Up to this point, perhaps, someone who follows the sequence of the argument will agree with it, since nothing that has been said seems outside a conception fitting to God. But he will not respond in the same way to what follows—even though it is precisely through these things that the mystery of truth is most firmly established: human birth; growth from infancy to maturity; food and drink; weariness and sleep; grief and tears; false accusation and trial; the cross and death; and being laid in a tomb. For when these things are included with the mystery, they somehow weaken the faith of those who judge too narrowly, so that because of what has already been said they do not accept what comes next either.
Because of what seems unfitting about death, they do not receive what is fitting to God in the resurrection from the dead. But I think we must first draw our reasoning a little away from the coarseness of fleshly thinking and consider what is beautiful in itself and what is not, and by what marks each of these is recognized.
For I think no reasonable person will object that among all things there is by nature only one thing that is shameful: the passion that belongs to evil. What is outside evil is foreign to every kind of shamefulness; and whatever has nothing shameful mixed into it is necessarily understood to belong to the realm of the beautiful. What is truly beautiful is unmixed with its opposite, and whatever is contemplated within the realm of the beautiful is fitting to God.
Let them therefore either show that birth, nurture, growth, advance toward the maturity of nature, the experience of death, and the return from death are evil; or, if they agree that the things just named are outside evil, they will necessarily confess that what is foreign to evil is not shameful. And if what is free from every shamefulness and evil is necessarily shown to be beautiful, how pitiably irrational are those who declare that what is beautiful is not fitting to God?