On the Unity of Christ

B. Enough, good sir, of such testimonies: but tell us how we ought to understand what is written of Christ, Who in the days of His flesh having offered supplications and entreaties with mighty cry and tears to Him that is able to save Him from death and, heard for His fear, although Son, learned obedience from the things which He suffered and, perfected, became author to them that obey Him of salvation indissoluble; I will add to what I said, this too, My God, My God, why forsookest Thou Me? for they say that such things are incongruous to God the Word and I would say that they come very far short of His inherent Excellence.

A. I myself too know that these things would not befit the Word which is sprung forth of God the Father, if the mode of the Economy be put aside [45] and if we do not admit that He have been made flesh according to the Scriptures: but since we rest firmly on this, and the doubting one whit abont it involves a charge of impiety, come let us view closely, as far as we may, the depth of the economy.

The Word therefore from forth of God the Father appeared in likeness of us, to aid in countless ways our human condition and to shew full well the path that leads us to everything that is admirable. It was then necessary that we should learn, when temptation attacks them who are in peril for the love of God, what sort of people they ought to be who have chosen to live a life and conversation noble and excellent; whether they should be seen by their Saviour remiss and falling back into negligence and out of due season revelling and spreading themselves out for delight: or intent unto prayer and bathed in tears and thirsting for aid from Him and for manliness, if He should be pleased that we should also suffer. It needed besides what we should know to our profit, whither the goal of obedience ends and through what prizes it goes, what and how great the reward of endurance. Christ therefore became a pattern of such things, and hereto the divine Peter confirms us saying, For what renown if sinning and buffeted ye endure? but if well-doing ye endure, this is thank from God, because Christ too died for us, leaving us [46] an ensample that ye should follow His steps. Hence the Word of God no longer bare and imparticipate in the measures of the emptying but in the days of His flesh has been made a pattern to us; in that then without any blame He could use the measures of the human nature and prolong His prayer and shed the tear [47] and seem now both to need a Saviour and to learn obedience, albeit Son. For the Spirit-clad was as it were astonished at the Mystery, that being by Nature and truly Son and Eminent in the glories of the Godhead He let Himself down unto low estate, so as to undergo the meanness of our human poverty. Yet was the pattern (as I said) comely and helpful, so as one might learn hence, and that full easily, that we ought not to hasten another road, when the season calls us to manliness. And indeed Christ said at one time, And fear not them that slay the body but cannot slay the soul, but rather fear Him Who can destroy both soul and body in Hell, at another again, If any man will come after Me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. The duty of following Him, what else is it than that we must be all-manly against temptations, and with that, ask the aid that is from above not negligently nor remissly but using rather intensest prayers and letting fall from our eyes the tear of godly fear?

B. You say well.

A. If moreover He say, My God My God why forsookest Thou Me, how will they understand it?

B. They would deem, as I suppose, that these are the words of the man who is assumed.

A. Of one who has broken down and who considers the onslaught of the trial as not to be borne, as intolerable, or how?

B. Of one who is distraught (as appears) out of human faint-heartedness: since to the disciples too He said, Exceeding sorrowful is My Soul unto death, and fell down before the Father Himself saying, Father, if it be possible, let this Cup pass from Me, yet not as I will but as THOU.

A. And verily this is nothing else than what we said just now, Who in the days of His flesh having offered both supplications and entreaties to Him Who could save Him from death with a mighty cry and tears. If any think that Christ had come down to this point of faint-heartedness and that He was sorrowful and very heavy, holding it intolerable to suffer, overcome with fear and mastered by weakness, he clearly accuses Him of not being God, and shews that to no purpose, as it seems, did He rebuke Peter.

B. How do you say?

A. For Christ said, See we are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of man will be betrayed into the hands of sinners, and they shall mock Him and crucify Him, and the third day He shall rise. He being pious, says, [God be] propitious to Thee, Lord, this shall not be to Thee. And what said Christ to him? Get thee behind Me satan, thou art an offence to Me, because thou dost not think the things of God but the things of men. And yet how did the disciple miss of what is fitting, in wanting the trial to be taken away from his Master, if it were insufferable to Him and by no means tolerable but rather lowering unto impotence and apt to shiver in pieces Him Who charged His disciples to be stout against the fear of death and to count suffering nothing, so that the good-pleasure of God should be accomplished by them?

And I wonder that they, saying that he has been connected with the Only-Begotten, and declaring him partaker of the Divine dignities, subject him to the fear of death, that so he may be seen to be bare man as we are and to have gained nothing from the Divine Dignities.

B. What then is the plan of the Economy herein?

A. Clearly mystical and deep and to be marvelled at by them who know aright the mystery of Christ. For view I pray, the words which beseem the emptying and are not incongruous to the measures of the manhood, how they were uttered in due and needful season, that He Who is over all creation might be seen to have been made in every respect as we. Hereto will follow again this also.

B. What?

A. Seeing that we have been made accursed because of the transgression in Adam and forsaken of God have fallen under the snare of death, and that all things have been made new in Christ, and a return of our condition to what it was in the beginning [has taken place]; need was it that the second Adam which is out of Heaven, He Who is superior to all sin, the All-holy and Undefiled second first-fruits of our race, Christ, should free from sentence the nature of men and call again upon it the good favour that is from above and from the Father and undo the forsaking [48] through His Obedience and entire subjection. For He did no sin, and the race of man in Him has gained the riches of spotlessness and entire blamelessness, so that it at length may with boldness cry out, My God my God why forsookest Thou me?

For consider that the Only-Begotten having been made man, gave forth such words as one of us and in behalf of our whole nature, as though He said [49], The first man hath transgressed, he slipped down into disobedience, he heeded not the command given him, by the wiles of the dragon he was carried off into wilfulness: therefore fall rightly has he been subjected unto decay and has become subject to doom, but Thou didst plant Me a second beginning to them on the earth, I am called, Second Adam. In Me Thou seest the race of man purged, achieving sinlessness, holy, all-pure. Give now the good things of Thy Clemency, undo the forsaking, rebuke decay and let wrath reach its period. I have conquered Satan himself too who of old prevailed, for he found in Me no whit of what was his.

Such then, as I think, is the meaning of the Saviour's words; for He was inviting the good favour of the Father not on Himself but on us rather. For as the [fruits] of wrath passed through as from the first root, I mean Adam, unto the whole nature of man (for death hath reigned from Adam unto Moses over them too which sinned not after the likeness of Adam's transgression): thus too will the [fruits] from our second first-fruits, Christ, pass through unto the whole human race. And the all-wise Paul will be our warrant, saying, For if by the transgression of one man the many died, much more by the righteousness of the One shall the many live, and again, For as in Adam all die so too in Christ shall all be quickened.

[45] ^k So too had S. Cyril written in his Dialogues to Hermias, " If one write of Him, Who in the days of His flesh offered supplications and entreaties to Him That can save Him from death &c, descend a little and take account of the measure of the human nature. For the Impress of the Father would not have died; but since the supplication has been made in the days of His flesh, the fear will be that of the flesh and the dread of death of the human nature in itself (ἰδικῶς). Hence even though He be said to receive the Name which is above every Name, do not drive away the SON from the bounds of Godhead in that He is Word and hath beamed forth from God the Father; for He was by Nature and truly God even before the times of the emptying." Dial. 5 p. 571 e.

[46] ^l Here the manuscript has you: I have translated us with Euthymius and the Syriac translation.

[47] ⁿ See the magnificent passage in S. Cyril's Defence against Theodoret's objection to his tenth chapter (quoted also by Dr. Bright in his article on S. Cyril in the Dictionary of Christian Biography): "He wept as man that He might stay thy tear, He feared, economically committing to His flesh to suffer what belonged to it, that He might make us of fairest courage, He refused the Cup that the Cross might reveal the impiety of the Jews, He is said to be weak in His human nature that He might end thy weakness, He prolonged prayers and supplications in order that He might render the Father's Ear open to thy prayers, in order that thou mightest learn not to slumber in temptations but rather to be all-intense unto prayers (Def. xii capp. adv. Theod. p. 234 a b)." And in his earlier work, the Thesaurus, " By His own death the Saviour annulled death. As then death had not been annulled, except He had died, so in regard to each passion of the flesh. For except He had feared, our nature had not become free from fearing; except He had sorrowed, it had never been rid of sorrowing: except He had been troubled and dismayed, it would never have been in case external to these. And in each several thing that befals humanly, applying the same reasoning, you will find that the passions of the flesh had motions in Christ, not in order that they should prevail as in us, but in order that when moved, they should be annulled by the might of the Word which indwelt the flesh, the nature being transformed to the better." Thes. cap. 24. p. 233 d e. " Seest thou that what thou deemest to be Christ's weaknesses is thy might?.. . Those tears wash us, that weeping cleanses us." S. Ambrose de fide, ii. 95. t. ii. 489.

[48] ^q τὴν ἐγκατάλειψιν, the withdrawal of the Spirit from our race, as God said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man. Although the Holy Ghost was still given to individuals as God willed, yet the "forsaking" was undone in the great Pentecostal outpour. S.Cyril elsewhere says, "As one therefore of the forsaken, in that He too like us partook of blood and flesh, He says, Why forsookest Thou Me? which was [the utterance] of one who was undoing the forsaking that had come upon us and as it were winning the Father to Himself and calling Him to good favour to us as to Himself first." De recta fide to the Empresses Pulcheria and Eudocia § 12 fin. p. 141 a.

[49] ^r "Wherefore of necessity when He was in a body suffering and weeping and toiling, these things which are proper to the flesh are ascribed to Him together with the body. If then He wept and was troubled, it was not the Word considered as the Word (ἧ Λόγος) Who wept and was troubled but it was proper to the flesh; and if too He besought that the cup might pass away, it was not the Godhead that was in terror but this affection too was proper to the manhood. And that the words, Why hast Thou forsaken Me, are His according to the foregoing explanations, though He suffered nothing (for the Word was impassible), is notwithstanding declared by the Evangelists; since the Lord became man and these things are done and said as from a man, that He might Himself lighten these very sufferings of the flesh and free it from them. Whence neither can the Lord be forsaken by the Father Who is ever in the Father, both before He spoke and when He uttered these words..... For behold when He says, Why hast Thou forsaken Me, the Father shewed that He was ever and even then in Him; for the earth knowing its Lord Who spoke, straightway trembled and the veil was rent, and the sun was hidden, and the rocks were torn asunder, and the graves, as I have said, did gape and the dead in them arose." S. Athan. against Arians iii. 56 pp. 478,479 O.T. "When then He is said to hunger and weep and weary, and to cry Eloi, Eloi, which are our human affections, He receives them from us and offers to the Father, interceding for us that in Him they may be annulled." S. Ath. against Arians, iv. 6 p. 520 O.T. See too note q.