Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Concerning His Fear.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XXIII.—Concerning His Fear.
The word fear has a double meaning. For fear
is natural when the soul is unwilling to be separated from the body, on
account of the natural sympathy and close relationship planted in it in
the beginning by the Creator, which makes it fear and struggle against
death and pray for an escape from it. It may be defined
thus: natural fear is the force whereby we cling to being with
shrinking2216
| 2216 Max.,
Dial. cum Pyrrh. | . For if
all things were brought by the Creator out of nothing into being, they
all have by nature a longing after being and not after non-being.
Moreover the inclination towards those things that support existence is
a natural property of them. Hence God the Word when He became man
had this longing, manifesting, on the one hand, in those things that
support existence, the inclination of His nature in desiring food and
drink and sleep, and having in a natural manner made proof of these
things, while on the other hand displaying in those things that bring
corruption His natural disinclination in voluntarily shrinking in the
hour of His passion before the face of death. For although what
happened did so according to the laws of nature, yet it was not, as in
our case, a matter of necessity. For He willingly and
spontaneously accepted that which was natural. So that fear
itself and terror and agony belong to the natural and innocent passions
and are not under the dominion of sin.
Again, there is a fear which arises from treachery of
reasoning and want of faith, and ignorance of the hour of death, as
when we are at night affected by fear at some chance noise. This
is unnatural fear, and may be thus defined: unnatural fear is an
unexpected shrinking. This our Lord did not assume. Hence
He never felt fear except in the hour of His passion, although He often
experienced a feeling of shrinking in accordance with the
dispensation. For He was not ignorant of the appointed time.
But the holy Athanasius in his discourse against
Apollinarius says that He did actually feel fear.
“Wherefore the Lord said: Now is My soul
troubled2217
. The
‘now’ indeed means just ‘when He willed,’ but
yet points to what actually was. For He did not speak of what was
not, as though it were present, as if the things that were said only
apparently happened. For all things happened naturally and
actually.” And again, after some other matters, he says,
“In nowise does His divinity admit passion apart from a suffering
body, nor yet does it manifest trouble and pain apart from a pained and
troubled soul, nor does it suffer anguish and offer up prayer apart
from a mind that suffered anguish and offered up prayer. For,
although these occurrences were not due to any overthrow of nature, yet
they took place to shew forth His real being2218
| 2218 S. Athanas.,
De salutari adventu Christi, contra Apollinarem towards the
end. | .” The words “these
occurrences were not due to any overthrow of His nature,” prove
that it was not involuntarily that He endured these
things.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
