Exegetical Fragments

Ver. 42. Father, if You be willing to remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but Yours, be done.

But let these things be enough to say on the subject of the will. This word, however, Let the cup pass, does not mean, Let it not come near me, or approach me. For what can pass from Him, certainly must first come near Him; and what does pass thus from Him, must be by Him. For if it does not reach Him, it cannot pass from Him. For He takes to Himself the person of man, as having been made man. Wherefore also on this occasion He deprecates the doing of the inferior, which is His own, and begs that the superior should be done, which is His Father's, to wit, the divine will; which again, however, in respect of the divinity, is one and the same will in Himself and in the Father. For it was the Father's will that He should pass through every trial (temptation); and the Father Himself in a marvellous manner brought Him on this course, not indeed with the trial itself as His goal, nor in order simply that He might enter into that, but in order that He might prove Himself to be above the trial, and also beyond it. And surely it is the fact, that the Saviour asks neither what is impossible, nor what is impracticable, nor what is contrary to the will of the Father. It is something possible; for I Mark makes mention of His saying, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto You. And they are possible if He wills them; for Luke tells us that He said, Father, if You be willing, remove this cup from me. The Holy Spirit, therefore, apportioned among the evangelists, makes up the full account of our Saviour's whole disposition by the expressions of these several narrators together. He does not, then, ask of the Father what the Father wills not. For the words, If You be willing, were demonstrative of subjection and docility, not of ignorance or hesitancy. For this reason, the other scripture says, All things are possible unto You. And Matthew again admirably describes the submission and humility when he says, If it be possible. For unless I adapt the sense in this way, some will perhaps assign an impious signification to this expression, If it be possible; as if there were anything impossible for God to do, except that only which He does not will to do. But … being straightway strengthened in His humanity by His ancestral divinity, he urges the safer petition, and desires no longer that should be the case, but that it might be accomplished in accordance with the Father's good pleasure, in glory, in constancy, and in fullness. For John, who has given us the record of the sublimest and divinest of the Saviour's words and deeds, heard Him speak thus: And the cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it? ¹ Now, to drink the cup was to discharge the ministry and the whole economy of trial with fortitude, to follow and fulfil the Father's determination, and to surmount all apprehensions. And the exclamation, Why have You forsaken me? was in due accordance with the requests He had previously made: Why is it that death has been in conjunction with me all along up till now, and that I bear not yet the cup? This I judge to have been the Saviour's meaning in this concise utterance.

And He certainly spoke truth then. Nevertheless He was not forsaken. But He drank out the cup at once, as His plea had implied, and then passed away.¹ And the vinegar which was handed to Him seems to me to have been a symbolical thing. For the turned wine¹ indicated very well the quick turning¹ and change which He sustained, when He passed from His passion to impassibility, and from death to deathlessness, and from the position of one judged to that of one judging, and from subjection under the despot's power to the exercise of kingly dominion. And the sponge, as I think, signified the complete transfusion¹ of the Holy Spirit that was realized in Him. And the reed symbolized the royal sceptre and the divine law. And the hyssop expressed that quickening and saving resurrection of His, by which He has also brought health to us.¹

43. And there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him.

44. And being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

The phrase, a sweat of blood, is a current parabolic expression used of persons in intense pain and distress; as also of one in bitter grief people say that the man weeps tears of blood. For in using the expression, as it were great drops of blood, he does not declare the drops of sweat to have been actually drops of blood.¹ For he would not then have said that these drops of sweat were like blood. For such is the force of the expression, as it were great drops. But rather with the object of making it plain that the Lord's body was not bedewed with any kind of subtle moisture which had only the show and appearance of actuality, but that it was really suffused all over with sweat in the shape of large thick drops, he has taken the great drops of blood as an illustration of what was the case with Him. And accordingly, as by the intensity of the supplication and the severe agony, so also by the dense and excessive sweat, he made the facts patent, that the Saviour was man by nature and in reality, and not in mere semblance and appearance, and that He was subject to all the innocent sensibilities natural to men. Nevertheless the words, I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again,¹ show that His passion was a voluntary thing; and besides that, they indicate that the life which is laid down and taken again is one thing, and the divinity which lays that down and takes it again is another.

He says, one thing and another, not as making a partition into two persons, but as showing the distinction between the two natures.¹

And as, by voluntarily enduring the death in the flesh, He implanted incorruptibility in it; so also, by taking to Himself of His own free-will the passion of our servitude,¹ He set in it the seeds of constancy and courage, whereby He has nerved those who believe in Him for the mighty conflicts belonging to their witness-bearing. Thus, also, those drops of sweat flowed from Him in a marvellous way like great drops of blood, in order that He might, as it were, drain off² and empty the fountain of the fear which is proper to our nature. For unless this had been done with a mystical import, He certainly would not, even had He been² the most timorous and ignoble of men, have been bedewed in this unnatural way with drops of sweat like drops of blood under the mere force of His agony.

Of like import is also the sentence in the narrative which tells us that an angel stood by the Saviour and strengthened Him. For this, too, bore also on the economy entered into on our behalf. For those who are appointed to engage in the sacred exertions of conflicts on account of piety, have the angels from heaven to assist them. And the prayer, Father, remove the cup, He uttered probably not as if He feared the death itself, but with the view of challenging the devil by these words to erect the cross for Him. With words of deceit that personality deluded Adam; with the words of divinity, then, let the deceiver himself now be deluded. Howbeit assuredly the will of the Son is not one thing, and the will of the Father another.² For He who wills what the Father wills, is found to have the Father's will. It is in a figure, therefore, that He says, not my will, but Yours. For it is not that He wishes the cup to be removed, but that He refers to the Father's will the right issue of His passion, and honours thereby the Father as the First.² For if the fathers² style one's disposition gnomè,² and if such disposition relates also to what is in consideration hidden as if by settled purpose, how say some that the Lord, who is above all these things, bears a gnomic will?² Manifestly that can be only by defect of reason.

45. And when He rose from prayer, and had come to His disciples, He found them sleeping for sorrow;