B. But, they say, to say that God the Word suffered will stamp Him with considerable disgrace and perhaps even bring reproach upon our venerable mystery itself.
A. Yet, ‘despising the shame,’ He chose to suffer in the flesh for us, according to the Scriptures. I would regard being ashamed of the suffering on the cross as a sickness of the Jewish mind and as falling under the serious charge of Greek foolishness. For the inspired Paul writes: ‘Since Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified—to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God—because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.’
B. How so? I do not understand at all.
A. Does he not say that the suffering on the cross became a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks? The Jews, seeing Him hanging from the wood and shaking their bloodthirsty heads at Him, said, ‘If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross, and we will believe You.’ They imagined that He had been overpowered by their strength, and for that reason was nailed there and suffered. They were deceived, because they did not believe Him truly to be the Son of God, but looked only at the flesh. The Greeks, meanwhile, being entirely unable to understand the depth of the mystery, regard it as foolishness when we say that Christ died for the life of the world. Yet this very thing that seems foolish is wiser than men. For the teaching concerning Christ, the Savior of us all, is deep and truly filled with the highest wisdom. And what the Jewish crowds thought to be weakness is stronger than men. The Only-Begotten Word of God saved us by taking on likeness to us, so that, having suffered in the flesh and risen from the dead, He might make our nature superior to death and corruption. What He accomplished lies beyond human power. Therefore what seems to have been done in our weakness and in suffering is stronger than men, because it displays power proper to God.
B. Then how, they say, can the same One both suffer and not suffer?
A. By suffering in His own flesh, and not in the nature of His Godhead. The explanation of these things is wholly ineffable, and no mind can fully attain thoughts so subtle and exalted. Yet by following reasonings that lead to right belief and considering what is fitting, we neither separate Him from being said to suffer—lest we first have to say that His birth according to the flesh was not His but someone else’s—nor do we say that what belongs to the flesh was done to His divine and supreme nature. Rather, as I have said, He is understood to have suffered in His own flesh while not suffering in His Godhead, in something like the following way. Every illustration is weak and falls short of the truth. Still, an illustration can give the mind a faint image of the matter and, starting from things close at hand, raise it toward what is lofty and beyond words. Take iron, for example, or another similar material brought into contact with fire. It receives the fire and becomes filled with its flame. If someone then strikes it, the material receives the blow and is damaged, but the nature of the fire is not harmed at all by the one who strikes. In something like this way you may understand the Son as being said to suffer in the flesh while not suffering in His Godhead. As I said, the power of the example is slight, but it can bring those who have chosen not to disbelieve the holy Scriptures somewhat near to the truth.
B. Well said.
A. For if the flesh united to Him ineffably, beyond mind and reason, had not become directly and truly the Word’s own, how could it be understood as life-giving? For He says, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven and gives life to the world. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world.’ But if the flesh belongs to another son besides Him, merely appropriated to Him through a relational conjunction and called by grace to equal honor, how does He call it His own, since He cannot lie? And how could someone else’s flesh give life to the world unless it became the own flesh of Life—that is, of the Word who is from God the Father—concerning whom the inspired John says, ‘And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him; and we are in His true Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.’
B. But I suppose they would reply that He Himself said very clearly, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you: unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.’ Therefore, they say, we understand that the honored body and blood belong not to God the Word, but to the man conjoined to Him.
A. Then where will they place the great mystery of godliness? On their account, the self-emptying of God the Word is, it seems, abolished: He was in the form and equality of the Father, yet for our sake chose to take the form of a servant, to come in likeness to us, to share in flesh and blood, and to bestow upon all under heaven the dispensation of His Incarnation. For through it the world has been saved, as the Father sums up all things in Him, both things in heaven and things on earth, according to what is written. If, then, they say that it is not the Only-Begotten Himself who speaks both in a God-befitting and in a human manner when He says, ‘And the bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world,’ but that some other Son of Man, conceived separately from Him, saved us, then it was not the Lord Himself who saved us, as Scripture says, but one of us. What is subject to corruption would then be made alive not by God, who has power to give life, but by one who himself belongs among those subject to corruption and who, together with us, received life by grace. But if it is true, according to the Scriptures, that the Word became flesh, appeared on earth, and lived among human beings, possessing the form of a servant as His own, then He will also be called Son of Man. And if some are offended at this, they expose themselves to the charge of ignorance. For the flesh, though by its own nature subject to corruption, could become life-giving in no other way than by becoming the own flesh of the Word who gives life to all things. In this way it carries out what belongs to Him, filled with His life-giving power. There is nothing astonishing in this. If fire, when it comes into contact with material that is not hot by its own nature, makes it hot by richly imparting the activity of its own power, how much more will the Word, being God, impart His own life-giving power and activity to His own flesh, since He united it to Himself and made it His own without confusion or change, in the manner known to Him?
B. It is therefore necessary to confess that, with no other intervening, the body became entirely the own body of the Word who is from the Father, even though it is understood to be animated by a rational soul.
A. Most certainly, if we rightly set forth the unerring word of faith, love the doctrines of truth, and follow in the footsteps of the holy Fathers—neither being carried away from the straight path nor abandoning the royal road and being led by the empty talk of some into a counterfeit understanding, but rather being built upon the one foundation, that is, Christ. ‘For no one can lay another foundation besides the one already laid,’ as the truly wise master builder and minister of His mysteries has written. We therefore believe that the Son of God the Father is one, and that our Lord Jesus Christ is understood in one Person: begotten divinely from God the Father as the Word before every age and all time, and in the last times of the age the same One born according to the flesh from a woman. To Him we attribute both the things proper to God and the human things. We say that the birth according to the flesh and the suffering on the cross were His, because He made all that belonged to His own flesh His own, while remaining impassible in the nature of the Godhead. Thus every knee bows to Him, ‘and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’ Amen.