible the eternal, that which was to be raised again,
that which abides unchanged, then, since He Who commended His Spirit to
the Father was also to be in Paradise with the thief that same day, I
would fain know if, while the sepulchre received Him, He was abiding in
heaven, or if He was abiding in heaven, when He cried out that God had
deserted Him.
62. It is one and the same Lord Jesus Christ, the
Word made flesh, Who expresses Himself in all these utterances, Who is
man when He says He is abandoned to death: yet while man still
rules in Paradise as God, and though reigning in Paradise, as Son of
God commends His Spirit to His Father, as Son of Man gives up to death
the Spirit He commended to the Father. Why do we then view as a
disgrace that which is a mystery? We see Him complaining that He
is left to die, because He is Man: we see Him, as He dies,
declaring that He reigned in Paradise, because He is God. Why
should we harp, to support our irreverence, on what He said to make us
understand His death, and keep back what He proclaimed to demonstrate
His immortality? The words and the voice are equally His, when He
complains of desertion, and when He declares His rule: by what
method of heretical logic do we split up our belief and deny that He
Who died was at the same time He Who rules? Did He not testify
both equally of Himself, when He commended His Spirit, and when He gave
it up? But if He is the same, Who commended His Spirit, and gave
it up, if He dies when ruling and rules when dead: then the
mystery of the Son of God and Son of Man means that He is One, Who
dying reigns, and reigning dies.
63. Stand aside then, all godless unbelievers, for
whom the divine mystery is too great, who do not know that Christ wept
not for Himself but for us, to prove the reality of His assumed manhood
by yielding to the emotion common to humanity: who do not
perceive that Christ died not for Himself, but for our life, to renew
human life by the death of the deathless God: who cannot
reconcile the complaint of the deserted with the confidence of the
Ruler: who would teach us that because He reigns as God and
complains that He is dying, we have here a dead man and the reigning
God. For He Who dies is none other than He Who reigns, He Who
commends His spirit than He Who gives it up: He Who was buried,
rose again: ascending or descending He is altogether one.
64. Listen to the teaching of the Apostle
and see in it a faith instructed not by the understanding of the flesh
but by the gift of the Spirit. The Greeks seek after wisdom,
he says, and the Jews ask for a sign; but we preach Christ crucified,
to the Jews a stumbling block, and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unto
them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ Jesus, the power of
God, God1208
. Is Christ
divided here so that Jesus the crucified is one, and Christ, the power
and wisdom of God, another? This is to the Jews a stumbling-block
and unto the Gentiles foolishness; but to us Christ Jesus is the power
of God, and the wisdom of God: wisdom, however, not known of the world, nor
understood by a secular philosophy. Hear the same blessed Apostle
when he declares that it has not been understood, We speak the
wisdom of God, which hath been hidden in a mystery, which God
foreordained before the world for our glory: which none of the
rulers of this world has known: for had they known it, they would
not have crucified the Lord of Glory1209
. Does not the Apostle know that this
wisdom of God is hidden in a mystery, and cannot be known of the rulers
of this world? Does he divide Christ into a Lord of Glory and a
crucified Jesus? Nay, rather, he contradicts this most foolish
and impious idea with the words, For I determined to know nothing
among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified1210
.
65. The Apostle knew nothing else, and he
determined to know nothing else: we men of feebler wit, and
feebler faith, split up, divide and double Jesus Christ, constituting
ourselves judges of the unknown, and blaspheming the hidden
mystery. For us Christ crucified is one, Christ the wisdom of God
another: Christ Who was buried different from Christ Who
descended from Heaven: the Son of Man not at the same time also
Son of God. We teach that which we do not understand: we
seek to refute that which we cannot grasp. We men improve upon
the revelation of God: we are not content to say with the
Apostle, Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s
elect? It is God that justifieth, who is he that
condemneth? It is Christ Jesus, that died, yea, rather, that was
raised from the dead, Who is at the right hand of God, Who also maketh
intercession for us1211
. Is He Who
intercedes for us other than He Who is at the right hand of God?
Is not He Who is at the right hand of God the very same Who rose
again? Is He Who rose again other than He Who died? He Who
died than He Who condemns us? Lastly, is not He Who condemns us
also God Who justifies us? Distinguish, if you can, Christ our
accuser from God our defender, Christ Who died from Christ Who
condemns, Christ sitting at the right hand of God and praying for us
from Christ Who died. Whether, therefore, dead or buried,
descended into Hades or ascended into Heaven, all is one and the same
Christ: as the Apostle says, Now this ‘He
ascended’ what is it, but that He also descended to the lower
parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that
ascended far above all heavens, that He may fill all
things1212
. How far
then shall we push our babbling ignorance and blasphemy, professing to
explain what is hidden in the mystery of God? He that
descended is the same also that ascended. Can we longer doubt
that the Man Christ Jesus rose from the dead, ascended above the
heavens and is at the right hand of God? We cannot say His body
descended into Hades, which lay in the grave. If then He Who
descended is one with Him, Who ascended; if His body did not go down
into Hades, yet really arose from the dead, and ascended into heaven,
what remains, except to believe in the secret mystery, which is hidden
from the world and the rulers of this age, and to confess that,
ascending or descending, He is but One, one Jesus Christ for us, Son of
God and Son of Man, God the Word and Man in the flesh, Who suffered,
died, was buried, rose again, was received into heaven, and sitteth at
the right hand of God: Who possesses in His one single self,
according to the Divine Plan and nature, in the form of God and in the
form of a servant, the Human and Divine without separation or
division.
66. So the Apostle moulding our ignorant and
haphazard ideas into conformity with truth says of this mystery of the
faith, For He was crucified through weakness but He liveth through
the power of God1213
. Preaching
the Son of Man and Son of God, Man through the Divine Plan, God through
His eternal nature, he says, that He Who was crucified through weakness
is He Who lives through the power of God. His weakness arises
from the form of a servant, His nature remains because of the
form of God. He took the form of a servant, though He was
in form of God: therefore there can be no doubt as to the mystery
according to which He both suffered and lived. There existed in
Him both weakness to suffer, and power of God to give life: and
hence He Who suffered and lived cannot be more than One, or other than
Himself.
67. The Only-begotten God suffered indeed
all that men can suffer: but let us express ourselves in the
words and faith of the Apostle. He says, For I delivered unto
you first of all how that Christ died for our sins, according to the
Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third
day according to the Scriptures1214
. This
is no unsupported statement of his own, which might lead to error, but
a warning to us to confess that Christ died and rose after a real
manner, not a nominal, since the fact is certified by the full weight
of Scripture authority; and that we must understand His death in that
exact sense in which Scripture declares it. In his
regard for the perplexities
and scruples of the weak and sensitive believer, he adds these solemn
concluding words, according to the Scriptures, to his
proclamation of the death and the resurrection. He would not have
us grow weaker, driven about by every wind of vain doctrine, or vexed
by empty subtleties and false doubts: he would summon faith to
return, before it were shipwrecked, to the haven of piety, believing
and confessing the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Son of Man
and Son of God, according to the Scriptures, this being the
safeguard of reverence against the attack of the adversary, so to
understand the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as it was
written of Him. There is no danger in faith: the reverent
confession of the hidden mystery of God is always safe. Christ
was born of the Virgin, but conceived of the Holy Ghost according to
the Scriptures. Christ wept, but according to the
Scriptures: that which made Him weep was also a cause of
joy. Christ hungered; but according to the Scriptures, He
used His power as God against the tree which bore no fruit, when He had
no food. Christ suffered: but according to the
Scriptures, He was about to sit at the right hand of Power.
He complained that He was abandoned to die: but according to
the Scriptures, at the same moment He received in His kingdom in
Paradise the thief who confessed Him. He died: but
according to the Scriptures, He rose again and sits at the right
hand of God. In the belief of this mystery there is life:
this confession resists all attack.
68. The Apostle is careful to leave no room
for doubt: we cannot say, “Christ was born, suffered, was
dead and buried, and rose again: but how, by what power, by what
division of parts of Himself? Who wept? Who rejoiced?
Who complained? Who descended? and Who ascended?” He
rests the merits of faith entirely on the confession of unquestioning
reverence. The righteousness, he says, which is of
faith saith thus, Say not in thy heart, Who hath ascended into heaven,
that is, to bring Christ down: or Who hath descended into the
abyss: that is, to bring Christ up from the dead? But what
saith the Scripture? Thy word is nigh, in thy mouth, and in thy
heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach: because if
thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in
thy heart, that God hath raised Him up from the dead, thou shalt be
saved1215
. Faith
perfects the righteous man: as it is written, Abraham believed
God and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness1216
. Did Abraham impugn the word of God,
when he was promised the inheritance of the Gentiles, and an abiding
posterity as many as the sand or the stars for multitude? To the
reverent faith, which trusts implicitly on the omnipotence of God, the
limits of human weakness are no barrier. Despising all that is
feeble and earthly in itself, it believes the divine promise, even
though it exceeds the possibilities of human nature. It knows
that the laws which govern man are no hindrance to the power of God,
Who is as bountiful in the performance as He is gracious in the
promise. Nothing is more righteous than Faith. For as in
human conduct it is equity and self-restraint that receive our
approval, so in the case of God, what is more righteous for man than to
ascribe omnipotence to Him, Whose Power He perceives to be without
limits?
69. The Apostle then looking in us for the
righteousness which is of Faith, cuts at the root of incredulous doubt
and godless unbelief. He forbids us to admit into our hearts the
cares of anxious thought, and points to the authority of the
Prophet’s words, Say not in thy heart, Who hath ascended into
heaven1217
| 1217 Deut. xxx. 12. The context is the assurance of
Moses, that “the law is not hidden from thee, neither is it far
off,” but “the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth,
and in thy heart.” | ?
Then He completes the thought of the Prophet’s words with the
addition, That is to bring Christ down. The perception of
the human mind cannot attain to the knowledge of the divine: but
neither can a reverent faith doubt the works of God. Christ
needed no human help, that any one should ascend into heaven to bring
Him down from His blessed Home to His earthly body. It was no
external force which drove Him down to the earth. We must believe
that He came, even as He did come: it is true religion to confess
Jesus Christ not brought down, but descending. The mystery both
of the time and the method of His coming, belongs to Him alone.
We may not think because He came but recently, that therefore He must
have been brought down, nor that His coming in time depended upon
another, who brought Him down.
Nor does the Apostle give room for unbelief in the
other direction. He quotes at once the words of the Prophet,
Or Who hath descended into the abyss1218
, and adds immediately the explanation,
That is to bring Christ back from the dead. He is free to
return into heaven, Who was free to descend to the earth. All
hesitation and doubt is then removed. Faith reveals what
omnipotence plans: history relates the effect, God Almighty was the
cause.
70. But there is demanded from us an
unwavering certainty. The Apostle expounding the whole secret of
the Scripture passes on, Thy word is nigh, in thy mouth and in thy
heart1219
. The words
of our confession must not be tardy or deliberately vague: there
must be no interval between heart and lips, lest what ought to be the
confession of true reverence become a subterfuge of infidelity.
The word must be near us, and within us; no delay between the heart and
the lips; a faith of conviction as well as of words. Heart and
lips must be in harmony, and reveal in thought and utterance a religion
which does not waver. Here too, as before, the Apostle adds the
explanation of the Prophet’s words, That is the word of Faith,
which we preach; because if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as
Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him up from
the dead, thou shalt be saved. Piety consists in rejecting
doubt, righteousness in believing, salvation in confessing.
Trifle not with ambiguities, be not stirred up to vain babblings, do
not debate in any way the powers of God, or impose limits upon His
might, cease searching again and again for the causes of unsearchable
mysteries: confess rather that Jesus is the Lord, and believe
that God raised Him from the dead; herein is salvation. What
folly is it to depreciate the nature and character of Christ, when this
alone is salvation, to know that He is the Lord. Again, what an
error of human vanity to quarrel about His resurrection, when it is
enough for eternal life to believe that God raised Him up. In
simplicity then is faith, in faith righteousness, and in confession
true godliness. For God does not call us to the blessed life
through arduous investigations. He does not tempt us with the
varied arts of rhetoric. The way to eternity is plain and easy;
believe that Jesus was raised from the dead by God and confess that He
is the Lord. Let no one therefore wrest into an occasion for
impiety, what was said because of our ignorance. It had to be
proved to us, that Jesus Christ died, that we might live in
Him.
71. If then He said, My God, My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me1220
, and Father,
into Thy hands I commend My Spirit1221
,
that we might be sure that He did die, was not this, in His care for
our faith, rather a scattering of our doubts, than a confession of His
weakness? When He was about to restore Lazarus, He prayed to the
Father: but what need had He of prayer, Who said, Father, I
thank Thee, that Thou hast heard Me; and I know that Thou hearest Me
always, but because of the multitude I said it, that they may believe
that Thou didst send Me1222
? He
prayed then for us, that we may know Him to be the Son; the words of
prayer availed Him nothing, but He said them for the advancement of our
faith. He was not in want of help, but we of teaching.
Again He prayed to be glorified; and immediately was heard from heaven
the voice of God the Father glorifying Him: but when they
wondered at the voice, He said, This voice hath not come for My
sake, but for your sakes1223
. The
Father is besought for us, He speaks for us: may all this lead us
to believe and confess! The answer of the Glorifier is granted
not to the prayer for glory, but to the ignorance of the
bystanders: must we not then regard the complaint of suffering,
when He found His greatest joy in suffering, as intended for the
building up of our faith? Christ prayed for His persecutors,
because they knew not what they did. He promised Paradise from
the cross, because He is God the King. He rejoiced upon the
cross, that all was finished when He drank the vinegar, because He had
fulfilled all prophecy before He died. He was born for us,
suffered for us, died for us, rose again for us. This alone is
necessary for our salvation, to confess the Son of God risen from the
dead: why then should we die in this state of godless
unbelief? If Christ, ever secure of His divinity, made clear to
us His death, Himself indifferent to death, yet dying to assure that it
was true humanity that He had assumed: why should we use this
very confession of the Son of God that for us He became Son of Man and
died as the chief weapon to deny His divinity?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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