B. That is enough of such testimonies, my good friend. But tell me how we ought to understand what is written concerning Christ: ‘Who, in the days of His flesh, offered prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the One able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His reverence; and although He was Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered, and, having been perfected, became for those who obey Him the cause of indestructible salvation.’ I will add to what I have said this also: ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ For they say that such things are unfitting for God the Word and fall far beneath the excellence inherent in Him.
A. I too know that these things would not fit the Word who came forth from God the Father if we were to set aside the manner of the dispensation and refuse to admit, according to the Scriptures, that ‘He became flesh.’ But since we stand firmly on this confession, and to doubt it at all would incur a charge of impiety, come, let us examine as far as we can the depth of the dispensation. The Word from God the Father appeared to us in a form like ours, in order to benefit the human condition in countless ways and to show very clearly the path that leads to everything admirable. It was therefore necessary for us to learn, when temptation rushes upon those who face danger for the love of God, what sort of people those who have chosen a noble and excellent life ought to be: whether their Savior should see them slackening, falling into negligence, indulging themselves at the wrong time, and giving themselves over to ease; or rather straining themselves in prayer, bathed in tears, thirsting for help from Him and for courage, if He should choose that we too must suffer. We also needed to learn, for our profit, where the course of obedience finally leads, through what rewards it passes, and how great and of what kind the reward of endurance is. Christ therefore became for us a pattern of these things. The inspired Peter confirms us in this when he says: ‘For what credit is there if, when you sin and are beaten, you endure it? But if, when doing good, you endure, this is grace before God, because Christ also died for us, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His footsteps.’ Thus the Word of God was no longer bare of, or without participation in, the conditions of self-emptying; rather, ‘in the days of His flesh’ He became our pattern. He could therefore, without blame, make use of the conditions of humanity, extend Himself in prayer, shed tears, appear in a certain way to need One who saves, and learn obedience although He was Son. For the Spirit-bearing writer is, as it were, struck with wonder at the mystery: although He is Son by nature and in truth, resplendent in the glories of the Godhead, He lowered Himself to humiliation so as to undergo the lowliness of our human poverty. Yet, as I said, this pattern was beautiful and profitable for us, so that from it one may very easily learn that, when the time calls us to courage, we must not rush down another road. Christ Himself said on one occasion, ‘Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna,’ and on another, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.’ What else can following Him mean except that we must show courage against temptations, while also asking for help from above—not carelessly or halfheartedly, but with the most earnest prayers, and with tears of reverent fear falling from our eyes?
B. Well said.
A. And if He says, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ how, then, would they understand it?
B. They would suppose, I imagine, that these are the words of the man who was assumed.
A. The words, then, of one who has lost heart and regards the assault of the trial as unbearable and intolerable—is that what you mean?
B. Of one who is distressed, presumably, because of human faintheartedness. For He also said to the holy disciples, ‘My soul is deeply sorrowful, even to death,’ and He fell before the Father Himself, saying, ‘Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.’
A. And yet this is nothing other than what we were just discussing: ‘Who, in the days of His flesh, offered prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the One able to save Him from death.’ But if anyone thinks that Christ descended to such faintheartedness that He was sorrowful and distressed because He found suffering unbearable, conquered by fear and overcome by weakness, that person plainly writes Him down as not being God and makes it seem, as far as I can see, that He rebuked Peter for no reason.
B. What do you mean?
A. Christ said, ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over into the hands of sinners; they will mock Him and crucify Him, and on the third day He will rise.’ Peter, because he loved God, said, ‘God be gracious to You, Lord; this shall never happen to You.’ And what did Christ say to him? ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, because you do not think the things of God, but the things of men.’ Yet how did the disciple depart from what was fitting when he wanted the trial removed from his Master, if that trial truly was unbearable to Him and impossible to endure—if it reduced Him to helplessness and could shatter the One who Himself commanded His disciples to stand courageously against the terrors of death and to count suffering as nothing whenever God’s will is being accomplished through them? And I marvel that these men, while saying that the man was conjoined to the Only-Begotten and declaring him a sharer in divine dignities, nevertheless cast him beneath the terrors of death so that he appears simply as one of us—a bare man who has gained nothing at all from those divine dignities.
B. What, then, is the meaning of the dispensation in these things?
A. It is mystical and deep, and worthy of wonder among those who rightly understand the mystery of Christ. Consider the words appropriate to His self-emptying and not unfitting for the conditions of humanity: they were spoken at the proper and necessary time, so that He who is above all creation might be seen to have become like us in every respect. And something else follows from this as well.
B. What is that?
A. Because we became accursed through Adam’s transgression, fell under the snare of death, and were abandoned by God, while in Christ all things have become new and our condition has been restored to what it was in the beginning, it was necessary that the second Adam, the One from heaven, the One above every sin, the all-pure and undefiled second firstfruits of our race—that is, Christ—should free human nature from its sentence, call down upon it once more the favor from above and from the Father, and undo its abandonment through His obedience and complete submission. For He committed no sin; in Him human nature has become rich in blamelessness and complete freedom from reproach, so that it may at last cry out with boldness, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ Consider that the Only-Begotten, having become man, uttered such words as one of us and on behalf of the whole nature, virtually saying: ‘The first man sinned; he slipped into disobedience, disregarded the commandment given to him, and was carried away into rebellion by the serpent’s deceit. Therefore, and quite rightly, he was subjected to corruption and came under sentence. But You planted Me as a second beginning for those on earth, and I have become the second Adam. In Me You see human nature purified, attaining freedom from sin, holy and all-pure. Therefore now grant the blessings that come from Your gentleness; end the abandonment; rebuke corruption; and let the effects of wrath come to an end. I have conquered even Satan himself, who prevailed of old, for he found absolutely nothing of his own in Me.’ Such, I think, is the meaning of the Savior’s words. For He was calling down the Father’s favor not so much upon Himself as upon us. Just as the consequences of wrath passed from the first root, I mean Adam, into the whole of human nature—for ‘death reigned from Adam to Moses even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression’—so also the blessings that come from our second firstfruits, Christ, will pass again into the whole human race. The all-wise Paul confirms this when he says, ‘For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more by the righteous act of the One shall the many live’; and again, ‘For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.’
B. It is therefore foolish and utterly out of harmony with the holy Scriptures to think and say that the man who was assumed uttered these human words because he had been abandoned by the Word conjoined to him.
A. That, my friend, would be impious and a very clear proof of utter senselessness; yet it is hardly surprising in people who have chosen not to think rightly. For because they separate and divide words and deeds everywhere, assigning some exclusively and individually to the Only-Begotten and others to a son other than Him, born from a woman, they have thereby strayed from the straight and most unerring path and from a clear knowledge of the mystery of Christ.
B. Then we must not divide the words or deeds that are set before us in the Gospel and apostolic preaching?
A. Certainly not, if by division you mean assigning them to two persons and two hypostases separated from one another and existing wholly apart, each on its own. For since there is one Son, the Word who became man for our sake, I would say that everything is His—both words and deeds, both the God-befitting and the human.
B. Then even if He is said to have grown weary from His journey, to have hungered, and to have slept, tell me: is it fitting to assign such lowly and humble things to God the Word?
A. If He were still bare and not yet incarnate, before He descended into self-emptying, certainly not; you are thinking rightly. But once He became man and emptied Himself, what harm can it do Him to attribute these things to Him? For just as we say that the flesh became His own, so too, by an appropriation belonging to the dispensation and according to the manner of the self-emptying, the weaknesses of the flesh are His. For He was made like His brothers in every respect, apart from sin alone. And do not be surprised that we say He made the weaknesses of the flesh His own together with the flesh. He likewise assigned to Himself the insults from outside that were inflicted on Him through the wickedness of the Jews, saying in the voice of the Psalmist, ‘They divided My garments among themselves, and for My clothing they cast lots’; and again, ‘All who saw Me mocked Me; they spoke with their lips and shook their heads.’
B. Then if He says, for example, ‘He who has seen Me has seen the Father,’ and ‘I and the Father are one,’ and then says to the Jews, ‘Why do you seek to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God?’ shall we allow that both sets of words belong to one and the same One?
A. Most certainly. Christ has in no way been divided; all who worship Him believe that He is one, only, and true Son. For the Image of the invisible God, the radiance of the glory of the Father’s hypostasis, and the exact imprint of His essence took the form of a servant—not by conjoining a man to Himself, as they say, but rather by Himself becoming in that form, while even so remaining in the likeness of God the Father. The all-wise Paul therefore wrote: ‘For it is God who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” who shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Christ Jesus.’ Notice how, in the face of Christ, the light of the divine and ineffable glory of God the Father shines forth. For the Only-Begotten, although He became man, shows in Himself the glory of the Father. For this One alone, and no other, is understood and called Christ. Otherwise, let our opponents teach us how anyone could behold in a mere man the illumination, or indeed the knowledge, of the divine glory. We will not see God in the form of a man except in the Word alone, who became like us and became man, yet even so remained by nature and in truth the Son. In Him, because He is understood to be God, this too could be seen in a wondrous way. The steward of His mysteries, having called Him Christ Jesus because He became like us and was incarnate, knows Him at the same time to be God by nature and in truth. For he writes: ‘I have written to you somewhat boldly in part, by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, serving as a priest of the Gospel of God.’ Zechariah also prophesies to his own child, I mean the Baptist: ‘And you, little child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High; for you shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare a people for Him.’ Then the inspired Baptist pointed out the Most High and Lord when he said: ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This is He of whom I said, “After me comes a man who has come to rank before me, because He was before me.”’ Is it lawful, then, to doubt that the Word from God the Father, together with the flesh united to Him, is one, only, and true Son—and that this flesh is not soulless, as some have said, but endowed with a rational soul—and that He is everywhere one Person together with it?
B. I would not doubt it in the least. For there is ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism.’ But if Jesus is said to have advanced in age, wisdom, and grace, who is it that advanced in these things? The Word from God the Father is full and perfect in Himself; what increase could He receive, and toward what could He advance? Since He is Himself Wisdom, He could not be said to receive wisdom. So, they say, we must ask to whom these things belong.
A. Then, it seems, we must introduce another Son and Lord simply because some people cannot reach the depth of the holy Scriptures. The wise Evangelist, after first stating that the Word became flesh, shows Him, within the dispensation, allowing His own flesh to proceed according to the laws of its own nature. It belongs to humanity to advance in age and wisdom—and, I would say, in grace as well—as the understanding proper to each stage rises, in a way, together with the body’s growth. Understanding is one thing in infants, another in children, and still another beyond childhood. It was certainly not impossible or beyond the power of the Word from the Father, as God, to raise the body united to Him straight from the swaddling clothes to the height of full maturity. Nor would it have been difficult for Him to display astonishing wisdom even as an infant. But that would have come close to spectacle and wonder-working and would have been out of keeping with the design of the dispensation, for the mystery was accomplished quietly. He therefore allowed, within the dispensation, the conditions of humanity to prevail in His own case. This too belongs to His likeness to us, whose progress toward maturity comes little by little, as time brings us to growth in age and to an understanding appropriate to it. The Word from the Father, then, is wholly perfect and in need of nothing whatever, including growth, because He is God. Yet because He became like us, He makes our things His own; and even so we know Him to be above us as God. Paul, although he knows that the Word became flesh, looks at the excellences of His Godhead and at times even dares to say that He is not a man. Thus he writes to the Galatians: ‘Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ.’ And elsewhere: ‘I make known to you that the Gospel preached by me is not according to man. For I did not receive it from a man, nor was I taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ.’
B. Then we should attribute to Him the statement that He advanced in wisdom, age, and grace, just as we attribute to Him hunger, weariness, and the like? And perhaps, if He is said to have suffered and to have been made alive by the Father, we will attribute these things to Him as well.
A. Yes. For we say that the human things are His by an appropriation belonging to the dispensation, and that what belongs to the flesh belongs to Him together with the flesh, since we do not understand there to be another Son beside Him. Rather, the Lord Himself saved us, giving His own blood as the price for the life of all. For we were bought with a price, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a spotless and unblemished lamb, when He offered Himself for us to God the Father as a fragrant offering. Paul, most learned in the Law, confirms this when he writes: ‘Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a fragrant aroma.’ And because Christ became a fragrant offering for us, showing human nature in Himself as free from sin, through Him and in Him we have gained boldness before the Father and God in heaven. For it is written: ‘Therefore, brothers, since we have boldness to enter the holy places by the blood of Christ, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh…’ Understand, then, how he says that the blood is His and the flesh is His, and calls the flesh the curtain. This is entirely fitting: just as the sacred curtain in the temple concealed the Holy of Holies, so the Lord’s flesh may be understood to have done something similar, not allowing the surpassing and extraordinary excellence and glory of God the Word united to it to be seen, so to speak, naked and uncovered. Thus some supposed that Christ was Elijah or one of the prophets. And the Jews, completely failing to understand the mystery concerning Him, mocked Him and said, ‘Is this not the carpenter’s son? How does He now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’ For the divine nature is invisible by nature. Yet He who in His own nature is invisible was seen by those on earth in a form like ours, and the Lord, though God, appeared to us. This, I think, is what the inspired David teaches when he says, ‘God will come openly, our God, and He will not keep silence.’
B. You are thinking rightly. Yet they insist that this is not how matters stand—far from it. For they refuse in any way to attribute the suffering on the cross to the Word who came from God. Instead, they say that He caused the man who was conjoined to Him with equal honor to endure the insults of the Jews, the sufferings of the cross, and death itself; and that this man became the founder of our salvation by returning to life through the power of the Word who was with him and abolishing the dominion of death.
A. Can they, then, establish from the holy Scriptures that this account is true? Or are they innovating the faith, ‘speaking from their own heart and not from the mouth of the Lord,’ as it is written? Perhaps they are unable to say, ‘But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.’
B. Yes, they say. The all-wise Paul confirms us in this, for he wrote: ‘For it was fitting for Him, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the founder of their salvation through sufferings.’ The One ‘for whom and through whom all things exist,’ they say, can be none other than the Word who came from God. Therefore He perfected through sufferings the founder of our salvation, that is, the one from the seed of David.
A. Then we have no longer been redeemed by God—for how, or from where, could we be?—but rather by someone else’s blood. Some counterfeit man and falsely named son has died for us. The venerable and great mystery of the Only-Begotten’s Incarnation would then have been empty talk and deception, and He would not truly have become man. We would have to call Savior and Redeemer not Him at all, but rather that other one who gave his own blood for us. Yet the most holy Paul wrote: ‘It was necessary, then, that the copies of the heavenly things should be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter holy places made with hands, copies of the true ones, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God on our behalf; nor did He enter to offer Himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places year after year with another’s blood, for then He would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But now He has appeared once, at the consummation of the ages, to put away sin through His sacrifice.’ The type, then, involves entering with another’s blood and certain people being cleansed by it. But the reality—or rather, the truth—must surely possess what is better: namely, that Jesus accomplishes this with His own blood, entering not into a temporary tabernacle made with hands, which belongs to shadow and type, but into the heavenly and true one, that is, into heaven. For ‘it was necessary that the copies of the heavenly things should be cleansed with these’—clearly, with the typical things and with blood belonging to another—‘but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.’ We must therefore necessarily seek in Christ what is better than the types, that is, the truth: the accomplishing of this with His own blood.
B. Well said.
A. But since they raise the Apostle’s statement against us as though it had been said about an ordinary man, come, let us take the passage from its beginning and follow it to a point sufficient for the argument. It is written: ‘But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death. For it was fitting for Him, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the founder of their salvation through sufferings. For He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from One, and for this reason He is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, “I will proclaim Your name to My brothers”; and again, “Behold, I and the children God has given Me.” Since, therefore, the children share in blood and flesh, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, so that through death He might abolish the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and set free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery throughout their whole lives. For surely He does not take hold of angels, but He takes hold of the seed of Abraham. Therefore He had to be made like His brothers in every respect.’ See—see how very clearly, after saying that He was made lower than the angels because of the suffering of death and was crowned on account of it with honor and glory, the Apostle makes plain whom he is speaking about: clearly, the Only-Begotten. For he says that He partook of blood and flesh just as we do and that He took hold not of angels but of Abraham’s seed. It was therefore fitting for God the Father, for whom and through whom all things exist, to perfect through sufferings the Son who had descended into self-emptying and become man, taking the form of a servant, as He consecrated His own flesh as the ransom for the life of all. For Christ, the spotless victim, was sacrificed for us, and by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified, restoring human nature to what it was in the beginning. For all things are new in Him. That God the Father gave His own Son for us is also confirmed by the all-wise Paul, who writes concerning Him: ‘He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?’ And by God’s own Son we mean the Word who came forth from His essence. He was given for us not while still bare and without flesh, but when He became flesh. Nor is there any reproach in saying that He suffered, for He suffered not in the nature of the Godhead but in His own flesh. For God the Father, as I said just now, ‘made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.’
B. Do we understand, then, that He actually became sin? Or rather, because He was made like those who are under sin, is He therefore called ‘sin’?
A. You have put it rightly. Just as ‘He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God’—for human nature has been justified in Him—so He caused the One who knew no death, since the Word is Life and life-giving, to suffer in the flesh, while remaining beyond suffering insofar as He is understood to be God, so that through Him and in Him we might live. For this reason Christ’s suffering has also been called ‘the likeness of death.’ It is written: ‘For if we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall also be united with Him in His resurrection.’ For the Word remained alive even while His holy flesh tasted death, so that, with death defeated and corruption trampled down, the power of the resurrection might pass to the whole human race. For it is true that ‘as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.’ How, indeed, can we say that the mystery of the Only-Begotten’s dispensation in the flesh benefited human nature unless the Word, being God, became flesh? Unless He who is above all creation lowered Himself into self-emptying and came down into our condition? Unless that which was subject to corruption became the body of Life, so that it might become superior to death and corruption?
B. Then we say that the Word Himself, who is from God the Father, suffered in the flesh for us?