What further objection is brought forward by those who oppose us? Chiefly this: that the transcendent nature ought not to have undergone the experience of death at all, but could, even without this, have accomplished its purpose with ease through the abundance of its power. And even if, for some ineffable reason, this had absolutely to take place, still it ought not to have been subjected to the dishonor of so ignominious a form of death. For what death, they say, could be more dishonorable than death by the cross? What, then, do we say in reply? That birth makes death necessary.
For the One who had resolved once to share in humanity had to pass through all the characteristic conditions of the nature. Human life is bounded by two limits; if He had entered the one but had not touched the one that follows, His purpose would have remained half-complete, since He would not have touched the other characteristic condition of our nature.
Perhaps someone who has grasped the mystery accurately would say more reasonably that death did not occur because of the birth, but rather that the birth was undertaken for the sake of death. For the One who always exists did not enter bodily birth because He needed to live, but because He was calling us back from death to life.
Since, then, our whole nature had to make its return again from death, He stooped over our fallen condition as though stretching out a hand to one lying there. He drew so near to death as to touch the state of being dead and, in His own body, to give our nature the beginning of resurrection, raising the whole of humanity together with Himself by His power.
For the God-bearing man was not from some other source, but from our own human stock, and through the resurrection He was raised together with the divinity. Just as, in our own body, the activity of one of the sense organs brings the whole that is united with the part into shared awareness, so too, as though the whole nature were one living creature, the resurrection of the part extends to the whole, being communicated from the part to the whole through the continuity and unity of the nature.
What, then, is unreasonable in what we learn in the mystery, if the One who stands bends down toward the one who has fallen in order to raise up the one lying there? As for the cross, if it contains some other and deeper meaning, those who are acquainted with hidden things may know it. But what has come down to us by tradition is this.
Since everything in the Gospel, both what is said and what is done, is according to a higher and more divine meaning, and there is nothing of this kind that does not in every case manifest a certain mingling of the divine with the human—the speech or action proceeding in a human manner, while what is understood beneath the surface manifests the divine—it would be consistent here too not to look at one and overlook the other, but to see the human in the death and to investigate what is more divine in the manner of it.
For it belongs to deity to pass through all things and to extend together with the nature of existing things through every part. Nothing would remain in being if it did not remain in that which is; and the divine nature is that which properly and primarily is. The continued existence of beings therefore compels us to believe that the divine nature is present in all things that exist. This is what we are taught through the cross. Its form is divided fourfold, so that from the center, where it is joined to itself, four projections are counted: the One who was extended upon it at the time of the dispensation through death is the One who binds and harmonizes the whole to Himself, bringing the different natures of existing things through Himself into one concord and harmony. For among existing things we conceive either something above, or something below, or our thought passes toward the boundaries at either side.
If, then, you consider the constitution of things above the heavens, or beneath the earth, or at either boundary of the whole, deity meets your thought everywhere, alone contemplated in every part among existing things and holding all things in being. Whether this nature ought to be called deity, Word, power, wisdom, or some other lofty term better able to indicate what transcends all, our argument has no concern with the particular expression, name, or form of words.
Since, then, all creation looks toward Him and is centered around Him, and through Him is joined together with itself—the things above being joined through Him to the things below, and those at the sides to one another—we had to be led toward an understanding of deity not only through hearing, but sight also had to become a teacher of these higher thoughts. Starting from this, the great Paul leads the people at Ephesus into the mystery, giving them through his teaching the capacity to know what are the depth and the height, the breadth and the length.
For he names each projection of the cross with its own term, calling the part above height, the part below depth, and the extensions to the sides breadth and length. Elsewhere, I think, he makes this thought still clearer to the Philippians when he says: ‘At the name of Jesus Christ every knee will bend—of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.’ Here he includes the middle arm under one designation, calling ‘on earth’ everything lying between the heavenly and the things beneath the earth. This is what we have learned concerning the mystery of the cross.
The narrative that follows contains events of such a kind and in such fitting sequence that even unbelievers must acknowledge that nothing in them is foreign to a conception worthy of God.
For His not remaining in death; the wounds inflicted on His body by iron presenting no obstacle to His continued existence; His appearing to the disciples after the resurrection whenever He wished; His being present with them unseen and coming into their midst without needing any entrance through the doors; His strengthening the disciples through the breathing of the Spirit; His promising to be with them and to be separated from them by no intervening barrier; His visibly ascending toward heaven while, as apprehended by the mind, being everywhere; and all the similar things contained in the narrative—none of these needs support from argument to show that they are divine and belong to a high and transcendent power.
I do not think it necessary to go through each of these matters individually, since the account itself makes their supernatural character evident. But since the dispensation involving the bath is also a part of the mystical teachings—whether someone wishes to call it baptism, illumination, or regeneration, we do not dispute about the name—it would be well to say a few things about this too.