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| Chapter VII. The resolution of the difficulty set forth for consideration is again taken in hand. Christ truly and really took upon Him a human will and affections, the source of whatsoever was not in agreement with His Godhead, and which must be therefore referred to the fact that He was at the same time both God and man.
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Chapter VII.
The resolution of the difficulty set forth for
consideration is again taken in hand. Christ truly and really
took upon Him a human will and affections, the source of whatsoever was
not in agreement with His Godhead, and which must be therefore referred
to the fact that He was at the same time both God and man.
52. There is,
therefore, unity of will where there is unity of working; for in God
His will issues straightway in actual effect. But the will of God
is one, and the human will another. Further, to show that life is
the object of human will, because we fear death, whilst the passion of
Christ depended on the Divine Will, that He should suffer for us, the
Lord said, when Peter would have detained Him from suffering:
“Thou savourest not of the things which be of God, but the things
which be of men.”1970
53. My will, therefore, He took to Himself, my
grief. In confidence I call it grief, because I preach His
Cross. Mine is the will which He called His own, for as man He
bore my grief, as man He spake, and therefore said, “Not as I
will, but as Thou wilt.” Mine was the grief, and mine the
heaviness with which He bore it, for no man exults when at the point to
die. With me and for me He suffers, for me He is sad, for me He
is heavy. In my stead, therefore, and in me He grieved Who had no
cause to grieve for Himself.
54. Not Thy wounds, but mine, hurt Thee,
Lord Jesus; not Thy death, but our weakness, even as the Prophet
saith: “For He is afflicted for our sakes”1971
—and we, Lord, esteemed Thee
afflicted, when Thou grievedst not for Thyself, but for me.
55. And what wonder if He grieved for all,
Who wept for one? What wonder if, in the hour of death, He is
heavy for all, Who wept when at the point to raise Lazarus from the
dead? Then, indeed, He was moved by a loving
sister’s tears, for they touched His human heart,—here by
secret grief He brought it to pass that, even as His death made an end
of death, and His stripes healed our scars, so also His sorrow took
away our sorrow.1972
| 1972 It is a very
beautiful doctrine of the Fathers that Christ submitted to the
conditions and experiences of our life in order to restore and sanctify
and endue them with the virtue of His merits. Hence Thomassini,
after the Fathers, thus discourses in his treatise on the
Incarnation: “The Fathers have been careful to attribute to
the Word of God” (incarnate) “not only the physical
parts—body and soul—but even the smallest and most
particular things: grief, fear, tears; and all the
emotions: conception, birth, babyhood; all the stages of life and
growth: hunger, thirst, fatigue, and sadness, in order that a
remedy might be applied at every place where sin had crept in, and
that, as death had corrupted all, so upon all might the water of life
be sprinkled.” Gregory of Nazianzus strikingly observes
(Or. 37): “Perchance indeed He sleeps, in order to
bless sleep: perchance, again, He is weary, in order to sanctify
weariness: and perchance weeps, to give dignity to
tears.” Hurter ad loc., who also cites Cyril of
Alexandria on S. John xii. 27—“You will find each and every
human experience duly represented in Christ, and that the affections of
the flesh were called out into energy, not that, as in us, they might
gain the upper hand, but that, by the might of the Word dwelling in
flesh, they might be tamed and kept within bounds, and our nature
transformed into a better state.” |
56. As being man, therefore, He doubts; as
man He is amazed. Neither His power nor His Godhead is amazed,
but His soul; He is amazed by consequence of having taken human
infirmity upon Him. Seeing, then, that He took upon Himself a
soul He also took the affections of a soul,1973
| 1973 Such as
Aristotle enumerates in the Ethics, II. ch. 4 (5). | for God could not have been distressed
or have died in respect of His being God. Finally, He
cried: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me?”1974
| 1974 Ps. xxii. 1; S. Matt. xxviii. 46; S. Mark xv.
34. | As being
man, therefore, He speaks, bearing with Him my terrors, for when we are
in the midst of dangers we think ourself abandoned by God. As
man, therefore, He is distressed, as man He weeps, as man He is
crucified.
57. For so hath the Apostle Paul likewise
said: “Because they have crucified the flesh of
Christ.”1975
And again
the Apostle Peter saith: “Christ having suffered according
to the flesh.”1976
It was
the flesh, therefore, that suffered; the Godhead above secure from
death; to suffering His body yielded, after the law of human nature;
can the Godhead die, then, if the soul cannot? “Fear not
them,” said our Lord, “which can kill the body, but cannot
kill the soul.”1977
If the
soul, then, cannot be killed, how can the Godhead?
58. When we read, then, that the Lord of
glory was crucified, let us not suppose that He was crucified as in His
glory.1978
It is
because He Who is God is also man, God by virtue of His Divinity, and
by taking upon Him of the flesh, the man Christ Jesus, that the Lord of
glory is said to have been crucified; for, possessing both natures,
that is,
the human and
the divine, He endured the Passion in His humanity, in order that
without distinction He Who suffered should be called both Lord of glory
and Son of man, even as it is written: “Who descended from
heaven.”1979
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