A. I will, and very gladly. I would say that they have missed the truth by attaching the one from the seed of David to the One who is Son by nature and in truth, that is, to the Only-Begotten, as though he were another son. Yet sacred Scripture cries out plainly: ‘The first man was from the earth, made of dust; the second is from heaven.’ And the Son Himself says, ‘I have come down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me: that I should lose nothing of all that He has given Me, but raise it up on the last day.’ Whom, then, do they say came down from heaven? The body, after all, was born from a woman.
B. Clearly, the Word who was begotten from God the Father. I do not suppose they would choose to think anything else.
A. Rightly said, my friend. The all-wise John also wrote somewhere, ‘He who comes from above is above all.’ But if the Father wills that everything given to Him should rise again, and if this is good and indeed God-befitting—for it belongs to God to save—why did He say that He came down not to do His own will, but the Father’s? Would anyone among us suppose that the Son who came from God the Father falls behind the Father’s goodness, that He is not Himself good, and that raising up what has been given to Him and freeing it from corruption is somehow foreign to Him?
B. We would be in danger of doing just that.
A. Yet we would very reasonably conclude that, since He is the genuine offspring of a good Father, He too must be understood as good—indeed, as Goodness itself. ‘For the tree is known by its fruit,’ according to His own words. And so He speaks truth when He says, ‘He who has seen Me has seen the Father,’ and ‘I and the Father are one.’
B. Well said. Explain, then, what seems to have been stated obscurely.
A. We do not say that the Son was unwilling to abolish death and drive corruption away from human bodies. For He ‘does not delight in the destruction of the living,’ and ‘the creatures of the world are wholesome,’ as it is written; rather, ‘through the envy of the devil death entered the world.’ But the joyless dominion of death could be overthrown in no other way than through the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten. Therefore He appeared as one of us and made His own a body subject to corruption according to the conditions inherent in its nature, so that, since He Himself is Life—for He was begotten from the Father who is Life—He might implant in it His own proper good, namely life. And once, from gentleness and love for humanity, He chose to undergo likeness to us, suffering too had necessarily to happen to Him when the impiety of the Jews raged against Him. Yet the disgrace involved in suffering was burdensome to Him. So when the time came at which He had to endure the cross for the life of all, in order to show that suffering, considered in itself, was unwilled, He approached it in a human manner, in the form of prayer, saying, ‘Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.’ Yet He says that the One from heaven came down not unwillingly to undergo the painful thing, so that He might accomplish resurrection for those on earth—a resurrection which He alone inaugurated for human nature. For according to the flesh He became ‘the Firstborn from the dead’ and ‘the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.’
B. Therefore the suffering would be said to be His, and not someone else’s, insofar as He appeared as man, even though He remained impassible insofar as He is understood to be God.
A. That is what I say. And remember the God-inspired Scripture, which says: ‘The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.’
B. Then do we say that the Word from God is the One who is called the last Adam?
A. Not the Word bare, as I said, but the Word who became like us. We therefore say that He is the life-giving One, since giving life is not a human work but rather something proper to God. He is also called the last Adam because, according to the flesh, He came from Adam and became a second beginning for those on earth. In Him human nature is reconstituted into newness of life—a life in holiness and incorruption—through the resurrection from the dead. In this way death was abolished, because Life by nature did not allow His own body to remain subject to corruption, since, according to the inspired Paul’s words, it was not possible for Christ to be held by it. And in this way the good accomplished by Him passed over to us as well.
B. Excellent.
A. Consider this also in addition to what we have said.
B. What do you mean?
A. Christ said to the holy Apostles, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ We have therefore been baptized into the holy and consubstantial Trinity—I mean the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Is what I have said not true?
B. Of course it is.
A. Do we not understand the One who begot as the Father, and as the Son the Only-Begotten God the Word, who was begotten from Him by nature?
B. Certainly.
A. How, then, have we been baptized into His death, according to the blessed Paul’s words? For he says, ‘As many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into His death.’ Yet there is ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism.’ Surely they would not say that we were baptized into the one from the seed of David as though he were another Son with an existence of his own. Rather, since the One who is God by nature is understood to be beyond suffering, yet chose to suffer in order to save those subject to corruption, He was made like those on earth in every respect, underwent birth according to the flesh from a woman, and, as I said, made His own a body capable of tasting death and of living again. In this way, while He Himself remained impassible, He could be said to suffer in His own flesh. For He is the One who saved what was lost. He therefore said plainly: ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.’ And again: ‘No one takes My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again.’ It does not belong to one of us, nor to an ordinary man, to have authority to lay down his life and take it up again. But the Only-Begotten and true Son laid it down and took it up again, bringing us out of the snares of death. One may see this very clearly foreshadowed in the books of Moses among those of old: the slaughter of the lamb delivered the Israelites from death and corruption and turned away the destroyer. The event was therefore a type of Christ. For ‘Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us,’ so that He might overthrow the joyless dominion of death and acquire the whole world beneath heaven by His own blood. ‘For we were bought with a price’ and are not our own. One died for all, the One whose worth exceeds that of all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who died and rose for them. Paul also supports this when he says, ‘For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.’ We all therefore belong to Christ, and through Him we have been reconciled to the Father, since He suffered in the flesh for us in order to present us cleansed. For it is written: ‘Therefore Jesus also, so that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.’ And again: ‘You, who once were alienated and enemies in mind through evil works, He has now reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and blameless before Him.’ Notice, then, how Scripture says that it was His own blood and His own flesh that were given for us. We must not say that they belonged to another son besides Him, understood separately, honored by a bare conjunction, possessing an added glory rather than an essential excellence, and wearing the name of sonship and of the Godhead above all things like a cloak or mask thrown over him. If, as our opponents have chosen to think, he were such by nature, it could in no way be fitting for him to say, ‘I am the truth.’ For how can something be true when it is not in reality what it is called, but is, as it were, spurious and falsely named? But Christ is indeed the Truth and is above all as God. For the Word remained what He was even though He became flesh, so that although the One who is above all became numbered among all things because of His humanity, He might still preserve the reality of being above everything and beyond the limits of creation.