Athanasius On The Incarnation
By C.S. Lewis
Athanasius stood contra mundum ("against the world") in defense of the biblical doctrine of Christ. He opposed Arius when it seemed all the world would follow Arius's heresy. Athanasius's work remains even today one of the definitive statements of orthodox Trinitarianism.
Introduction
by C. S. Lewis
There is a strange idea abroad that in
every subject the ancient books should be read only by the
professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the
modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature
that if the average student wants to find out something about
Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a
translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium.
He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all
about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling
him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one,
for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet
one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself
inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only
knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more
intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student
will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of
what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books
on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main
endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand
knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand
knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to
acquire.
This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness
of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever
you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost
certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St.
Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or
M. Maritain or M. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.
Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am
a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern
books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would
advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice
precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less
protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive
contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the
amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested
against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all
its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself)
have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood
without the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you
join at eleven o'clock a conversation which began at eight you will
often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem
to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you
will not see why—the reason, of course, being that the earlier
stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the
same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may
be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to
accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its
real significance. The only safety is to have a standard of plain,
central Christianity ("mere Christianity" as Baxter called it)
which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper
perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old
books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow
yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.
If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one
to every three new ones.
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing
certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We
all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic
mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All
contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary
outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it.
Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages
than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without
question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They
thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be,
but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with
each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of
common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic
blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which
posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies
where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about
which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President
Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us
can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase
it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books.
Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew
already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with
which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to
keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our
minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of
course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no
cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we.
But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors
we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and
palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not
because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go
wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future
would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but
unfortunately we cannot get at them.
I myself was first led into reading the Christian classics,
almost accidentally, as a result of my English studies. Some, such
as Hooker, Herbert, Traherne, Taylor and Bunyan, I read because
they are themselves great English writers; others, such as
Boethius, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Dante, because they
were "influences." George Macdonald I had found for myself at the
age of sixteen and never wavered in my allegiance, though I tried
for a long time to ignore his Christianity. They are, you will
note, a mixed bag, representative of many Churches, climates and
ages. And that brings me to yet another reason for reading them.
The divisions of Christendom are undeniable and are by some of
these writers most fiercely expressed. But if any man is tempted
to think—as one might be tempted who read only con-
temporaries—that "Christianity" is a word of so many meanings that
it means nothing at all, he can learn beyond all doubt, by stepping
out of his own century, that this is not so. Measured against the
ages "mere Christianity" turns out to be no insipid
interdenominational transparency, but something positive,
self-consistent, and inexhaustible. I know it, indeed, to my cost.
In the days when I still hated Christianity, I learned to
recognise, like some all too familiar smell, that almost unvarying
something which met me, now in Puritan Bunyan, now in Anglican
Hooker, now in Thomist Dante. It was there (honeyed and floral) in
Francois de Sales; it was there (grave and homely) in Spenser and
Walton; it was there (grim but manful) in Pascal and Johnson; there
again, with a mild, frightening, Paradisial flavour, in Vaughan and
Boehme and Traherne. In the urban sobriety of the eighteenth
century one was not safe—Law and Butler were two lions in the
path. The supposed "Paganism" of the Elizabethans could not keep
it out; it lay in wait where a man might have supposed himself
safest, in the very centre of The Faerie Queene and the Arcadia.
It was, of course, varied; and yet—after all—so unmistakably the
same; recognisable, not to be evaded, the odour which is death to
us until we allow it to become life:
From yon far country blows.
We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well our enemies know it. That unity any of us can find by going out of his own age. It is not enough, but it is more than you had thought till then. Once you are well soaked in it, if you then venture to speak, you will have an amusing experience. You will be thought a Papist when you are actually reproducing Bunyan, a Pantheist when you are quoting Aquinas, and so forth. For you have now got on to the great level viaduct which crosses the ages and which looks so high from the valleys, so low from the mountains, so narrow compared with the swamps, and so broad compared with the sheep-tracks.
The present book is something of an experiment. The translation is intended for the world at large, not only for theological students. If it succeeds, other translations of other great Christian books will presumably follow. In one sense, of course, it is not the first in the field. Translations of the Theologia Germanica, the Imitation, the Scale of Perfection, and the Revelations of Lady Julian of Norwich, are already on the market, and are very valuable, though some of them are not very scholarly. But it will be noticed that these are all books of devotion rather than of doctrine. Now the layman or amateur needs to be instructed as well as to be exhorted. In this age his need for knowledge is particularly pressing. Nor would I admit any sharp division between the two kinds of book. For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.
This is a good translation of a very great book. St. Athanasius has suffered in popular estimation from a certain sentence in the "Athanasian Creed." I will not labour the point that that work is not exactly a creed and was not by St. Athanasius, for I think it is a very fine piece of writing. The words "Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly" are the offence. They are commonly misunderstood. The operative word is keep; not acquire, or even believe, but keep. The author, in fact, is not talking about unbelievers, but about deserters, not about those who have never heard of Christ, nor even those who have misunderstood and refused to accept Him, but of those who having really understood and really believed, then allow themselves, under the sway of sloth or of fashion or any other invited confusion to be drawn away into sub-Christian modes of thought. They are a warning against the curious modern assumption that all changes of belief, however brought about, are necessarily exempt from blame. But this is not my immediate concern. I mention "the creed (commonly called) of St. Athanasius" only to get out of the reader's way what may have been a bogey and to put the true Athanasius in its place. His epitaph is Athanasius contra mundum, "Athanasius against the world." We are proud that our own country has more than once stood against the world. Athanasius did the same. He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, "whole and undefiled," when it looked as if all the civilised world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius—into one of those "sensible" synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivated clergymen. It is his glory that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have moved away.
When I first opened his De Incarnatione I soon discovered by a very simple test that I was reading a masterpiece. I knew very little Christian Greek except that of the New Testament and I had expected difficulties. To my astonishment I found it almost as easy as Xenophon; and only a master mind could, in the fourth century, have written so deeply on such a subject with such classical simplicity. Every page I read confirmed this impression. His approach to the Miracles is badly needed today, for it is the final answer to those who object to them as "arbitrary and meaningless violations of the laws of Nature." They are here shown to be rather the re-telling in capital letters of the same message which Nature writes in her crabbed cursive hand; the very operations one would expect of Him who was so full of life that when He wished to die He had to "borrow death from others." The whole book, indeed, is a picture of the Tree of Life—a sappy and golden book, full of buoyancy and confidence. We cannot, I admit, appropriate all its confidence today. We cannot point to the high virtue of Christian living and the gay, almost mocking courage of Christian martyrdom, as a proof of our doctrines with quite that assurance which Athanasius takes as a matter of course. But whoever may be to blame for that it is not Athanasius.
The translator knows so much more Christian Greek than I that it would be out of place for me to praise her version. But it seems to me to be in the right tradition of English translation. I do not think the reader will find here any of that sawdusty quality which is so common in modern renderings from the ancient languages. That is as much as the English reader will notice; those who compare the version with the original will be able to estimate how much wit and talent is presupposed in such a choice, for example, as "these wiseacres" on the very first page.
Creation And The Fall
(1)
In our former book we dealt fully enough with
a few of the chief points about the heathen worship of idols, and how those false fears originally arose. We also, by
God's grace, briefly indicated that the Word of the Father is Himself divine, that all things that are owe their being
to His will and power, and that it is through Him that the Father gives order to creation, by Him that all things are
moved, and through Him that they receive their being. Now, Macarius, true lover of Christ, we must take a step
further in the faith of our holy religion, and consider also the Word's becoming Man and His divine Appearing in
our midst. That mystery the Jews traduce, the Greeks deride, but we adore; and your own love and devotion to the
Word also will be the greater, because in His Manhood He seems so little worth. For it is a fact that the more
unbelievers pour scorn on Him, so much the more does He make His Godhead evident. The things which they, as
men, rule out as impossible, He plainly shows to be possible; that which they deride as unfitting, His goodness makes
most fit; and things which these wiseacres laugh at as "human" He by His inherent might declares divine. Thus by
what seems His utter poverty and weakness on the cross He overturns the pomp and parade of idols, and quietly and
hiddenly wins over the mockers and unbelievers to recognize Him as God.
Now in dealing with these matters it is necessary first to recall what has already been said. You must
understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been made manifest in bodily form. He
has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been
manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us
men. We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must
grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the
beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the
same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the
beginning.
(2) In regard to the making of the universe and the creation of all things there have been various opinions, and
each person has propounded the theory that suited his own taste. For instance, some say that all things are self-
originated and, so to speak, haphazard. The Epicureans are among these; they deny that there is any Mind behind
the universe at all. This view is contrary to all the facts of experience, their own existence included. For if all things
had come into being in this automatic fashion, instead of being the outcome of Mind, though they existed, they
would all be uniform and without distinction. In the universe everything would be sun or moon or whatever it was,
and in the human body the whole would be hand or eye or foot. But in point of fact the sun and the moon and the
earth are all different things, and even within the human body there are different members, such as foot and hand
and head. This distinctness of things argues not a spontaneous generation but a prevenient Cause; and from that
Cause we can apprehend God, the Designer and Maker of all.
Others take the view expressed by Plato, that giant among the Greeks. He said that God had made all things
out of pre-existent and uncreated matter, just as the carpenter makes things only out of wood that already exists. But
those who hold this view do not realize that to deny that God is Himself the Cause of matter is to impute limitation
to Him, just as it is undoubtedly a limitation on the part of the carpenter that he can make nothing unless he has the
wood. How could God be called Maker and Artificer if His ability to make depended on some other cause, namely
on matter itself? If He only worked up existing matter and did not Himself bring matter into being, He would be not
the Creator but only a craftsman.
Then, again, there is the theory of the Gnostics, who have invented for themselves an Artificer of all things
other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. These simply shut their eyes to the obvious meaning of Scripture.
For instance, the Lord, having reminded the Jews of the statement in Genesis, "He Who created them in the
beginning made them male and female. . . ," and having shown that for that reason a man should leave his parents
and cleave to his wife, goes on to say with reference to the Creator, "What therefore God has joined
together, let no man put asunder." How can they get a creation
independent of the Father out of that? And, again, St. John, speaking all inclusively, says, "All things became by Him
and without Him came nothing into being. How then could the
Artificer be someone different, other than the Father of Christ?
(3)Such are the notions which men put forward. But the impiety of their foolish talk is plainly declared by the
divine teaching of the Christian faith. From it we know that, because there is Mind behind the universe, it did not
originate itself; because God is infinite, not finite, it was not made from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing and
out of non-existence absolute and utter God brought it into being through the Word. He says as much in Genesis:
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; and
again through that most helpful book The Shepherd, "Believe thou first and foremost that there is One
God Who created and arranged all things and brought them out of non-existence into being." Paul also indicates the same thing when he says, "By faith we
understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which we see now did not come into
being out of things which had previously appeared." For God is
good—or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging
about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, He made all things out of nothing through His own Word, our
Lord Jesus Christ and of all these His earthly creatures He reserved especial mercy for the race of men. Upon them,
therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures
lacked—namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that,
reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in
limited degree they might continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise. But since the
will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first
upon two things—namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single
prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise
should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went
astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of
death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. This is what Holy
Scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, "Of every tree that is in the garden thou shalt surely eat, but of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die." "Ye shall surely die"—not just die only, but remain in the
state of death and of corruption.
(4) You may be wondering why we are discussing the origin of men when we set out to talk about the Word's
becoming Man. The former subject is relevant to the latter for this reason: it was our sorry case that caused the
Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to
appear among us. It is we who were the cause of His taking human form, and for our salvation that in His great love
He was both born and manifested in a human body. For God had made man thus (that is, as an embodied spirit),
and had willed that he should remain in incorruption. But men, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil
of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God
had created them, they were in process of becoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its
dominion. For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature;
and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning,
through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being;
inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists,
evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from
nothing; but he bears also the Likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that Likeness through constant
contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it affirmed in Wisdom: "The
keeping of His laws is the assurance of incorruption." And being
incorrupt, he would be henceforth as God, as Holy Scripture says, "I have said, Ye are gods and sons of the Highest
all of you: but ye die as men and fall as one of the princes."
(5) This, then, was the plight of men. God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously
bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word. Then, turning from eternal things to things corruptible, by
counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, though they
were by nature subject to corruption, the grace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping from
the natural law, provided that they retained the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is to say, the
presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption, as also Wisdom says:
God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered
into the world." When this happened, men began to die, and
corruption ran riot among them and held sway over them to an even more than natural degree, because it was the
penalty of which God had forewarned them for transgressing the commandment. Indeed, they had in their sinning
surpassed all limits; for, having invented wickedness in the beginning and so involved themselves in death and
corruption, they had gone on gradually from bad to worse, not stopping at any one kind of evil, but continually, as
with insatiable appetite, devising new kinds of sins. Adulteries and thefts were everywhere, murder and rapine filled
the earth, law was disregarded in corruption and injustice, all kinds of iniquities were perpetrated by all, both singly
and in common. Cities were warring with cities, nations were rising against nations, and the whole earth was rent
with factions and battles, while each strove to outdo the other in wickedness. Even crimes contrary to nature were
not unknown, but as the martyr-apostle of Christ says: "Their women changed the natural use into that which is
against nature; and the men also, leaving the natural use of the woman, flamed out in lust towards each other,
perpetrating shameless acts with their own sex, and receiving in their own persons the due recompense of their
pervertedness."
2
The Divine Dilemma and Its Solution in the Incarnation
(6)
We saw in the last chapter that, because death and corruption were gaining
ever firmer hold on them, the human race was in process of destruction. Man, who was created in God's image and
in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being
undone. The law of death, which followed from the Transgression, prevailed upon us, and from it there was no
escape. The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting. It would, of course, have been
unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was
equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into
non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be
brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work
of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As,
then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works
were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption and death have their
way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been
better never to have been created at all than, having been created, to be neglected and perish; and, besides that, such
indifference to the ruin of His own work before His very eyes would argue not goodness in God but limitation, and
that far more than if He had never created men at all. It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be
carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.
(7) Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God,
the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He
could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their
transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they
became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would
not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor
does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from
sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well
enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature
and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not
meet the case. What—or rather Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required?
Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was,
and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of
character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate
all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.
(8) For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In
one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever
abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to
our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself,
expressed the Father's Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw that
corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it
would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which
He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting
up against them; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with
compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures
should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body
even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have
revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He
took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father—a pure body, untainted by
intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple
for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt.
Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His
body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death
all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was
appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men
who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the
grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.
(9) The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death; yet He Himself,
as the Word, being immortal and the Father's Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed
a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a
sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to
corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. It was by surrendering to death the body which He
had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for His human
brethren by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His
own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required.
Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with
incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word's
indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all. You know how it
is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single
house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He
has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy
against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply
ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God,
come among us to put an end to death.
(10) This great work was, indeed, supremely worthy of the goodness of God. A king who has founded a city, so
far from neglecting it when through the carelessness of the inhabitants it is attacked by robbers, avenges it and saves
it from destruction, having regard rather to his own honor than to the people's neglect. Much more, then, the Word
of the All-good Father was not unmindful of the human race that He had called to be; but rather, by the offering of
His own body He abolished the death which they had incurred, and corrected their neglect by His own teaching.
Thus by His own power He restored the whole nature of man. The Savior's own inspired disciples assure us of this.
We read in one place: " For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that, if One died on behalf of
all, then all died, and He died for all that we should no longer live unto ourselves, but unto Him who died and rose
again from the dead, even our Lord Jesus Christ." And again
another says: "But we behold Him Who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the
suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He should taste of death on behalf of
every man." The same writer goes on to point out why it was necessary for God the Word and none other to become
Man: "For it became Him, for Whom are all things and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto
glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering. He means that the rescue of mankind from corruption was the
proper part only of Him Who made them in the beginning. He points out also that the Word assumed a human
body, expressly in order that He might offer it in sacrifice for other like bodies: "Since then the children are sharers
in flesh and blood, He also Himself assumed the same, in order that through death He might bring to nought Him
that hath the power of death, that is to say, the Devil, and might rescue those who all their lives were enslaved by the
fear of death." For by the sacrifice of His own body He did two
things: He put an end to the law of death which barred our way; and He made a new beginning of life for us, by
giving us the hope of resurrection. By man death has gained its power over men; by the Word made Man death has
been destroyed and life raised up anew. That is what Paul says, that true servant of Christ: For since by man came
death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Just as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive," and so forth. Now, therefore, when we die we no longer
do so as men condemned to death, but as those who are even now in process of rising we await the general
resurrection of all, "which in its own times He shall show," even
God Who wrought it and bestowed it on us.
This, then, is the first cause of the Savior's becoming Man. There are, however, other things which show how
wholly fitting is His blessed presence in our midst; and these we must now go on to consider.
3
The Divine Dilemma and Its Solution in the Incarnation—continued
(11)
When God the Almighty was making mankind through His own Word, He
perceived that they, owing to the limitation of their nature, could not of themselves have any knowledge of their
Artificer, the Incorporeal and Uncreated. He took pity on them, therefore, and did not leave them destitute of the
knowledge of Himself, lest their very existence should prove purposeless. For of what use is existence to the creature
if it cannot know its Maker? How could men be reasonable beings if they had no knowledge of the Word and
Reason of the Father, through Whom they had received their being? They would be no better than the beasts, had
they no knowledge save of earthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them
to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ,
and has made even themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of
Godlikeness in themselves they may be able to perceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through
Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed
life.
But, as we have already seen, men, foolish as they are, thought little of the grace they had received, and turned
away from God. They defiled their own soul so completely that they not only lost their apprehension of God, but
invented for themselves other gods of various kinds. They fashioned idols for themselves in place of the truth and
reverenced things that are not, rather than God Who is, as St. Paul says, "worshipping the creature rather than the
Creator." Moreover, and much worse, they transferred the honor
which is due to God to material objects such as wood and stone, and also to man; and further even than that they
went, as we said in our former book. Indeed, so impious were they that they worshipped evil spirits as gods in
satisfaction of their lusts. They sacrificed brute beasts and immolated men, as the just due of these deities, thereby
bringing themselves more and more under their insane control. Magic arts also were taught among them, oracles in
sundry places led men astray, and the cause of everything in human life was traced to the stars as though nothing
existed but that which could be seen. In a word, impiety and lawlessness were everywhere, and neither God nor His
Word was known. Yet He had not hidden Himself from the sight of men nor given the knowledge of Himself in one
way only; but rather He had unfolded it in many forms and by many ways.
(12) God knew the limitation of mankind, you see; and though the grace of being made in His Image was
sufficient to give them knowledge of the Word and through Him of the Father, as a safeguard against their neglect of
this grace, He provided the works of creation also as means by which the Maker might be known. Nor was this all.
Man's neglect of the indwelling grace tends ever to increase; and against this further frailty also God made provision
by giving them a law, and by sending prophets, men whom they knew. Thus, if they were tardy in looking up to
heaven, they might still gain knowledge of their Maker from those close at hand; for men can learn directly about
higher things from other men. Three ways thus lay open to them, by which they might obtain the knowledge of God.
They could look up into the immensity of heaven, and by pondering the harmony of creation come to know its Ruler,
the Word of the Father, Whose all-ruling providence makes known the Father to all. Or, if this was beyond them,
they could converse with holy men, and through them learn to know God, the Artificer of all things, the Father of
Christ, and to recognize the worship of idols as the negation of the truth and full of all impiety. Or else, in the third
place, they could cease from lukewarmness and lead a good life merely by knowing the law. For the law was not
given only for the Jews, nor was it solely for their sake that God sent the prophets, though it was to the Jews that
they were sent and by the Jews that they were persecuted. The law and the prophets were a sacred school of the
knowledge of God and the conduct of the spiritual life for the whole world.
So great, indeed, were the goodness and the love of God. Yet men, bowed down by the pleasures of the
moment and by the frauds and illusions of the evil spirits, did not lift up their heads towards the truth. So burdened
were they with their wickednesses that they seemed rather to be brute beasts than reasonable men, reflecting the very
Likeness of the Word.
(13) What was God to do in face of this dehumanising of mankind, this universal hiding of the knowledge of
Himself by the wiles of evil spirits? Was He to keep silence before so great a wrong and let men go on being thus
deceived and kept in ignorance of Himself? If so, what was the use of having made them in His own Image
originally? It would surely have been better for them always to have been brutes, rather than to revert to that
condition when once they had shared the nature of the Word. Again, things being as they were, what was the use of
their ever having had the knowledge of God? Surely it would have been better for God never to have bestowed it,
than that men should subsequently be found unworthy to receive it. Similarly, what possible profit could it be to God
Himself, Who made men, if when made they did not worship Him, but regarded others as their makers? This would
be tantamount to His having made them for others and not for Himself. Even an earthly king, though he is only a
man, does not allow lands that he has colonized to pass into other hands or to desert to other rulers, but sends
letters and friends and even visits them himself to recall them to their allegiance, rather than allow His work to be
undone. How much more, then, will God be patient and painstaking with His creatures, that they be not led astray
from Him to the service of those that are not, and that all the more because such error means for them sheer ruin,
and because it is not right that those who had once shared His Image should be destroyed.
What, then, was God to do? What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Image in mankind, so
that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this be done save by the coming of the
very Image Himself, our Savior Jesus Christ? Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image;
nor could angels have done it, for they are not the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person,
because it was He alone, the Image of the Father Who could recreate man made after the Image.
In order to effect this re-creation, however, He had first to do away with death and corruption. Therefore He
assumed a human body, in order that in it death might once for all be destroyed, and that men might be renewed
according to the Image. The Image of the Father only was sufficient for this need. Here is an illustration to prove
it.
(14) You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through
external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it
again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the
Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and
seek out His lost sheep, even as He says in the Gospel: "I came to seek and to save that which was lost. This also explains His saying to the Jews: "Except a man be born
anew . . ." a He was not referring to a man's natural birth from
his mother, as they thought, but to the re-birth and re-creation of the soul in the Image of God.
Nor was this the only thing which only the Word could do. When the madness of idolatry and irreligion filled
the world and the knowledge of God was hidden, whose part was it to teach the world about the Father? Man's,
would you say? But men cannot run everywhere over the world, nor would their words carry sufficient weight if they
did, nor would they be, unaided, a match for the evil spirits. Moreover, since even the best of men were confused
and blinded by evil, how could they convert the souls and minds of others? You cannot put straight in others what is
warped in yourself. Perhaps you will say, then, that creation was enough to teach men about the Father. But if that
had been so, such great evils would never have occurred. Creation was there all the time, but it did not prevent men
from wallowing in error. Once more, then, it was the Word of God, Who sees all that is in man and moves all things
in creation, Who alone could meet the needs of the situation. It was His part and His alone, Whose ordering of the
universe reveals the Father, to renew the same teaching. But how was He to do it? By the same means as before,
perhaps you will say, that is, through the works of creation. But this was proven insufficient. Men had neglected to
consider the heavens before, and now they were looking in the opposite direction. Wherefore, in all naturalness and
fitness. desiring to do good to men, as Man He dwells, taking to Himself a body like the rest; and through His
actions done in that body, as it were on their own level, He teaches those who would not learn by other means to
know Himself, the Word of God, and through Him the Father.
(15) He deals with them as a good teacher with his pupils, coming down to their level and using simple means.
St. Paul says as much: "Because in the wisdom of God the world in its wisdom knew not God, God thought fit
through the simplicity of the News proclaimed to save those who believe." Men had turned from the contemplation of God above, and were
looking for Him in the opposite direction, down among created things and things of sense. The Savior of us all, the
Word of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to
speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things
might apprehend the Father through the works which He, the Word of God, did in the body. Human and human
minded as men were, therefore, to whichever side they looked in the sensible world they found themselves taught the
truth. Were they awe-stricken by creation? They beheld it confessing Christ as Lord. Did their minds tend to regard
men as Gods? The uniqueness of the Savior's works marked Him, alone of men, as Son of God. Were they drawn to
evil spirits? They saw them driven out by the Lord and learned that the Word of God alone was God and that the
evil spirits were not gods at all. Were they inclined to hero-worship and the cult of the dead? Then the fact that the
Savior had risen from the dead showed them how false these other deities were, and that the Word of the Father is
the one true Lord, the Lord even of death. For this reason was He both born and manifested as Man, for this He
died and rose, in order that, eclipsing by His works all other human deeds, He might recall men from all the paths of
error to know the Father. As He says Himself, "I came to seek and to save that which was lost."
(16) When, then, the minds of men had fallen finally to the level of sensible things, the Word submitted to
appear in a body, in order that He, as Man, might center their senses on Himself, and convince them through His
human acts that He Himself is not man only but also God, the Word and Wisdom of the true God. This is what Paul
wants to tell us when he says: "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the
saints what is the length and breadth and height and depth, and to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge,
so that ye may be filled unto all the fullness of God." The Self-
revealing of the Word is in every dimension—above, in creation; below, in the Incarnation; in the depth, in Hades; in
the breadth, throughout the world. All things have been filled with the knowledge of God.
For this reason He did not offer the sacrifice on behalf of all immediately He came, for if He had surrendered
His body to death and then raised it again at once He would have ceased to be an object of our senses. Instead of
that, He stayed in His body and let Himself be seen in it, doing acts and giving signs which showed Him to be not
only man, but also God the Word. There were thus two things which the Savior did for us by becoming Man. He
banished death from us and made us anew; and, invisible and imperceptible as in Himself He is, He became visible
through His works and revealed Himself as the Word of the Father, the Ruler and King of the whole creation.
(17) There is a paradox in this last statement which we must now examine. The Word was not hedged in by His
body, nor did His presence in the body prevent His being present elsewhere as well. When He moved His body He
did not cease also to direct the universe by His Mind and might. No. The marvelous truth is, that being the Word, so
far from being Himself contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself. In creation He is present
everywhere, yet is distinct in being from it; ordering, directing, giving life to all, containing all, yet is He Himself the
Uncontained, existing solely in His Father. As with the whole, so also is it with the part. Existing in a human body, to
which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the
whole; and He is revealed both through the works of His body and through His activity in the world. It is, indeed,
the function of soul to behold things that are outside the body, but it cannot energize or move them. A
man cannot transport things from one place to another, for instance, merely by thinking about them; nor can you or
I move the sun and the stars just by sitting at home and looking at them. With the Word of God in His human
nature, however, it was otherwise. His body was for Him not a limitation, but an instrument, so that He was both in
it and in all things, and outside all things, resting in the Father alone. At one and the same time—this is the wonder—
as Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in
constant union with the Father. Not even His birth from a virgin, therefore, changed Him in any way, nor was He
defiled by being in the body. Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it. For His being in everything does not
mean that He shares the nature of everything, only that He gives all things their being and sustains them in it. Just as
the sun is not defiled by the contact of its rays with earthly objects, but rather enlightens and purifies them, so He
Who made the sun is not defiled by being made known in a body, but rather the body is cleansed and quickened by
His indwelling, "Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth."
(18) You must understand, therefore, that when writers on this sacred theme speak of Him as eating and
drinking and being born, they mean that the body, as a body, was born and sustained with the food proper to its
nature; while God the Word, Who was united with it, was at the same time ordering the universe and revealing
Himself through His bodily acts as not man only but God. Those acts are rightly said to be His acts, because the
body which did them did indeed belong to Him and none other; moreover, it was right that they should be thus
attributed to Him as Man, in order to show that His body was a real one and not merely an appearance. From such
ordinary acts as being born and taking food, He was recognized as being actually present in the body; but by the
extraordinary acts which He did through the body He proved Himself to be the Son of God. That is the meaning of
His words to the unbelieving Jews: "If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not; but if I do, even if ye believe
not Me, believe My works, that ye may know that the Father is in Me and I in the Father."
Invisible in Himself, He is known from the works of creation; so also, when His Godhead is veiled in human
nature, His bodily acts still declare Him to be not man only, but the Power and Word of God. To speak
authoritatively to evil spirits, for instance, and to drive them out, is not human but divine; and who could see-Him
curing all the diseases to which mankind is prone, and still deem Him mere man and not also God? He cleansed
lepers, He made the lame to walk, He opened the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind, there was no sickness or
weakness that-He did not drive away. Even the most casual observer can see that these were acts of God. The
healing of the man born blind, for instance, who but the Father and Artificer of man, the Controller of his whole
being, could thus have restored the faculty denied at birth? He Who did thus must surely be Himself the Lord of
birth. This is proved also at the outset of His becoming Man. He formed His own body from the virgin; and that is
no small proof of His Godhead, since He Who made that was the Maker of all else. And would not anyone infer
from the fact of that body being begotten of a virgin only, without human father, that He Who appeared in it was
also the Maker and Lord of all beside?
Again, consider the miracle at Cana. Would not anyone who saw the substance of water transmuted into wine
understand that He Who did it was the Lord and Maker of the water that He changed? It was for the same reason
that He walked on the sea as on dry land—to prove to the onlookers that He had mastery over all. And the feeding
of the multitude, when He made little into much, so that from five loaves five thousand mouths were filled—did not
that prove Him none other than the very Lord Whose Mind is over all?
4
The Death of Christ
(19)
All these things the Savior thought fit to do, so that, recognizing His bodily
acts as works of God, men who were blind to His presence in creation might regain knowledge of the Father. For, as
I said before, who that saw His authority over evil spirits and their response to it could doubt that He was, indeed,
the Son, the Wisdom and the Power of God? Even the very creation broke silence at His behest and, marvelous to
relate, confessed with one voice before the cross, that monument of victory, that He Who suffered thereon in the
body was not man only, but Son of God and Savior of all. The sun veiled his face, the earth quaked, the mountains
were rent asunder, all men were stricken with awe. These things showed that Christ on the cross was God, and that
all creation was His slave and was bearing witness by its fear to the presence of its Master.
Thus, then, God the Word revealed Himself to men through His works. We must next consider the end of His
earthly life and the nature of His bodily death. This is, indeed, the very center of our faith, and everywhere you hear
men speak of it; by it, too, no less than by His other acts, Christ is revealed as God and Son of God.
(20) We have dealt as far as circumstances and our own understanding permit with the reason for His bodily
manifestation. We have seen that to change the corruptible to incorruption was proper to none other than the Savior
Himself, Who in the beginning made all things out of nothing; that only the Image of the Father could re-create the
likeness of the Image in men, that none save our Lord Jesus Christ could give to mortals immortality, and that only
the Word Who orders all things and is alone the Father's true and sole-begotten Son could teach men about Him
and abolish the worship of idols But beyond all this, there was a debt owing which must needs be paid; for, as I said
before, all men were due to die. Here, then, is the second reason why the Word dwelt among us, namely that having
proved His Godhead by His works, He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to
death in place of all, to settle man's account with death and free him from the primal transgression. In the same act
also He showed Himself mightier than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits of the
resurrection.
You must not be surprised if we repeat ourselves in dealing with this subject. We are speaking of the good
pleasure of God and of the things which He in His loving wisdom thought fit to do, and it is better to put the same
thing in several ways than to run the risk of leaving something out. The body of the Word, then, being a real human
body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to
death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it. Thus
it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord's body; yet,
because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished. Death there had to be, and
death for all, so that the due of all might be paid. Wherefore, the Word, as I said, being Himself incapable of death,
assumed a mortal body, that He might offer it as His own in place of all, and suffering for the sake of all through
His union with it, " might bring to nought Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver them
who all their lifetime were enslaved by the fear of death."
(21) Have no fears then. Now that the common Savior of all has died on our behalf, we who believe in Christ
no longer die, as men died aforetime, in fulfillment of the threat of the law. That condemnation has come to an end;
and now that, by the grace of the resurrection, corruption has been banished and done away, we are loosed from our
mortal bodies in God's good time for each, so that we may obtain thereby a better resurrection. Like seeds cast into
the earth, we do not perish in our dissolution, but like them shall rise again, death having been brought to nought by
the grace of the Savior. That is why blessed Paul, through whom we all have surety of the resurrection, says: "This
corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality; but when this corruptible shall have
put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is
written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?"
"Well then," some people may say, "if the essential thing was that He should surrender His body to death in
place of all, why did He not do so as Man privately, without going to the length of public crucifixion? Surely it would
have been more suitable for Him to have laid aside His body with honor than to endure so shameful a death." But
look at this argument closely, and see how merely human it is, whereas what the Savior did was truly divine and
worthy of His Godhead for several reasons. The first is this. The death of men under ordinary circumstances is the
result of their natural weakness. They are essentially impermanent, so after a time they fall ill and when worn out
they die. But the Lord is not like that. He is not weak, He is the Power of God and Word of God and Very Life
Itself. If He had died quietly in His bed like other men it would have looked as if He did so in accordance with His
nature, and as though He was indeed no more than other men. But because He was Himself Word and Life and
Power His body was made strong, and because the death had to be accomplished, He took the occasion of perfecting
His sacrifice not from Himself, but from others. How could He fall sick, Who had healed others? Or how could that
body weaken and fail by means of which others are made strong? Here, again, you may say, "Why did He not prevent
death, as He did sickness?" Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body, and to
prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection. And as to the unsuitability of sickness for His body,
as arguing weakness, you may say, "Did He then not hunger?" Yes, He hungered, because that was the property of
His body, but He did not die of hunger because He Whose body hungered was the Lord. Similarly, though He died
to ransom all, He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than
the Life Himself.
(22) Someone else might say, perhaps, that it would have been better for the Lord to have avoided the designs
of the Jews against Him, and so to have guarded His body from death altogether. But see how unfitting this also
would have been for Him. Just as it would not have been fitting for Him to give His body to death by His own hand,
being Word and being Life, so also it was not consonant with Himself that He should avoid the death inflicted by
others. Rather, He pursued it to the uttermost, and in pursuance of His nature neither laid aside His body of His
own accord nor escaped the plotting Jews. And this action showed no limitation or weakness in the Word; for He
both waited for death in order to make an end of it, and hastened to accomplish it as an offering on behalf of all.
Moreover, as it was the death of all mankind that the Savior came to accomplish, not His own, He did not lay aside
His body by an individual act of dying, for to Him, as Life, this simply did not belong; but He accepted death at the
hands of men, thereby completely to destroy it in His own body.
There are some further considerations which enable one to understand why the Lord's body had such an end.
The supreme object of His coming was to bring about the resurrection of the body. This was to be the monument to
His victory over death, the assurance to all that He had Himself conquered corruption and that their own bodies also
would eventually be incorrupt; and it was in token of that and as a pledge of the future resurrection that He kept His
body incorrupt. But there again, if His body had fallen sick and the Word had left it in that condition, how unfitting
it would have been! Should He Who healed the bodies of others neglect to keep His own in health? How would His
miracles of healing be believed, if this were so? Surely people would either laugh at Him as unable to dispel disease
or else consider Him lacking in proper human feeling because He could do so, but did not.
(23) Then, again, suppose without any illness He had just concealed His body somewhere, and then suddenly
reappeared and said that He had risen from the dead. He would have been regarded merely as a teller of tales, and
because there was no witness of His death, nobody would believe His resurrection. Death had to precede
resurrection, for there could be no resurrection without it. A secret and unwitnessed death would have left the
resurrection without any proof or evidence to support it. Again, why should He die a secret death, when He
proclaimed the fact of His rising openly? Why should He drive out evil spirits and heal the man blind from birth and
change water into wine, all publicly, in order to convince men that He was the Word, and not also declare publicly
that incorruptibility of His mortal body, so that He might Himself be believed to be the Life? And how could His
disciples have had boldness in speaking of the resurrection unless they could state it as a fact that He had first died?
Or how could their hearers be expected to believe their assertion, unless they themselves also had witnessed His
death? For if the Pharisees at the time refused to believe and forced others to deny also, though the things had
happened before their very eyes, how many excuses for unbelief would they have contrived, if it had taken place
secretly? Or how could the end of death and the victory over it have been declared, had not the Lord thus
challenged it before the sight of all, and by the incorruption of His body proved that henceforward it was annulled
and void?
(24) There are some other possible objections that must be answered. Some might urge that, even granting the
necessity of a public death for subsequent belief in the resurrection, it would surely have been better for Him to have
arranged an honorable death for Himself, and so to have avoided the ignominy of the cross. But even this would
have given ground for suspicion that His power over death was limited to the particular kind of death which He
chose for Himself; and that again would furnish excuse for disbelieving the resurrection. Death came to His body,
therefore, not from Himself but from enemy action, in order that the Savior might utterly abolish death in whatever
form they offered it to Him. A generous wrestler, virile and strong, does not himself choose his antagonists, lest it
should be thought that of some of them he is afraid. Rather, he lets the spectators choose them, and that all the
more if these are hostile, so that he may overthrow whomsoever they match against him and thus vindicate his
superior strength. Even so was it with Christ. He, the Life of all, our Lord and Savior, did not arrange the manner of
his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a
death inflicted by others, and those others His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by
no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to
be the Life, and the power of death be recognized as finally annulled. A marvelous and mighty paradox has thus
occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonor and disgrace has become the glorious
monument to death's defeat. Therefore it is also, that He neither endured the death of John, who was beheaded, nor
was He sawn asunder, like Isaiah: even in death He preserved His body whole and undivided, so that there should be
no excuse hereafter for those who would divide the Church.
(25) So much for the objections of those outside the Church. But if any honest Christian wants to know why He
suffered death on the cross and not in some other way, we answer thus: in no other way was it expedient for us,
indeed the Lord offered for our sakes the one death that was supremely good. He had come to bear the curse that
lay on us; and how could He "become a curse" otherwise than by
accepting the accursed death? And that death is the cross, for it is written "Cursed is every one that hangeth on
tree." Again, the death of the Lord is the ransom of all, and by it
"the middle wall of partition" is broken down and the call of the
Gentiles comes about. How could He have called us if He had not been crucified, for it is only on the cross that a
man dies with arms outstretched? Here, again, we see the fitness of His death and of those outstretched arms: it was
that He might draw His ancient people with the one and the Gentiles with the other, and join both together in
Himself. Even so, He foretold the manner of His redeeming death, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto
Myself." Again, the air is the sphere of the devil, the enemy of
our race who, having fallen from heaven, endeavors with the other evil spirits who shared in his disobedience both to
keep souls from the truth and to hinder the progress of those who are trying to follow it. The apostle refers to this
when he says, "According to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of
disobedience." But the Lord came to overthrow the devil and to
purify the air and to make "a way" for us up to heaven, as the apostle says, "through the veil, that is to say, His
flesh." This had to be done through death, and by what other
kind of death could it be done, save by a death in the air, that is, on the cross? Here, again, you see how right and
natural it was that the Lord should suffer thus; for being thus "lifted up," He cleansed the air from all the evil
influences of the enemy. "I beheld Satan as lightning falling," He
says; and thus He re-opened the road to heaven, saying again, "Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lift up, ye
everlasting doors." For it was not the Word Himself Who
needed an opening of the gates, He being Lord of all, nor was any of His works closed to their Maker. No, it was we
who needed it, we whom He Himself upbore in His own body—that body which He first offered to death on behalf of
all, and then made through it a path to heaven.
5
The Resurrection
(26)
Fitting indeed, then, and wholly consonant was the death on the cross for
us; and we can see how reasonable it was, and why it is that the salvation of the world could be accomplished in no
other way. Even on the cross He did not hide Himself from sight; rather, He made all creation witness to the
presence of its Maker. Then, having once let it be seen that it was truly dead, He did not allow that temple of His
body to linger long, but forthwith on the third day raised it up, impassable and incorruptible, the pledge and token of
His victory.
It was, of course, within His power thus to have raised His body and displayed it as alive directly after death.
But the all-wise Savior did not do this, lest some should deny that it had really or completely died. Besides this, had
the interval between His death and resurrection been but two days, the glory of His incorruption might not have
appeared. He waited one whole day to show that His body was really dead, and then on the third day showed it
incorruptible to all. The interval was no longer, lest people should have forgotten about it and grown doubtful
whether it were in truth the same body. No, while the affair was still ringing in their ears and their eyes were still
straining and their minds in turmoil, and while those who had put Him to death were still on the spot and themselves
witnessing to the fact of it, the Son of God after three days showed His once dead body immortal and incorruptible;
and it was evident to all that it was from no natural weakness that the body which the Word indwelt had died, but in
order that in it by the Savior's power death might be done away.
(27) A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is supplied by a present fact,
namely this. All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by
the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead. Before the divine sojourn of the
Savior, even the holiest of men were afraid of death, and mourned the dead as those who perish. But now that the
Savior has raised His body, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as
nothing, and prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die they do not
perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection. But that devil who of old wickedly exulted
in death, now that the pains of death are loosed, he alone it is who remains truly dead. There is proof of this too; for
men who, before they believe in Christ, think death horrible and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it
so completely that they go eagerly to meet it, and themselves become witnesses of the Savior's resurrection from it.
Even children hasten thus to die, and not men only, but women train themselves by bodily discipline to meet it. So
weak has death become that even women, who used to be taken in by it, mock at it now as a dead thing robbed of
all its strength. Death has become like a tyrant who has been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch;
bound hand and foot the passers-by sneer at him, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and
rage, because of the king who has conquered him. So has death been conquered and branded for what it is by the
Savior on the cross. It is bound hand and foot, all who are in Christ trample it as they pass and as witnesses to Him
deride it, scoffing and saying, "O Death, where is thy victory? O Grave, where is thy sting?
(28) Is this a slender proof of the impotence of death, do you think? Or is it a slight indication of the Savior's
victory over it, when boys and young girls who are in Christ look beyond this present life and train themselves to die?
Every one is by nature afraid of death and of bodily dissolution; the marvel of marvels is that he who is enfolded in
the faith of the cross despises this natural fear and for the sake of the cross is no longer cowardly in face of it. The
natural property of fire is to burn. Suppose, then, that there was a substance such as the Indian asbestos is said to be,
which had no fear of being burnt, but rather displayed the impotence of the fire by proving itself unburnable. If
anyone doubted the truth of this, all he need do would be to wrap himself up in the substance in question and then
touch the fire. Or, again, to revert to our former figure, if anyone wanted to see the tyrant bound and helpless, who
used to be such a terror to others, he could do so simply by going into the country of the tyrant's conqueror. Even
so, if anyone still doubts the conquest of death, after so many proofs and so many martyrdoms in Christ and such
daily scorn of death by His truest servants, he certainly does well to marvel at so great a thing, but he must not be
obstinate in unbelief and disregard of plain facts. No, he must be like the man who wants to prove the property of
the asbestos, and like him who enters the conqueror's dominions to see the tyrant bound. He must embrace the faith
of Christ, this disbeliever in the conquest of death, and come to His teaching. Then he will see how impotent death is
and how completely conquered. Indeed, there have been many former unbelievers and deriders who, after they
became believers, so scorned death as even themselves to become martyrs for Christ's sake.
(29) If, then, it is by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ that death is trampled underfoot, it is clear that
it is Christ Himself and none other Who is the Archvictor over death and has robbed it of its power. Death used to
be strong and terrible, but now, since the sojourn of the Savior and the death and resurrection of His body, it is
despised; and obviously it is by the very Christ Who mounted on the cross that it has been destroyed and vanquished
finally. When the sun rises after the night and the whole world is lit up by it, nobody doubts that it is the sun which
has thus shed its light everywhere and driven away the dark. Equally clear is it, since this utter scorning and
trampling down of death has ensued upon the Savior's manifestation in the body and His death on the cross, that it
is He Himself Who brought death to nought and daily raises monuments to His victory in His own disciples. How
can you think otherwise, when you see men naturally weak hastening to death, unafraid at the prospect of corruption,
fearless of the descent into Hades, even indeed with eager soul provoking it, not shrinking from tortures, but
preferring thus to rush on death for Christ's sake, rather than to remain in this present life? If you see with your own
eyes men and women and children, even, thus welcoming death for the sake of Christ's religion, how can you be so
utterly silly and incredulous and maimed in your mind as not to realize that Christ, to Whom these all bear witness,
Himself gives the victory to each, making death completely powerless for those who hold His faith and bear the sign
of the cross? No one in his senses doubts that a snake is dead when he sees it trampled underfoot, especially when
he knows how savage it used to be; nor, if he sees boys making fun of a lion, does he doubt that the brute is either
dead or completely bereft of strength. These things can be seen with our own eyes, and it is the same with the
conquest of death. Doubt no longer, then, when you see death mocked and scorned by those who believe in Christ,
that by Christ death was destroyed, and the corruption that goes with it resolved and brought to end.
(30) What we have said is, indeed, no small proof of the destruction of death and of the fact that the cross of
the Lord is the monument to His victory. But the resurrection of the body to immortality, which results henceforward
from the work of Christ, the common Savior and true Life of all, is more effectively proved by facts than by words to
those whose mental vision is sound. For, if, as we have shown, death was destroyed and everybody tramples on it
because of Christ, how much more did He Himself first trample and destroy it in His own body! Death having been
slain by Him, then, what other issue could there be than the resurrection of His body and its open demonstration as
the monument of His victory? How could the destruction of death have been manifested at all, had not the Lord's
body been raised? But if anyone finds even this insufficient, let him find proof of what has been said in present facts.
Dead men cannot take effective action; their power of influence on others lasts only till the grave. Deeds and actions
that energize others belong only to the living. Well, then, look at the facts in this case. The Savior is working mightily
among men, every day He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world, both within and beyond the
Greek-speaking world, to accept His faith and be obedient to His teaching. Can anyone, in face of this, still doubt
that He has risen and lives, or rather that He is Himself the Life? Does a dead man prick the consciences of men, so
that they throw all the traditions of their fathers to the winds and bow down before the teaching of Christ? If He is
no longer active in the world, as He must needs be if He is dead, how is it that He makes the living to cease from
their activities, the adulterer from his adultery, the murderer from murdering, the unjust from avarice, while the
profane and godless man becomes religious? If He did not rise, but is still dead, how is it that He routs and
persecutes and overthrows the false gods, whom unbelievers think to be alive, and the evil spirits whom they
worship? For where Christ is named, idolatry is destroyed and the fraud of evil spirits is exposed; indeed, no such
spirit can endure that Name, but takes to flight on sound of it. This is the work of One Who lives, not of one dead;
and, more than that, it is the work of God. It would be absurd to say that the evil spirits whom He drives out and the
idols which He destroys are alive, but that He Who drives out and destroys, and Whom they themselves acknowledge
to be Son of God, is dead.
(31) In a word, then, those who disbelieve in the resurrection have no support in facts, if their gods and evil
spirits do not drive away the supposedly dead Christ. Rather, it is He Who convicts them of being dead. We are
agreed that a dead person can do nothing: yet the Savior works mightily every day, drawing men to religion,
persuading them to virtue, teaching them about immortality, quickening their thirst for heavenly things, revealing the
knowledge of the Father, inspiring strength in face of death, manifesting Himself to each, and displacing the
irreligion of idols; while the gods and evil spirits of the unbelievers can do none of these things, but rather become
dead at Christ's presence, all their ostentation barren and void. By the sign of the cross, on the contrary, all magic is
stayed, all sorcery confounded, all the idols are abandoned and deserted, and all senseless pleasure ceases, as the eye
of faith looks up from earth to heaven. Whom, then, are we to call dead? Shall we call Christ dead, Who effects all
this? But the dead have not the faculty to effect anything. Or shall we call death dead, which effects nothing
whatever, but lies as lifeless and ineffective as are the evil spirits and the idols? The Son of God, "living and
effective, is active every day and effects the salvation of all; but
death is daily proved to be stripped of all its strength, and it is the idols and the evil spirits who are dead, not He.
No room for doubt remains, therefore, concerning the resurrection of His body.
Indeed, it would seem that he who disbelieves this bodily rising of the Lord is ignorant of the power of the
Word and Wisdom of God. If He took a body to Himself at all, and made it His own in pursuance of His purpose, as
we have shown that He did, what was the Lord to do with it, and what was ultimately to become of that body upon
which the Word had descended? Mortal and offered to death on behalf of all as it was, it could not but die; indeed,
it was for that very purpose that the Savior had prepared it for Himself. But on the other hand it could not remain
dead, because it had become the very temple of Life. It therefore died, as mortal, but lived again because of the Life
within it; and its resurrection is made known through its works.
It is, indeed, in accordance with the nature of the invisible God that He should be thus known through His
works; and those who doubt the Lord's resurrection because they do not now behold Him with their eyes, might as
well deny the very laws of nature. They have ground for disbelief when works are lacking; but when the works cry out
and prove the fact so clearly, why do they deliberately deny the risen life so manifestly shown? Even if their mental
faculties are defective, surely their eyes can give them irrefragable proof of the power and Godhead of Christ. A
blind man cannot see the sun, but he knows that it is above the earth from the warmth which it affords; similarly, let
those who are still in the blindness of unbelief recognize the Godhead of Christ and the resurrection which He has
brought about through His manifested power in others. Obviously He would not be expelling evil spirits and
despoiling idols, if He were dead, for the evil spirits would not obey one who was dead. If, on the other hand, the
very naming of Him drives them forth, He clearly is not dead; and the more so that the spirits, who perceive things
unseen by men, would know if He were so and would refuse to obey Him. But, as a matter of fact, what profane
persons doubt, the evil spirits know—namely that He is God; and for that reason they flee from Him and fall at His
feet, crying out even as they cried when He was in the body, "We know Thee Who Thou art, the Holy One of God,"
and, "Ah, what have I in common with Thee, Thou Son of God? I implore Thee, torment me not."
Both from the confession of the evil spirits and from the daily witness of His works, it is manifest, then, and let
none presume to doubt it, that the Savior has raised His own body, and that He is very Son of God, having His being
from God as from a Father, Whose Word and Wisdom and Whose Power He is. He it is Who in these latter days
assumed a body for the salvation of us all, and taught the world concerning the Father. He it is Who has destroyed
death and freely graced us all with incorruption through the promise of the resurrection, having raised His own body
as its first-fruits, and displayed it by the sign of the cross as the monument to His victory over death and its
corruption.
6
Refutation of the Jews
(33)
We have dealt thus far with the Incarnation of our Savior, and have found
clear proof of the resurrection of His Body and His victory over death. Let us now go further and investigate the
unbelief and the ridicule with which Jews and Gentiles respectively regard these same facts. It seems that in both
cases the points at issue are the same, namely the unfittingness or incongruity (as it seems to them) alike of the cross
and of the Word's becoming man at all. But we have no hesitation in taking up the argument against these objectors,
for the proofs on our side are extremely clear.
First, then, we will consider the Jews. Their unbelief has its refutation in the Scriptures which even themselves
read; for from cover to cover the inspired Book clearly teaches these things both in its entirety and in its actual
words. Prophets foretold the marvel of the Virgin and of the Birth from her, saying, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive
and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God is with us." And Moses, that truly great one in whose word the Jews trust so
implicitly, he also recognized the importance and truth of the matter. He puts it thus: "There shall arise a star from
Jacob and a man from Israel, and he shall break in pieces the rulers of Moab. And, again, "How lovely are thy dwellings, O Jacob, thy tents, O
Israel! Like woodland valleys they give shade, and like parks by rivers, like tents which the Lord has pitched, like
cedar-trees by streams. There shall come forth a Man from among his seed, and he shall rule over many
peoples." And, again, Isaiah says, "Before the Babe shall be old
enough to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria from under the eyes
of the king of Assyria." These words, then, foretell that a Man
shall appear. And Scripture proclaims further that He that is to come is Lord of all. These are the words, "Behold,
the Lord sitteth on an airy cloud and shall come into Egypt, and the man-made images of Egypt shall be
shaken." And it is from Egypt also that the Father calls him
back, saying, "Out of Egypt have I called My Son."
(34) Moreover, the Scriptures are not silent even about His death. On the contrary, they refer to it with the
utmost clearness. They have not feared to speak also of the cause of it. He endures it, they say, not for His own sake,
but for the sake of bringing immortality and salvation to all, and they record also the plotting of the Jews against
Him and all the indignities which He suffered at their hands. Certainly nobody who reads the Scriptures can plead
ignorance of the facts as an excuse for error! There is this passage, for instance: "A man that is afflicted and knows
how to bear weakness, for His face is turned away. He was dishonored and not considered, He bears our sins and
suffers for our sakes. And we for our part thought Him distressed and afflicted and ill-used; but it was for our sins
that He was wounded and for our lawlessness that He was made weak. Chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
and by His bruising we are healed." O marvel at the love of the
Word for men, for it is on our account that He is dishonored, so that we may be brought to honor. "For all we," it
goes on, "have strayed like sheep, man has strayed from his path, and the Lord has given Him up for our sins; and
He Himself did not open His mouth at the ill-treatment. Like a sheep He was led to slaughter, and as a lamb is
dumb before its shearer, so He opened not His mouth; in His humiliation His judgment was taken away." And then Scripture anticipates the surmises of any who might think
from His suffering thus that He was just an ordinary man, and shows what power worked in His behalf. "Who shall
declare of what lineage He comes?" it says, "for His life is exalted from the earth. By the lawlessnesses of the people
was He brought to death, and I will give the wicked in return for His burial and the rich in return for His death. For
He did no lawlessness, neither was deceit found in His mouth. And the Lord wills to heal Him of His affliction."
(35) You have heard the prophecy of His death, and now, perhaps, you want to know what indications there are
about the cross. Even this is not passed over in silence: on the contrary, the sacred writers proclaim it with the
utmost plainness. Moses foretells it first, and that right loudly, when he says, "You shall see your Life hanging before
your eyes, and shall not believe."[10] After him the prophets also
give their witness, saying, "But I as an innocent lamb brought to be offered was yet ignorant of it. They plotted evil
against Me, saying, 'Come, let us cast wood into His bread, and wipe Him out from the land of the living." And, again, "They pierced My hands and My feet, they counted all
My bones, they divided My garments for themselves and cast lots for My clothing." Now a death lifted up and that takes place on wood can be none
other than the death of the cross; moreover, it is only in that death that the hands and feet are pierced. Besides this,
since the Savior dwelt among men, all nations everywhere have begun to know God; and this too Holy Writ expressly
mentions. "There shall be the Root of Jesse," it says, "and he who rises up to rule the nations, on Him nations shall
set their hope."
These are just a few things in proof of what has taken place; but indeed all Scripture teems with disproof of
Jewish unbelief. For example, which of the righteous men and holy prophets and patriarchs of whom the Divine
Scriptures tell ever had his bodily birth from a virgin only? Was not Abel born of Adam, Enoch of Jared, Noah of
Lamech, Abraham of Terah, Isaac of Abraham, and Jacob of Isaac? Was not Judah begotten by Jacob and Moses
and Aaron by Ameram? Was not Samuel the son of Elkanah, David of Jesse, Solomon of David, Hezekiah of Ahaz,
Josiah of Amon, Isaiah of Amos, Jeremiah of Hilkiah and Ezekiel of Buzi? Had not each of these a father as author
of his being? So who is He that is born of a virgin only, that sign of which the prophet makes so much? Again, which
of all those people had his birth announced to the world by a star in the heavens? When Moses was born his parents
hid him. David was unknown even in his own neighborhood, so that mighty Samuel himself was ignorant of his
existence and asked whether Jesse had yet another son. Abraham again became known to his neighbors as a great
man only after his birth. But with Christ it was otherwise. The witness to His birth was not man, but a star shining in
the heavens whence He was coming down.
(36) Then, again, what king that ever was reigned and took trophies from his enemies before he had strength to
call father or mother? Was not David thirty years old when he came to the throne and Solomon a grown young man?
Did not Joash enter on his reign at the age of seven, and Josiah, some time after him, at about the same age, both of
them fully able by that time to call father or mother? Who is there, then, that was reigning and despoiling his
enemies almost before he was born? Let the Jews, who have investigated the matter, tell us if there was ever such a
king in Israel or Judah—a king upon whom all the nations set their hopes and had peace, instead of being at enmity
with him on every side! As long as Jerusalem stood there was constant war between them, and they all fought against
Israel. The Assyrians oppressed Israel, the Egyptians persecuted them, the Babylonians fell upon them, and, strange
to relate, even the Syrians their neighbors were at war with them. And did not David fight with Moab and smite the
Syrians, and Hezekiah quail at the boasting of Sennacherib? Did not Amalek make war on Moses and the Amorites
oppose him, and did not the inhabitants of Jericho array themselves against Joshua the son of Nun? Did not the
nations always regard Israel with implacable hostility? Then it is worth inquiring who it is, on whom the nations are
to set their hopes. Obviously there must be someone, for the prophet could not have told a lie. But did any of the
holy prophets or of the early patriarchs die on the cross for the salvation of all? Was any of them wounded and
killed for the healing of all? Did the idols of Egypt fall down before any righteous man or king that came there?
Abraham came there certainly, but idolatry prevailed just the same; and Moses was born there, but the mistaken
worship was unchanged.
(37) Again, does Scripture tell of anyone who was pierced in hands and feet or hung upon a tree at all, and by
means of a cross perfected his sacrifice for the salvation of all? It was not Abraham, for he died in his bed, as did
also Isaac and Jacob. Moses and Aaron died in the mountain, and David ended his days in his house, without
anybody having plotted against him. Certainly he had been sought by Saul, but he was preserved unharmed. Again
Isaiah was sawn asunder, but he was not hung on a tree. Jeremiah was shamefully used, but he did not die under
condemnation. Ezekiel suffered, but he did so, not on behalf of the people, but only to signify to them what was
going to happen. Moreover, all these even when they suffered were but men, like other men; but He Whom the
Scriptures declare to suffer on behalf of all is called not merely man but Life of all, although in point of fact He did
share our human nature. "You shall see your Life hanging before your eyes," they say, and "Who shall declare of
what lineage He comes?" With all the saints we can trace their descent from the beginning, and see exactly how each
came to be; but the Divine Word maintains that we cannot declare the lineage of Him Who is the Life. Who is it,
then, of Whom Holy Writ thus speaks? Who is there so great that even the prophets foretell of Him such mighty
things? There is indeed no one in the Scriptures at all, save the common Savior of all, the Word of God, our Lord
Jesus Christ. He it is that proceeded from a virgin, and appeared as man on earth, He it is Whose earthly lineage
cannot be declared, because He alone derives His body from no human father, but from a virgin alone. We can trace
the paternal descent of David and Moses and of all the patriarchs. But with the Savior we cannot do so, for it was
He Himself Who caused the star to announce His bodily birth, and it was fitting that the Word, when He came down
from heaven, should have His sign in heaven too, and fitting that the King of creation on His coming forth should be
visibly recognized by all the world. He was actually born in Judea, yet men from Persia came to worship Him. He it
is Who won victory from His demon foes and trophies from the idolaters even before His bodily appearing—namely,
all the heathen who from every region have abjured the tradition of their fathers and the false worship of idols and
are now placing their hope in Christ and transferring their allegiance to Him. The thing is happening before our very
eyes, here in Egypt; and thereby another prophecy is fulfilled, for at no other time have the Egyptians ceased from
their false worship save when the Lord of all, riding as on a cloud, came down here in the body and brought the
error of idols to nothing and won over everybody to Himself and through Himself to the Father. He it is Who was
crucified with the sun and moon as witnesses; and by His death salvation has come to all men, and all creation has
been redeemed. He is the Life of all, and He it is Who like a sheep gave up His own body to death, His life for ours
and our salvation.
(38) Yet the Jews disbelieve this. This argument does not satisfy them. Well, then, let them be persuaded by
other things in their own oracles. Of whom, for instance, do the prophets say "I was made manifest to those who did
not seek Me, I was found by those who had not asked for Me? I said, 'See, here am I,' to the nation that had not
called upon My Name. I stretched out My hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people." Who is this person that was made manifest, one might ask the
Jews? If the prophet is speaking of himself, then they must tell us how he was first hidden, in order to be manifested
afterwards. And, again, what kind of man is this prophet, who was not only revealed after being hidden, but also
stretched out his hands upon the cross? Those things happened to none of those righteous men: they happened only
to the Word of God Who, being by nature without body, on our account appeared in a body and suffered for us all.
And if even this is not enough for them, there is other overwhelming evidence by which they may be silenced. The
Scripture says, "Be strong, hands that hang down and feeble knees, take courage, you of little faith, be strong and do
not fear. See, our God will recompense judgment, He Himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of blind men
shall be opened and the ears of deaf men shall hear, and stammerers shall speak distinctly." What can they say to this, or how can they look it in the face at
all? For the prophecy does not only declare that God will dwell here, it also makes known the signs and the time of
His coming. When God comes, it says, the blind will see, the lame will walk, the deaf will hear and the stammerers
will speak distinctly. Can the Jews tell us when such signs occurred in Israel, or when anything of the kind took place
at all in Jewry? The leper Naaman was cleansed, it is true, but no deaf man heard nor did any lame man walk. Elijah
raised a dead person and so did Elisha; but no one blind from birth received his sight. To raise a dead person is a
great thing indeed, but it is not such as the Savior did. And surely, since the Scriptures have not kept silence about
the leper and the dead son of the widow, if a lame man had walked and a blind man had received his sight, they
would have mentioned these as well. Their silence on these points proves that the events never took place. When
therefore did these things happen, unless when the Word of God Himself came in the body? Was it not when He
came that lame men walked and stammerers spoke clearly and men blind from birth were given sight? And the Jews
who saw it themselves testified to the fact that such things had never before occurred. "Since the world began," they
said, "it has never been heard of that anyone should open the eyes of a man born blind. If this Man were not from
God, He could do nothing."
(39) But surely they cannot fight against plain facts. So it may be that, without denying what is written, they will
maintain that they are still waiting for these things to happen, and that the Word of God is yet to come, for that is a
theme on which they are always harping most brazenly, in spite of all the evidence against them. But they shall be
refuted on this supreme point more clearly than on any, and that not by ourselves but by the most wise Daniel, for
he signifies the actual date of the Savior's coming as well as His Divine sojourn in our midst. "Seventy weeks," he
says, "are cut short upon thy people and upon the holy city, to make a complete end of sin and for sins to be sealed
up and iniquities blotted out, and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to seal vision and prophet, and to anoint a
Holy One of holies. And thou shalt know and understand from the going forth of the Word to answer, and to build Jerusalem, until Christ the Prince." In regard to the other prophecies, they may possibly be able to
find excuses for deferring their reference to a future time, but what can they say to this one? How can they face it at
all? Not only does it expressly mention the Anointed One, that is the Christ, it even declares that He Who is to be
anointed is not man only, but the Holy One of holies! And it says that Jerusalem is to stand till His coming, and that
after it prophet and vision shall cease in Israel! David was anointed of old, and Solomon, and Hezekiah; but then
Jerusalem and the place stood, and prophets were prophesying, Gad and Asaph and Nathan, and later Isaiah and
Hosea and Amos and others. Moreover, those men who were anointed were called holy certainly, but none of them
was called the Holy of holies. Nor is it any use for the Jews to take refuge in the Captivity, and say that Jerusalem
did not exist then, for what about the prophets? It is a fact that at the outset of the Exile Daniel and Jeremiah were
there, and Ezekiel and Haggai and Zechariah also prophesied.
(40) So the Jews are indulging in fiction, and transferring present time to future. When did prophet and vision
cease from Israel? Was it not when Christ came, the Holy One of holies? It is, in fact, a sign and notable proof of
the coming of the Word that Jerusalem no longer stands, neither is prophet raised up nor vision revealed among
them. And it is natural that it should be so, for when He that was signified had come, what need was there any
longer of any to signify Him? And when the Truth had come, what further need was there of the shadow? On His
account only they prophesied continually, until such time as Essential Righteousness has come, Who was made the
Ransom for the sins of all. For the same reason Jerusalem stood until the same time, in order that there men might
premeditate the types before the Truth was known. So, of course, once the Holy One of holies had come, both vision
and prophecy were sealed. And the kingdom of Jerusalem ceased at the same time, because kings were to be
anointed among them only until the Holy of holies had been anointed. Moses also prophesies that the kingdom of
the Jews shall stand until His time, saying, "A ruler shall not fail from Judah nor a prince from his loins, until the
things laid up for him shall come and the Expectation of the nations Himself." And that is why the Savior Himself was always proclaiming "The
law and the prophets prophesied until John."[20] So if there is still
king or prophet or vision among the Jews, they do well to deny that Christ is come; but if there is neither king nor
vision, and since that time all prophecy has been sealed and city and temple taken, how can they be so irreligious,
how can they so flaunt the facts, as to deny Christ Who has brought it all about? Again, they see the heathen
forsaking idols and setting their hopes through Christ on the God of Israel; why do they yet deny Christ Who after
the flesh was born of the root of Jesse and reigns henceforward? Of course, if the heathen were worshipping some
other god, and not confessing the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses, then they would do well to
argue that God had not come. But if the heathen are honoring the same God Who gave the law to Moses and the
promises to Abraham—the God Whose word too the Jews dishonored, why do they not recognize or rather why do
they deliberately refuse to see that the Lord of Whom the Scriptures prophesied has shone forth to the world and
appeared to it in a bodily form? Scripture declares it repeatedly. "The Lord God has appeared to us," and again, "He sent forth His Word and healed them." And again, "It was no ambassador, no angel who saved us, but the
Lord Himself." The Jews are afflicted like some demented
person who sees the earth lit up by the sun, but denies the sun that lights it up! What more is there for their
Expected One to do when he comes? To call the heathen? But they are called already. To put an end to prophet and
king and vision? But this too has already happened. To expose the God-denyingness of idols? It is already exposed
and condemned. Or to destroy death? It is already destroyed. What then has not come to pass that the Christ must
do? What is there left out or unfulfilled that the Jews should disbelieve so light-heartedly? The plain fact is, as I say,
that there is no longer any king or prophet nor Jerusalem nor sacrifice nor vision among them; yet the whole earth is
filled with the knowledge of God, and the Gentiles, forsaking atheism, are now taking refuge with the God of
Abraham through the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Surely, then, it must be plain even to the most shameless that the Christ has come, and that He has enlightened
all men everywhere, and given them the true and divine teaching about His Father.
Thus the Jews may be refuted by these and other arguments from the Divine teaching.
7
Refutation of the Gentiles
(41)
We come now to the unbelief of the Gentiles; and this is indeed a matter
for complete astonishment, for they laugh at that which is no fit subject for mockery, yet fail to see the shame and
ridiculousness of their own idols. But the arguments on our side do not lack weight, so we will confute them too on
reasonable grounds, chiefly from what we ourselves also see.
First of all, what is there in our belief that is unfitting or ridiculous? Is it only that we say that the Word has
been manifested in a body? Well, if they themselves really love the truth, they will agree with us that this involved no
unfittingness at all. If they deny that there is a Word of God at all, that will be extraordinary, for then they will be
ridiculing what they do not know. But suppose they confess that there is a Word of God, that He is the Governor of
all things, that in Elim the Father wrought the creation, that by His providence the whole receives light and life and
being, and that He is King over all, so that He is known by means of the works of His providence, and through Him
the Father. Suppose they confess all this, what then? Are they not unknowingly turning the ridicule against
themselves? The Greek philosophers say that the universe is a great body, and they say truly, for we perceive the
universe and its parts with our senses. But if the Word of God is in the universe, which is a body, and has entered
into it in its every part, what is there surprising or unfitting in our saying that He has entered also into human
nature? If it were unfitting for Him to have embodied Himself at all, then it would be unfitting for Him to have
entered into the universe, and to be giving light and movement by His providence to all things in it, because the
universe, as we have seen, is itself a body. But if it is right and fitting for Him to enter into the universe and to
reveal Himself through it, then, because humanity is part of the universe along with the rest, it is no less fitting for
Him to appear in a human body, and to enlighten and to work through that. And surely if it were wrong for a part of
the universe to have been used to reveal His Divinity to men, it would be much more wrong that He should be so
revealed by the whole!
(42) Take a parallel case. A man's personality actuates and quickens his whole body. If anyone said it was
unsuitable for the man's power to be in the toe, he would be thought silly, because, while granting that a man
penetrates and actuates the whole of his body, he denied his presence in the part. Similarly, no one who admits the
presence of the Word of God in the universe as a whole should think it unsuitable for a single human body to be by
Him actuated and enlightened.
But is it, perhaps, because humanity is a thing created and brought into being out of non-existence that they
regard as unfitting the manifestation of the Savior in our nature? If so, it is high time that they spurned Him from
creation too; for it, too, has been brought out of non-being into being by the Word. But if, on the other hand,
although creation is a thing that has been made, it is not unsuitable for the Word to be present in it, then neither is
it unsuitable for Him to be in man. Man is a part of the creation, as I said before; and the reasoning which applies to
one applies to the other. All things derive from the Word their light and movement and life, as the Gentile authors
themselves say, "In Him we live and move and have our being."
Very well then. That being so, it is by no means unbecoming that the Word should dwell in man. So if, as we say, the
Word has used that in which He is as the means of His self-manifestation, what is there ridiculous in that? He could
not have used it had He not been present in it; but we have already admitted that He is present both in the whole
and in the parts. What, then, is there incredible in His manifesting Himself through that in which He is? By His own
power He enters completely into each and all, and orders them throughout ungrudgingly; and, had He so willed, He
could have revealed Himself and His Father by means of sun or moon or sky or earth or fire or water. Had He done
so, no one could rightly have accused Him of acting unbecomingly, for He sustains in one whole all things at once,
being present and invisibly revealed not only in the whole, but also in each particular part. This being so, and since,
moreover, He has willed to reveal Himself through men, who are part of the whole, there can be nothing ridiculous
in His using a human body to manifest the truth and knowledge of the Father. Does not the mind of man pervade
his entire being, and yet find expression through one part only, namely the tongue? Does anybody say on that
account that Mind has degraded itself? Of course not. Very well, then, no more is it degrading for the Word, Who
pervades all things, to have appeared in a human body. For, as I said before, if it were unfitting for Him thus to
indwell the part, it would be equally so for Him to exist within the whole.
(43) Some may then ask, why did He not manifest Himself by means of other and nobler parts of creation, and
use some nobler instrument, such as sun or moon or stars or fire or air, instead of mere man? The answer is this.
The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men. For one who wanted to
make a display the thing would have been just to appear and dazzle the beholders. But for Him Who came to heal
and to teach the way was not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, and
to be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the Divine appearing by exceeding their
capacity to receive it.
Moreover, nothing in creation had erred from the path of God's purpose for it, save only man. Sun, moon,
heaven, stars, water, air, none of these had swerved from their order, but, knowing the Word as their Maker and
their King, remained as they were made. Men alone having rejected what is good, have invented nothings instead of
the truth, and have ascribed the honor due to God and the knowledge concerning Him to demons and men in the
form of stones. Obviously the Divine goodness could not overlook so grave a matter as this. But men could not
recognize Him as ordering and ruling creation as a whole. So what does He do? He takes to Himself for instrument
a part of the whole, namely a human body, and enters into that. Thus He ensured that men should recognize Him in
the part who could not do so in the whole, and that those who could not lift their eyes to His unseen power might
recognize and behold Him in the likeness of themselves. For, being men, they would naturally learn to know His
Father more quickly and directly by means of a body that corresponded to their own and by the Divine works done
through it; for by comparing His works with their own they would judge His to be not human but Divine. And if, as
they say, it were unsuitable for the Word to reveal Himself through bodily acts, it would be equally so for Him to do
so through the works of the universe. His being in creation does not mean that He shares its nature; on the contrary,
all created things partake of His power. Similarly, though He used the body as His instrument, He shared nothing of
its defect, but rather sanctified it by His indwelling. Does not
even Plato, of whom the Greeks think so much, say that the Author of the Universe, seeing it storm-tossed and in
danger of sinking into the state of dissolution, takes his seat at the helm of the Life-force of the universe, and comes
to the rescue and puts everything right? What, then, is there incredible in our saying that, mankind having gone
astray, the Word descended upon it and was manifest as man, so that by His intrinsic goodness and His
steersmanship He might save it from the storm?
(44) It may be, however, that, though shamed into agreeing that this objection is void, the Greeks will want to
raise another. They will say that, if God wanted to instruct and save mankind, He might have done so, not by His
Word's assumption of a body, but, even as He at first created them, by the mere signification of His will. The
reasonable reply to that is that the circumstances in the two cases are quite different. In the beginning, nothing as yet
existed at all; all that was needed, therefore, in order to bring all things into being, was that His will to do so should
be signified. But once man was in existence, and things that were, not things that were not, demanded to be healed,
it followed as a matter of course that the Healer and Savior should align Himself with those things that existed
already, in order to heal the existing evil. For that reason, therefore, He was made man, and used the body as His
human instrument. If this were not the fitting way, and He willed to use an instrument at all, how otherwise was the
Word to come? And whence could He take His instrument, save from among those already in existence and needing
His Godhead through One like themselves? It was not things non-existent that needed salvation, for which a bare
creative word might have sufficed, but man—man already in existence and already in process of corruption and ruin.
It was natural and right, therefore, for the Word to use a human instrument and by that means unfold Himself to
all.
You must know, moreover, that the corruption which had set in was not external to the body but established
within it. The need, therefore, was that life should cleave to it in corruption's place, so that, just as death was
brought into being in the body, life also might be engendered in it. If death had been exterior to the body, life might
fittingly have been the same. But if death was within the body, woven into its very substance and dominating it as
though completely one with it, the need was for Life to be woven into it instead, so that the body by thus enduing
itself with life might cast corruption off. Suppose the Word had come outside the body instead of in it, He would, of
course, have defeated death, because death is powerless against the Life. But the corruption inherent in the body
would have remained in it none the less. Naturally, therefore, the Savior assumed a body for Himself, in order that
the body, being interwoven as it were with life, should no longer remain a mortal thing, in thrall to death, but as
endued with immortality and risen from death, should thenceforth remain immortal. For once having put op
corruption, it could not rise, unless it put on life instead; and besides this, death of its very nature could not appear
otherwise than in a body. Therefore He put on a body, so that in the body He might find death and blot it out. And,
indeed, how could the Lord have been proved to be the Life at all, had He not endued with life that which was
subject to death? Take an illustration. Stubble is a substance naturally destructible by fire; and it still remains stubble,
fearing the menace of fire which has the natural property of consuming it, even if fire is kept away from it, so that it
is not actually burnt. But suppose that, instead of merely keeping the fire from it somebody soaks the stubble with a
quantity of asbestos, the substance which is said to be the antidote to fire. Then the stubble no longer fears the fire,
because it has put on that which fire cannot touch, and therefore it is safe. It is just the same with regard to the body
and death. Had death been kept from it by a mere command, it would still have remained mortal and corruptible,
according to its nature. To prevent this, it put on the incorporeal Word of God, and therefore fears neither death
nor corruption any more, for it is clad with Life as with a garment and in it corruption is clean done away.
(45) The Word of God thus acted consistently in assuming a body and using a human instrument to vitalize the
body. He was consistent in working through man to reveal Himself everywhere, as well as through the other parts of
His creation, so that nothing was left void of His Divinity and knowledge. For I take up now the point I made
before, namely that the Savior did this in order that He might fill all things everywhere with the knowledge of
Himself, just as they are already filled with His presence, even as the Divine Scripture says, "The whole universe was
filled with the knowledge of the Lord." If a man looks up to
heaven he sees there His ordering; but if he cannot look so high as heaven, but only so far as men, through His
works he sees His power, incomparable with human might, and learns from them that He alone among men is God
the Word. Or, if a man has gone astray among demons and is in fear of them, he may see this Man drive them out
and judge therefrom that He is indeed their Master. Again, if a man has been immersed in the element of water and
thinks that it is God—as indeed the Egyptians do worship water—he may see its very nature changed by Him and
learn that the Lord is Creator of all. And if a man has gone down even to Hades, and stands awestruck before the
heroes who have descended thither, regarding them as gods, still he may see the fact of Christ's resurrection and His
victory over death, and reason from it that, of all these, He alone is very Lord and God.
For the Lord touched all parts of creation, and freed and undeceived them all from every deceit. As St. Paul
says, "Having put off from Himself the principalities and the powers, He triumphed on the cross," so that no one could possibly be any longer deceived, but everywhere
might find the very Word of God. For thus man, enclosed on every side by the works of creation and everywhere—in
heaven, in Hades, in men and on the earth, beholding the unfolded Godhead of the Word, is no longer deceived
concerning God, but worships Christ alone, and through Him rightly knows the Father.
On these grounds, then, of reason and of principle, we will fairly silence the Gentiles in their turn. But if they
think these arguments insufficient to confute them, we will go on in the next chapter to prove our point from
facts.
8
Refutation of the Gentiles—continued
(46)
When did people begin to abandon the worship of idols, unless it were
since the very Word of God came among men? When have oracles ceased and become void of meaning, among the
Greeks and everywhere, except since the Savior has revealed Himself on earth? When did those whom the poets call
gods and heroes begin to be adjudged as mere mortals, except when the Lord took the spoils of death and preserved
incorruptible the body He had taken, raising it from among the dead? Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of
demons fall under contempt, save when the Word, the Power of God, the Master of all these as well, condescended
on account of the weakness of mankind and appeared on earth? When did the practice and theory of magic begin to
be spurned under foot, if not at the manifestation of the Divine Word to men? In a word, when did the wisdom of
the Greeks become foolish, save when the true Wisdom of God revealed Himself on earth? In old times the whole
world and every place in it was led astray by the worship of idols, and men thought the idols were the only gods that
were. But now all over the world men are forsaking the fear of idols and taking refuge with Christ; and by
worshipping Him as God they come through Him to know the Father also, Whom formerly they did not know. The
amazing thing, moreover, is this. The objects of worship formerly were varied and countless; each place had its own
idol and the so-called god of one place could not pass over to another in order to persuade the people there to
worship him, but was barely reverenced even by his own. Indeed no! Nobody worshipped his neighbor's god, but
every man had his own idol and thought that it was lord of all. But now Christ alone is worshipped, as One and the
Same among all peoples everywhere; and what the feebleness of idols could not do, namely, convince even those
dwelling close at hand, He has effected. He has persuaded not only those close at hand, but literally the entire world
to worship one and the same Lord and through Him the Father.
(47) Again, in former times every place was full of the fraud of the oracles, and the utterances of those at
Delphi and Dordona and in Boeotia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and those of the Kabiri and the Pythoness were
considered marvelous by the minds of men. But now, since Christ has been proclaimed everywhere, their madness
too has ceased, and there is no one left among them to give oracles at all. Then, too, demons used to deceive men's
minds by taking up their abode in springs or rivers or trees or stones and imposing upon simple people by their
frauds. But now, since the Divine appearing of the Word, all this fantasy has ceased, for by the sign of the cross, if a
man will but use it, he drives out their deceits. Again, people used to regard as gods those who are mentioned in the
poets—Zeus and Kronos and Apollo and the heroes, and in worshipping them they went astray. But now that the
Savior has appeared among men, those others have been exposed as mortal men, and Christ alone is recognized as
true God, Word of God, God Himself. And what is one to say about the magic that they think so marvelous? Before
the sojourn of the Word, it was strong and active among Egyptians and Chaldeans and Indians and filled all who saw
it with terror and astonishment. But by the coming of the Truth and the manifestation of the Word it too has been
confuted and entirely destroyed. As to Greek wisdom, however, and the philosophers' noisy talk, I really think no
one requires argument from us; for the amazing fact is patent to all that, for all that they had written so much, the
Greeks failed to convince even a few from their own neighborhood in regard to immortality and the virtuous
ordering of life. Christ alone, using common speech and through the agency of men not clever with their tongues, has
convinced whole assemblies of people all the world over to despise death, and to take heed to the things that do not
die, to look past the things of time and gaze on things eternal, to think nothing of earthly glory and to aspire only to
immortality.
(48) These things which we have said are no mere words: they are attested by actual experience. Anyone who
likes may see the proof of glory in the virgins of Christ, and in the young men who practice chastity as part of their
religion, and in the assurance of immortality in so great and glad a company of martyrs. Anyone, too, may put what we have said to the proof of
experience in another way. In the very presence of the fraud of demons and the imposture of the oracles and the
wonders of magic, let him use the sign of the cross which they all mock at, and but speak the Name of Christ, and he
shall see how through Him demons are routed, oracles cease, and all magic and witchcraft is confounded.
Who, then, is this Christ and how great is He, Who by His Name and presence overshadows and confounds all
things on every side, Who alone is strong against all and has filled the whole world with His teaching? Let the
Greeks tell us, who mock at Him without stint or shame. If He is a man, how is it that one man has proved stronger
than all those whom they themselves regard as gods, and by His own power has shown them to be nothing? If they
call Him a magician, how is it that by a magician all magic is destroyed, instead of being rendered strong? Had He
conquered certain magicians or proved Himself superior to one of them only, they might reasonably think that He
excelled the rest only by His greater skill. But the fact is that His cross has vanquished all magic entirely and has
conquered the very name of it. Obviously, therefore, the Savior is no magician, for the very demons whom the
magicians invoke flee from Him as from their Master. Who is He, then? Let the Greeks tell us, whose only serious
pursuit is mockery! Perhaps they will say that He, too, is a demon, and that is why He prevailed. But even so the
laugh is still on our side. for we can confute them by the same proofs as before. How could He be a demon, Who
drives demons out? If it were only certain ones that He drove out, then they might reasonably think that He
prevailed against them through the power of their Chief, as the Jews, wishing to insult Him, actually said. But since
the fact is, here again, that at the mere naming of His Name all madness of the demons is rooted out and put to
flight, obviously the Greeks are wrong here, too, and our Lord and Savior Christ is not, as they maintain, some
demonic power.
If, then, the Savior is neither a mere man nor a magician, nor one of the demons, but has by His Godhead
confounded and overshadowed the opinions of the poets and the delusion of the demons and the wisdom of the
Greeks, it must be manifest and will be owned by all that He is in truth Son of God, Existent Word and Wisdom and
Power of the Father. This is the reason why His works are no mere human works, but, both intrinsically and by
comparison with those of men, are recognized as being superhuman and truly the works of God.
(49) What man that ever was, for instance, formed a body for himself from a virgin only? Or what man ever
healed so many diseases as the common Lord of all? Who restored that which was lacking in man's nature or made
one blind from birth to see? Aesculapius was deified by the Greeks because he practiced the art of healing and
discovered herbs as remedies for bodily diseases, not, of course, forming them himself out of the earth, but finding
them out by the study of nature. But what is that in comparison with what the Savior did when, instead of just
healing a wound, He both fashioned essential being and restored to health the thing that He had formed? Hercules,
too, is worshipped as a god by the Greeks because he fought against other men and destroyed wild animals by craft.
But what is that to what the Word did, in driving away from men diseases and demons and even death itself?
Dionysus is worshipped among them, because he taught men drunkenness; yet they ridicule the true Savior and Lord
of all, Who taught men temperance.
That, however, is enough on this point. What will they say to the other marvels of His Godhead? At what man's
death was the sun darkened and the earth shaken? Why, even to this day men are dying, and they did so also before
that time. When did any such marvels happen in their case? Now shall we pass over the deeds done in His earthly
body and mention those after His resurrection? Has any man's teaching, in any place or at any time, ever prevailed
everywhere as one and the same, from one end of the earth to the other, so that his worship has fairly flown through
every land? Again, if, as they say, Christ is man only and not God the Word, why do not the gods of the Greeks
prevent His entering their domains? Or why, on the other hand, does the Word Himself dwelling in our midst make
an end of their worship by His teaching and put their fraud to shame?
(50) Many before Him have been kings and tyrants of the earth, history tells also of many among the Chaldeans
and Egyptians and Indians who were wise men and magicians. But which of those, I do not say after his death, but
while yet in this life, was ever able so far to prevail as to fill the whole world with his teaching and retrieve so great a
multitude from the craven fear of idols, as our Savior has won over from idols to Himself? The Greek philosophers
have compiled many works with persuasiveness and much skill in words; but what fruit have they to show for this
such as has the cross of Christ? Their wise thoughts were persuasive enough until they died; yet even in their life-
time their seeming influence was counterbalanced by their rivalry with one another, for they were a jealous company
and declaimed against each other. But the Word of God, by strangest paradox, teaching in meaner language, has put
the choicest sophists in the shade, and by confounding their teachings and drawing all men to Himself He has filled
His own assemblies. Moreover, and this is the marvelous thing by going down as Man to death He has confounded
ail the sounding utterances of the wise men about the idols. For whose death ever drove out demons, or whose death
did ever demons fear, save that of Christ? For where the Savior is named, there every demon is driven out. Again,
who has ever so rid men of their natural passions that fornicators become chaste and murderers no longer wield the
sword and those who formerly were craven cowards boldly play the man? In a word, what persuaded the barbarians
and heathen folk in every place to drop their madness and give heed to peace, save the faith of Christ and the sign
of the cross? What other things have given men such certain faith in immortality as have the cross of Christ and the
resurrection of His body? The Greeks told all sorts of false tales, but they could never pretend that their idols rose
again from death: indeed it never entered their heads that a body could exist again after death at all. And one would
be particularly ready to listen to them on this point, because by these opinions they have exposed the weakness of
their own idolatry, at the same time yielding to Christ the possibility of bodily resurrection, so that by that means He
might be recognized by all as Son of God.
(51) Again, who among men, either after his death or while yet living, taught about virginity and did not
account this virtue impossible for human beings? But Christ our Savior and King of all has so prevailed with His
teaching on this subject that even children not yet of lawful age promise that virginity which transcends the law. And
who among men has ever been able to penetrate even to Scythians and Ethiopians, or Parthians or Armenians or
those who are said to live beyond Hyrcania, or even the Egyptians and Chaldeans, people who give heed to magic
and are more than naturally enslaved by the fear of demons and savage in their habits, and to preach at all about
virtue and self-control and against the worshipping of idols, as has the Lord of all, the Power of God, our Lord Jesus
Christ? Yet He not only preached through His own disciples, but also wrought so persuasively on men's
understanding that, laying aside their savage habits and forsaking the worship of their ancestral gods, they learnt to
know Him and through Him to worship the Father. While they were yet idolaters, the Greeks and Barbarians were
always at war with each other, and were even cruel to their own kith and kin. Nobody could travel by land or sea at
all unless he was armed with swords, because of their irreconcilable quarrels with each other. Indeed, the whole
course of their life was carried on with the weapons, and the sword with them replaced the staff and was the
mainstay of all aid. All this time, as I said before, they were serving idols and offering sacrifices to demons, and for
all the superstitious awe that accompanied this idol worship, nothing could wean them from that warlike spirit. But,
strange to relate, since they came over to the school of Christ, as men moved with real compunction they have laid
aside their murderous cruelty and are war-minded no more. On the contrary, all is peace among them and nothing
remains save desire for friendship.
(52) Who, then, is He Who has done these things and has united in peace those who hated each other, save the
beloved Son of the Father, the common Savior of all, Jesus Christ, Who by His own love underwent all things for our
salvation? Even from the beginning, moreover, this peace that He was to administer was foretold, for Scripture says,
"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles, and nation shall not take sword against
nation, neither shall they learn any more to wage war." Nor is
this by any means incredible.
The barbarians of the present day are naturally savage in their habits, and as long as they sacrifice to their idols
they rage furiously against each other and cannot bear to be a single hour without weapons. But when they hear the
teaching of Christ, forthwith they turn from fighting to farming, and instead of arming themselves with swords extend
their hands in prayer. In a word, instead of fighting each other, they take up arms against the devil and the demons,
and overcome them by their selfcommand and integrity of soul. These facts are proof of the Godhead of the Savior,
for He has taught men what they could never learn among the idols. It is also no small exposure of the weakness and
nothingness of demons and idols, for it was because they knew their own weakness that the demons were always
setting men to fight each other, fearing lest, if they ceased from mutual strife, they would turn to attack the demons
themselves. For in truth the disciples of Christ, instead of fighting each other, stand arrayed against demons by their
habits and virtuous actions, and chase them away and mock at their captain the devil. Even in youth they are chaste,
they endure in times of testing and persevere in toils. When they are insulted, they are patient, when robbed they
make light of it, and, marvelous to relate, they make light even of death itself, and become martyrs of Christ.
(53) And here is another proof of the Godhead of the Savior, which is indeed utterly amazing. What mere man
or magician or tyrant or king was ever able by himself to do so much? Did anyone ever fight against the whole
system of idol-worship and the whole host of demons and all magic and all the wisdom of the Greeks, at a time when
all of these were strong and flourishing and taking everybody in, as did our Lord, the very Word of God? Yet He is
even now invisibly exposing every man's error, and single-handed is carrying off all men from them all, so that those
who used to worship idols now tread them under foot, reputed magicians burn their books and the wise prefer to all
studies the interpretation of the gospels. They are deserting those whom formerly they worshipped, they worship and
confess as Christ and God Him Whom they used to ridicule as crucified. Their so-called gods are routed by the sign
of the cross, and the crucified Savior is proclaimed in all the world as God and Son of God. Moreover, the gods
worshipped among the Greeks are now falling into disrepute among them on account of the disgraceful things they
did, for those who receive the teaching of Christ are more chaste in life than they. If these, and the like of them, are
human works, let anyone who will show us similar ones done by men in former time, and so convince us. But if they
are shown to be, and are the works not of men but of God, why are the unbelievers so irreligious as not to recognize
the Master Who did them? They are afflicted as a man would be who failed to recognize God the Artificer through
the works of creation. For surely if they had recognized His Godhead through His power over the universe, they
would recognize also that the bodily works of Christ are not human, but are those of the Savior of all, the Word of
God. And had they recognized this, as Paul says, "They would not have crucified the Lord of glory."
(54) As, then, he who desires to see God Who by nature is invisible and not to be beheld, may yet perceive and
know Him through His works, so too let him who does not see Christ with his understanding at least consider Him in
His bodily works and test whether they be of man or God. If they be of man, then let him scoff; but if they be of
God, let him not mock at things which are no fit subject for scorn, but rather let him recognize the fact and marvel
that things divine have been revealed to us by such humble means, that through death deathlessness has been made
known to us, and through the Incarnation of the Word the Mind whence all things proceed has been declared, and
its Agent and Ordainer, the Word of God Himself. He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God. He
manifested Himself by means of a body in order that we might perceive the Mind of the unseen Father. He endured
shame from men that we might inherit immortality. He Himself was unhurt by this, for He is impassable and
incorruptible; but by His own impassability He kept and healed the suffering men on whose account He thus
endured. In short, such and so many are the Savior's achievements that follow from His Incarnation, that to try to
number them is like gazing at the open sea and trying to count the waves. One cannot see all the waves with one's
eyes, for when one tries to do so those that are following on baffle one's senses. Even so, when one wants to take in
all the achievements of Christ in the body, one cannot do so, even by reckoning them up, for the things that
transcend one's thought are always more than those one thinks that one has grasped.
As we cannot speak adequately about even a part of His work, therefore, it will be better for us not to speak
about it as a whole. So we will mention but one thing more, and then leave the whole for you to marvel at. For,
indeed, everything about it is marvelous, and wherever a man turns his gaze he sees the Godhead of the Word and is
smitten with awe.
(55) The substance of what we have said so far may be summarized as follows. Since the Savior came to dwell
among us, not only does idolatry no longer increase, but it is getting less and gradually ceasing to be. Similarly, not
only does the wisdom of the Greeks no longer make any progress, but that which used to be is disappearing. And
demons, so far from continuing to impose on people by their deceits and oracle-givings and sorceries, are routed by
the sign of the cross if they so much as try. On the other hand, while idolatry and everything else that opposes the
faith of Christ is daily dwindling and weakening and falling, see, the Savior's teaching is increasing everywhere!
Worship, then, the Savior "Who is above all" and mighty, even God the Word, and condemn those who are being
defeated and made to disappear by Him. When the sun has come, darkness prevails no longer; any of it that may be
left anywhere is driven away. So also, now that the Divine epiphany of the Word of God has taken place, the
darkness of idols prevails no more, and all parts of the world in every direction are enlightened by His teaching.
Similarly, if a king be reigning somewhere, but stays in his own house and does not let himself be seen, it often
happens that some insubordinate fellows, taking advantage of his retirement, will have themselves proclaimed in his
stead; and each of them, being invested with the semblance of kingship, misleads the simple who, because they
cannot enter the palace and see the real king, are led astray by just hearing a king named. When the real king
emerges, however, and appears to view, things stand differently. The insubordinate impostors are shown up by his
presence, and men, seeing the real king, forsake those who previously misled them. In the same way the demons used
formerly to impose on men, investing themselves with the honor due to God. But since the Word of God has been
manifested in a body, and has made known to us His own Father, the fraud of the demons is stopped and made to
disappear; and men, turning their eyes to the true God, Word of the Father, forsake the idols and come to know the
true God.
Now this is proof that Christ is God, the Word and Power of God. For whereas human things cease and the
fact of Christ remains, it is clear to all that the things which cease are temporary, but that He Who remains is God
and very Son of God, the sole-begotten Word.
9
Conclusion
(56)
Here, then, Macarius, is our offering to you who love Christ, a brief
statement of the faith of Christ and of the manifestation of His Godhead to us. This will give you a beginning, and
you must go on to prove its truth by the study of the Scriptures. They were written and inspired by God; and we,
who have learned from inspired teachers who read the Scriptures and became martyrs for the Godhead of Christ,
make further contribution to your eagerness to learn. From the Scriptures you will learn also of His second
manifestation to us, glorious and divine indeed, when He shall come not in lowliness but in His proper glory, no
longer in humiliation but in majesty, no longer to suffer but to bestow on us all the fruit of His cross— the
resurrection and incorruptibility. No longer will He then be judged, but rather will Himself be Judge, judging each
and all according to their deeds done in the body, whether good or ill. Then for the good is laid up the heavenly
kingdom, but for those that practice evil outer darkness and the eternal fire. So also the Lord Himself says, "I say
unto you, hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of power, coming on the clouds of heaven
in the glory of the Father." For that Day we have one of His own
sayings to prepare us, "Get ready and watch, for ye know not the hour in which He cometh" And blessed Paul says, "We must all stand before the judgment seat
of Christ, that each one may receive according as he practiced in the body, whether good or ill."
(57) But for the searching and right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good life and a pure
soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature can, the truth concerning God the
Word. One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saints unless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate
their life. Anyone who wants to look at sunlight naturally wipes his eye clear first, in order to make, at any rate, some
approximation to the purity of that on which he looks; and a person wishing to see a city or country goes to the place
in order to do so. Similarly, anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his
own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds. Thus united to them in the fellowship of life, he will both
understand the things revealed to them by God and, thenceforth escaping the peril that threatens sinners in the
judgment, will receive that which is laid up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven. Of that reward it is written: "Eye
hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared" for them that live a godly life and love the God and Father in Christ
Jesus our Lord, through Whom and with Whom be to the Father Himself, with the Son Himself, in the Holy Spirit,
honor and might and glory to ages of ages. Amen.