A young man called me recently to discuss his family’s movement toward the Orthodox Church. He told me a priceless story about how his seven-year old daughter helped him and his wife understand an Orthodox practice that is often a hindrance to inquirers. Although the family had icons in their home they could not grasp the reason for the practice of venerating (kissing) them. One evening after prayers with his daughter she looked at the icon in her room and asked, “Who is on those pictures, Daddy?”

He replied, “The Virgin Mary and Jesus.”

She picked up the icon, kissed it and hugged it to her chest exclaiming, “Oh, daddy, they love you so much!”

“Then,” he told me, “We understood. It’s all about affection.”

Love, in fact, is the heart and soul of the theology of the early Church Fathers and of the Orthodox Church. The Fathers of the Church — East and West — in the early centuries shared the same perspective: humanity longs for liberation from the tyranny of death, sin, corruption and the devil which is only possible through the Life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Only the compassionate advent of God in the flesh could accomplish our salvation, because only He could conquer these enemies of humanity. It is impossible for Orthodoxy to imagine life outside the all-encompassing love and grace of the God who came Himself to rescue His fallen creation. Theology is, for the Fathers of the Orthodox Church, all about love.

The Approach of the Orthodox Fathers

As pervasive as the term original sin has become, it may come as a surprise to some that it was unknown in both the Eastern and Western Church until Augustine (c. 354-430). The concept may have arisen in the writings of Tertullian, but the expression seems to have appeared first in Augustine’s works. Prior to this the theologians of the early church used different terminology indicating a contrasting way of thinking about the fall, its effects and God’s response to it. The phrase the Greek Fathers used to describe the tragedy in the Garden was ancestral sin.

Ancestral sin has a specific meaning. The Greek word for sin in this case, amartema, refers to an individual act indicating that the Eastern Fathers assigned full responsibility for the sin in the Garden to Adam and Eve alone. The word amartia, the more familiar term for sin which literally means “missing the mark”, is used to refer to the condition common to all humanity (Romanides, 2002). The Eastern Church, unlike its Western counterpart, never speaks of guilt being passed from Adam and Eve to their progeny, as did Augustine. Instead, it is posited that each person bears the guilt of his or her own sin. The question becomes, “What then is the inheritance of humanity from Adam and Eve if it is not guilt?” The Orthodox Fathers answer as one: death. (I Corinthians 15:21) “Man is born with the parasitic power of death within him,” writes Fr. Romanides (2002, p. 161). Our nature, teaches Cyril of Alexandria, became “diseased… through the sin of one” (Migne, 1857-1866a). It is not guilt that is passed on, for the Orthodox fathers; it is a condition, a disease.

In Orthodox thought Adam and Eve were created with a vocation: to become one with God gradually increasing in their capacity to share in His divine life — deification² (Romanides, 2002, p. 76-77). “They needed to mature, to grow to awareness by willing detachment and faith, a loving trust in a personal God” (Clement, 1993, p. 84). Theophilus of Antioch (2nd Century) posits that Adam and Eve were created neither immortal nor mortal. They were created with the potential to become either through obedience or disobedience (Romanides, 2002).

The freedom to obey or disobey belonged to our first parents, “For God made man free and sovereign” (Romanides, 2002, p. 32). To embrace their God-given vocation would bring life, to reject it would bring death, but not at God’s hands. Theophilus continues, “… should he keep the commandment of God he would be rewarded with immortality… if, however, he should turn to things of death by disobeying God, he would be the cause of death to himself” (Romanides, 2002, p. 32)

Adam and Eve failed to obey the commandment not to eat from the forbidden tree thus rejecting God and their vocation to manifest the fullness of human existence (Yannaras, 1984). Death and corruption began to reign over the creation. “Sin reigned through death.” (Romans 5:21) In this view death and corruption do not originate with God; he neither created nor intended them. God cannot be the Author of evil. Death is the natural result of turning aside from God.

Adam and Eve were overcome with the same temptation that afflicts all humanity: to be autonomous, to go their own way, to realize the fullness of human existence without God. According to the Orthodox fathers sin is not a violation of an impersonal law or code of behavior, but a rejection of the life offered by God (Yannaras, 1984). This is the mark, to which the word amartia refers. Fallen human life is above all else the failure to realize the God-given potential of human existence, which is, as St. Peter writes, to “become partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). St. Basil writes: “Humanity is an animal who has received the vocation to become God” (Clement, 1993, p. 76).

In Orthodox thought God did not threaten Adam and Eve with punishment nor was He angered or offended by their sin; He was moved to compassion.³ The expulsion from the Garden and from the Tree of Life was an act of love and not vengeance so that humanity would not “become immortal in sin” (Romanides, 2002, p. 32). Thus began the preparation for the Incarnation of the Son of God and the solution that alone could rectify the situation: the destruction of the enemies of humanity and God, death (I Corinthians 15:26, 56), sin, corruption and the devil (Romanides, 2002).

It is important to note that salvation as deification is not pantheism because the Orthodox Fathers insist on the doctrine of creation ex nihilo (Athanasius, 1981). Human beings, along with all created things, have come into being from nothing. Created beings will always remain created and God will always remain Uncreated. The Son of God in the Incarnation crossed the unbridgeable chasm between them. Orthodox hymnography frequently speaks of the paradox of the Uncreated and created uniting without mixture or confusion in the wondrous hypostatic union. The Nativity of Christ, for example, is interpreted as “a secret re-creation, by which human nature was assumed and restored to its original state” (Clement, 1993, p. 41). God and human nature, separated by the Fall, are reunited in the Person of the Incarnate Christ and redeemed through His victory on the Cross and in the Resurrection by which death is destroyed (I Corinthians 15:54-55). In this way the Second Adam fulfills the original vocation and reverses the tragedy of the fallen First Adam opening the way of salvation for all.

The Fall could not destroy the image of God; the great gift given to humanity remained intact, but damaged (Romanides, 2002). Origen speaks of the image buried as in a well choked with debris (Clement, 1993). While the work of salvation was accomplished by God through Jesus Christ the removal of the debris that hides the image in us calls for free and voluntary cooperation. St. Paul uses the word synergy, or “co-workers”, (I Corinthians 3:9) to describe the cooperation between Divine Grace and human freedom. For the Orthodox Fathers this means asceticism (prayer, fasting, charity and keeping vigil) relating to St. Paul’s image of the spiritual athlete (I Corinthians 9:24-27). This is the working out of salvation “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). Salvation is a process involving faith, freedom and personal effort to fulfill the commandment of Christ to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).

The great Orthodox hymn of Holy Pascha (Easter) captures in a few words the essence of the Orthodox understanding of the Atonement: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, And upon those in the tombs bestowing life” (The Liturgikon, Paschal services, 1989). Because of the victory of Christ on the Cross and in the Tomb humanity has been set free, the curse of the law has been broken, death is slain, life has dawned for all. Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 – 662) writes that “Christ’s death on the Cross is the judgment of judgment” (Clement, 1993, p. 49) and because of this we can rejoice in the conclusion stated so beautifully by Olivier Clement: “In the crucified Christ forgiveness is offered and life is given. For humanity it is no longer a matter of fearing judgment or of meriting salvation, but of welcoming love in trust and humility” (Clement, 1993, p. 49).

Augustine’s Legacy

The piety and devotion of Augustine is largely unquestioned by Orthodox theologians, but his conclusions on the Atonement are (Romanides, 2002). Augustine, by his own admission, did not properly learn to read Greek and this was a liability for him. He seems to have relied mostly on Latin translations of Greek texts (Augustine, 1956a,

p. 9). His misinterpretation of a key scriptural reference, Romans 5:12, is a case in point (Meyendorff, 1979). In Latin the Greek idiom eph ho which means because of was translated as in whom. Saying that all have sinned in Adam is quite different than saying that all sinned because of him. Augustine believed and taught that all humanity has sinned in Adam (Meyendorff, 1979, p. 144). The result is that guilt replaces death as the ancestral inheritance (Augustine, 1956b) Therefore the term original sin conveys the belief that Adam and Eve’s sin is the first and universal transgression in which all humanity participates.

Augustine famously debated Pelagius (c. 354-418) over the place the human will could play in salvation. Augustine took the position against him that only grace is able to save, sola gratis (Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, 7)⁴. From this a doctrine of predestination developed (God gives grace to whom He will) which hardened in the 16^th and 17^th centuries into the doctrine of two-fold predestination (God in His sovereignty saves some and condemns others). The position of the Church of the first two centuries concerning the image and human freedom was abandoned.

The Roman idea of justice found prominence in Augustinian and later Western theology. The idea that Adam and Eve offended God’s infinite justice and honor made of death God’s method of retribution (Romanides, 2002). But this idea of justice deviates from Biblical thought. Kalomiros (1980) explains the meaning of justice in the original Greek of the New Testament:

The Greek word dikaiosuni ‘justice’, is a translation of the Hebrew word tsedaka. The word means ‘the divine energy which accomplishes man’s salvation.’ It is parallel and almost synonymous with the word hesed which means ‘mercy’, ‘compassion’, ‘love’, and to the word emeth which means ‘fidelity’, ‘truth’. This is entirely different from the juridical understanding of ‘justice’. (p. 31)

The juridical view of justice generates two problems for Augustine. One: how can one say that the attitude of the immutable God’s toward His creation changes from love to wrath? Two: how can God, who is good, be the author of such an evil as death (Romanides, 1992)? The only way to answer this is to say, as Augustine did to the young Bishop, Julian of Eclanum (d. 454), that God’s justice is inscrutable (Cahill, 1995, p. 65). Logically, then, justice provides proof of inherited guilt for Augustine, because since all humanity suffers the punishment of death and since God who is just cannot punish the innocent, then all must be guilty in Adam. Also, by similar reasoning, justice appears as a standard to which even God must adhere (Kalomiris, 1980). Can God change or be subject to any kind of standard or necessity? By contrast the Orthodox father, Basil the Great, attributes the change in attitude to humanity rather than to God (Migne, 1857-1866b). Because of the theological foundation laid by Augustine and taken up by his heirs, the conclusion seems unavoidable that a significant change occurs in the West making the wrath of God and not death the problem facing humanity (Romanides, 1992, p. 155-156).

How then could God’s anger be assuaged? The position of the ancient Church had no answer because its proponents did not see wrath as the problem. The Satisfaction Theory proposed by Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109) in his work Why the God-Man? provides the most predominant answer in the West⁵. The sin of Adam offended and angered God making the punishment of death upon all guilty humanity justified. The antidote to this situation is the crucifixion of the Incarnate Son of God because only the suffering and death of an equally eternal being could ever satisfy the infinite offense of the infinitely dishonored God and assuage His wrath (Williams, 2002; Yannaras, 1984, p. 152). God sacrifices His Son to restore His honor and pronounces the sacrifice sufficient. The idea of imputed righteousness rises from this. The Orthodox understanding that “the resurrection…through Christ, opens for humanity the way of love that is stronger than death” (Clement, 1993, p. 87) is replaced by a juridical theory of courtrooms and verdicts.

The image of an angry, vengeful God haunts the West where a basic insecurity and guilt seem to exist. Many appear to hold that sickness, suffering and death are God’s will. Why? I suspect one reason is that down deep the belief persists that God is still angry and must be appeased. Yes, sickness, suffering and death come and when they do God’s grace is able to transform them into life-bearing trials, but are they God’s will? Does God punish us when the mood strikes, when our behavior displeases Him or for no reason at all? Are the ills that afflict creation on account of God? For example, could the loving Father really be said to enjoy the sufferings of His Son or of the damned in hell (Yannaras, 1984)? Freud rebelled against these ideas calling the God inherent in them the sadistic Father (Yannaras, 1984, p. 153). Could it be as Yannaras, Clement and Kalomiris propose that modern atheism is a healthy rebellion against a terrorist deity (Clement, 2000)? Kalomiris (1980) writes that there are no atheists, just people who hate the God in whom they have been taught to believe.

Orthodoxy agrees that grace is a gift, but one that is given to all not to a chosen few. For Grace is an uncreated energy of God sustaining all creation apart from which nothing can exist (Psalm 104:29). What is more, though grace sustains humanity, salvation cannot be forced upon us (or withheld) by divine decree. Clement points out that the “Greek fathers (and some of the Latin Fathers), according to whom the creation of humanity entailed a real risk on God’s part, laid the emphasis on salvation through love: ‘God can do anything except force a man to love him’. The gift of grace saves, but only in an encounter of love” (Clement, 1993, p. 81). Orthodox theology holds that divine grace must be joined with human volition.

Pastoral Practice East and West

In simple terms, we can say that the Eastern Church tends towards a therapeutic model which sees sin as illness, while the Western Church tends towards a juridical model seeing sin as moral failure. For the former the Church is the hospital of souls, the arena of salvation where, through the grace of God, the faithful ascend from “glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18) into union with God in a joining together of grace and human volition. The choice offered to Adam and Eve remains our choice: to ascend to life or descend into corruption. For the latter, whether the Church is viewed as essential, important or arbitrary, the model of sin as moral failing rests on divine election and adherence to moral, ethical codes as both the cure for sin and guarantor of fidelity. Whether ecclesial authority or individual conscience imposes the code the result is the same.

Admittedly, the idea of salvation as process is not absent in the West. (One can call to mind the Western mystics and the Wesleyan movement as examples.) However, the underlying theological foundations of Eastern Church and Western Church in regard to ancestral or original sin are dramatically opposed. The difference is apparent when looking at the understanding of ethics itself. For the Western Church ethics often seems to imply exclusively adherence to an external code; for the Eastern Church ethics implies “the restoration of life to the fullness of freedom and love” (Yannaras, 1984, p. 143).

Modern psychology has encouraged most Christian caregivers to view sin as illness so that, in practice, the juridical approach is often mitigated. The willingness to refer to mental health providers when necessary implies an expansion of the definition of sin from moral infraction to human condition. This is a happy development. Recognizing sin as disease helps us to understand that the problem of the human condition operates on many levels and may even have a genetic component.

It is interesting that Christians from a broad spectrum have rediscovered the psychology of spiritual writers of the ancient Church. I discovered this in an Oral Roberts University Seminary classroom twenty-five years ago through a reading of “The Life of St. Pelagia the Harlot.” My journey into Orthodoxy and the priesthood began at that point. These pastors and teachers of the ancient Church were inspired by the Orthodox perspective enunciated in this paper: death as the problem, sin as disease, salvation as process and Christ as Victor.

Sin as missing the mark or, put another way, as the failure to realize the full potential of the gift of human life, calls for a gradual approach to pastoral care. The goal is nothing less than an existential transformation from within through growth in communion with God. Daily sins are more than moral infractions; they are revelations of the brokenness of human life and evidence of personal struggle. “Repentance means rejecting death and uniting ourselves to life” (Yannaras, 1984, 147-148).

In Orthodoxy we tend to dwell on the process and the goal more than the sin. A wise Serbian Orthodox priest once commented that God is more concerned about the direction of our lives than He is about the specifics. Indeed, the Scriptures point to the wondrous truth that, “If thou, O God, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand, but with Thee there is forgiveness” (Psalm 130:3-4). The way is open for all who desire to take it. A young monk was once asked, “What do you do all day in the monastery?” He replied, “We fall and rise, fall and rise.”

The sacramental approach in the Eastern Church is an integral part of pastoral care. The therapeutic view frees the sacrament of Confession in the Orthodox Church from the tendency to take on a juridical character resulting in proscribed, impersonal penances. In Orthodoxy sacraments are seen as a means of revealing the truth about humanity and also about God (Yannaras, 1984, p. 143). After Holy Baptism we often fail in our work of fulfilling the vocation to unbury the image within. Seventy times seven we return to the sacrament not as an easy way out (confess today, sin tomorrow), but because humility is a hard lesson to learn, real transformation is not instantaneous and we are in need of God’s help. Healing takes time. Sacraments are far from magical or automatic rituals (Yannaras, 1984, p. 144). They are personal, grace-filled events in which our free response to God’s grace is acknowledged and sanctified. Even in evangelical circles where Confession as sacrament is rejected the altar call often plays a similar role. It is telling that the Orthodox Sacrament of Confession always takes place face to face and never in the kind of confessional that appeared in the West. Sin is personal and healing must be equally personal. Therefore nothing in authentic pastoral care can be impersonal, automatic or pre-planned. In Orthodoxy the prescription is tailored for the patient as he or she is, not as he or she ought to be.

The juridical approach that has predominated in the West can make pastoral practice seem cold and automatic. Neither a focus on good works nor faith alone are sufficient to transform the human heart. Do positive, external criteria signify inner transformation in all cases? Some branches of Christian counseling too often rely on the application of seemingly relevant verses of Scripture to effect changes in behavior as if convincing one of the truth of Holy Scripture is enough. Belief in Scripture may be a beginning, but real transformation is not just a matter of thinking. First and foremost it is a matter of an existential transformation. It is a matter of a shift in the very mode of life itself: from autonomy to communion. Allow me to explain.

Death has caused a change in the way we relate to God, to one another and to the world. Our lives are dominated by the struggle to survive. Yannaras writes that we see ourselves not as persons sharing a common nature and purpose, but as autonomous individuals who live to survive in competition with one another. Thus, set adrift by death, we are alienated from God, from others and also from our true selves (Yannaras, 1984). The Lord Jesus speaks to this saying, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew16:26). Salvation is a transformation from the tragic state of alienation and autonomy that ends in death into a state of communion with God and one another that ends in eternal life. So, in the Orthodox view, a transformation in this mode of existence must occur. If the chosen are saved by decree and not by choice such an emphasis is irrelevant. The courtroom seems insufficient as an arena for healing or transformation.

Great flexibility needs to exist in pastoral care if it is to promote authentic transformation. We need to take people as they are and not as they ought to be. Moral and ethical codes are references, certainly, but not ends in themselves. As a pastor entrusted with personal knowledge of people’s lives, I know that moving people from point A to Z is impossible. If, by the grace of God, step B can be discovered, then real progress can often be made. Every step is a real step. If we can be faithful in small things the Lord will grant us bigger ones later (Matthew 25:21). There need be no rush in this intimate process of real transformation that has no end. As a priest and confessor I tell those who come to me, “I do not know exactly what is ahead on this spiritual adventure. That is between you and God, but if you will allow me, we will take the road together.”

A Romanian priest found himself overhearing the confession of a hardened criminal to an old priest-monk in a crowded Communist prison cell. As he listened he noticed the priest-monk begin to cry. He did not say a word through his tears until the man had finished at which time he replied, “My son, try to do better next time.” Yannaras writes that the message of the Church for humanity wounded and degraded by the ‘terrorist God of juridical ethics’ is precisely this: “what God really asks of man is neither individual feats nor works of merit, but a cry of trust and love from the depths” (Yannaras, 1984, p. 47). The cry comes from the depth of our need to the unfathomable depth of God’s love; the Prodigal Son crying out, “I want to go home” to the Father who, seeing his advance from a distance, runs to meet him. (Luke 15:11-32)

What this divine/human relationship will produce God knows, but we place ourselves in His loving hands and not without some trepidation because “God is a loving fire… for all: good or bad.” (Kalomiris, 1980, p. 19) The knowledge that salvation is a process makes our failures understandable. The illness that afflicts us demands access to the grace of God often and repeatedly. We offer to Him the only things that we have, our weakened condition and will. Joined with God’s love and grace it is the fuel that breathed upon by the Spirit of God, breaks the soul into flame.

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said: Abba, as much as I am able I practice a small rule, a little fasting, some prayer and meditation, and remain quiet, and as much as possible keep my thoughts clean. What else should I do? Then the old man stood up and stretched out his hands toward heaven, and his fingers became like ten torches of flame. And he said: If you wish you can become all flame. (Nomura, 2001, p. 92)

As we have seen, for the early Church Fathers and the Orthodox Church the Atonement is much more than a divine exercise in jurisprudence; it is the event of the life, death and resurrection of the Son of God that sets us free from the Ancestral Sin and its effects. Our slavery to death, sin, corruption and the devil are destroyed through the Cross and Resurrection and our hopeless adventure in autonomy is revealed to be what it is: a dead end. Salvation is much more than a verdict from above; it is an endless process of transformation from autonomy to communion, a gradual ascent from glory to glory as we take up once again our original vocation now fulfilled in Christ. The way to the Tree of Life at long last revealed to be the Cross is reopened and its fruit, the Body and Blood of God, offered to all. The goal is far greater than a change in behavior; we are meant to become divine.

Notes

1 Editor’s Note: Some within modern evangelicalism (Oden 2003, Packer and Oden 2004) have begun to examine the writings of the Patristics in an attempt to inspire unity within the Christian church. While somewhat controversial, the present article was invited in hope of beginning dialogue among the tributaries of Christian spirituality on a topic of great importance to a spiritually sensitive psychotherapy — sin.

2 A reference to movement toward union with God.

3 Orthodox theology recognizes that all human language, concepts and analogies fail to describe God in His essence. True knowledge of God demands that we proceed apophatically, that is, with the stripping away of human concepts, for God is infinitely beyond them all.

4 Pelagius is regarded as a heretic in the East (as is the case in the West). He elevated the human will and the expense of divine grace. In fairness, however, the Orthodox position is expressed best by John Cassian — who is often regarded as “semi-Pelagian” in the West. The problem — to the Orthodox perspective — is that both Pelagius and Augustine set the categories in the extreme — freedom of the will with nothing left for God versus complete sovereignty of God, with nothing left to human will. The Fathers argued instead for “synergy,” a mystery of God’s grace being given with the cooperation of the human heart.

5 It would perhaps be more precise to say the Latin West. The most prominent Reformed view seems to be a modification of Anselm’s emphasis on vicarious satisfaction, in which more emphasis is placed on penal substitution.

References

• Athanasius (1981). On the incarnation: The treatise de incarnatione verbi dei. (P. Lawson, Trans.). Crestwood: NY: St. Validimir’s Seminary Press.
• Augustine (1956a). Nicene and post nicene fathers: Four anti-pelagian writings, vol. 1, Grand Rapids , Michigan: Eerdmans.
• Augustine (1956b). Nicene and post nicene fathers: Four anti-pelagian writings, vol. 5,Grand Rapids , Michigan: Eerdmans.
• Cahill, T. (1995). How the irish saved civilization. New York: Doubleday.
• Clement, O. (1993). The roots of Christian mysticism. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press.
• Clement, O. (2000). On human being. New York: New City Press.
• Kalomiris, A. (1980). The river of fire. Retrieved April, 20, 2004, www.orthodoxpress.org/parish/river_of_fire.htm.
• Migne, J. P. (Ed.). (1857-1866a). The patrologiae curus completes, seris graeca. (Vols. 1-161), 74, 788-789. Paris: Parisorium.
• Migne, J. P. (Ed.). (1857-1866b). The patrologiae curus completes, seris graeca. (Vols. 1-161), 31, 345. Paris: Parisorium.
• Meyendorff, J. (1979). Byzantine theology. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
• Nomura, Yushi, trans. (2001). Desert wisdom: Sayings from the desert fathers, Marynoll, New York: Orbis Books.
• Oden, T. C. (2003). The rebirth of orthodoxy: Signs of new life in Christianity. New York: Harper Collins.
• Packer, J. I. & Oden, T. C. (2004). One faith: The evangelical consensus. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press.
• Romanides, J. (1992). The ancestral sin. Ridgewood, NJ: Zephyr Publishing.
• The liturgikon: The book of divine services for the priest and deacon (1989). New York: Athens Printing Co.
• Williams, T. “Saint Anselm”, Retrieved April 21, 2004. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2002 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL= http://plato.Stanford.edu/archives/spr.2002/entires/anselm/.
• Yannaras, C. (1984). The freedom of morality. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

About the Author

The Very Reverend Antony Hughes, M.Div., is the rector of St. Mary’s Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA. He has served as the Orthodox Chaplain at Harvard University.

The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasuries of grace—all things are there. (H.43.7)

St. Macarius

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

A.I. Solzhenitsyn

+++

These quotes are among the best known (ancient and modern) Orthodox statements on the heart of man and reveal the fundamental character of our spiritual struggle. There is not even a hint in these statements of human beings having a “legal” standing before God or that the Church should have any concern with such notions.

Man, as a fallen creature, is better described as diseased or broken (St. Paul uses the term “corrupt” phthoros in the Greek). The corruption which St. Paul describes is again not a legal term (as “corrupt” often means in modern English usage) but refers instead to a corruption that is similar to the rotting of a dead body. Indeed it is death that is at work in us that manifests itself as sin in our lives. The death that is at work in us is our falling back towards non-existence, or nothingness, whence all of creation came. God alone is the Lord and Giver of Life and true existence is only found in communion with Him. That communion is made possible through Christ Who became what we are, that we might become like Him.

It is the heart, the very core of our existence, that the Fathers dwell on when they look at the work of sin and redemption in our lives. Thus Orthodoxy is extremely “realist” in its understanding of the spiritual life rather than being concerned with legal standing or “debts owed,” etc. It is possible to use such relational language in a metaphorical manner, but the truth of our problem is to be found in the very character of our existence: Is it being transformed into the image of Christ or is it falling deeper into corruption and death?

This concern for the reality of our existence changes the focus and understanding of every action of the Church. Thus in Baptism, the focus is our union with the death and resurrection of Christ and the Gift of the Holy Spirit given us in Holy Chrismation. St. Ignatius of Antioch (2nd century) referred to Holy Communion as the “medicine of immortality.” Penance (confession) is occasionally described by the fathers as a “second baptism,” meaning that it restores the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

A priest hearing confession listens intently for the state of the heart (if possible) rather than simply categorizing and subjecting to legal analysis what he hears. Indeed, it is considered a sin to judge someone whose confession you are hearing. As a good pastor, however, a priest must always be concerned with the state of the heart within any of those for whom he is responsible before God. He cannot change anyone’s heart, but with whatever skill God may have given him, he can counsel and nurture each soul towards the path of healing in the heart and, most importantly, he can pray constantly for his flock and for the heart of each of its members.

By the same token, it is important for every Christian to pay attention to his own heart. Christ makes this abundantly clear when he interiorizes the commandments on murder and adultery, warning:

You have heard that it was said to the men of old, `You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment… (Matt. 5:21-22)

And

You have heard that it was said, `You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matt. 5:27-28).

It is not that our outward actions do not matter, but that they are only manifestations of the state of the heart:

The good man out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure produces evil; for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks (Luke 6:45).

Most of my writing in this blog (as well as my preaching and teaching in the Church) concentrates on this inner life. Learning to open our eyes to the source of our actions and the absolute need for the grace of the Holy Spirit in order to change our hearts is the most fundamental understanding in our daily life before God. There are a myriad of other things to think about in our faith, many of them serving as religious distractions from the essential work of repentance. It is easier to argue points of doctrine than to stand honestly before God in prayer or confession. Doctrine is important (what Orthodox priest would deny this?) but only as it makes Christ known to us. But the knowledge of Christ that saves is not the knowledge one gains as mere information – but rather the knowledge one gains inwardly as we repent, pray, forgive, and humble ourselves before God. The promise to us is that the “pure in heart shall see God.”

Doctrine is not known until it becomes united to the heart in a continual act of communion with God. Thus, if we are honest, we will profess ignorance and pray for true knowledge.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

A quote from St. Silouan:

The heart-stirrings of a good man are good; those of a wicked person are wicked; but everyone must learn how to cambat intrusive thoughts, and turn the bad into good. This is the mark of the soul that is well versed.

How does this come about, you will ask?

Here is the way of it: just as a man knows when he is cold or when he feels hot, so does the man who has experienced the Holy Spirit know when grace is in his soul, or when evil spirits approach.

The Lord gives the soul understanding to recognize His coming, and love Him and do His will. In the same way the soul recognizes thoughts which proceed from the enemy, not by their outward form but by their effect on her [the soul].

This is knowledge born of experience; and the man with no experience is easily duped by the enemy.

God grant us such true knowledge and the healing of our hearts.

In regard to the doctrine of original sin as contained in the Old Testament and illuminated by the unique revelation of Christ in the New Testament, there continues to reign in the denominations of the West–especially since the development of scholastic presuppositions–a great confusion, which in the last few centuries seems to have gained much ground in the theological problematics of the Orthodox East. In some circles this problem has been dressed in a halo of mystifying vagueness to such an extent that even some Orthodox theologians seem to expect one to accept the doctrine of original sin simply as a great and profound mystery of faith (e.g., Androutsos, Dogmatike , pp. 161-162). This has certainly become a paradoxical attitude, especially since these Christians who cannot point their fingers at this enemy of mankind are the same people who illogically claim that in Christ there is remission of this unknown original sin. This is a far cry from the certitude of St. Paul, who, of the devil himself, claimed that “we are not ignorant of his thoughts” (noemata). ¹

If one is to vigorously and consistently maintain that Jesus Christ is the unique Savior Who has brought salvation to a world in need of salvation, one obviously must know what is the nature of the need which provoked this salvation. ² It would, indeed, seem foolish to have medical doctors trained to heal sickness if there were no such thing as sickness in the world. Likewise, a savior who claims to save people in need of no salvation is a savior only unto himself.

Undoubtedly, one of the most important causes of heresy is the failure to understand the exact nature of the human situation described by the Old and New Testaments, to which the historical events of the birth, teachings, death, resurrection and second coming of Christ are the only remedy. The failure to understand this automatically implies a perverted understanding of what it is that Christ did and continues to do for us, and what our subsequent relation is to Christ and neighbor within the realm of salvation. The importance of a correct definition of original sin and its consequences can never be exaggerated. Any attempt to minimize its importance or alter its significance automatically entails either a weakening or even a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the Church, sacraments and human destiny.

The temptation facing every inquiry into the thought of St. Paul and the other Apostolic writers is to approach their writings with definite, although many times unconscious, presuppositions contrary to the Biblical witness. If one approaches the Biblical testimony to the work of Christ and the life of the primitive community with predetermined metaphysical notions concerning the moral structure of what most would call the natural world, and, by consequence, with fixed ideas concerning human destiny and the needs of hte individual and humanity in general, he will undoubtedly take from the faith and life of the ancient Church only such aspects as fit his own frame of reference. Then, if he wishes to be consistent in representing his own interpretation of the Scriptures as authentic, he will necessarily proceed to exaplain away everything extraneous to his concepts as secondary and superficial, or simply as the product of some misunderstanding on the part of certain Apostles or a group of Fathers, or even the whole primitive Church in general.

A proper approach to the New Testament teaching of St. Paul concerning original sin cannot be one-sided. It is incorrect, for example, to emphasize, in Romans 5:12, the phrase, eph’ho pantes hemarton , by trying to make it fit any certain system of thought concerning moral law and guilt without first establishing the importance of St. Paul’s beliefs concerning the powers of Satan and the true situation not only of man, but of all creation. It is also wrong to deal with the problem of the transmission of original sin within the framework of dualistic anthropology while at the same time completely ignoring the Hebraic foundations of St. Paul’s anthropology. Likewise, and attempt to interpret the Biblical doctrine of the fall in terms of a hedonistic philosophy of happiness is already doomed to failure because of its refusal to recognize not only the abnormality but, more important, the consequences of death and corruption.

A correct approach to the Pauline doctrine of original sin must take into consideration St. Paul’s understanding of (1) the fallen state of creation, including the powers of Satan, death and corruption, (2) the justice of God and law, and (3) anthropology and the destiny of man and creation. These divisions are not meant to suggest that each topic is to be dealt with here in detail; rather, they shall be discussed only in the light of the main problem of original sin and its transmission according to St. Paul.

I. Fallen Creation

St. Paul strongly affirms the belief that all things created by God are good. ³ Yet, at the same time, he insists on the fact that not only man, ⁴ but also all of creation has fallen. ⁵ Both man and creation are awaiting the final redemption. ⁶ Thus, in spite of the fact that all things created by God are good, the devil has temporarily ⁷ become the “god of this age.” ⁸ A basic presupposition of St. Paul’s thought is that althought the world was created by God and as such is good, yet now there rules in it the power of Satan. The devil, however, is by no means absolute, since God has never abandoned His creation. ⁹

Thus, according to St. Paul, creation as it is is not what God intended it to be–”For the creature was made subject to vanity…by reason of him who hath subjected the same.” ¹⁰ Therefore, evil can exist, at least temporarily, as a parasitic element alongside and inside of that which God created originally good. A good example of this is one who would do the Good according to the “inner man,” but finds it impossible because of the indwelling power of sin in the flesh. ¹¹ Although created good and still maintained and governed by God, creation as it is is still far from being normal or natural, if by “normal” we understand nature according to the original and final destiny of creation. governing this age, in spite of the fact that God Himself is still sustaining creation and creating for Himself a remnant, ¹² is the devil himself. ¹³

To try to read into St. Paul’s thought any type of philosophy of a naturally well balanced universe with inherent and fixed moral laws of reason, according to which men can live with peace of mind and be happy, is to do violence to the apostle’s faith. For St. Paul, there is now no such thing as a natural world with an inherent system of moral laws, because all of creation has been subjected to the vanity and evil power of Satan, who is ruling by the powers of death and corruption. ¹⁴ For this reason all men have become sinners. ¹⁵ There is no such thing as a man who is sinless simply because he is living according to the rules of reason or the Mosaic law. ¹⁶ The possibility of living according to universal reason entails, also, the possibility of being without sin. But for Paul this is a myth, because Satan is no respecter of reasonable rules of good conduct ¹⁷ and has under his influence all men born under the power of death and corruption. ¹⁸

Whether or not belief in the present, real and active power of Satan appeals to the Biblical theologian, he cannot ignore the importance that St. Paul attributes to the power of the devil. To do so is to completely misunderstand the problem of original sin and its transmission and so misinterpret the mind of the New Testament writers and the faith of the whole ancient Church. In regard to the power of Satan to introduce sin into the life of every man, St. Augustine in combating Pelagianism obviously misread St. Paul. by relegating the power of Satan, death, and corruption to the background and pushing to the foreground of controversy the problem of personal guilt in the transmission of original sin, St. Augustine introduced a false moralistic philosophical approach which is foreign to the thinking of St. Paul ¹⁹ and which was not accepted by the patristic tradition of the East. ²⁰

For St. Paul, Satan is not simply a negative power in the universe. He is personal with will, ²¹ with thoughts, ²² and with methods of deception, ²³ against whom Christians must wage and intense battle ²⁴ because they can still be tempted by him. ²⁵ He is active in a dynamic manner, ²⁶ fighting for the destruction of creation and not simply waiting passively in a restricted corner to accept those who happen to rationally decide not to follow God and the moral laws inherent in a natural universe. Satan is even capable of transforming himself into an angel of light ²⁷. He has at his disposal miraculous powers of perversion ²⁸ and has as co-workers whole armies of invisible powers. ²⁹ He is the “god of this age,” ³⁰ the one who deceived the first woman. ³¹ It is he who led man ³² and all of creation into the path of death and corruption. ³³

The power of death and corruption, according to Paul, is not negative, but on the contrary, positively active. “The sting of death is sin,” ³⁴ which in turn reigns in death. ³⁵ Not only man, but all creation has been yoked under its tyrannizing power ³⁶ and is now awaiting redemption. Creation itself shall also be delivered from the slavery of corruption. ³⁷ Along with the final destruction of all the enemies of God, death–the last and probably the greatest enemy–will be destroyed. ³⁸ Then death will be swallowed up in victory. ³⁹ For St. Paul, the destruction of death is parallel to the destruction of the devil and his forces. Salvation from the one is salvation from the other. ⁴⁰

It is obvious from St. Paul’s expressions concerning fallen creation, Satan, and death, that there is no room in his thinking for any type of metaphysical dualism, of departmentalization which would make of this world and intermediary domain which for man is merely a stepping stone leading either into the presence of God or into the kingdom of Satan. The idea of a three story universe, whereby God and His company of saints and angels occupy the top floor, the devil the basement, and man in the flesh the middle, has no room in Pauline theology. For Paul, all three orders of existence interpenetrate. There is no such thing as a middle world of neutrality where man can live according to natural law and then be judged for a life of happiness in the presence of God or for a life of torment in the pits of outer darkness. On the contrary, all of creation is the domain of God, Who Himself cannot be tainted with evil. But in His domain there are other wills which He has created, which can choose either the kingdom of God or the kingdom of death and destruction.

In spite of the fact that creation is of God and essentially good, the devil at the same time has parasitically transformed this same creation of God into a temporary kingdom for himself. ⁴¹ The devil, death, and sin are reigning in this world and not in another. Both the kingdom of darkness and kingdom of light are battling hand to hand in the same place. For this reason, the only true victory possible over the devil is the resurrection of the dead. ⁴² There is no escape from the battlefield. The only choice possible for every man is either to fight the devil by actively sharing in the victory of Christ, or to accept the deceptions of the devil by wanting to believe that all goes well and everything is normal. ⁴³

II. The Justice of God and Law

It is obvious, according to what has been said about St. Paul’s views concerning the non-dualistic nature of fallen creation, that for Paul there cannot exist any system of moral laws inherent in a natural and normal universe. Therefore, what man accepts as just and good according to his observations of human relationships within society and nature cannot be confused with the justice of God. The justice of God has been revealed uniquely and fully only in Christ. ⁴⁴ No man has the right to substitute his own conception of justice for that of God. ⁴⁵

The justice of God as revealed in Christ does not operate according to objective rules of conduct, ⁴⁶ but rather according to the personal relationships of faith and love. ⁴⁷ “The law is not made for a just man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners…” ⁴⁸ Yet the law is not evil, but good ⁴⁹ and even spiritual. ⁵⁰ However, it is not enough. It is of a temporary and pedagogical nature, ⁵¹ and in Christ must be fulfilled ⁵² and surpassed by personalistic love, according to the image of God’s love as revealed in Christ. ⁵³ Faith and love in Christ must be personal. for this reason, faith without love is empty. “Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.” ⁵⁴ Likewise, acts of faith bereft of love are of no avail. “Though I bestow all my goods and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.” ⁵⁵

There is no life in the following of objective rules. If there were such a possibility of receiving life by living according to law, there would be no need of redemption in Christ. “Righteousness should have been by the law. ” ⁵⁶ If a “law was given capable of giving life” ⁵⁷ then salvation, and not a promise, was bestowed upon Abraham. ⁵⁸ But life does not exist in the law. It is rather of essence of God, “Who alone hath immortality.” ⁵⁹ Only God can bestow life and this He does freely, according to his own will, ⁶⁰ in His own way, and at the time of His own choosing. ⁶¹

On the other hand, it is a grave mistake to make the justice of God responsible for death and corruption. Nowhere does Paul attribute the beginnings of death and corruption to God. On the contrary, nature was subjected to vanity and corruption by the devil, ⁶² who through the sin and death of the first man managed to lodge himself parasitically within creation, of which he was already a part but at first not yet its tyrant. For Paul, the transgression of the first man opened the way for the entrance of death into the world, ⁶³ but this enemy ⁶⁴ is certainly not the finished product of God. Neither can the death of Adam, or even of each man, be considered the outcome of any decision of God to punish. ⁶⁵ St. Paul never suggests such an idea.

To get at the basic presuppositions of Biblical thinking, one must abandon any juridical scheme of human justice which demands punishment and rewards according to objective rules of morality. To approach the problem of original sin in such a naive manner as to say that tout lecteur sense concilura qu’une penalite commune implique une offense commune , and that thus all share in the guilt of Adam, ⁶⁶ is to ignore the true nature of the justice of God and deny and real power to the devil.

The relationships which exist among God, man and the devil are not according to rules and regulations, but according to personalistic freedom. The fact that there are laws forbidding one from killing his neighbor does not imply the impossibility of killing not only one, but hundreds of thousands of neighbors. If man can disregard rules and regulations of good conduct, certainly the devil cannot be expected to follow such rules if he can help it. St. Paul’s version of the devil is certainly not that of one who is simply obeying general rules of nature and carrying out the will of God by punishing souls in hell. Quite on the contrary, he is fighting God dynamically by means of all possible deception, trying by all his cunning and power to destroy the works of God. ⁶⁷ Thus salvation for man and creation cannot come by a simple act of forgiveness of any juridical imputation of sin, nor can it come by any payment of satisfaction to the devil (Origen) or to God (Rome). Salvation can come only by the destruction of the devil and his power. ⁶⁸

Thus, according to St. Paul, it is God Himself Who has destroyed “principalities and powers” by nailing the handwriting in ordinances, which was against us, to the cross of Christ. ⁶⁹ “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing to them their offences.” ⁷⁰ although we were in sin, God did not hold this against us, but has declared His own justice to those who believe in Christ. ⁷¹ The justice of God is not according to that of men, which operates by the law of works. ⁷² For St. Paul, the justice of God and the love of God are not to be separated for the sake of any juridical doctrine of atonement. The justice of God and the love of God as revealed in Christ are the same thing. In Romans 3:21-26, for example, the expression, “love of God,” could very easily be substituted for the “justice of God.”

It is interesting to note that every time St. Paul speaks about the wrath of God it is always that which is revealed to those who have become hopelessly enslaved, by their own choosing, to the flesh and the devil. ⁷³ Although creation is held captive in corruption, those without the law are without excuse in worshipping and living falsely, because “the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead ⁷⁴–”Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the desires of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves…” ⁷⁵ and again, “God gave them over to reprobate mind.” ⁷⁶ This does not mean that god caused them to become what they are, but rather that He gave them up as being completely lost to corruption and the power of the devil. One must also interpret other similar passages in like manner. ⁷⁷

This giving up by God of people who have already become hardened in their hearts against His works is not restricted to the gentiles, but extends, also, to Jews. ⁷⁸ “For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.” ⁷⁹ And, “For as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law. ” ⁸⁰ The gentiles, however, even though they are not under the Mosaic law, are not excused from the responsibility of personal sin, for they, “having not the law, are a law unto themselves, who shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and amongst themselves accusing or else excusing their thoughts.” ⁸¹ At the last judgment, all men, whether under the law or not, whether hearers of Christ or not, shall be judged by Christ according to the Gospel as preached by Paul, ⁸² and not according to any system of natural laws. Even though the invisible things of God “from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, ” there is still no such thing as moral law inherent in the universe. The gentiles who “have not the law” but who “do by nature the things contained in the law” are not abiding by any natural system of moral laws in the universe. They rather “shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness.” Here, again, one sees Paul’s conception of personal relationships between God and man. “God hath shewed it unto them, ⁸³ and it is God Who is still speaking to fallen man outside of the law, through the conscience and in the heart, which for Paul is the center of man’s thoughts, ⁸⁴ and for members of the body of Christ the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit ⁸⁵ and Christ. ⁸⁶

III. The Destiny of Man and Anthropology

Before making any attempt to determine the meaning of original sin according to what has been said thus far, it is necessary to examine St. Paul’s conception of the destiny of man and his anthropology.

(a) The Destiny of Man

It would be nonsense to try to read into Paul’s theology a conception of human destiny which accepts the aspirations and desires of what one would call “natural man” as normal. It is normal for natural man to seek security and happiness in the acquisition and possession of objective goods. The scholastic theologians of the West have often used these aspirations of natural man as proof that he is instinctively seeking after the Absolute, the possession of which is the only possible state of complete happiness, that is, a state wherein it is impossible to desire anything more because nothing better exists. This hedonistic type of approach to human destiny is, of course, possible only for those who accept death and corruption either as normal or, at most, as the outcome of a decision of God to punish. If those who accept God as the ultimate source of death were to really attribute sin to the powers of corruption, they would in effect be making God Himself the source of sin and evil.

For St. Paul, there is no such thing as normality for those who have not put on Christ. The destiny of man and creation cannot be deducted from observations of the life of fallen man and creation. Nowhere does Paul call on Christians to live a life of security and happiness according to the ways of this world. On the contrary, he calls on Christians to die to this world and the body of sin, ⁸⁷ and even to suffer in the Gospel, according to the power of God. ⁸⁸ Paul claims that “all who want to live godly lives in Christ Jesus shall be persecuted.” ⁸⁹ This is hardly the language of one who is seeking security and happiness. ⁹⁰ Nor is it possible to suppose that for Paul such sufferings without love could be considered as the means to reach one’s destiny. This would fall under the category of payment for works and not eh personal relationships of faith and love. ⁹¹

St. Paul does not believe that human destiny consists simply in becoming conformed to the rules and regulations of nature, which supposedly remain unchanged from the beginning of time. The relationship of the Divine Will to human wills is not one of juridical or hedonistic submission of the one to the other (as St. Augustine and the scholastics thought), but rather one of personal love. St. Paul claims that “we are co-workers of God.” ⁹² Our relationship of love with God is such that in Christ there is now no longer need for law. “If ye be led by the Spirit ye are not under the law. ” ⁹³ The members of the body of Christ are not called on to live on the level of impersonal ordinances, but are now expected to live according to the love of God as revealed in Christ, which needs no laws because it seeks not its own, ⁹⁴ but strives to empty itself for others in the image of the love of Christ. ⁹⁵

The love and justice of God have been revealed once and for all in Christ ⁹⁶ by the destruction of the devil ⁹⁷ and the deliverance of man from the body of death and sin, ⁹⁸ so that man may actually become an imitator of God Himself, ⁹⁹ Who has predestined His elect to become “conformed to the image of His Son,” ¹⁰⁰ who did nothing to please Himself but suffered for others. ¹⁰¹ Christ died so that the living should no longer live unto themselves, ¹⁰² but should become perfect men, even “unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” ¹⁰³ Christians are no longer to live according to the rudiments of this world, as though living in this world, ¹⁰⁴ but are to have the same mind as Christ, ¹⁰⁵ so that in Christ they may become perfect. ¹⁰⁶ Men are no longer to love their wives according to the world, but must love their wives exactly “as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it. ” ¹⁰⁷ The destiny of man is not happiness and self-satisfaction, ¹⁰⁸ but rather perfection in Christ. Man must become perfect, as God ¹⁰⁹ and Christ are perfect. ¹¹⁰ such perfection can come only through the personalistic power of divine and selfless love, ¹¹¹ “which is the bond of perfection.” ¹¹² This love is not to be confused with the love of fallen man who seeks his own. ¹¹³ Love in Christ does not seek its own, but that of the other. ¹¹⁴

To become perfect according to the image of Christ is not restricted to the realm of love, but forms and inseparable part of the salvation of the total man and creation alike. Man’s body of humility will be transformed to become “conformed” to Christ’s “body of glory.” ¹¹⁵ man is destined to become, like Christ, perfect according to the body also. “He Who raised Christ from the dead shall bring to life also your mortal bodies by His Spirit which dwells in you.” ¹¹⁶

St. Paul claims that death is the enemy ¹¹⁷ which came into the world and passed unto all men through the sin of one man. ¹¹⁸ not only many, but all of creation became subject to corruption. ¹¹⁹ The subjugation of man and creation to the power of the devil and death was obviously a temporary frustration of the original destiny of man and creation. It is false to read into Paul’s statements about the first and second Adams the idea that Adam would have died even though he had not sinned, simply because the first Adam was made eis psychen zosan –which expression, according to St. Paul’s usage within the context, clearly means mortal. ¹²⁰ Adam could very well have been created not naturally immortal, but if he had not sinned there is no reason to believe that he would not have become immortal by nature. ¹²¹ This is certainly implied by the extraordinary powers St. Paul attributes to death and corruption.

(b) Anthropology of St. Paul

As we have said, for St. Paul, the law is good ¹²² and even spiritual. ¹²³ According to the “inner man” this is obvious. ¹²⁴ But in spite of the fact that he can possess the will to do good according to the law he cannot find the power to do the good ¹²⁵ because he is “carnal and sold under sin.” ¹²⁶ If he himself, according to the “inner man,” wants to do good but cannot, it is no longer he who does the evil, but sin that dwelleth in him. ¹²⁷ So he asks, “O wretched man that I am! who will deliver me from the body of this death?” ¹²⁸ To be delivered from the “body of this death” is to be saved from the power of sin dwelling in the flesh. Thus, “the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has liberated me from the law of sin and death.” ¹²⁹

It is misleading to try to interpret this section ¹³⁰ of Paul according to a dualistic anthropology, which would make the term, sarkikos , refer only to the lower appetites of the body–and especially of the sexual desires–to the exclusion of the soul. The word, sarkikos , is not used by Paul in such a context. Elsewhere, St. Paul reminds married people that they have not authority over their own bodies and so should not deprive one another, “unless it be with consent for a time that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and come together again that Satan may not tempt you for your incontinency. ¹³¹¹³² To the Corinthians he declare that they are an epistle written not with ink, “but with the spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart– en plaxi kardias sarkinais .” ¹³³ Christ was known according to the flesh ¹³⁴ and “God was manifested in the flesh.” ¹³⁵ St. Paul asks whether, if he has planted spiritual things amongst the Corinthians, it is such a great thing if he shall reap the sarkika ¹³⁶. Nowhere does he use the adjective, sarkikos , exclusively in reference to the sexual, or what is commonly called the desires of the flesh in contrast to those of the soul.

It seems that St. Paul attributes a positive power of sin to the sarx as such only in the epistle to the Galatians, who, having begun int he Spirit, now think that they are being perfected in the flesh. ¹³⁷ The sarx here has a will which desires against the pneuma . ¹³⁸ “The works of the flesh are manifest, which a re these; adultery, fornication, uncleanliness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings and such like.” ¹³⁹ Most of these works of the sarkos would require the very active, and even initiative, participation of the intellect, which here is an indication that the sarx , for Paul, is much more than what any dualistic anthropology would be ready to admit. The flesh as such, however, as a positive force of sin, found over- emphasized in Galatians, where Paul is infuriated over the foolishness of his readers, ¹⁴⁰ cannot be isolated from other references, where sin parasitically dwells in the flesh ¹⁴¹ and where the flesh itself is not only not evil, ¹⁴² but that in which God Himself has been manifested. ¹⁴³ The flesh as such is not evil, but has become very much weakened by sin and the enmity which dwells in it. ¹⁴⁴

To understand St. Paul’s anthropology, it is necessary to refer not to the dualistic anthropology of the Greek,s who made a clear cut distinction between soul and body, but rather to the Hebraic frame of references, in which sarx and psyche (flesh and soul) both denote the whole living person and not any part of him. ¹⁴⁵ Thus, in the Old Testament the expression, pasa sarx (all flesh), is employed for all living things, ¹⁴⁶ as well as for man in particular. ¹⁴⁷ The expression, pasa psyche (all souls), is used in the same manner. ¹⁴⁸ In the New Testament, both expressions, pasa sarx ¹⁴⁹ and pasa psyche , ¹⁵⁰ are used in perfect accord with the Old Testament context.

Thus we find that, for St. Paul, to be sarkikos ¹⁵¹ and psychikos ¹⁵² means exactly the same thing. “Flesh and blood (sarx kai haima) cannot inherit the kingdom of God” ¹⁵³ because corruption cannot inherit incorruption. ¹⁵⁴ For this reason, a soma psychikon is “sown in corruption” and raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. ” ¹⁵⁵ “A soma psychikon is sown, and a soma pneumatikon is raised. There is a soma psychikon and there is a soma pneumatikon !” ¹⁵⁶ Both the sarkikon and the psychikon and dominated by death and corruption and so cannot inherit the kingdom of life. This only the pneumatikon can do. “However, the pneumatikon is not first, but the psychikon , and afterward the pneumatikon . The first man is from the earth; earthy; the second man, the Lord, from heaven.” ¹⁵⁷ That the first man became eis psychen zosan (a living soul), for Paul, means exactly that he became psychikon , and therefore subject to corruption, ¹⁵⁸ because “from the earth, earthy…” ¹⁵⁹ Such expressions do not admit of any dualistic anthropology. A soma psychikon “from the earth, earthy,” or a psyche zosa “from the earth, earthy,” would lead to impossible confusion if interpreted from the viewpoint of a dualism which distinguishes between the body and soul, the lower and the higher, the material and the purely spiritual. What, then, would a psyche zosa be, which came from the earth and is earthy? In speaking of death, a dualist could never say that a soma psychikon is sown in corruption. He would rather have to say that the soul leaves the body, which alone is sown in corruption.

Neither the psyche nor the pneuma is the intellectual part of man. To quote I Corinthians 2:11 (tis gar oiden anthropon ta tou anthropou ei me to pneuma tou anthropou to en auto?) or I Thessalonians 5:23 (Autos o Theos tea eirenes hagiasai hymas holoteleis, kai holokleron hymon to pneuma kai he psyche kai to soma amemptos en te parousia toy K.H.I.X. teretheie) does not prove otherwise. One cannot take these expressions in isolation from the rest of Paul’s writings for the sake of trying to make him speak the language of even a Thomistic dualist, as is done, for example, by F. Prat in La Theologie de s.Paul , t.2, pp. 62-63. Elsewhere, in speaking against the practise of certain individuals’ praying publicly in unknown tongues, St. Paul says, “If I pray in an unknown tongue my pnuema prays, but my mind is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray with the pneuma and I will pray with the mind also.” ¹⁶⁰ Here a sharp distinction is made between the pneuma and the nous (mind). Therefore, for St. Paul, the realm of pneuma does not belong within the category of human understanding. It is of another dimension.

In order to express the idea of intellect or understanding all four evangelists use the word, kardia (heart). ¹⁶¹ The word, nous (mind), is used only once by St. Luke. ¹⁶² In contrast, St. Paul makes use of both kardia ¹⁶³ and nous ¹⁶⁴ to denote the faculty of intelligence. Nous , however, cannot be taken for any such thing as the intellectual faculties of an immaterial soul. Nous is rather synonymous with kardia , which in turn is synonymous with the eso anthropon .

The Holy Spirit is sent by God into the kardia , ¹⁶⁵ or into the eso anthropon , ¹⁶⁶ that Christ may dwell in the kardia . ¹⁶⁷ The kardia and the eso anthropon are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Man delights in the law of God according to the eso anthropon , but there is another law in his members which wars against he law of the nous . ¹⁶⁸ Here the nous is clearly synonymous with the eso anthropon , which in turn is the kardia , the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit and Christ. ¹⁶⁹

To walk in the vanity of the nous , with the dianoia darkened, being alienated from the life of God through ignorance, is a result of the “hardening of the heart– dia ten perosin test kardias .” ¹⁷⁰ It is the heart which is the seat of man’s free will, and it is here where man by his own choice either becomes blinded ¹⁷¹ and hardened, ¹⁷² or else enlightened in his understanding of the hope, glory, and power in Christ. ¹⁷³ It is in the heart where the secrets of men are kept, ¹⁷⁴ and it is Christ “Who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the heart.” ¹⁷⁵

It would be absurd to interpret St. Paul’s use of the expressions, eso anthropon and nous , according to a dualistic anthropology by ignoring his use of the word, kardia , which is in perfect accord with the New Testament and Old Testament writers. By using such words as nous and eso anthropon , Paul is certainly introducing new terminology, foreign to traditional Hebraic usage, but he is definitely not introducing any new anthropology based on Hellenistic dualism. St. Paul never refers to either psyche or pneuma as faculties of human intelligence. His anthropology is Hebraic and not Hellenistic.

In both the Old and New Testaments, one finds the expression, to pneuma tes zoes (the spirit of life), but never to pneuma zon (the living spirit). ¹⁷⁶ Also, one finds psyche zosa (the living soul), but never psyche tes zoes (the soul of life). ¹⁷⁷ This is due to the fact that the psyche , or sarx , lives only by participation, while the pneuma is itself the principle of life given to man as a gift from God, ¹⁷⁸ “Who alone hath immortality.” ¹⁷⁹ God gives man of His Own uncreated life without destroying the freedom of human personality. Thus, man is not an intellectual form fashioned according to a predetermined essence or universal idea of man whose destiny is to become conformed to a state of mechanical contentment in the presence of God whereby his will become sterile and immobile in a state of complete self-satisfaction and happiness (e.g., according to the Neo-platonic teaching of St. Augustine and the Roman scholastics in general concerning human destiny). The personality of man does not consist of an immaterial intellectual soul which has life of itself and uses the body simply as a dwelling place. The sarx , or psyche , is the total man, and the kardia is the center of intelligence where the will has complete independence of choice to become either hardened to truth or receptive to divine enlightenment from without. The pneuma of man is not the center of human personality, nor is it that faculty which rules the actions of men, but rather it is the spark of divine life given to man as his principle of life. Thus, man can live according to the pneuma tes zoes or according to the law of the flesh, which is death and corruption. The very personality of man, therefore, although created by God Himself, remains outside of the essence of God,a nd therefore completely free either to reject the act of creation, for which he was not consulted, or to accept the creative love of God by living according to the pneuma , given to him for this purpose by God.

“The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the spirit is life and peace.” ¹⁸⁰ Those who live according to the flesh shall die. ¹⁸¹ Those who mortify the deeds of the flesh by the spirit shall live. ¹⁸² The spirit of man, however, deprived of union with the vivifying spirit of God, is hopelessly weak against the flesh dominated by death and corruption ¹⁸³–”Who shall deliver me from the body of this death.” ¹⁸⁴ And, “the law of the pneumatos tes zoes (spirit of life) in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” ¹⁸⁵ Only those whose spirit has been renewed ¹⁸⁶ by union with the Spirit of God ¹⁸⁷ can fight the desires of the flesh. Only those who are given the Spirit of God and hear Its voice in the life of the body of Christ are able to fight against sin. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” ¹⁸⁸

Although the spirit of man is the principle of life given to him by God, it can still partake of the filthiness of fleshly works. For this reason, it is necessary for Christians to guard against the corruption not only of the flesh, but of the spirit, also. ¹⁸⁹ The union of man’s spirit with the Spirit of God in baptism is no magical guarantee against the possibility of their separation. To become again enslaved tot he works of the flesh may very well lead to exclusion from the body of Christ. ¹⁹⁰ The Spirit of God is given to man that Christ may dwell in the heart. ¹⁹¹ “Now if any an have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.” ¹⁹² To have the Spirit of God dwelling in the body is to be, also, a member of the body of Christ. To be deprived of the one is to be cut off from the other. It is impossible to be in communion with only part of God. Communion with Christ through the Spirit is communion with the whole Godhead. Exclusion from the One Person is exclusion from all Three Persons.

“The works of the flesh are manifest…” ¹⁹³ “The mind of the flesh is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. ¹⁹⁴ Such people are enslaved to the power of death and corruption in the flesh. They must be saved from the “Body of this death.” ¹⁹⁵ On the other hand, those who have been buried with Christ through baptism have died to the body of sin and are living unto Christ. ¹⁹⁶ They are no longer living according to the desires of flesh, but of the spirit. “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance–against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” ¹⁹⁷

It is clear that, for St. Paul, the union of man’s spirit with the Spirit of God in the life of love within the body of Christ is life and salvation. On the other hand, to live according tot he desires of the flesh, dominated by the powers of death and corruption, means death–”For the mind of the flesh is death.” ¹⁹⁸ St. Paul is dealing throughout his epistles with the categories of life and death. God is life. The devil holds the reins of death and corruption. Unity with God in the Spirit, through the body of Christ in the life of love, is life and brings salvation and perfection. Separation of man’s spirit from the divine life in the body of Christ is slavery to the powers of death and corruption used by the devil to destroy the works of God. The life of the spirit is unity and love. The life according to the flesh is disunity and dissolution in death and corruption.

It is absolutely necessary to grasp the essential spirit of St. Paul’s usage of the words, sarx , psyche , and pneuma , in order to avoid the widespread confusion that dominates the field of inquiry into Pauline theology. St. Paul is never speaking in terms of immaterial rational souls in contrast to material bodies. Sarx and psyche are synonymous and comprise, together with the pneuma , the total man. To live according to the pneuma is not to live a life according to the lower half of man. On the contrary, to live according to the sarx , or psyche , is to live according to the law of death. To live according to the spirit is to live according to the law of life and love.

Those who are sarkikoi cannot live according to their original destiny of selfless love for God and neighbor, because they are dominated by the power of death and corruption. “the sting of death is sin.” ¹⁹⁹ Sin reigned in death. ²⁰⁰ Death is the last enemy to be destroyed. ²⁰¹ So long as man lives according tot he law of death, in the flesh, he cannot please God ²⁰² because he does not live according to the law of life and love. “The mind of the flesh is enmity against God for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be.” ²⁰³ In order to live according to his original destiny, man must be liberated from “the body of this death.” ²⁰⁴ This liberation from the power of death and corruption has come from God, Who sent His own Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh” to deliver man “from the law of sin and death.” ²⁰⁵ But, although the power of death and sin has thus been destroyed by the death and resurrection of Christ, participation in this victory can come only through dying to this world with Christ in the waters of baptism. ²⁰⁶ It is only by dying in baptism and then continuously dying to the rudiments and ways of the world that the members of the body of Christ can become perfect as God is perfect.

The importance that St. Paul attributes to dying to the rudiments of this world in order to live according to the “spirit of life” cannot be exaggerated. To try to pass off his insistence on complete self-denial for salvation as a product of eschatological enthusiasts is to miss completely the very basis of the New Testament message. If the destruction of the devil, death and corruption is salvation and the only condition for life according to man’s original destiny, then the means of passing from the realm of death and its consequences to the realm of life, in the victory of Christ over death, must be taken very seriously. For Paul, the way from death to life is communion with the death and life of Christ in baptism and a continuous life of live within the body of Christ. This new life of love within the body of Christ, however, must be accompanied by a continuous death to the ways of this world, which is dominated by the law of death and corruption in the hands of the devil. Participation in the victory over death does not come simply by having a magical faith and a general sentiment of vague love for humanity (Luther). Full membership int he body of Christ can come only by dying in the waters of baptism with Christ, and living according to the law of the “spirit of life.” Catechumens and penitents certainly had faith, but they either had not yet passed through death, in baptism, to the new life, or else, once having died to the flesh in baptism, they failed to remain steadfast and allowed the power of death and corruption to regain its dominance over the “spirit of life.”

In regard to St. Paul’s teaching concerning baptismal death to the rudiments of this world, it is interesting to note his usage of the word, soma , to designate the communion of those in Christ who constitute the Church. The word, soma , in both the Old and New Testaments, apart from Paul, is used predominantly to designate a dead person, or corpse. ²⁰⁷ At the Last Supper, our Lord used the word, soma , most likely to designate the fact that He was to pass through death, while his use of the word, haima , was to show his returning to life–since, for the Old Testament, blood is the element of life. ²⁰⁸ Thus, at the Last Supper as at every Eucharist, there is a proclamation and confession of the death and resurrection of Christ. According to the presuppositions set forth by St. Paul concerning baptismal death, it is very possible to describe the Church as the soma of Christ no only because of the indwelling of Christ and the Holy Spirit in the bodies of Christian, but also because all the members of Christ have died to the body of sin in the waters of baptism. Before sharing in the life of Christ, on must first become an actual soma by being liberated from the devil in passing through a death to the ways of this world and living according to the “spirit.” ²⁰⁹

Synthetic Observations

St. Paul does not say anywhere that the whole human race has been accounted guilty of the sin of Adam and is therefore punished by God with death. Death is an evil force which made its way into the world through sin, lodged itself in the world, and, in the person of Satan, is reigning both in man and creation. For this reason, although man can know the good through the law written in his heart and may wish to do what is good, he cannot because of the sin which is dwelling in his flesh. Therefore, it is not he who does the evil, but sin that dwelleth in him. Because of this sin, he cannot find the means to do good. He must be saved from “the body of this death.” ²¹⁰ Only then can he do good. What can Paul mean by such statements? A proper answer is to be found only when St. Paul’s doctrine of human destiny is taken into account.

If man was created for a life of complete selfless love, whereby his actions would always be directed outward, toward God and neighbor, and never toward himself–whereby he would be the perfect image and likeness of God–then it is obvious that the power of death and corruption has now made it impossible to live such a life of perfection. The power of death in the universe has brought with it the will for self-preservation, fear, and anxiety, ²¹¹ which in turn are the root causes of self-assertion, egoism, hatred, envy and the like. Because man is afraid of becoming meaningless, he is constantly endeavoring to prove, to himself and others, that he is worth something. He thirsts after compliments and is afraid of insults. He seeks his own and is jealous of the successes of others. He likes those who like him, and hates those who hate him. He either seeks security and happiness in wealth, glory and bodily pleasures, or imagines that this destiny is to be happy in the possession of the presence of God by an introverted and individualistic and inclined to mistake his desires for self-satisfaction and happiness for his normal destiny. On the other hand, he can become zealous over vague ideological principles of love for humanity and yet hate his closest neighbors. These are the works of the flesh of which St. Paul speaks. ²¹² Underlying every movement of what the world has come to regard as normal man, is the quest for security and happiness. But such desires are not normal . They are the consequences of perversion by death and corruption, though which the devil pervades all of creation, dividing and destroying. This power is so great that even if man wishes to live according to his original destiny it is impossible because of the sin which is dwelling in the flesh ²¹³–”Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” ²¹⁴

To share in the love of God, without any concern for one’s self, is also to share in the life and truth of God. Love, life and truth in God are one and can be found only in God. The turning away of love from God and neighbor toward the self is breaking of communion with the life and truth of God, which cannot be separated from His love. The breaking of this communion with God can be consummated only in death, because nothing created can continue indefinitely to exist of itself. ²¹⁵ Thus, by the transgression of the first man, the principle of “sin (the devil) entered into the world and through sin death, and so death passed upon all men…” ²¹⁶ Not only humanity, but all of creation has become subjected to death and corruption by the devil. ²¹⁷ Because man is inseparably a part of, and in constant communion with, creation and is linked through procreation to the whole historical process of humanity, the fall of creation through on man automatically involves the fall and corruption of all men. It is through death and corruption that all of humanity and creation is held captive to the devil and involved in sin, because it is by death that man falls short of his original destiny, which was to love God and neighbor without concern for the self. Man does not die because he is guilty for the sin of Adam. ²¹⁸ He becomes a sinner because he is yoked to the power of the devil through death and its consequences. ²¹⁹

St. Paul clearly says that “the sting of death is sin,” ²²⁰ that “sin reigned in death,” ²²¹ and that death is “the last enemy that shall be destroyed.” ²²² In his epistles, he is especially inspired when he is speaking about the victory of Christ over death and corruption. It would be highly illogical to try to interpret Pauline thought with the presuppositions (1) that death is normal or (2) that at most, it is the outcome of a juridical decision of God to punish the whole human race for one sin, (3) that happiness is the ultimate destiny of man, and (4) that the soul is immaterial, naturally immortal and directly created by God at conception and is therefore normal and pure of defects (Roman scholasticism). The Pauline doctrine of man’s inability to do the good which he is capable of acknowledging according to the “inner man” can be understood only if one takes seriously the power of death and corruption in the flesh, which makes it impossible for man to live according to his original destiny.

The moralistic problem raised by St. Augustine concerning the transmission of death to the descendants of Adam as punishment for the one original transgression is foreign to Paul’s thoughts. The death of each man cannot be considered the outcome of personal guilt. St. Paul is not thinking as a philosophical moralist looking for the cause of the fall of humanity and creation in the breaking of objective rules of good behavior, which demands punishment from a God whose justice is in the image of the justice of this world. Paul is clearly thinking of the fall in terms of a personalistic warfare between God and Satan, in which Satan is not obliged to follow any sort of moral rules if he can help it. It is for this reason that St. Paul can say that the serpent “deceived Eve” ²²³ and that “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” ²²⁴ Man was not punished by God, but taken captive by the devil.

this interpretation is further made clear by the fact that Paul is insisting that “until the law sin was int he world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.” ²²⁵ It is clear that Paul here is denying anything like a general personal guilt for the sin of Adam. Sin was, however, in the world, since death reigned even over them who had not sinned as Adam sinned. Sin here is obviously the person of Satan, who ruled the world through death even before the coming of the law. This is the only possible interpretation of this statement, because it is clearly supported elsewhere by Paul’s teachings concerning the extraordinary powers of the devil, especially in Romans 8:19-21. St. Paul’s statements should be taken very literally when he says that the last enemy to be destroyed is death ²²⁶ and that “the sting of death is sin.” ²²⁷

From what has been observed, the famous expression, eph’ho pantes hemarton , ²²⁸ can be safely interpreted as modifying the word, thanatos , which preceeds it, and which grammatically is the only word which fits the context. Eph’ho as a reference to Adam is both grammatically and exegetically impossible. Such an interpretation was first introduced by Origen, who obviously used it with a purpose in mind, because he believed in the pre-existence of all souls whereby he could easily say that all sinned in Adam. The interpretation of eph’ho as “because” was first introduced into the East by Photius, ²²⁹ who claims that there are two interpretations prevalent–Adam and thanatos –but he would interpret it dioti (because). He bases his argument on a false interpretation of II Corinthians 5:4 by interpreting eph’ho , here again, as dioti . But here it is quite clear that eph’ho refers to skensi (eph’ho skenei ou thelomen ekdysasthai) . Photius is interpreting Paul within the framework of natural moral law and is seeking to justify the death of all men by personal guilt. He claims that all men die because they sin by following in the footsteps of Adam. ²³⁰ However, neither he nor any of the Eastern Fathers accepts the teaching that all men are made guilty for the sin of Adam.

From purely grammatical considerations it is impossible to interpret eph’ho as a reference to any word other than thanatos . Each time the grammatical construction of the preposition epi with the dative is used by Paul, it is always used as a relative pronoun which modifies a preceding noun ²³¹ or phrase. ²³² To make an exception in Romans 5:12 by making St. Paul use the wrong Greek expression to express the idea, “because,” is to beg the issue. The correct interpretation of this passage, both grammatically and exegetically, can be supplied only when eph’ho is understood to modify thanatos – kai houtos eis pantas anthropous ho thanatos dielthen eph’ho (thanato) pantes hemarton –”because of which” (death), or “on the basis of which” (death), or “for which (death) all have sinned.” Satan, being himself the principle of sin, through death and corruption involves all of humanity and creation in sin and death. Thus, to be under the power of death according to Paul is to be a slave to the devil and a sinner, because of the inability of the flesh to live according to the law of God, which is selfless love.

The theory of the transmission of original sin and guilt is certainly not found in St. Paul, who can be interpreted neither in terms of juridicism nor in terms of any dualism which distinguishes between the material and the allegedly pure, spiritual, and intellectual parts of man. It is no wonder that some Biblical scholars are at a loss when they cannot find in the Old testament any clear-cut support for what they take to be the Pauline doctrine of original sin in terms of moral guilt and punishment. ²³³ The same perplexity is met by many moralistic Western scholars when they study the Eastern Fathers. ²³⁴ Consequently, St. Augustine is popularly supposed to be the first and only of the early Fathers who understood the theology of St. Paul. This is clearly a myth, from which both Protestants and Romans need liberation.

It is only when one understands the meaning of death and its consequences that one can understand the life of the ancient Church, and especially its attitude toward martyrdom. Being already dead to the world in baptism, and having their life hidden with Christ in God, ²³⁵ Christians could not falter in the face of death. They were already dead, and yet living in Christ. To be afraid of death was to be still under the power of the devil– II Timothy 1:7: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of sound mind.” In trying to convince the Roman Christians not to hinder his martyrdom, St. Ignatius wrote: “The prince of this world would fain carry me away, and corrupt my disposition toward God. Let none of you therefore, who are in Rome, help him.” ²³⁶ The Cyprianic controversy over the fallen during times of persecution was violent, because the Church understood that it was a contradiction to die in baptism and then to deny Christ for fear of death and torture. The canons of the Church, although today generally ignored as an aid to understanding the inner faith of the ancient Church, still remain very severe for those who would reject their faith for fear of death. ²³⁷ Such an attitude towards death is not the product of eschatological frenzy and enthusiasm, but rather of a clear recognition of who the devil is, what his thoughts are, ²³⁸ what his powers over humanity and creation are, how he is destroyed through baptism and the mystagogical life within the body of Christ, which is the Church. Oscar Cullman is seriously mistaken in trying to make the New Testament writers say that Satan and the evil demons have been deprived of their power, and that now leur puissance n’est qu’apparente . ²³⁹ The greatest power of the devil is death, which is destroyed only within the body of Christ, where the faithful are continuously engaged in the struggle against Satan by striving for selfless love. This combat against the devil and striving for selfless love is centered in the corporate Eucharistic life of the local community–”For when you assemble frequently epi to auto (in the same place) the powers of Satan are destroyed and the destruction at which he aims is prevented by the unity of your faith.” ²⁴⁰ Anyone, therefore, who does not hear the Spirit within him calling him tothe Eucharistic assembly for the corporate life of selfless love is obviously under the sway of the devil. “He, therefore, who does not assemble with the Church, has even by this manifested his pride and condemned himself…” ²⁴¹ The world outside of the corporate life of love, in the sacraments, is still under the power of the consequences of death and therefore a slave to the devil. The devil is already defeated only because his power has been destroyed by the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ; and this defeat is perpetuated only in the remnant of those saved before Christ and after Christ. Both those saved before Christ and after Him are saved by His death and resurrection, and make up the New Jerusalem. Against this Church the devil cannot prevail, and by this fact he is already defeated. But his power outside of those who are saved remains the same. ²⁴² Satan is still “the god of this world,” ²⁴³ and it is for this reason that Christians must live as if not living in this world. ²⁴⁴

Concluding Remarks

The modern Biblical scholar cannot claim to be objective if his examination of Biblical theology is one-sided, or governed by certain philosophical prejudices. The modern school of Biblical criticism is clearly making a false attempt to get at the essential form of the original kerygma, while remaining quite ignorant and blind to the very essence of the Old and New Testament analysis of the fallen state of humanity and creation, especially in regard to its teachings concerning the natures of God and Satan. Thus, one sees the anti- liberal tendencies of modern Protestantism, accepting the method of Biblical criticism and at the same time trying to salvage what it takes to be the essential message of the Gospel writers. yet, in all their pseudo-scientific method of research, writers of this school fail to come to any definite conclusions because they stubbornly refuse to take seriously the Biblical doctrine of Satan, death and corruption. For this reason, such a question as whether or not the body of Christ was really resurrected is not regarded as important–e.g., Emil Brunner, The Mediator . What is important is the faith that Christ is the unique Savior in history, even though very possibly not resurrected in history. How he saves and what he saves men from is presumably a secondary question.

It is clear that for St. Paul the bodily resurrection of Christ is the destruction of the devil, death, and corruption. Christ is the first fruits from the dead. ²⁴⁵ If there is no resurrection there can be no salvation. ²⁴⁶ Since death is a consequence of the discontinuation of communion with the life and love of God, and thereby a captivity of man and creation by the devil, then only a real resurrection can destroy the power of the devil. It is inaccurate and shallow thinking to try to pass off as Biblical the idea that the question of a real bodily resurrection is of secondary importance. At the center of Biblical and patristic thought there is clearly a Christology of real union, which is conditioned by the Biblical doctrine of Satan, death and corruption, and human destiny. Satan is governing through death, materially and physically. His defeat must be also material and physical. Restoration of communion must be not only in the realm of mental attitude, but, more important, through creation, of which man is an inseparable part. Without a clear understanding of the Biblical doctrine of Satan and his power, it is impossible to understand the sacramental life of the body of Christ, and, by consequence, the doctrine of the Fathers concerning Christology and Trinity becomes a meaningless diversion of scholastic specialists. Both Roman scholastics and Protestants are undeniably heretical in their doctrines of grace and ecclesiology simply because they do not see any longer that salvation is only the union of man with the life of God in the body of Christ, where the devil is being ontologically and really destroyed in the life of love. Outside of the life of unity with each other and Christ in the sacramental life of corporate love there is no salvation, because the devil is still ruling the world through the consequences of death and corruption. Extra-sacramental organizations, such as the papacy, cannot be fostered off as the essence of Christianity because they are clearly under the influence of worldly considerations and do not have as their sole aim the life of selfless love. In Western Christianity, the dogmas of the Church have become the object of logical gymnastics in the classrooms of philosophy. What is usually taken as natural human reason is set up as the exponent of revealed theology. The teachings of the Church concerning the Holy Trinity, Christology, and Grace, are no longer the accepted expressions of the continuous and existential experience of the body of Christ, living within the very life of the Holy Trinity through the human nature of Christ, in whose flesh the devil has been destroyed and against whose body (the Church) the gates of death (hades) cannot prevail.

It is the mission of Orthodox theology today to bring an awakening to Western Christianity, but in order to do this the Orthodox themselves must rediscover their own traditions and cease, once and for all, accepting the corroding infiltration of Western theological confusion into Orthodox theology. It is only by returning to the Biblical understanding of Satan and human destiny that the sacraments of the Church can once again become the source and strength of Orthodox theology. The enemy of life and love can be destroyed only when Christians can confidently say, “we are not ignorant of his thoughts. ” ²⁴⁷ Any theology which cannot define with exactitude the methods and deceptions of the devil is clearly heretical, because such a theology is already deceived by the devil. It is for this reason that the Fathers could assert that heresy is the work of the devil.

Footnotes

^{1 II Cor. 2:11}

^{2 St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei , 4}

^{3 I Tim. 4:4}

^{4 Rom. 5:12}

^{5 Rom. 8:20}

^{6 Rom. 8:21-23}

^{7 I Cor. 15:26}

^{8 II Cor. 4:3}

^{9 Rom. 1:20}

^{10 Rom. 8:20}

^{11 Rom. 7:15-25}

^{12 Rom 11:5}

^{13 II Cor. 4:3}

^{14 I Cor. 15:56}

^{15 Rom. 3:9-12; 5:19}

^{16 Rom. 5:13}

^{17 II Cor. 4:3; 11:14; Eph. 6:11-17; II Thes. 2:8}

^{18 Rom. 8:24}

^{19 Col. 2:8}

^{20 e.g., St. Cyrill of Alexandria, Migne, P.G.t. 74, c. 788-789}

^{21 II Tim. 2:26}

^{22 II Cor. 2:11}

^{23 I Tim. 2:14; 4:14; II Tim. 2:26; II Cor. 11:14; 4:3; 2:11; 11:3}

^{24 Eph. 6:11-17}

^{25 I Cor. 7:5; II Cor. 2:11; 11:3; Eph. 4:27; I Thes. 3:5; I Tim. 3:6; 3:7; 4:1; 5:14}

^{26 II Cor. 11:14; 4:3; Eph 2:2; 6:11-17; I Thes. 2:18; 3:5; II Thes. 2:9; I Tim. 2:14; 3:7; II Tim. 2:25-26}

^{27 II Cor. 11:15}

^{28 II Thes. 2:9}

^{29 Eph 6:12; Col. 2:15}

^{30 II Cor. 4:4}

^{31 II Cor. 11:3; I Tim. 2:14}

^{32 Ibid.}

^{33 Rom. 8:19-22}

^{34 I Cor. 15:56}

^{35 Rom. 5:21}

^{36 Rom. 8:20}

^{37 Rom. 8:21}

^{38 I Cor. 15:24-26}

^{39 I Cor. 15:54}

^{40 Col. 2:13-15; I Cor. 15:24-27; 15:54-57}

^{41 II Cor. 4:3; Gal. 1:4; Eph. 6:12}

^{42 I Cor. 15:1 ff.}

^{43 Rom. 12:2; I Cor. 2:12; 11:32; II Cor. 4:3; Col. 2:20; II Thes. 2:9; II Tim. 4:10; Col. 2:8; I Cor. 5:10}

^{44 Rom. 1:17; 3:21-26}

^{45 Rom. 10:2-4; Phil. 3:8}

^{46 Rom. 3:20; 5:15 ff; 9:32}

^{47 Rom. 9:30-10:10; I Cor. 13:1-14:1; I Tim. 5:8}

^{48 I Tim. 1:9-10}

^{49 I Tim. 1:18}

^{50 Rom. 7:14}

^{51 Gal. 3:24}

^{52 Gal. 5:13}

^{53 Rom. 8:29; 15:1-3; 15:7; I Cor. 2:16; 10:33; 13:1 ff; 15:49; II cor. 3:13; Gal. 4:19; Eph. 4:13; 5:1; 5:25; Phil. 2:5; Col. 3:10; I Thes. 1:6}

^{54 I Cor. 13:2}

^{55 I Cor. 13:3}

^{56 Gal. 3:21}

^{57 Ibid.}

^{58 Gal. 3:18}

^{59 I Tim. 6:16}

^{60 Rom. 9:16}

^{61 Rom. 3:26; Eph. 2:4-6; I Tim. 6:15}

^{62 II Cor. 11:13; I Tim 2:14}

^{63 Rom. 5:12}

^{64 I Cor. 15:26}

^{65 St. Gregory Palamas, Kephalia Physica , 52, Migne, P.G.T. 150-A}

^{66 F. Prat, La Theologie de saint Paul , Paris 1924, t.c. pp. 67-68}

^{67 Rom. 8:20; I Cor. 10:10; II Cor. 2:11; 4:3; 11:3; 11:14; Eph. 2:1-3; 6:11-17; I Thes. 2:18; 3:5; II Thes. 2:9; I Tim. 2:14; 5:14; II Tim. 2:26}

^{68 Col. 2:15; I Cor. 15:24-26; 15:53-57; Rom. 8:21}

^{69 Col. 2:14-15}

^{70 II Cor. 5:19}

^{71 Rom. 3:20-27}

^{72 Rom. 10:3; Phil. 3:8}

^{73 Rom. 1:18 ff}

^{74 Rom. 1:20}

^{75 Rom. 1:24}

^{76 Rom. 1:28}

^{77 e.g., Rom. 9:14-18; 11:8}

^{78 Rom. 9:6}

^{79 Rom. 2:13}

^{80 Rom. 2:12}

^{81 Rom. 2:14-15}

^{82 Rom. 2:16}

^{83 Rom. 1:19}

^{84 Rom. 1:21; I Cor. 4:5; 14-25; Eph. 1:17}

^{85 II Cor. 1:22; Gal. 4:6}

^{86 Eph. 3;17}

^{87 Rom. 8:10; 8:13; II Cor. 4:10-11; 6:4-10; Col. 2:11-12; 2:20; 3:3; II Thes. 1:4-5}

^{88 II Tim. 1:8; 2:3-6; 4:5}

^{89 II Tim. 3:12}

^{90 I Tim 6:7-9}

^{91 I Cor. 13:3}

^{92 I Cor. 3:9}

^{93 Gal. 5:18}

^{94 I Cor. 13:4}

^{95 Phil. 2:5-8}

^{96 Rom. 3:21-28}

^{97 Col. 2:15}

^{98 Rom. 8:24; 66}

^{99 Eph. 5:1}

^{100 Rom. 8:29}

^{101 Rom. 15:1-3}

^{102 II Cor. 5:15}

^{103 Eph. 4:13}

^{104 Col. 2:20}

^{105 I Cor. 2:16; Phil. 2:5-8}

^{106 Col. 1:28}

^{107 Eph. 5:25}

^{108 Phil. 2:20}

^{109 Eph. 5:1}

^{110 Rom. 8:29; I Cor. 10:33; 15:49; II Cor. 3:13; Gal. 4:19; Eph. 4:13; 5:25; Phil. 2:5-8; Col. 1:28; 3:10; 4:12; I Thes. 1:6}

^{111 I Cor. 13:2-3}

^{112 Col. 3:14}

^{113 Phil. 2:20}

^{114 Rom. 14:7; 15:1-3; I Cor. 10:24; 10:29-11:1; 12:25-26; 13:1 ff; II Cor. 5:14- 15; Gal. 5:13; 6:1 Eph. 4:2; Phil. 2:4; I Thes. 5:11}

^{115 Phil 3:21}

^{116 Rom. 8:11}

^{117 I Cor. 15:26}

^{118 Rom. 5:12}

^{119 Rom. 8:20-21}

^{120 I Cor. 15:42-49}

^{121 St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei , 4-5}

^{122 Rom. 7:12}

^{123 v. 14}

^{124 Rom. 7:22}

^{125 Rom. 7:18}

^{126 Rom. 7:14}

^{127 Rom. 7:20}

^{128 Rom. 7:24}

^{129 Rom. 8:2}

^{130 Rom. 7:13 ff}

^{131 I Cor. 7:4-5}

^{132 Rom. 15:27}

^{133 II Cor. 3:3}

^{134 II Cor. 5:16}

^{135 I Tim. 3:16}

^{136 I Cor. 9:11}

^{137 Gal. 3:3}

^{138 Gal. 5:16-18}

^{139 Gal. 5:19-21}

^{140 Gal. 3:1}

^{141 Rom. 7:17-18}

^{142 I Cor. 9:11; Rom. 15:27; II Cor. 3:3; 4:11; 5:16}

^{143 I Tim. 3:16}

^{144 Rom. 7:17-18; Eph. 2:15}

^{145 Tresmontant, Essai sur la pensee Hebraique , Paris 1953, pp. 95-96}

^{146 Gen. 6:13,17; 7:15,21; Ps. 135:25}

^{147 Gen. 6:12; Is. 40:6; Jer. 25:31; 12:12; Zach. 2:17}

^{148 Jos. 10:28,30,32,35,37; Gen. 1:21,24; 2:7, 19; 9:10,12,15; Lev. 11:10}

^{149 Matt. 24:22; Mk. 13:10; Lk. 3:6; Rom. 3:20; I Cor. 1:23; Gal. 11:16}

^{150 Acts 2:43; 3:23; Rom. 2:9; 13:1; Rev. 16:3}

^{151 Rom. 7:14}

^{152 I Cor. 2:14}

^{153 I Cor. 15:50}

^{154 Ibid.}

^{155 I Cor. 15:42-49}

^{156 I Cor. 15:44}

^{157 I Cor. 15:46-47}

^{158 I Cor. 15:45}

^{159 I Cor. 15:47}

^{160 I Cor. 14:14-15}

^{161 Matt. 13:15; 15:19; Mk. 2:6; 2:8; 3:5; 6:52; 8:17; Lk. 2:35; 24:15; 24:38; Acts 8:22; 28:27; Jn. 12:40}

^{162 Lk. 24:45}

^{163 Rom. 1:21; 1:24; 2:5; 8:27; 10:1,6,8,10; 16:18; I Cor. 4:5; 7:37; 14:25; II Cor. 3:15; 4:6; 9:7; Eph. 4:18; 6:22; Phil 4:7; Col. 2:2; 3:16; 4:8; I Thes. 2:4; II Thes. 2:16; 3:5; I Tim. 1:5; II Tim 2:22}

^{164 I Cor. 14:14-19; 2:16; Rom. 7:23; 12:2; Eph. 4:23; Tit. 1:15}

^{165 II Cor. 1:22; Gal. 4:6}

^{166 Eph. 3:16}

^{167 Eph. 3:17}

^{168 Rom. 7:22-23}

^{169 Eph. 3:16-17}

^{170 Eph. 4:17-18}

^{171 Rom. 1:21}

^{172 Eph. 4:18}

^{173 Eph. 1:18-19}

^{174 I cor. 14:25}

^{175 I Cor. 4:5}

^{176 Tresmontant, op. cit., p. 110}

^{177 Ibid}

^{178 Eccl. 12:7}

^{179 I Tim. 6:16}

^{180 Rom. 8:6}

^{181 Rom. 8:13}

^{182 Ibid}

^{183 Rom. 8:9}

^{184 Rom. 7:24}

^{185 Rom. 8:2}

^{186 Rom. 7:6}

^{187 Rom. 8:9}

^{188 Rom. 8:16}

^{189 II Cor. 7:1}

^{190 Rom. 11:21; I Cor. 5:1-13; II Thes. 3:6; 3:14; II Tim. 3:5}

^{191 II Cor. 1:22; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 3:16-17}

^{192 Rom. 8:9}

^{193 Gal. 5:19}

^{194 Rom. 8:7-8}

^{195 Rom. 7:13-25}

^{196 Rom. 6:1-14}

^{197 Gal. 5:22-24}

^{198 Rom. 8:6}

^{199 I Cor. 15:56}

^{200 Rom. 5:21}

^{201 I Cor. 15:26}

^{202 Rom. 8:8}

^{203 Rom. 8:7}

^{204 Rom. 7:24}

^{205 Rom. 8:1-11}

^{206 Rom. 6:1-14}

^{207 e.g. Matt. 5:29; 10:28; 14:12; 26:12; 27:52, 58,59; Mk. 14:18; 15:43; 15:45; Lk. 12:4; 23:52; 24:3,23; Jn. 2:21; 19:31,38,40; 20:12; Acts 9:40; I Pet. 2:24; Jude 9}

^{208 Westcott, Commentary on the Epistle to Hebrews}

^{209 St. Paul’s usage of the word, soma , is not always consistent; yet it is never used in any dualistic context, to distinguish between body and soul. On the contrary, Paul frequently uses soma as synonymous with sarx (I Cor. 6:16; 7:34; 13:3; 15:35-58; II Cor. 4:10-11; Eph. 1:20-22; 2:15; 5:28 ff; Col. 1:22-24). If his anthropology were dualistic, it would not have been logical to use the term, soma , to designate the church and kephale tou somatos (head of the body) to designate christ. It would have been much more normal to call the Church the body and Christ the soul in the body.}

^{210 Rom. 7:13-25}

^{211 Heb. 2:14-15}

^{212 Gal. 5:19-21}

^{213 Rom. 7}

^{214 Rom. 7:24}

^{215 Athanasius, op. cit, 4-5}

^{216 Rom. 5:12}

^{217 Rom. 8:20-22}

^{218 St. John Chrysostom, Migne, P.G.t. 60, col. 391-692; Theophylactos, Migne, P.G.t. 124, c. 404-405}

^{219 St. Cyrill of Alexandria, Migne, P.G.t. 74, c. 781-785, and especially c. 788- 789; Theodoretos of Cyrus, Migne, P.G.t. 66, c. 800}

^{220 I Cor. 15:56}

^{221 Rom. 5:21}

^{222 I Cor. 15:26}

^{223 II Cor. 11:3}

^{224 I Tim. 2:14}

^{225 Rom. 5:13-14}

^{226 I Cor. 15:26}

^{227 I Cor. 15:56}

^{228 Rom. 5:12}

^{229 Amphilochia, heroteseis, 84, Migne, P.G.t. 101, c. 553-556}

^{230 Ecumenius, extracts from Photius , Migne, P.G.t. 118, c. 418}

^{231 Rom. 9:33; 10:19; 15:12; II Cor. 5:4; Rom. 6;21}

^{232 Phil. 4:10}

^{233 e.g., Lagrange, Epitre aux Romains , p. 117-118; Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p. 136-137}

^{234 A Gaudel, Peche Originel, Dictionaire de Theologie Catholique , t.xii, premiere partie}

^{235 Col. 3:3}

^{236 Rom. 7}

^{237 Canon 10, First Ecum. Council; Apostolic Canon 62; Canon 1, Council of Angyra, 313-314; Canon 1, Peter of Alexandria}

^{238 II Cor. 2:11}

^{239 Christ et le temps, p. 142}

^{240 St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians , ch. 13}

^{241 Ibid., ch. 5}

^{242 Eph. 2:12; 6:11-12; II Thes. 2:8-12}

^{243 II Cor. 4:4}

^{244 Col. 2:20-23}

^{245 I Cor. 15:23}

^{246 I Cor. 15:12-19}

^{247 II Cor. 2:11}

Introduction by C.S. Lewis

Chapter 1
Creation and the Fall

1  In our former book ¹ we dealt fully enough with a few of the chief points about the heathen worship of idols, and how those false fears originally arose. We also, by God’s grace, briefly indicated that the Word of the Father is Himself divine, that all things that are owe their being to His will and power, and that it is through Him that the Father gives order to creation, by Him that all things are moved, and through Him that they receive their being. Now, Macarius, true lover of Christ, we must take a step further in the faith of our holy religion, and consider also the Word’s becoming Man and His divine Appearing in our midst. That mystery the Jews traduce, the Greeks deride, but we adore; and your own love and devotion to the Word also will be the greater, because in His Manhood He seems so little worth. For it is a fact that the more unbelievers pour scorn on Him, so much the more does He make His Godhead evident. The things which they, as men, rule out as impossible, He plainly shows to be possible; that which they deride as unfitting, His goodness makes most fit; and things which these wiseacres laugh at as “human” He by His inherent might declares divine. Thus by what seems His utter poverty and weakness on the cross He overturns the pomp and parade of idols, and quietly and hiddenly wins over the mockers and unbelievers to recognize Him as God.

Now in dealing with these matters it is necessary first to recall what has already been said. You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been made manifest in bodily form. He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.

2  In regard to the making of the universe and the creation of all things there have been various opinions, and each person has propounded the theory that suited his own taste. For instance, some say that all things are self-originated and, so to speak, haphazard. The Epicureans are among these; they deny that there is any Mind behind the universe at all. This view is contrary to all the facts of experience, their own existence included. For if all things had come into being in this automatic fashion, instead of being the outcome of Mind, though they existed, they would all be uniform and without distinction. In the universe everything would be sun or moon or whatever it was, and in the human body the whole would be hand or eye or foot. But in point of fact the sun and the moon and the earth are all different things, and even within the human body there are different members, such as foot and hand and head. This distinctness of things argues not a spontaneous generation but a prevenient Cause; and from that Cause we can apprehend God, the Designer and Maker of all.

Others take the view expressed by Plato, that giant among the Greeks. He said that God had made all things out of pre-existent and uncreated matter, just as the carpenter makes things only out of wood that already exists. But those who hold this view do not realize that to deny that God is Himself the Cause of matter is to impute limitation to Him, just as it is undoubtedly a limitation on the part of the carpenter that he can make nothing unless he has the wood. How could God be called Maker and Artificer if His ability to make depended on some other cause, namely on matter itself? If He only worked up existing matter and did not Himself bring matter into being, He would be not the Creator but only a craftsman.

Then, again, there is the theory of the Gnostics, who have invented for themselves an Artificer of all things other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. These simply shut their eyes to the obvious meaning of Scripture. For instance, the Lord, having reminded the Jews of the statement in Genesis, “He Who created them in the beginning made them male and female … ,” and having shown that for that reason a man should leave his parents and cleave to his wife, goes on to say with reference to the Creator, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” ² How can they get a creation independent of the Father out of that? And, again, St. John, speaking all inclusively, says, “All things became by Him and without Him came nothing into being.” ³ How then could the Artificer be someone different, other than the Father of Christ?

3  Such are the notions which men put forward. But the impiety of their foolish talk is plainly declared by the divine teaching of the Christian faith. From it we know that, because there is Mind behind the universe, it did not originate itself; because God is infinite, not finite, it was not made from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing and out of non-existence absolute and utter God brought it into being through the Word. He says as much in Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; ⁴ and again through that most helpful book The Shepherd, “Believe thou first and foremost that there is One God Who created and arranged all things and brought them out of non-existence into being.” ⁵ Paul also indicates the same thing when he says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which we see now did not come into being out of things which had previously appeared.” ⁶ For God is good — or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, He made all things out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ and of all these His earthly creatures He reserved especial mercy for the race of men. Upon them, therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked — namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in limited degree they might continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise. But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things — namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. This is what Holy Scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, “Of every tree that is in the garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die.” ⁷ “Ye shall surely die” — not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption.

4  You may be wondering why we are discussing the origin of men when we set out to talk about the Word’s becoming Man. The former subject is relevant to the latter for this reason: it was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who were the cause of His taking human form, and for our salvation that in His great love He was both born and manifested in a human body. For God had made man thus (that is, as an embodied spirit), and had willed that he should remain in incorruption. But men, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, they were in process of becoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its dominion. For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but he bears also the Likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that Likeness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it affirmed in Wisdom: “The keeping of His laws is the assurance of incorruption.” ⁸ And being incorrupt, he would be henceforth as God, as Holy Scripture says, “I have said, Ye are gods and sons of the Highest all of you: but ye die as men and fall as one of the princes.” ⁹

5  This, then, was the plight of men. God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word. Then, turning from eternal things to things corruptible, by counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, though they were by nature subject to corruption, the grace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping from the natural law, provided that they retained the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is to say, the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption, as also Wisdom says: “God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world.” ¹⁰ When this happened, men began to die, and corruption ran riot among them and held sway over them to an even more than natural degree, because it was the penalty of which God had forewarned them for transgressing the commandment. Indeed, they had in their sinning surpassed all limits; for, having invented wickedness in the beginning and so involved themselves in death and corruption, they had gone on gradually from bad to worse, not stopping at any one kind of evil, but continually, as with insatiable appetite, devising new kinds of sins. Adulteries and thefts were everywhere, murder and raping filled the earth, law was disregarded in corruption and injustice, all kinds of iniquities were perpetrated by all, both singly and in common. Cities were warring with cities, nations were rising against nations, and the whole earth was rent with factions and battles, while each strove to outdo the other in wickedness. Even crimes contrary to nature were not unknown, but as the martyr-apostle of Christ says: “Their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature; and the men also, leaving the natural use of the woman, flamed out in lust towards each other, perpetrating shameless acts with their own sex, and receiving in their own persons the due recompense of their pervertedness.” ¹¹

Chapter 2
The Divine Dilemma and its Solution in the Incarnation

6  We saw in the last chapter that, because death and corruption were gaining ever firmer hold on them, the human race was in process of destruction. Man, who was created in God’s image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone. The law of death, which followed from the Transgression, prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape. The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting. It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As, then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than, having been created, to be neglected and perish; and, besides that, such indifference to the ruin of His own work before His very eyes would argue not goodness in God but limitation, and that far more than if He had never created men at all. It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.

7  Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not meet the case. What — or rather Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.

8  For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father’s Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw that corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father — a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

9  The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death; yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father’s Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. It was by surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required. Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all. You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.

10  This great work was, indeed, supremely worthy of the goodness of God. A king who has founded a city, so far from neglecting it when through the carelessness of the inhabitants it is attacked by robbers, avenges it and saves it from destruction, having regard rather to his own honor than to the people’s neglect. Much more, then, the Word of the All-good Father was not unmindful of the human race that He had called to be; but rather, by the offering of His own body He abolished the death which they had incurred, and corrected their neglect by His own teaching. Thus by His own power He restored the whole nature of man. The Savior’s own inspired disciples assure us of this. We read in one place: “For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that, if One died on behalf of all, then all died, and He died for all that we should no longer live unto ourselves, but unto Him who died and rose again from the dead, even our Lord Jesus Christ.” ¹² And again another says: “But we behold Him Who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He should taste of death on behalf of every man.” The same writer goes on to point out why it was necessary for God the Word and none other to become Man: “For it became Him, for Whom are all things and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” ¹³ He means that the rescue of mankind from corruption was the proper part only of Him Who made them in the beginning. He points out also that the Word assumed a human body, expressly in order that He might offer it in sacrifice for other like bodies: “Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself assumed the same, in order that through death He might bring to nought Him that hath the power of death, that is to say, the Devil, and might rescue those who all their lives were enslaved by the fear of death.” ¹⁴ For by the sacrifice of His own body He did two things: He put an end to the law of death which barred our way; and He made a new beginning of life for us, by giving us the hope of resurrection. By man death has gained its power over men; by the Word made Man death has been destroyed and life raised up anew. That is what Paul says, that true servant of Christ: “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Just as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” ¹⁵ and so forth. Now, therefore, when we die we no longer do so as men condemned to death, but as those who are even now in process of rising we await the general resurrection of all, “which in its own times He shall show,” ¹⁶ even God Who wrought it and bestowed it on us.

This, then, is the first cause of the Savior’s becoming Man. There are, however, other things which show how wholly fitting is His blessed presence in our midst; and these we must now go on to consider.

Chapter 3
The Divine Dilemma and its Solution in the Incarnation — continued

11  When God the Almighty was making mankind through His own Word, He perceived that they, owing to the limitation of their nature, could not of themselves have any knowledge of their Artificer, the Incorporeal and Uncreated. He took pity on them, therefore, and did not leave them destitute of the knowledge of Himself, lest their very existence should prove purposeless. For of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker? How could men be reasonable beings if they had no knowledge of the Word and Reason of the Father, through Whom they had received their being? They would be no better than the beasts, had they no knowledge save of earthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they may be able to perceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed life.

But, as we have already seen, men, foolish as they are, thought little of the grace they had received, and turned away from God. They defiled their own soul so completely that they not only lost their apprehension of God, but invented for themselves other gods of various kinds. They fashioned idols for themselves in place of the truth and reverenced things that are not, rather than God Who is, as St. Paul says, “worshipping the creature rather than the Creator.” ¹⁷ Moreover, and much worse, they transferred the honor which is due to God to material objects such as wood and stone, and also to man; and further even than that they went, as we said in our former book. Indeed, so impious were they that they worshipped evil spirits as gods in satisfaction of their lusts. They sacrificed brute beasts and immolated men, as the just due of these deities, thereby bringing themselves more and more under their insane control. Magic arts also were taught among them, oracles in sundry places led men astray, and the cause of everything in human life was traced to the stars as though nothing existed but that which could be seen. In a word, impiety and lawlessness were everywhere, and neither God nor His Word was known. Yet He had not hidden Himself from the sight of men nor given the knowledge of Himself in one way only; but rather He had unfolded it in many forms and by many ways.

12  God knew the limitation of mankind, you see; and though the grace of being made in His Image was sufficient to give them knowledge of the Word and through Him of the Father, as a safeguard against their neglect of this grace, He provided the works of creation also as means by which the Maker might be known. Nor was this all. Man’s neglect of the indwelling grace tends ever to increase; and against this further frailty also God made provision by giving them a law, and by sending prophets, men whom they knew. Thus, if they were tardy in looking up to heaven, they might still gain knowledge of their Maker from those close at hand; for men can learn directly about higher things from other men. Three ways thus lay open to them, by which they might obtain the knowledge of God. They could look up into the immensity of heaven, and by pondering the harmony of creation come to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father, Whose all-ruling providence makes known the Father to all. Or, if this was beyond them, they could converse with holy men, and through them learn to know God, the Artificer of all things, the Father of Christ, and to recognize the worship of idols as the negation of the truth and full of all impiety. Or else, in the third place, they could cease from lukewarmness and lead a good life merely by knowing the law. For the law was not given only for the Jews, nor was it solely for their sake that God sent the prophets, though it was to the Jews that they were sent and by the Jews that they were persecuted. The law and the prophets were a sacred school of the knowledge of God and the conduct of the spiritual life for the whole world.

So great, indeed, were the goodness and the love of God. Yet men, bowed down by the pleasures of the moment and by the frauds and illusions of the evil spirits, did not lift up their heads towards the truth. So burdened were they with their wickednesses that they seemed rather to be brute beasts than reasonable men, reflecting the very Likeness of the Word.

13  What was God to do in face of this dehumanising of mankind, this universal hiding of the knowledge of Himself by the wiles of evil spirits? Was He to keep silence before so great a wrong and let men go on being thus deceived and kept in ignorance of Himself? If so, what was the use of having made them in His own Image originally? It would surely have been better for them always to have been brutes, rather than to revert to that condition when once they had shared the nature of the Word. Again, things being as they were, what was the use of their ever having had the knowledge of God? Surely it would have been better for God never to have bestowed it, than that men should subsequently be found unworthy to receive it. Similarly, what possible profit could it be to God Himself, Who made men, if when made they did not worship Him, but regarded others as their makers? This would be tantamount to His having made them for others and not for Himself. Even an earthly king, though he is only a man, does not allow lands that he has colonized to pass into other hands or to desert to other rulers, but sends letters and friends and even visits them himself to recall them to their allegiance, rather than allow His work to be undone. How much more, then, will God be patient and painstaking with His creatures, that they be not led astray from Him to the service of those that are not, and that all the more because such error means for them sheer ruin, and because it is not right that those who had once shared His Image should be destroyed.

What, then, was God to do? What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this be done save by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Savior Jesus Christ? Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels have done it, for they are not the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father Who could recreate man made after the Image.

In order to effect this re-creation, however, He had first to do away with death and corruption. Therefore He assumed a human body, in order that in it death might once for all be destroyed, and that men might be renewed according to the Image. The Image of the Father only was sufficient for this need. Here is an illustration to prove it.

14  You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep, even as He says in the Gospel: “I came to seek and to save that which was lost. ¹⁸ This also explains His saying to the Jews: “Except a man be born anew … ” ¹⁹ a He was not referring to a man’s natural birth from his mother, as they thought, but to the re-birth and re-creation of the soul in the Image of God.

Nor was this the only thing which only the Word could do. When the madness of idolatry and irreligion filled the world and the knowledge of God was hidden, whose part was it to teach the world about the Father? Man’s, would you say? But men cannot run everywhere over the world, nor would their words carry sufficient weight if they did, nor would they be, unaided, a match for the evil spirits. Moreover, since even the best of men were confused and blinded by evil, how could they convert the souls and minds of others? You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself. Perhaps you will say, then, that creation was enough to teach men about the Father. But if that had been so, such great evils would never have occurred. Creation was there all the time, but it did not prevent men from wallowing in error. Once more, then, it was the Word of God, Who sees all that is in man and moves all things in creation, Who alone could meet the needs of the situation. It was His part and His alone, Whose ordering of the universe reveals the Father, to renew the same teaching. But how was He to do it? By the same means as before, perhaps you will say, that is, through the works of creation. But this was proven insufficient. Men had neglected to consider the heavens before, and now they were looking in the opposite direction. Wherefore, in all naturalness and fitness, desiring to do good to men, as Man He dwells, taking to Himself a body like the rest; and through His actions done in that body, as it were on their own level, He teaches those who would not learn by other means to know Himself, the Word of God, and through Him the Father.

15  He deals with them as a good teacher with his pupils, coming down to their level and using simple means. St. Paul says as much: “Because in the wisdom of God the world in its wisdom knew not God, God thought fit through the simplicity of the News proclaimed to save those who believe.” ²⁰ Men had turned from the contemplation of God above, and were looking for Him in the opposite direction, down among created things and things of sense. The Savior of us all, the Word of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which He, the Word of God, did in the body. Human and human minded as men were, therefore, to whichever side they looked in the sensible world they found themselves taught the truth. Were they awe-stricken by creation? They beheld it confessing Christ as Lord. Did their minds tend to regard men as Gods? The uniqueness of the Savior’s works marked Him, alone of men, as Son of God. Were they drawn to evil spirits? They saw them driven out by the Lord and learned that the Word of God alone was God and that the evil spirits were not gods at all. Were they inclined to hero-worship and the cult of the dead? Then the fact that the Savior had risen from the dead showed them how false these other deities were, and that the Word of the Father is the one true Lord, the Lord even of death. For this reason was He both born and manifested as Man, for this He died and rose, in order that, eclipsing by His works all other human deeds, He might recall men from all the paths of error to know the Father. As He says Himself, “I came to seek and to save that which was lost.” ²¹

16  When, then, the minds of men had fallen finally to the level of sensible things, the Word submitted to appear in a body, in order that He, as Man, might center their senses on Himself, and convince them through His human acts that He Himself is not man only but also God, the Word and Wisdom of the true God. This is what Paul wants to tell us when he says: “That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the length and breadth and height and depth, and to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge, so that ye may be filled unto all the fullness of God.” ²² The Self-revealing of the Word is in every dimension — above, in creation; below, in the Incarnation; in the depth, in Hades; in the breadth, throughout the world. All things have been filled with the knowledge of God.

For this reason He did not offer the sacrifice on behalf of all immediately He came, for if He had surrendered His body to death and then raised it again at once He would have ceased to be an object of our senses. Instead of that, He stayed in His body and let Himself be seen in it, doing acts and giving signs which showed Him to be not only man, but also God the Word. There were thus two things which the Savior did for us by becoming Man. He banished death from us and made us anew; and, invisible and imperceptible as in Himself He is, He became visible through His works and revealed Himself as the Word of the Father, the Ruler and King of the whole creation.

17  There is a paradox in this last statement which we must now examine. The Word was not hedged in by His body, nor did His presence in the body prevent His being present elsewhere as well. When He moved His body He did not cease also to direct the universe by His Mind and might. No. The marvelous truth is, that being the Word, so far from being Himself contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself. In creation He is present everywhere, yet is distinct in being from it; ordering, directing, giving life to all, containing all, yet is He Himself the Uncontained, existing solely in His Father. As with the whole, so also is it with the part. Existing in a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole; and He is revealed both through the works of His body and through His activity in the world. It is, indeed, the function of soul to behold things that are outside the body, but it cannot energize or move them. A man cannot transport things from one place to another, for instance, merely by thinking about them; nor can you or I move the sun and the stars just by sitting at home and looking at them. With the Word of God in His human nature, however, it was otherwise. His body was for Him not a limitation, but an instrument, so that He was both in it and in all things, and outside all things, resting in the Father alone. At one and the same time — this is the wonder — as Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father. Not even His birth from a virgin, therefore, changed Him in any way, nor was He defiled by being in the body. Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it. For His being in everything does not mean that He shares the nature of everything, only that He gives all things their being and sustains them in it. Just as the sun is not defiled by the contact of its rays with earthly objects, but rather enlightens and purifies them, so He Who made the sun is not defiled by being made known in a body, but rather the body is cleansed and quickened by His indwelling, “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.” ²³

18  You must understand, therefore, that when writers on this sacred theme speak of Him as eating and drinking and being born, they mean that the body, as a body, was born and sustained with the food proper to its nature; while God the Word, Who was united with it, was at the same time ordering the universe and revealing Himself through His bodily acts as not man only but God. Those acts are rightly said to be His acts, because the body which did them did indeed belong to Him and none other; moreover, it was right that they should be thus attributed to Him as Man, in order to show that His body was a real one and not merely an appearance. From such ordinary acts as being born and taking food, He was recognized as being actually present in the body; but by the extraordinary acts which He did through the body He proved Himself to be the Son of God. That is the meaning of His words to the unbelieving Jews: “If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not; but if I do, even if ye believe not Me, believe My works, that ye may know that the Father is in Me and I in the Father.” ²⁴

Invisible in Himself, He is known from the works of creation; so also, when His Godhead is veiled in human nature, His bodily acts still declare Him to be not man only, but the Power and Word of God. To speak authoritatively to evil spirits, for instance, and to drive them out, is not human but divine; and who could see-Him curing all the diseases to which mankind is prone, and still deem Him mere man and not also God? He cleansed lepers, He made the lame to walk, He opened the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind, there was no sickness or weakness that He did not drive away. Even the most casual observer can see that these were acts of God. The healing of the man born blind, for instance, who but the Father and Artificer of man, the Controller of his whole being, could thus have restored the faculty denied at birth? He Who did thus must surely be Himself the Lord of birth. This is proved also at the outset of His becoming Man. He formed His own body from the virgin; and that is no small proof of His Godhead, since He Who made that was the Maker of all else. And would not anyone infer from the fact of that body being begotten of a virgin only, without human father, that He Who appeared in it was also the Maker and Lord of all beside?

Again, consider the miracle at Cana. Would not anyone who saw the substance of water transmuted into wine understand that He Who did it was the Lord and Maker of the water that He changed? It was for the same reason that He walked on the sea as on dry land — to prove to the onlookers that He had mastery over all. And the feeding of the multitude, when He made little into much, so that from five loaves five thousand mouths were filled — did not that prove Him none other than the very Lord Whose Mind is over all?

Chapter 4
The Death of Christ

19  All these things the Savior thought fit to do, so that, recognizing His bodily acts as works of God, men who were blind to His presence in creation might regain knowledge of the Father. For, as I said before, who that saw His authority over evil spirits and their response to it could doubt that He was, indeed, the Son, the Wisdom and the Power of God? Even the very creation broke silence at His behest and, marvelous to relate, confessed with one voice before the cross, that monument of victory, that He Who suffered thereon in the body was not man only, but Son of God and Savior of all. The sun veiled his face, the earth quaked, the mountains were rent asunder, all men were stricken with awe. These things showed that Christ on the cross was God, and that all creation was His slave and was bearing witness by its fear to the presence of its Master.

Thus, then, God the Word revealed Himself to men through His works. We must next consider the end of His earthly life and the nature of His bodily death. This is, indeed, the very center of our faith, and everywhere you hear men speak of it; by it, too, no less than by His other acts, Christ is revealed as God and Son of God.

20  We have dealt as far as circumstances and our own understanding permit with the reason for His bodily manifestation. We have seen that to change the corruptible to incorruption was proper to none other than the Savior Himself, Who in the beginning made all things out of nothing; that only the Image of the Father could re-create the likeness of the Image in men, that none save our Lord Jesus Christ could give to mortals immortality, and that only the Word Who orders all things and is alone the Father’s true and sole-begotten Son could teach men about Him and abolish the worship of idols. But beyond all this, there was a debt owing which must needs be paid; for, as I said before, all men were due to die. Here, then, is the second reason why the Word dwelt among us, namely that having proved His Godhead by His works, He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all, to settle man’s account with death and free him from the primal transgression. In the same act also He showed Himself mightier than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits of the resurrection.

You must not be surprised if we repeat ourselves in dealing with this subject. We are speaking of the good pleasure of God and of the things which He in His loving wisdom thought fit to do, and it is better to put the same thing in several ways than to run the risk of leaving something out.

The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it. Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord’s body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished. Death there had to be, and death for all, so that the due of all might be paid. Wherefore, the Word, as I said, being Himself incapable of death, assumed a mortal body, that He might offer it as His own in place of all, and suffering for the sake of all through His union with it, ” might bring to nought Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver them who all their lifetime were enslaved by the fear of death.” ²⁵

21  Have no fears then. Now that the common Savior of all has died on our behalf, we who believe in Christ no longer die, as men died aforetime, in fulfillment of the threat of the law. That condemnation has come to an end; and now that, by the grace of the resurrection, corruption has been banished and done away, we are loosed from our mortal bodies in God’s good time for each, so that we may obtain thereby a better resurrection. Like seeds cast into the earth, we do not perish in our dissolution, but like them shall rise again, death having been brought to nought by the grace of the Savior. That is why blessed Paul, through whom we all have surety of the resurrection, says: “This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality; but when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?’” ²⁶

“Well then,” some people may say, “if the essential thing was that He should surrender His body to death in place of all, why did He not do so as Man privately, without going to the length of public crucifixion? Surely it would have been more suitable for Him to have laid aside His body with honor than to endure so shameful a death.” But look at this argument closely, and see how merely human it is, whereas what the Savior did was truly divine and worthy of His Godhead for several reasons. The first is this. The death of men under ordinary circumstances is the result of their natural weakness. They are essentially impermanent, so after a time they fall ill and when worn out they die. But the Lord is not like that. He is not weak, He is the Power of God and Word of God and Very Life Itself. If He had died quietly in His bed like other men it would have looked as if He did so in accordance with His nature, and as though He was indeed no more than other men. But because He was Himself Word and Life and Power His body was made strong, and because the death had to be accomplished, He took the occasion of perfecting His sacrifice not from Himself, but from others. How could He fall sick, Who had healed others? Or how could that body weaken and fail by means of which others are made strong? Here, again, you may say, “Why did He not prevent death, as He did sickness?” Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body, and to prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection. And as to the unsuitability of sickness for His body, as arguing weakness, you may say, “Did He then not hunger?” Yes, He hungered, because that was the property of His body, but He did not die of hunger because He Whose body hungered was the Lord. Similarly, though He died to ransom all, He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the Life Himself.

22  Someone else might say, perhaps, that it would have been better for the Lord to have avoided the designs of the Jews against Him, and so to have guarded His body from death altogether. But see how unfitting this also would have been for Him. Just as it would not have been fitting for Him to give His body to death by His own hand, being Word and being Life, so also it was not consonant with Himself that He should avoid the death inflicted by others. Rather, He pursued it to the uttermost, and in pursuance of His nature neither laid aside His body of His own accord nor escaped the plotting Jews. And this action showed no limitation or weakness in the Word; for He both waited for death in order to make an end of it, and hastened to accomplish it as an offering on behalf of all. Moreover, as it was the death of all mankind that the Savior came to accomplish, not His own, He did not lay aside His body by an individual act of dying, for to Him, as Life, this simply did not belong; but He accepted death at the hands of men, thereby completely to destroy it in His own body.

There are some further considerations which enable one to understand why the Lord’s body had such an end. The supreme object of His coming was to bring about the resurrection of the body. This was to be the monument to His victory over death, the assurance to all that He had Himself conquered corruption and that their own bodies also would eventually be incorrupt; and it was in token of that and as a pledge of the future resurrection that He kept His body incorrupt. But there again, if His body had fallen sick and the Word had left it in that condition, how unfitting it would have been! Should He Who healed the bodies of others neglect to keep His own in health? How would His miracles of healing be believed, if this were so? Surely people would either laugh at Him as unable to dispel disease or else consider Him lacking in proper human feeling because He could do so, but did not.

23  Then, again, suppose without any illness He had just concealed His body somewhere, and then suddenly reappeared and said that He had risen from the dead. He would have been regarded merely as a teller of tales, and because there was no witness of His death, nobody would believe His resurrection. Death had to precede resurrection, for there could be no resurrection without it. A secret and unwitnessed death would have left the resurrection without any proof or evidence to support it. Again, why should He die a secret death, when He proclaimed the fact of His rising openly? Why should He drive out evil spirits and heal the man blind from birth and change water into wine, all publicly, in order to convince men that He was the Word, and not also declare publicly that incorruptibility of His mortal body, so that He might Himself be believed to be the Life? And how could His disciples have had boldness in speaking of the resurrection unless they could state it as a fact that He had first died? Or how could their hearers be expected to believe their assertion, unless they themselves also had witnessed His death? For if the Pharisees at the time refused to believe and forced others to deny also, though the things had happened before their very eyes, how many excuses for unbelief would they have contrived, if it had taken place secretly? Or how could the end of death and the victory over it have been declared, had not the Lord thus challenged it before the sight of all, and by the incorruption of His body proved that henceforward it was annulled and void?

24  There are some other possible objections that must be answered. Some might urge that, even granting the necessity of a public death for subsequent belief in the resurrection, it would surely have been better for Him to have arranged an honorable death for Himself, and so to have avoided the ignominy of the cross. But even this would have given ground for suspicion that His power over death was limited to the particular kind of death which He chose for Himself; and that again would furnish excuse for disbelieving the resurrection. Death came to His body, therefore, not from Himself but from enemy action, in order that the Savior might utterly abolish death in whatever form they offered it to Him. A generous wrestler, virile and strong, does not himself choose his antagonists, lest it should be thought that of some of them he is afraid. Rather, he lets the spectators choose them, and that all the more if these are hostile, so that he may overthrow whomsoever they match against him and thus vindicate his superior strength. Even so was it with Christ. He, the Life of all, our Lord and Savior, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those others His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be recognized as finally annulled. A marvelous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonor and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death’s defeat. Therefore it is also, that He neither endured the death of John, who was beheaded, nor was He sawn asunder, like Isaiah: even in death He preserved His body whole and undivided, so that there should be no excuse hereafter for those who would divide the Church.

25  So much for the objections of those outside the Church. But if any honest Christian wants to know why He suffered death on the cross and not in some other way, we answer thus: in no other way was it expedient for us, indeed the Lord offered for our sakes the one death that was supremely good. He had come to bear the curse that lay on us; and how could He “become a curse” ²⁷ otherwise than by accepting the accursed death? And that death is the cross, for it is written “Cursed is every one that hangeth on tree.” ²⁸ Again, the death of the Lord is the ransom of all, and by it “the middle wall of partition” ²⁹ is broken down and the call of the Gentiles comes about. How could He have called us if He had not been crucified, for it is only on the cross that a man dies with arms outstretched? Here, again, we see the fitness of His death and of those outstretched arms: it was that He might draw His ancient people with the one and the Gentiles with the other, and join both together in Himself. Even so, He foretold the manner of His redeeming death, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Myself.” ³⁰ Again, the air is the sphere of the devil, the enemy of our race who, having fallen from heaven, endeavors with the other evil spirits who shared in his disobedience both to keep souls from the truth and to hinder the progress of those who are trying to follow it. The apostle refers to this when he says, “According to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience.” ³¹ But the Lord came to overthrow the devil and to purify the air and to make “a way” for us up to heaven, as the apostle says, “through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.” ³² This had to be done through death, and by what other kind of death could it be done, save by a death in the air, that is, on the cross? Here, again, you see how right and natural it was that the Lord should suffer thus; for being thus “lifted up,” He cleansed the air from all the evil influences of the enemy. “I beheld Satan as lightning falling,” ³³ He says; and thus He re-opened the road to heaven, saying again, “Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors.” ³⁴ For it was not the Word Himself Who needed an opening of the gates, He being Lord of all, nor was any of His works closed to their Maker. No, it was we who needed it, we whom He Himself upbore in His own body — that body which He first offered to death on behalf of all, and then made through it a path to heaven.

Chapter 5
The Resurrection

26  Fitting indeed, then, and wholly consonant was the death on the cross for us; and we can see how reasonable it was, and why it is that the salvation of the world could be accomplished in no other way. Even on the cross He did not hide Himself from sight; rather, He made all creation witness to the presence of its Maker. Then, having once let it be seen that it was truly dead, He did not allow that temple of His body to linger long, but forthwith on the third day raised it up, impassable and incorruptible, the pledge and token of His victory.

It was, of course, within His power thus to have raised His body and displayed it as alive directly after death. But the all-wise Savior did not do this, lest some should deny that it had really or completely died. Besides this, had the interval between His death and resurrection been but two days, the glory of His incorruption might not have appeared. He waited one whole day to show that His body was really dead, and then on the third day showed it incorruptible to all. The interval was no longer, lest people should have forgotten about it and grown doubtful whether it were in truth the same body. No, while the affair was still ringing in their ears and their eyes were still straining and their minds in turmoil, and while those who had put Him to death were still on the spot and themselves witnessing to the fact of it, the Son of God after three days showed His once dead body immortal and incorruptible; and it was evident to all that it was from no natural weakness that the body which the Word indwelt had died, but in order that in it by the Savior’s power death might be done away.

27  A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is supplied by a present fact, namely this. All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead. Before the divine sojourn of the Savior, even the holiest of men were afraid of death, and mourned the dead as those who perish. But now that the Savior has raised His body, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing, and prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection. But that devil who of old wickedly exulted in death, now that the pains of death are loosed, he alone it is who remains truly dead. There is proof of this too; for men who, before they believe in Christ, think death horrible and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it so completely that they go eagerly to meet it, and themselves become witnesses of the Savior’s resurrection from it. Even children hasten thus to die, and not men only, but women train themselves by bodily discipline to meet it. So weak has death become that even women, who used to be taken in by it, mock at it now as a dead thing robbed of all its strength. Death has become like a tyrant who has been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and foot the passers-by sneer at him, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage, because of the king who has conquered him. So has death been conquered and branded for what it is by the Savior on the cross. It is bound hand and foot, all who are in Christ trample it as they pass and as witnesses to Him deride it, scoffing and saying, “O Death, where is thy victory? O Grave, where is thy sting?” ³⁵

28  Is this a slender proof of the impotence of death, do you think? Or is it a slight indication of the Savior’s victory over it, when boys and young girls who are in Christ look beyond this present life and train themselves to die? Every one is by nature afraid of death and of bodily dissolution; the marvel of marvels is that he who is enfolded in the faith of the cross despises this natural fear and for the sake of the cross is no longer cowardly in face of it. The natural property of fire is to burn. Suppose, then, that there was a substance such as the Indian asbestos is said to be, which had no fear of being burnt, but rather displayed the impotence of the fire by proving itself unburnable. If anyone doubted the truth of this, all he need do would be to wrap himself up in the substance in question and then touch the fire. Or, again, to revert to our former figure, if anyone wanted to see the tyrant bound and helpless, who used to be such a terror to others, he could do so simply by going into the country of the tyrant’s conqueror. Even so, if anyone still doubts the conquest of death, after so many proofs and so many martyrdoms in Christ and such daily scorn of death by His truest servants, he certainly does well to marvel at so great a thing, but he must not be obstinate in unbelief and disregard of plain facts. No, he must be like the man who wants to prove the property of the asbestos, and like him who enters the conqueror’s dominions to see the tyrant bound. He must embrace the faith of Christ, this disbeliever in the conquest of death, and come to His teaching. Then he will see how impotent death is and how completely conquered. Indeed, there have been many former unbelievers and deriders who, after they became believers, so scorned death as even themselves to become martyrs for Christ’s sake.

29  If, then, it is by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ that death is trampled underfoot, it is clear that it is Christ Himself and none other Who is the Archvictor over death and has robbed it of its power. Death used to be strong and terrible, but now, since the sojourn of the Savior and the death and resurrection of His body, it is despised; and obviously it is by the very Christ Who mounted on the cross that it has been destroyed and vanquished finally. When the sun rises after the night and the whole world is lit up by it, nobody doubts that it is the sun which has thus shed its light everywhere and driven away the dark. Equally clear is it, since this utter scorning and trampling down of death has ensued upon the Savior’s manifestation in the body and His death on the cross, that it is He Himself Who brought death to nought and daily raises monuments to His victory in His own disciples. How can you think otherwise, when you see men naturally weak hastening to death, unafraid at the prospect of corruption, fearless of the descent into Hades, even indeed with eager soul provoking it, not shrinking from tortures, but preferring thus to rush on death for Christ’s sake, rather than to remain in this present life? If you see with your own eyes men and women and children, even, thus welcoming death for the sake of Christ’s religion, how can you be so utterly silly and incredulous and maimed in your mind as not to realize that Christ, to Whom these all bear witness, Himself gives the victory to each, making death completely powerless for those who hold His faith and bear the sign of the cross? No one in his senses doubts that a snake is dead when he sees it trampled underfoot, especially when he knows how savage it used to be; nor, if he sees boys making fun of a lion, does he doubt that the brute is either dead or completely bereft of strength. These things can be seen with our own eyes, and it is the same with the conquest of death. Doubt no longer, then, when you see death mocked and scorned by those who believe in Christ, that by Christ death was destroyed, and the corruption that goes with it resolved and brought to end.

30  What we have said is, indeed, no small proof of the destruction of death and of the fact that the cross of the Lord is the monument to His victory. But the resurrection of the body to immortality, which results henceforward from the work of Christ, the common Savior and true Life of all, is more effectively proved by facts than by words to those whose mental vision is sound. For, if, as we have shown, death was destroyed and everybody tramples on it because of Christ, how much more did He Himself first trample and destroy it in His own body! Death having been slain by Him, then, what other issue could there be than the resurrection of His body and its open demonstration as the monument of His victory? How could the destruction of death have been manifested at all, had not the Lord’s body been raised? But if anyone finds even this insufficient, let him find proof of what has been said in present facts. Dead men cannot take effective action; their power of influence on others lasts only till the grave. Deeds and actions that energize others belong only to the living. Well, then, look at the facts in this case. The Savior is working mightily among men, every day He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world, both within and beyond the Greek-speaking world, to accept His faith and be obedient to His teaching. Can anyone, in face of this, still doubt that He has risen and lives, or rather that He is Himself the Life? Does a dead man prick the consciences of men, so that they throw all the traditions of their fathers to the winds and bow down before the teaching of Christ? If He is no longer active in the world, as He must needs be if He is dead, how is it that He makes the living to cease from their activities, the adulterer from his adultery, the murderer from murdering, the unjust from avarice, while the profane and godless man becomes religious? If He did not rise, but is still dead, how is it that He routs and persecutes and overthrows the false gods, whom unbelievers think to be alive, and the evil spirits whom they worship? For where Christ is named, idolatry is destroyed and the fraud of evil spirits is exposed; indeed, no such spirit can endure that Name, but takes to flight on sound of it. This is the work of One Who lives, not of one dead; and, more than that, it is the work of God. It would be absurd to say that the evil spirits whom He drives out and the idols which He destroys are alive, but that He Who drives out and destroys, and Whom they themselves acknowledge to be Son of God, is dead.

31  In a word, then, those who disbelieve in the resurrection have no support in facts, if their gods and evil spirits do not drive away the supposedly dead Christ. Rather, it is He Who convicts them of being dead. We are agreed that a dead person can do nothing: yet the Savior works mightily every day, drawing men to religion, persuading them to virtue, teaching them about immortality, quickening their thirst for heavenly things, revealing the knowledge of the Father, inspiring strength in face of death, manifesting Himself to each, and displacing the irreligion of idols; while the gods and evil spirits of the unbelievers can do none of these things, but rather become dead at Christ’s presence, all their ostentation barren and void. By the sign of the cross, on the contrary, all magic is stayed, all sorcery confounded, all the idols are abandoned and deserted, and all senseless pleasure ceases, as the eye of faith looks up from earth to heaven. Whom, then, are we to call dead? Shall we call Christ dead, Who effects all this? But the dead have not the faculty to effect anything. Or shall we call death dead, which effects nothing whatever, but lies as lifeless and ineffective as are the evil spirits and the idols? The Son of God, “living and effective,” ³⁶ is active every day and effects the salvation of all; but death is daily proved to be stripped of all its strength, and it is the idols and the evil spirits who are dead, not He. No room for doubt remains, therefore, concerning the resurrection of His body.

Indeed, it would seem that he who disbelieves this bodily rising of the Lord is ignorant of the power of the Word and Wisdom of God. If He took a body to Himself at all, and made it His own in pursuance of His purpose, as we have shown that He did, what was the Lord to do with it, and what was ultimately to become of that body upon which the Word had descended? Mortal and offered to death on behalf of all as it was, it could not but die; indeed, it was for that very purpose that the Savior had prepared it for Himself. But on the other hand it could not remain dead, because it had become the very temple of Life. It therefore died, as mortal, but lived again because of the Life within it; and its resurrection is made known through its works.

32  It is, indeed, in accordance with the nature of the invisible God that He should be thus known through His works; and those who doubt the Lord’s resurrection because they do not now behold Him with their eyes, might as well deny the very laws of nature. They have ground for disbelief when works are lacking; but when the works cry out and prove the fact so clearly, why do they deliberately deny the risen life so manifestly shown? Even if their mental faculties are defective, surely their eyes can give them irrefragable proof of the power and Godhead of Christ. A blind man cannot see the sun, but he knows that it is above the earth from the warmth which it affords; similarly, let those who are still in the blindness of unbelief recognize the Godhead of Christ and the resurrection which He has brought about through His manifested power in others. Obviously He would not be expelling evil spirits and despoiling idols, if He were dead, for the evil spirits would not obey one who was dead. If, on the other hand, the very naming of Him drives them forth, He clearly is not dead; and the more so that the spirits, who perceive things unseen by men, would know if He were so and would refuse to obey Him. But, as a matter of fact, what profane persons doubt, the evil spirits know — namely that He is God; and for that reason they flee from Him and fall at His feet, crying out even as they cried when He was in the body, “We know Thee Who Thou art, the Holy One of God,” and, “Ah, what have I in common with Thee, Thou Son of God? I implore Thee, torment me not.” ³⁷

Both from the confession of the evil spirits and from the daily witness of His works, it is manifest, then, and let none presume to doubt it, that the Savior has raised His own body, and that He is very Son of God, having His being from God as from a Father, Whose Word and Wisdom and Whose Power He is. He it is Who in these latter days assumed a body for the salvation of us all, and taught the world concerning the Father. He it is Who has destroyed death and freely graced us all with incorruption through the promise of the resurrection, having raised His own body as its first-fruits, and displayed it by the sign of the cross as the monument to His victory over death and its corruption.

Chapter 6
Refutation of the Jews

33  We have dealt thus far with the Incarnation of our Savior, and have found clear proof of the resurrection of His Body and His victory over death. Let us now go further and investigate the unbelief and the ridicule with which Jews and Gentiles respectively regard these same facts. It seems that in both cases the points at issue are the same, namely the unfittingness or incongruity, as it seems to them, of both the cross and of the Word’s becoming man at all. But we have no hesitation in taking up the argument against these objectors, for the proofs on our side are extremely clear.

First, then, we will consider the Jews. Their unbelief has its refutation in the Scriptures which even themselves read; for from cover to cover the inspired Book clearly teaches these things both in its entirety and in its actual words. Prophets foretold the marvel of the Virgin and of the Birth from her, saying, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name ‘Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us.’” ³⁸ And Moses, that truly great one in whose word the Jews trust so implicitly, he also recognized the importance and truth of the matter. He puts it thus: “There shall arise a star from Jacob and a man from Israel, and he shall break in pieces the rulers of Moab. ³⁹ And, again, “How lovely are thy dwellings, O Jacob, thy tents, O Israel! Like woodland valleys they give shade, and like parks by rivers, like tents which the Lord has pitched, like cedar-trees by streams. There shall come forth a Man from among his seed, and he shall rule over many peoples.” ⁴⁰ And, again, Isaiah says, “Before the Babe shall be old enough to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria from under the eyes of the king of Assyria.” ⁴¹ These words, then, foretell that a Man shall appear. And Scripture proclaims further that He that is to come is Lord of all. These are the words, “Behold, the Lord sitteth on an airy cloud and shall come into Egypt, and the man-made images of Egypt shall be shaken.” ⁴² And it is from Egypt also that the Father calls him back, saying, “Out of Egypt have I called My Son.” ⁴³

34  Moreover, the Scriptures are not silent even about His death. On the contrary, they refer to it with the utmost clearness. They have not feared to speak also of the cause of it. He endures it, they say, not for His own sake, but for the sake of bringing immortality and salvation to all, and they record also the plotting of the Jews against Him and all the indignities which He suffered at their hands. Certainly nobody who reads the Scriptures can plead ignorance of the facts as an excuse for error! There is this passage, for instance: “A man that is afflicted and knows how to bear weakness, for His face is turned away. He was dishonored and not considered, He bears our sins and suffers for our sakes. And we for our part thought Him distressed and afflicted and ill-used; but it was for our sins that He was wounded and for our lawlessness that He was made weak. Chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His bruising we are healed.” ⁴⁴ O marvel at the love of the Word for men, for it is on our account that He is dishonored, so that we may be brought to honor. “For all we,” it goes on, “have strayed like sheep, man has strayed from his path, and the Lord has given Him up for our sins; and He Himself did not open His mouth at the ill-treatment. Like a sheep He was led to slaughter, and as a lamb is dumb before its shearer, so He opened not His mouth; in His humiliation His judgment was taken away.” ⁴⁵ And then Scripture anticipates the surmises of any who might think from His suffering thus that He was just an ordinary man, and shows what power worked in His behalf. “Who shall declare of what lineage He comes?” it says, “for His life is exalted from the earth. By the lawlessnesses of the people was He brought to death, and I will give the wicked in return for His burial and the rich in return for His death. For He did no lawlessness, neither was deceit found in His mouth. And the Lord wills to heal Him of His affliction.” ⁴⁶

35  You have heard the prophecy of His death, and now, perhaps, you want to know what indications there are about the cross. Even this is not passed over in silence: on the contrary, the sacred writers proclaim it with the utmost plainness. Moses foretells it first, and that right loudly, when he says, “You shall see your Life hanging before your eyes, and shall not believe.” ⁴⁷ After him the prophets also give their witness, saying, “But I as an innocent lamb brought to be offered was yet ignorant of it. They plotted evil against Me, saying, ‘Come, let us cast wood into His bread, and wipe Him out from the land of the living.” ⁴⁸ And, again, “They pierced My hands and My feet, they counted all My bones, they divided My garments for themselves and cast lots for My clothing.” ⁴⁹ Now a death lifted up and that takes place on wood can be none other than the death of the cross; moreover, it is only in that death that the hands and feet are pierced. Besides this, since the Savior dwelt among men, all nations everywhere have begun to know God; and this too Holy Writ expressly mentions. “There shall be the Root of Jesse,” it says, “and he who rises up to rule the nations, on Him nations shall set their hope.” ⁵⁰

These are just a few things in proof of what has taken place; but indeed all Scripture teems with disproof of Jewish unbelief. For example, which of the righteous men and holy prophets and patriarchs of whom the Divine Scriptures tell ever had his bodily birth from a virgin only? Was not Abel born of Adam, Enoch of Jared, Noah of Lamech, Abraham of Terah, Isaac of Abraham, and Jacob of Isaac? Was not Judah begotten by Jacob and Moses and Aaron by Ameram? Was not Samuel the son of Elkanah, David of Jesse, Solomon of David, Hezekiah of Ahaz, Josiah of Amon, Isaiah of Amos, Jeremiah of Hilkiah and Ezekiel of Buzi? Had not each of these a father as author of his being? So who is He that is born of a virgin only, that sign of which the prophet makes so much? Again, which of all those people had his birth announced to the world by a star in the heavens? When Moses was born his parents hid him. David was unknown even in his own neighborhood, so that mighty Samuel himself was ignorant of his existence and asked whether Jesse had yet another son. Abraham again became known to his neighbors as a great man only after his birth. But with Christ it was otherwise. The witness to His birth was not man, but a star shining in the heavens whence He was coming down.

36  Then, again, what king that ever was reigned and took trophies from his enemies before he had strength to call father or mother? Was not David thirty years old when he came to the throne and Solomon a grown young man? Did not Joash enter on his reign at the age of seven, and Josiah, some time after him, at about the same age, both of them fully able by that time to call father or mother? Who is there, then, that was reigning and despoiling his enemies almost before he was born? Let the Jews, who have investigated the matter, tell us if there was ever such a king in Israel or Judah — a king upon whom all the nations set their hopes and had peace, instead of being at enmity with him on every side! As long as Jerusalem stood there was constant war between them, and they all fought against Israel. The Assyrians oppressed Israel, the Egyptians persecuted them, the Babylonians fell upon them, and, strange to relate, even the Syrians their neighbors were at war with them. And did not David fight with Moab and smite the Syrians, and Hezekiah quail at the boasting of Sennacherib? Did not Amalek make war on Moses and the Amorites oppose him, and did not the inhabitants of Jericho array themselves against Joshua the son of Nun? Did not the nations always regard Israel with implacable hostility? Then it is worth inquiring who it is, on whom the nations are to set their hopes. Obviously there must be someone, for the prophet could not have told a lie. But did any of the holy prophets or of the early patriarchs die on the cross for the salvation of all? Was any of them wounded and killed for the healing of all? Did the idols of Egypt fall down before any righteous man or king that came there? Abraham came there certainly, but idolatry prevailed just the same; and Moses was born there, but the mistaken worship was unchanged.

37  Again, does Scripture tell of anyone who was pierced in hands and feet or hung upon a tree at all, and by means of a cross perfected his sacrifice for the salvation of all? It was not Abraham, for he died in his bed, as did also Isaac and Jacob. Moses and Aaron died in the mountain, and David ended his days in his house, without anybody having plotted against him. Certainly he had been sought by Saul, but he was preserved unharmed. Again Isaiah was sawn asunder, but he was not hung on a tree. Jeremiah was shamefully used, but he did not die under condemnation. Ezekiel suffered, but he did so, not on behalf of the people, but only to signify to them what was going to happen. Moreover, all these even when they suffered were but men, like other men; but He Whom the Scriptures declare to suffer on behalf of all is called not merely man but Life of all, although in point of fact He did share our human nature. “You shall see your Life hanging before your eyes,” they say, and “Who shall declare of what lineage He comes?” With all the saints we can trace their descent from the beginning, and see exactly how each came to be; but the Divine Word maintains that we cannot declare the lineage of Him Who is the Life. Who is it, then, of Whom Holy Writ thus speaks? Who is there so great that even the prophets foretell of Him such mighty things? There is indeed no one in the Scriptures at all, save the common Savior of all, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. He it is that proceeded from a virgin, and appeared as man on earth, He it is Whose earthly lineage cannot be declared, because He alone derives His body from no human father, but from a virgin alone. We can trace the paternal descent of David and Moses and of all the patriarchs. But with the Savior we cannot do so, for it was He Himself Who caused the star to announce His bodily birth, and it was fitting that the Word, when He came down from heaven, should have His sign in heaven too, and fitting that the King of creation on His coming forth should be visibly recognized by all the world. He was actually born in Judea, yet men from Persia came to worship Him. He it is Who won victory from His demon foes and trophies from the idolaters even before His bodily appearing — namely, all the heathen who from every region have abjured the tradition of their fathers and the false worship of idols and are now placing their hope in Christ and transferring their allegiance to Him. The thing is happening before our very eyes, here in Egypt; and thereby another prophecy is fulfilled, for at no other time have the Egyptians ceased from their false worship save when the Lord of all, riding as on a cloud, came down here in the body and brought the error of idols to nothing and won over everybody to Himself and through Himself to the Father. He it is Who was crucified with the sun and moon as witnesses; and by His death salvation has come to all men, and all creation has been redeemed. He is the Life of all, and He it is Who like a sheep gave up His own body to death, His life for ours and our salvation.

38  Yet the Jews disbelieve this. This argument does not satisfy them. Well, then, let them be persuaded by other things in their own oracles. Of whom, for instance, do the prophets say “I was made manifest to those who did not seek Me, I was found by those who had not asked for Me? I said, ‘See, here am I,’ to the nation that had not called upon My Name. I stretched out My hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people.” ⁵¹ Who is this person that was made manifest, one might ask the Jews? If the prophet is speaking of himself, then they must tell us how he was first hidden, in order to be manifested afterwards. And, again, what kind of man is this prophet, who was not only revealed after being hidden, but also stretched out his hands upon the cross? Those things happened to none of those righteous men: they happened only to the Word of God Who, being by nature without body, on our account appeared in a body and suffered for us all. And if even this is not enough for them, there is other overwhelming evidence by which they may be silenced. The Scripture says, “Be strong, hands that hang down and feeble knees, take courage, you of little faith, be strong and do not fear. See, our God will recompense judgment, He Himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of blind men shall be opened and the ears of deaf men shall hear, and stammerers shall speak distinctly.” ⁵² What can they say to this, or how can they look it in the face at all? For the prophecy does not only declare that God will dwell here, it also makes known the signs and the time of His coming. When God comes, it says, the blind will see, the lame will walk, the deaf will hear and the stammerers will speak distinctly. Can the Jews tell us when such signs occurred in Israel, or when anything of the kind took place at all in Jewry? The leper Naaman was cleansed, it is true, but no deaf man heard nor did any lame man walk. Elijah raised a dead person and so did Elisha; but no one blind from birth received his sight. To raise a dead person is a great thing indeed, but it is not such as the Savior did. And surely, since the Scriptures have not kept silence about the leper and the dead son of the widow, if a lame man had walked and a blind man had received his sight, they would have mentioned these as well. Their silence on these points proves that the events never took place. When therefore did these things happen, unless when the Word of God Himself came in the body? Was it not when He came that lame men walked and stammerers spoke clearly and men blind from birth were given sight? And the Jews who saw it themselves testified to the fact that such things had never before occurred. “Since the world began,” they said, “it has never been heard of that anyone should open the eyes of a man born blind. If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing.” ⁵³

39  But surely they cannot fight against plain facts. So it may be that, without denying what is written, they will maintain that they are still waiting for these things to happen, and that the Word of God is yet to come, for that is a theme on which they are always harping most brazenly, in spite of all the evidence against them. But they shall be refuted on this supreme point more clearly than on any, and that not by ourselves but by the most wise Daniel, for he signifies the actual date of the Savior’s coming as well as His Divine sojourn in our midst. “Seventy weeks,” he says, “are cut short upon thy people and upon the holy city, to make a complete end of sin and for sins to be sealed up and iniquities blotted out, and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to seal vision and prophet, and to anoint a Holy One of holies. And thou shalt know and understand from the going forth of the Word to answer, ⁵⁴ and to build Jerusalem, until Christ the Prince.” ⁵⁵ In regard to the other prophecies, they may possibly be able to find excuses for deferring their reference to a future time, but what can they say to this one? How can they face it at all? Not only does it expressly mention the Anointed One, that is the Christ, it even declares that He Who is to be anointed is not man only, but the Holy One of holies! And it says that Jerusalem is to stand till His coming, and that after it prophet and vision shall cease in Israel! David was anointed of old, and Solomon, and Hezekiah; but then Jerusalem and the place stood, and prophets were prophesying, Gad and Asaph and Nathan, and later Isaiah and Hosea and Amos and others. Moreover, those men who were anointed were called holy certainly, but none of them was called the Holy of holies. Nor is it any use for the Jews to take refuge in the Captivity, and say that Jerusalem did not exist then, for what about the prophets? It is a fact that at the outset of the Exile Daniel and Jeremiah were there, and Ezekiel and Haggai and Zechariah also prophesied.

40  So the Jews are indulging in fiction, and transferring present time to future. When did prophet and vision cease from Israel? Was it not when Christ came, the Holy One of holies? It is, in fact, a sign and notable proof of the coming of the Word that Jerusalem no longer stands, neither is prophet raised up nor vision revealed among them. And it is natural that it should be so, for when He that was signified had come, what need was there any longer of any to signify Him? And when the Truth had come, what further need was there of the shadow? On His account only they prophesied continually, until such time as Essential Righteousness has come, Who was made the Ransom for the sins of all. For the same reason Jerusalem stood until the same time, in order that there men might premeditate the types before the Truth was known. So, of course, once the Holy One of holies had come, both vision and prophecy were sealed. And the kingdom of Jerusalem ceased at the same time, because kings were to be anointed among them only until the Holy of holies had been anointed. Moses also prophesies that the kingdom of the Jews shall stand until His time, saying, “A ruler shall not fail from Judah nor a prince from his loins, until the things laid up for him shall come and the Expectation of the nations Himself.” ⁵⁶ And that is why the Savior Himself was always proclaiming “The law and the prophets prophesied until John.” ⁵⁷ So if there is still king or prophet or vision among the Jews, they do well to deny that Christ is come; but if there is neither king nor vision, and since that time all prophecy has been sealed and city and temple taken, how can they be so irreligious, how can they so flaunt the facts, as to deny Christ Who has brought it all about? Again, they see the heathen forsaking idols and setting their hopes through Christ on the God of Israel; why do they yet deny Christ Who after the flesh was born of the root of Jesse and reigns henceforward? Of course, if the heathen were worshipping some other god, and not confessing the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses, then they would do well to argue that God had not come. But if the heathen are honoring the same God Who gave the law to Moses and the promises to Abraham — the God Whose word too the Jews dishonored, why do they not recognize or rather why do they deliberately refuse to see that the Lord of Whom the Scriptures prophesied has shone forth to the world and appeared to it in a bodily form? Scripture declares it repeatedly. “The Lord God has appeared to us,” ⁵⁸ and again, “He sent forth His Word and healed them.” ⁵⁹ And again, “It was no ambassador, no angel who saved us, but the Lord Himself.” ⁶⁰ The Jews are afflicted like some demented person who sees the earth lit up by the sun, but denies the sun that lights it up! What more is there for their Expected One to do when he comes? To call the heathen? But they are called already. To put an end to prophet and king and vision? But this too has already happened. To expose the Goddenyingness of idols? It is already exposed and condemned. Or to destroy death? It is already destroyed. What then has not come to pass that the Christ must do? What is there left out or unfulfilled that the Jews should disbelieve so light-heartedly? The plain fact is, as I say, that there is no longer any king or prophet nor Jerusalem nor sacrifice nor vision among them; yet the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of God, and the Gentiles, forsaking atheism, are now taking refuge with the God of Abraham through the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Surely, then, it must be plain even to the most shameless that the Christ has come, and that He has enlightened all men everywhere, and given them the true and divine teaching about His Father.

Thus the Jews may be refuted by these and other arguments from the Divine teaching.

Chapter 7
Refutation of the Gentiles

41  We come now to the unbelief of the Gentiles; and this is indeed a matter for complete astonishment, for they laugh at that which is no fit subject for mockery, yet fail to see the shame and ridiculousness of their own idols. But the arguments on our side do not lack weight, so we will confute them too on reasonable grounds, chiefly from what we ourselves also see.

First of all, what is there in our belief that is unfitting or ridiculous? Is it only that we say that the Word has been manifested in a body? Well, if they themselves really love the truth, they will agree with us that this involved no unfittingness at all. If they deny that there is a Word of God at all, that will be extraordinary, for then they will be ridiculing what they do not know. But suppose they confess that there is a Word of God, that He is the Governor of all things, that in Him the Father wrought the creation, that by His providence the whole receives light and life and being, and that He is King over all, so that He is known by means of the works of His providence, and through Him the Father. Suppose they confess all this, what then? Are they not unknowingly turning the ridicule against themselves? The Greek philosophers say that the universe is a great body, and they say truly, for we perceive the universe and its parts with our senses. But if the Word of God is in the universe, which is a body, and has entered into it in its every part, what is there surprising or unfitting in our saying that He has entered also into human nature? If it were unfitting for Him to have embodied Himself at all, then it would be unfitting for Him to have entered into the universe, and to be giving light and movement by His providence to all things in it, because the universe, as we have seen, is itself a body. But if it is right and fitting for Him to enter into the universe and to reveal Himself through it, then, because humanity is part of the universe along with the rest, it is no less fitting for Him to appear in a human body, and to enlighten and to work through that. And surely if it were wrong for a part of the universe to have been used to reveal His Divinity to men, it would be much more wrong that He should be so revealed by the whole!

42  Take a parallel case. A man’s personality actuates and quickens his whole body. If anyone said it was unsuitable for the man’s power to be in the toe, he would be thought silly, because, while granting that a man penetrates and actuates the whole of his body, he denied his presence in the part. Similarly, no one who admits the presence of the Word of God in the universe as a whole should think it unsuitable for a single human body to be by Him actuated and enlightened.

But is it, perhaps, because humanity is a thing created and brought into being out of non-existence that they regard as unfitting the manifestation of the Savior in our nature? If so, it is high time that they spurned Him from creation too; for it, too, has been brought out of non-being into being by the Word. But if, on the other hand, although creation is a thing that has been made, it is not unsuitable for the Word to be present in it, then neither is it unsuitable for Him to be in man. Man is a part of the creation, as I said before; and the reasoning which applies to one applies to the other. All things derive from the Word their light and movement and life, as the Gentile authors themselves say, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” ⁶¹ Very well then. That being so, it is by no means unbecoming that the Word should dwell in man. So if, as we say, the Word has used that in which He is as the means of His self-manifestation, what is there ridiculous in that? He could not have used it had He not been present in it; but we have already admitted that He is present both in the whole and in the parts. What, then, is there incredible in His manifesting Himself through that in which He is? By His own power He enters completely into each and all, and orders them throughout ungrudgingly; and, had He so willed, He could have revealed Himself and His Father by means of sun or moon or sky or earth or fire or water. Had He done so, no one could rightly have accused Him of acting unbecomingly, for He sustains in one whole all things at once, being present and invisibly revealed not only in the whole, but also in each particular part. This being so, and since, moreover, He has willed to reveal Himself through men, who are part of the whole, there can be nothing ridiculous in His using a human body to manifest the truth and knowledge of the Father. Does not the mind of man pervade his entire being, and yet find expression through one part only, namely the tongue? Does anybody say on that account that Mind has degraded itself? Of course not. Very well, then, no more is it degrading for the Word, Who pervades all things, to have appeared in a human body. For, as I said before, if it were unfitting for Him thus to indwell the part, it would be equally so for Him to exist within the whole.

43  Some may then ask, why did He not manifest Himself by means of other and nobler parts of creation, and use some nobler instrument, such as sun or moon or stars or fire or air, instead of mere man? The answer is this. The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men. For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have been just to appear and dazzle the beholders. But for Him Who came to heal and to teach the way was not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, and to be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the Divine appearing by exceeding their capacity to receive it.

Moreover, nothing in creation had erred from the path of God’s purpose for it, save only man. Sun, moon, heaven, stars, water, air, none of these had swerved from their order, but, knowing the Word as their Maker and their King, remained as they were made. Men alone having rejected what is good, have invented nothings instead of the truth, and have ascribed the honor due to God and the knowledge concerning Him to demons and men in the form of stones. Obviously the Divine goodness could not overlook so grave a matter as this. But men could not recognize Him as ordering and ruling creation as a whole. So what does He do? He takes to Himself for instrument a part of the whole, namely a human body, and enters into that. Thus He ensured that men should recognize Him in the part who could not do so in the whole, and that those who could not lift their eyes to His unseen power might recognize and behold Him in the likeness of themselves. For, being men, they would naturally learn to know His Father more quickly and directly by means of a body that corresponded to their own and by the Divine works done through it; for by comparing His works with their own they would judge His to be not human but Divine. And if, as they say, it were unsuitable for the Word to reveal Himself through bodily acts, it would be equally so for Him to do so through the works of the universe. His being in creation does not mean that He shares its nature; on the contrary, all created things partake of His power. Similarly, though He used the body as His instrument, He shared nothing of its defect, ⁶² but rather sanctified it by His indwelling. Does not even Plato, of whom the Greeks think so much, say that the Author of the Universe, seeing it storm-tossed and in danger of sinking into the state of dissolution, takes his seat at the helm of the Life-force of the universe, and comes to the rescue and puts everything right? What, then, is there incredible in our saying that, mankind having gone astray, the Word descended upon it and was manifest as man, so that by His intrinsic goodness and His steersmanship He might save it from the storm?

44  It may be, however, that, though shamed into agreeing that this objection is void, the Greeks will want to raise another. They will say that, if God wanted to instruct and save mankind, He might have done so, not by His Word’s assumption of a body, but, even as He at first created them, by the mere signification of His will. The reasonable reply to that is that the circumstances in the two cases are quite different. In the beginning, nothing as yet existed at all; all that was needed, therefore, in order to bring all things into being, was that His will to do so should be signified. But once man was in existence, and things that were, not things that were not, demanded to be healed, it followed as a matter of course that the Healer and Savior should align Himself with those things that existed already, in order to heal the existing evil. For that reason, therefore, He was made man, and used the body as His human instrument. If this were not the fitting way, and He willed to use an instrument at all, how otherwise was the Word to come? And whence could He take His instrument, save from among those already in existence and needing His Godhead through One like themselves? It was not things non-existent that needed salvation, for which a bare creative word might have sufficed, but man — man already in existence and already in process of corruption and ruin. It was natural and right, therefore, for the Word to use a human instrument and by that means unfold Himself to all.

You must know, moreover, that the corruption which had set in was not external to the body but established within it. The need, therefore, was that life should cleave to it in corruption’s place, so that, just as death was brought into being in the body, life also might be engendered in it. If death had been exterior to the body, life might fittingly have been the same. But if death was within the body, woven into its very substance and dominating it as though completely one with it, the need was for Life to be woven into it instead, so that the body by thus enduing itself with life might cast corruption off. Suppose the Word had come outside the body instead of in it, He would, of course, have defeated death, because death is powerless against the Life. But the corruption inherent in the body would have remained in it none the less. Naturally, therefore, the Savior assumed a body for Himself, in order that the body, being interwoven as it were with life, should no longer remain a mortal thing, in thrall to death, but as endued with immortality and risen from death, should thenceforth remain immortal. For once having put on corruption, it could not rise, unless it put on life instead; and besides this, death of its very nature could not appear otherwise than in a body. Therefore He put on a body, so that in the body He might find death and blot it out. And, indeed, how could the Lord have been proved to be the Life at all, had He not endued with life that which was subject to death? Take an illustration. Stubble is a substance naturally destructible by fire; and it still remains stubble, fearing the menace of fire which has the natural property of consuming it, even if fire is kept away from it, so that it is not actually burnt. But suppose that, instead of merely keeping the fire from it somebody soaks the stubble with a quantity of asbestos, the substance which is said to be the antidote to fire. Then the stubble no longer fears the fire, because it has put on that which fire cannot touch, and therefore it is safe. It is just the same with regard to the body and death. Had death been kept from it by a mere command, it would still have remained mortal and corruptible, according to its nature. To prevent this, it put on the incorporeal Word of God, and therefore fears neither death nor corruption any more, for it is clad with Life as with a garment and in it corruption is clean done away.

45  The Word of God thus acted consistently in assuming a body and using a human instrument to vitalize the body. He was consistent in working through man to reveal Himself everywhere, as well as through the other parts of His creation, so that nothing was left void of His Divinity and knowledge. For I take up now the point I made before, namely that the Savior did this in order that He might fill all things everywhere with the knowledge of Himself, just as they are already filled with His presence, even as the Divine Scripture says, “The whole universe was filled with the knowledge of the Lord.” ⁶³ If a man looks up to heaven he sees there His ordering; but if he cannot look so high as heaven, but only so far as men, through His works he sees His power, incomparable with human might, and learns from them that He alone among men is God the Word. Or, if a man has gone astray among demons and is in fear of them, he may see this Man drive them out and judge therefrom that He is indeed their Master. Again, if a man has been immersed in the element of water and thinks that it is God — as indeed the Egyptians do worship water — he may see its very nature changed by Him and learn that the Lord is Creator of all. And if a man has gone down even to Hades, and stands awestruck before the heroes who have descended thither, regarding them as gods, still he may see the fact of Christ’s resurrection and His victory over death, and reason from it that, of all these, He alone is very Lord and God.

For the Lord touched all parts of creation, and freed and undeceived them all from every deceit. As St. Paul says, “Having put off from Himself the principalities and the powers, He triumphed on the cross,” ⁶⁴ so that no one could possibly be any longer deceived, but everywhere might find the very Word of God. For thus man, enclosed on every side by the works of creation and everywhere — in heaven, in Hades, in men and on the earth, beholding the unfolded Godhead of the Word, is no longer deceived concerning God, but worships Christ alone, and through Him rightly knows the Father.

On these grounds, then, of reason and of principle, we will fairly silence the Gentiles in their turn. But if they think these arguments insufficient to confute them, we will go on in the next chapter to prove our point from facts.

Chapter 8
Refutation of the Gentiles — continued

46  When did people begin to abandon the worship of idols, unless it were since the very Word of God came among men? When have oracles ceased and become void of meaning, among the Greeks and everywhere, except since the Savior has revealed Himself on earth? When did those whom the poets call gods and heroes begin to be adjudged as mere mortals, except when the Lord took the spoils of death and preserved incorruptible the body He had taken, raising it from among the dead? Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of demons fall under contempt, save when the Word, the Power of God, the Master of all these as well, condescended on account of the weakness of mankind and appeared on earth? When did the practice and theory of magic begin to be spurned under foot, if not at the manifestation of the Divine Word to men? In a word, when did the wisdom of the Greeks become foolish, save when the true Wisdom of God revealed Himself on earth? In old times the whole world and every place in it was led astray by the worship of idols, and men thought the idols were the only gods that were. But now all over the world men are forsaking the fear of idols and taking refuge with Christ; and by worshipping Him as God they come through Him to know the Father also, Whom formerly they did not know. The amazing thing, moreover, is this. The objects of worship formerly were varied and countless; each place had its own idol and the so-called god of one place could not pass over to another in order to persuade the people there to worship him, but was barely reverenced even by his own. Indeed no! Nobody worshipped his neighbor’s god, but every man had his own idol and thought that it was lord of all. But now Christ alone is worshipped, as One and the Same among all peoples everywhere; and what the feebleness of idols could not do, namely, convince even those dwelling close at hand, He has effected. He has persuaded not only those close at hand, but literally the entire world to worship one and the same Lord and through Him the Father.

47  Again, in former times every place was full of the fraud of the oracles, and the utterances of those at Delphi and Dordona and in Boeotia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and those of the Kabiri and the Pythoness were considered marvelous by the minds of men. But now, since Christ has been proclaimed everywhere, their madness too has ceased, and there is no one left among them to give oracles at all. Then, too, demons used to deceive men’s minds by taking up their abode in springs or rivers or trees or stones and imposing upon simple people by their frauds. But now, since the Divine appearing of the Word, all this fantasy has ceased, for by the sign of the cross, if a man will but use it, he drives out their deceits. Again, people used to regard as gods those who are mentioned in the poets — Zeus and Kronos and Apollo and the heroes, and in worshipping them they went astray. But now that the Savior has appeared among men, those others have been exposed as mortal men, and Christ alone is recognized as true God, Word of God, God Himself. And what is one to say about the magic that they think so marvelous? Before the sojourn of the Word, it was strong and active among Egyptians and Chaldeans and Indians and filled all who saw it with terror and astonishment. But by the coming of the Truth and the manifestation of the Word it too has been confuted and entirely destroyed. As to Greek wisdom, however, and the philosophers’ noisy talk, I really think no one requires argument from us; for the amazing fact is patent to all that, for all that they had written so much, the Greeks failed to convince even a few from their own neighborhood in regard to immortality and the virtuous ordering of life. Christ alone, using common speech and through the agency of men not clever with their tongues, has convinced whole assemblies of people all the world over to despise death, and to take heed to the things that do not die, to look past the things of time and gaze on things eternal, to think nothing of earthly glory and to aspire only to immortality.

48  These things which we have said are no mere words: they are attested by actual experience. Anyone who likes may see the proof of glory in the virgins of Christ, and in the young men who practice chastity as part of their religion, and in the assurance of immortality in so great and glad a company ⁶⁵ of martyrs. Anyone, too, may put what we have said to the proof of experience in another way. In the very presence of the fraud of demons and the imposture of the oracles and the wonders of magic, let him use the sign of the cross which they all mock at, and but speak the Name of Christ, and he shall see how through Him demons are routed, oracles cease, and all magic and witchcraft is confounded.

Who, then, is this Christ and how great is He, Who by His Name and presence overshadows and confounds all things on every side, Who alone is strong against all and has filled the whole world with His teaching? Let the Greeks tell us, who mock at Him without stint or shame. If He is a man, how is it that one man has proved stronger than all those whom they themselves regard as gods, and by His own power has shown them to be nothing? If they call Him a magician, how is it that by a magician all magic is destroyed, instead of being rendered strong? Had He conquered certain magicians or proved Himself superior to one of them only, they might reasonably think that He excelled the rest only by His greater skill. But the fact is that His cross has vanquished all magic entirely and has conquered the very name of it. Obviously, therefore, the Savior is no magician, for the very demons whom the magicians invoke flee from Him as from their Master. Who is He, then? Let the Greeks tell us, whose only serious pursuit is mockery! Perhaps they will say that He, too, is a demon, and that is why He prevailed. But even so the laugh is still on our side. for we can confute them by the same proofs as before. How could He be a demon, Who drives demons out? If it were only certain ones that He drove out, then they might reasonably think that He prevailed against them through the power of their Chief, as the Jews, wishing to insult Him, actually said. But since the fact is, here again, that at the mere naming of His Name all madness of the demons is rooted out and put to flight, obviously the Greeks are wrong here, too, and our Lord and Savior Christ is not, as they maintain, some demonic power.

If, then, the Savior is neither a mere man nor a magician, nor one of the demons, but has by His Godhead confounded and overshadowed the opinions of the poets and the delusion of the demons and the wisdom of the Greeks, it must be manifest and will be owned by all that He is in truth Son of God, Existent Word and Wisdom and Power of the Father. This is the reason why His works are no mere human works, but, both intrinsically and by comparison with those of men, are recognized as being superhuman and truly the works of God.

49  What man that ever was, for instance, formed a body for himself from a virgin only? Or what man ever healed so many diseases as the common Lord of all? Who restored that which was lacking in man’s nature or made one blind from birth to see? Aesculapius was deified by the Greeks because he practiced the art of healing and discovered herbs as remedies for bodily diseases, not, of course, forming them himself out of the earth, but finding them out by the study of nature. But what is that in comparison with what the Savior did when, instead of just healing a wound, He both fashioned essential being and restored to health the thing that He had formed? Hercules, too, is worshipped as a god by the Greeks because he fought against other men and destroyed wild animals by craft. But what is that to what the Word did, in driving away from men diseases and demons and even death itself? Dionysus is worshipped among them, because he taught men drunkenness; yet they ridicule the true Savior and Lord of all, Who taught men temperance.

That, however, is enough on this point. What will they say to the other marvels of His Godhead? At what man’s death was the sun darkened and the earth shaken? Why, even to this day men are dying, and they did so also before that time. When did any such marvels happen in their case? Now shall we pass over the deeds done in His earthly body and mention those after His resurrection? Has any man’s teaching, in any place or at any time, ever prevailed everywhere as one and the same, from one end of the earth to the other, so that his worship has fairly flown through every land? Again, if, as they say, Christ is man only and not God the Word, why do not the gods of the Greeks prevent His entering their domains? Or why, on the other hand, does the Word Himself dwelling in our midst make an end of their worship by His teaching and put their fraud to shame?

50  Many before Him have been kings and tyrants of the earth, history tells also of many among the Chaldeans and Egyptians and Indians who were wise men and magicians. But which of those, I do not say after his death, but while yet in this life, was ever able so far to prevail as to fill the whole world with his teaching and retrieve so great a multitude from the craven fear of idols, as our Savior has won over from idols to Himself? The Greek philosophers have compiled many works with persuasiveness and much skill in words; but what fruit have they to show for this such as has the cross of Christ? Their wise thoughts were persuasive enough until they died; yet even in their life-time their seeming influence was counterbalanced by their rivalry with one another, for they were a jealous company and declaimed against each other. But the Word of God, by strangest paradox, teaching in meaner language, has put the choicest sophists in the shade, and by confounding their teachings and drawing all men to Himself He has filled His own assemblies. Moreover, and this is the marvelous thing by going down as Man to death He has confounded all the sounding utterances of the wise men about the idols. For whose death ever drove out demons, or whose death did ever demons fear, save that of Christ? For where the Savior is named, there every demon is driven out. Again, who has ever so rid men of their natural passions that fornicators become chaste and murderers no longer wield the sword and those who formerly were craven cowards boldly play the man? In a word, what persuaded the barbarians and heathen folk in every place to drop their madness and give heed to peace, save the faith of Christ and the sign of the cross? What other things have given men such certain faith in immortality as have the cross of Christ and the resurrection of His body? The Greeks told all sorts of false tales, but they could never pretend that their idols rose again from death: indeed it never entered their heads that a body could exist again after death at all. And one would be particularly ready to listen to them on this point, because by these opinions they have exposed the weakness of their own idolatry, at the same time yielding to Christ the possibility of bodily resurrection, so that by that means He might be recognized by all as Son of God.

51  Again, who among men, either after his death or while yet living, taught about virginity and did not account this virtue impossible for human beings? But Christ our Savior and King of all has so prevailed with His teaching on this subject that even children not yet of lawful age promise that virginity which transcends the law. And who among men has ever been able to penetrate even to Scythians and Ethiopians, or Parthians or Armenians or those who are said to live beyond Hyrcania, or even the Egyptians and Chaldeans, people who give heed to magic and are more than naturally enslaved by the fear of demons and savage in their habits, and to preach at all about virtue and self-control and against the worshipping of idols, as has the Lord of all, the Power of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? Yet He not only preached through His own disciples, but also wrought so persuasively on men’s understanding that, laying aside their savage habits and forsaking the worship of their ancestral gods, they learnt to know Him and through Him to worship the Father. While they were yet idolaters, the Greeks and Barbarians were always at war with each other, and were even cruel to their own kith and kin. Nobody could travel by land or sea at all unless he was armed with swords, because of their irreconcilable quarrels with each other. Indeed, the whole course of their life was carried on with the weapons, and the sword with them replaced the staff and was the mainstay of all aid. All this time, as I said before, they were serving idols and offering sacrifices to demons, and for all the superstitious awe that accompanied this idol worship, nothing could wean them from that warlike spirit. But, strange to relate, since they came over to the school of Christ, as men moved with real compunction they have laid aside their murderous cruelty and are war-minded no more. On the contrary, all is peace among them and nothing remains save desire for friendship.

52  Who, then, is He Who has done these things and has united in peace those who hated each other, save the beloved Son of the Father, the common Savior of all, Jesus Christ, Who by His own love underwent all things for our salvation? Even from the beginning, moreover, this peace that He was to administer was foretold, for Scripture says, “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles, and nation shall not take sword against nation, neither shall they learn any more to wage war.” ⁶⁶ Nor is this by any means incredible.

The barbarians of the present day are naturally savage in their habits, and as long as they sacrifice to their idols they rage furiously against each other and cannot bear to be a single hour without weapons. But when they hear the teaching of Christ, forthwith they turn from fighting to farming, and instead of arming themselves with swords extend their hands in prayer. In a word, instead of fighting each other, they take up arms against the devil and the demons, and overcome them by their selfcommand and integrity of soul. These facts are proof of the Godhead of the Savior, for He has taught men what they could never learn among the idols. It is also no small exposure of the weakness and nothingness of demons and idols, for it was because they knew their own weakness that the demons were always setting men to fight each other, fearing lest, if they ceased from mutual strife, they would turn to attack the demons themselves. For in truth the disciples of Christ, instead of fighting each other, stand arrayed against demons by their habits and virtuous actions, and chase them away and mock at their captain the devil. Even in youth they are chaste, they endure in times of testing and persevere in toils. When they are insulted, they are patient, when robbed they make light of it, and, marvelous to relate, they make light even of death itself, and become martyrs of Christ.

53  And here is another proof of the Godhead of the Savior, which is indeed utterly amazing. What mere man or magician or tyrant or king was ever able by himself to do so much? Did anyone ever fight against the whole system of idol-worship and the whole host of demons and all magic and all the wisdom of the Greeks, at a time when all of these were strong and flourishing and taking everybody in, as did our Lord, the very Word of God? Yet He is even now invisibly exposing every man’s error, and single-handed is carrying off all men from them all, so that those who used to worship idols now tread them under foot, reputed magicians burn their books and the wise prefer to all studies the interpretation of the gospels. They are deserting those whom formerly they worshipped, they worship and confess as Christ and God Him Whom they used to ridicule as crucified. Their so-called gods are routed by the sign of the cross, and the crucified Savior is proclaimed in all the world as God and Son of God. Moreover, the gods worshipped among the Greeks are now falling into disrepute among them on account of the disgraceful things they did, for those who receive the teaching of Christ are more chaste in life than they. If these, and the like of them, are human works, let anyone who will show us similar ones done by men in former time, and so convince us. But if they are shown to be, and are the works not of men but of God, why are the unbelievers so irreligious as not to recognize the Master Who did them? They are afflicted as a man would be who failed to recognize God the Artificer through the works of creation. For surely if they had recognized His Godhead through His power over the universe, they would recognize also that the bodily works of Christ are not human, but are those of the Savior of all, the Word of God. And had they recognized this, as Paul says, “They would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” ⁶⁷

54  As, then, he who desires to see God Who by nature is invisible and not to be beheld, may yet perceive and know Him through His works, so too let him who does not see Christ with his understanding at least consider Him in His bodily works and test whether they be of man or God. If they be of man, then let him scoff; but if they be of God, let him not mock at things which are no fit subject for scorn, but rather let him recognize the fact and marvel that things divine have been revealed to us by such humble means, that through death deathlessness has been made known to us, and through the Incarnation of the Word the Mind whence all things proceed has been declared, and its Agent and Ordainer, the Word of God Himself. He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God. He manifested Himself by means of a body in order that we might perceive the Mind of the unseen Father. He endured shame from men that we might inherit immortality. He Himself was unhurt by this, for He is impassable and incorruptible; but by His own impassability He kept and healed the suffering men on whose account He thus endured. In short, such and so many are the Savior’s achievements that follow from His Incarnation, that to try to number them is like gazing at the open sea and trying to count the waves. One cannot see all the waves with one’s eyes, for when one tries to do so those that are following on baffle one’s senses. Even so, when one wants to take in all the achievements of Christ in the body, one cannot do so, even by reckoning them up, for the things that transcend one’s thought are always more than those one thinks that one has grasped.

As we cannot speak adequately about even a part of His work, therefore, it will be better for us not to speak about it as a whole. So we will mention but one thing more, and then leave the whole for you to marvel at. For, indeed, everything about it is marvelous, and wherever a man turns his gaze he sees the Godhead of the Word and is smitten with awe.

55  The substance of what we have said so far may be summarized as follows. Since the Savior came to dwell among us, not only does idolatry no longer increase, but it is getting less and gradually ceasing to be. Similarly, not only does the wisdom of the Greeks no longer make any progress, but that which used to be is disappearing. And demons, so far from continuing to impose on people by their deceits and oracle-givings and sorceries, are routed by the sign of the cross if they so much as try. On the other hand, while idolatry and everything else that opposes the faith of Christ is daily dwindling and weakening and falling, see, the Savior’s teaching is increasing everywhere! Worship, then, the Savior “Who is above all” and mighty, even God the Word, and condemn those who are being defeated and made to disappear by Him. When the sun has come, darkness prevails no longer; any of it that may be left anywhere is driven away. So also, now that the Divine epiphany of the Word of God has taken place, the darkness of idols prevails no more, and all parts of the world in every direction are enlightened by His teaching. Similarly, if a king be reigning somewhere, but stays in his own house and does not let himself be seen, it often happens that some insubordinate fellows, taking advantage of his retirement, will have themselves proclaimed in his stead; and each of them, being invested with the semblance of kingship, misleads the simple who, because they cannot enter the palace and see the real king, are led astray by just hearing a king named. When the real king emerges, however, and appears to view, things stand differently. The insubordinate impostors are shown up by his presence, and men, seeing the real king, forsake those who previously misled them. In the same way the demons used formerly to impose on men, investing themselves with the honor due to God. But since the Word of God has been manifested in a body, and has made known to us His own Father, the fraud of the demons is stopped and made to disappear; and men, turning their eyes to the true God, Word of the Father, forsake the idols and come to know the true God.

Now this is proof that Christ is God, the Word and Power of God. For whereas human things cease and the fact of Christ remains, it is clear to all that the things which cease are temporary, but that He Who remains is God and very Son of God, the sole-begotten Word.

Chapter 9
Conclusion

56  Here, then, Macarius, is our offering to you who love Christ, a brief statement of the faith of Christ and of the manifestation of His Godhead to us. This will give you a beginning, and you must go on to prove its truth by the study of the Scriptures. They were written and inspired by God; and we, who have learned from inspired teachers who read the Scriptures and became martyrs for the Godhead of Christ, make further contribution to your eagerness to learn. From the Scriptures you will learn also of His second manifestation to us, glorious and divine indeed, when He shall come not in lowliness but in His proper glory, no longer in humiliation but in majesty, no longer to suffer but to bestow on us all the fruit of His cross — the resurrection and incorruptibility. No longer will He then be judged, but rather will Himself be Judge, judging each and all according to their deeds done in the body, whether good or ill. Then for the good is laid up the heavenly kingdom, but for those that practice evil outer darkness and the eternal fire. So also the Lord Himself says, “I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of power, coming on the clouds of heaven in the glory of the Father.” ⁶⁸ For that Day we have one of His own sayings to prepare us, “Get ready and watch, for ye know not the hour in which He cometh” ⁶⁹ And blessed Paul says, “We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive according as he practiced in the body, whether good or ill.” ⁷⁰

57  But for the searching and right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good life and a pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature can, the truth concerning God the Word. One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saints unless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate their life. Anyone who wants to look at sunlight naturally wipes his eye clear first, in order to make, at any rate, some approximation to the purity of that on which he looks; and a person wishing to see a city or country goes to the place in order to do so. Similarly, anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds. Thus united to them in the fellowship of life, he will both understand the things revealed to them by God and, thenceforth escaping the peril that threatens sinners in the judgment, will receive that which is laid up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven. Of that reward it is written: “Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared” ⁷¹ for them that live a godly life and love the God and Father in Christ Jesus our Lord, through Whom and with Whom be to the Father Himself, with the Son Himself, in the Holy Spirit, honor and might and glory to ages of ages. Amen.