About the Incarnation (Translator unknown)

The essay “On the Incarnation” (57 chapters) was written by St. Athanasius the Great c. 318 This is the most important work for Eastern Christian anthropology and soteriology, since it reveals the meaning of the Incarnation. St. Athanasius says that the incarnation was necessary, possible and worthy of God. The first part (chap. 1-32) provides an explanation of the reason why He, who by His nature is incorporeal and is the Divine Word, by the mercy and goodness of the Father, for the sake of our salvation, appeared in human flesh. In the second part (chap. 33-57) the author proceeds to refuting the objections of Jews and pagans. He denounces the unbelief of the Jews with Old Testament prophecies, especially carefully explaining Daniel's prophecy about the seventy weeks (chap. 33-40). St. Athanasius proves that the various objections of the pagans, in which they ridicule the mystery of the incarnation of the Divine Logos, are unfounded and explains that the Word of God appeared in human flesh (chap. 41-45). Then, on the basis of the spread and action of Christianity, in which not human, but truly Divine power is revealed, he proves the Divine dignity of the Savior and the Divine origin of the Christian religion (chap. 46-55). In conclusion, St. Athanasius exhorts the reader to read the Scriptures for himself and lead a life similar to the lives of those who wrote the sacred books. This publication presents work performed by an unknown translator. More accurate is the translation of this work, performed at the beginning of the 20th century at the Moscow Theological Academy in the series “Creations of the Holy Fathers.” *The title of the work in Greek is Λόγος περὶ τῆς ἐνανθρωπήσεως τοῦ Λόγου. *The title of the work in Latin is Oratio de incarnatione Verbi. See also: Word about the incarnation of God the Word, and about His coming to us in the flesh A Word about the incarnation of God the Word and His coming to us in the flesh Chapter 1. Creation and Fall (1) In our previous book we have fully dealt with several of the main points concerning the idolatry of the heathen, and how these false fears arose. We have also, by God's grace, briefly pointed out that the Word of the Father is Himself by nature Divine, to Whom everything owes its existence, is subject to His will and power, and that through Him the Father gives order to creation, through Him everything moves, and through Him everything has found life. Now, Macarius, loving Christ in truth, we must take steps further in the faith of our holy confession and consider also how the Word became Man and also His Divine Manifestation among us. This secret is reviled by the Jews, ridiculed by the Greeks, but we exalt it; and your love and devotion to the Word will also increase, because in His Humanity He seems less valuable. For the more the unbelievers pour contempt upon Him, the more He makes His Divinity evident. What they exclude as impossible, He clearly shows as possible. What they deride as empty, His goodness makes more complete. And what these wise guys ridicule as “human”, He makes divine with His inherent power. Thus, by what appears to be His extreme poverty and weakness on the cross, He overthrows the pomp and parade of idols and calmly and quietly subdues scoffers and unbelievers to acknowledge Him as God. Now, in discussing these issues, we must first remember what has already been said. You must understand why the Word of the Father, so great and so exalted, appeared in bodily form. He did not take on a body to suit His own nature, far from it, since as the Word He has no body. He appeared in a human body for this reason only: Out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us humans. We will begin then with the creation of the world and with God the Creator, which is the first thing you must understand, and also that the renewal of creation was accomplished by the same Word who created the world in the beginning. There is, therefore, no inconsistency between the creation and salvation of one Father, who used the same Messenger for both works, bringing about the salvation of the world through the same Word who created the world in the beginning. (2) Regarding the creation of the universe and the creation of all things, there were different opinions, and each person presented for discussion a theory that suited his own taste. For example, some say that everything happens by itself and, so to speak, by chance. Among them are the Epicureans; they deny that there is any Intelligence behind the universe at all. This idea contradicts all the facts of experience, including their own existence too. For if everything came into being in this automatic way instead of being created by the Mind, then although they would exist, they would all be homogeneous and without any difference. In the universe, everything would be the sun or the moon or whatever it was, and in the human body, everything would be a hand or an eye or a foot. But in 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 legs and arms and head. This difference of things refutes spontaneous origin, and proves an eternal Cause; and from that Cause we can apprehend God, the Designer and Creator of all things. Others adhere to the idea expressed by Plato of the giant himself among the Greeks. He said that God made everything from pre-existing material and uncreated matter just as a carpenter makes something from wood that already exists. But those who hold this idea do not understand that to deny that God is a Person, the Cause of Causes, is to impose a limitation on Him, just as it is to limit a carpenter that he cannot do anything without wood. How could God be called Creator and Creator if His powers of creation depend on some other cause, namely, matter itself? If He only created from existing matter and did not Himself create matter in beings, He will not be a Creator, but only a master. There is also the theory of the Gnostics, who invented for themselves a Craftsman of everything other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. They simply close their eyes to the obvious meaning of Scripture. For example, the Lord reminded the Hebrews of the statements in Genesis: “He who created them in the beginning made them male and female,” showing that for this reason a man should leave his parents and cleave to his wife, went on to say of the Creator, “that what God has joined together, let no man separate.” How can they therefore consider creation independent of the Father? And again St. John says comprehensively: “All things came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being that was made.” How then could the Creator be anyone other than the Father of Christ? (3) These are the concepts that people put forward. But the fearlessness of God of their foolish words is clearly revealed by the Divine teaching of the Christian faith. And we know that since there is a Mind behind the universe, it did not come into existence by itself, and since God is infinite and not limited, it was not created from existing matter, but from nothing and from non-existence. The absolute and unique God gave everything into existence through the Word. He says so much in Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; and also through the very useful book of Shepherd 1: “Believe first of all that there is one God, who created and arranged everything and from non-existence into being.” Paul also points out the same thing when he says: “By faith we understand that the worlds were created by the Word of God in such a way that what we see now did not arise from what appeared before.” For God is good and, moreover, with all the goodness of which He is the Source, it is impossible for Him who is so good to be someone average or constrained in relation to anything. Unconstrained by anything existing, He created everything out of nothing by His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ and from all His earthly creatures, He singled out people for special mercy. To them, men, who, like the animals, were by nature short-lived, He gave the grace which other beings lacked, namely, to manifest His own image, a share in the rational being of the Word itself, so that, reflecting Him and being themselves rational, and even expressing the Mind of God as He did, though in a limited degree, they might continue to live forever in the blessed and only true life of saints in paradise. But since a person could turn to any path by his own will, God made this grace that He gave conditional from the first day on two things: namely, law and place. He placed them in His own paradise and gave them the only prohibition. If they kept grace and maintained the charm of their original innocence, then life in paradise should be theirs without sorrow, pain or care, and this would ultimately guarantee immortality in heaven. But if they had fallen into error and become vicious, throwing away their beautiful birthright, then they would have become enslaved according to the natural law of death and would have ceased to live in paradise, but, dying outside it, would have continued to live in death and in corruption. This is how Holy Scripture tells us the commandment of God: “Of every tree that is in the garden you will certainly eat, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.” “You will surely die” and people not only die, but also remain in a state of death and decay. (4) You may wonder, asking, “Why are we discussing the origin of men when we mean to talk about the Word becoming Man?” The first subject is close to the second for this reason: our guilt caused the Word to descend, our crime caused His love for us so that He hastened to help us and appeared among us. We are the reason for His taking on human form and for our salvation in His great love He was both born and appeared in a human body. For God created man this way (that is, as an incarnate spirit) and wanted him to remain incorruptible. But people, turning from looking at God to the evil of their own manifestations, inevitably fell into slavery to the law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God created them, they entered into a process of complete corruption and death took them completely under its control. For the transgression of the commandment forced them to turn back to their nature, and just as in the beginning they came from non-existence, so now they are on the path of returning through corruption again to non-existence. The existence and love of the Word gave them being, which means it is inevitable that when they lost the knowledge of God, they also lost life with him. For only God alone exists, and evil is not existence, but the negation and antithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was created from nothing; but he also bears the likeness of Him who exists, and if a person retains this likeness through constant looking at Him, then his nature will be freed from the power of death and he will remain incorruptible. This is confirmed in Wisdom: “Keeping His laws is a guarantee of incorruption.” And being incorruptible, he would henceforth be like God, since the Holy Scripture says: “I said, you are gods and sons of the Most High, all of you; but you die like men and fall like any of the princes.” (5) This was an unbearable burden for the people. God not only created them out of nothing, but also in goodness gave them His own life through the grace of the Word. Then, when turning from the eternal to the corruptible on the advice of the devil, they doomed themselves to their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, although they were by nature subject to corruption, the grace of their union with the Word enabled them to escape the natural law and ensured the preservation of the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is, the presence of the Word with them protected them even from natural corruption, just as Wisdom says: “God created man for incorruptibility and as an image of His own eternity; but the devil’s envy introduced death into the world.” When this happened, people began to die and corruption ruled their rebellion and dominated them even more than the natural degree, because this was the punishment that God warned them about in breaking the commandment. Indeed, they exceeded all limits in their sin; for, having invented evil at the beginning and thus involving themselves in death and corruption, they went gradually from bad to worse, not stopping at any kind of evil, but continually, as with a greedy appetite, inventing new types of sins. Adultery and theft were everywhere, murder and robbery filled the earth, the law was neglected in corruption and unrighteousness, all types of unrighteousness were committed by everyone, individually and in general by everyone. Cities were at enmity with cities, nations rebelled against nations, and the whole earth was captured by strife and battles, and at the same time each sought to surpass the other in evil. Even crimes contrary to nature were revealed, as the apostle-martyr of Christ says: “Their women have changed the natural use into that which is contrary to their nature; and men also abandoned the natural use of the female sex, became inflamed with lust for one another, committing shameless acts with their own sex, receiving in themselves the due recompense of their depravity.” Chapter 2. The Divine Dilemma and Its Solution in the Incarnation (6) We saw in the last chapter that since death and corruption prevailed, the human race plunged into the process of destruction. Man, who was created in the image of God and, possessing reason, reflected the Word Himself, was corrupted and God's plan was undermined. The law of death that followed the crime defeated us and there was no salvation from this. What happened was truly both monstrous and incomprehensible. It would, of course, be incredible that God took back His words and that man, having transgressed, should not have died. But it would be equally monstrous that a being who once shared the nature of the Word should perish and return back into nothingness through corruption. It would not be worthy of the goodness of God that the creatures created by Him should turn into oblivion through the deception of man by the devil. And it would also be unworthy of Him, first of all, in that the work of God in humanity should cease either through their own negligence or through the deception of evil spirits. And since the beings whom He created intelligent like the Word were actually perishing, and such noble works were on the way to destruction, what then had the good God to do? Did He allow corruption and death to continue their path with them? In that case, what would be the benefit of creating them in the beginning? Of course it would be better to never create them at all, than to, having created them, reject them and let them perish. And, besides this, such indifference to the collapse of His own creation before His eyes would, first of all, speak not in favor of the goodness of God, but of His limitations, and that it would have been much better if He had never created people at all. It is impossible for God to abandon man who was about to be swallowed up by corruption, because this would not satisfy and would not be worthy of Himself. (7) Still, this is not all. As we have already noted, it would be incredible for God, the Father of Truth, to take back His words about death, canceling them to ensure our continued existence. He could not deceive Himself, and then what should He do? Did He demand repentance from people for their crimes? You could say that this would be worthy of God and would further argue that just as through crime they submitted to corruption, so through repentance they could return to incorruption again. But repentance would not answer to Divine consistency, for if death held people in its power, then God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance lead people out of what is their nature, nor does it help them stop sinning. If this were a case of crime only, and not of the decay that followed, then repentance would be quite sufficient; but crime is the beginning of the enslavement of people under the power of corruption inherent in their nature and this deprived them of the grace that belonged to them as a creation in the image of God. No, repentance would not solve the problem. What, or rather Who, was necessary for such grace and such return as we required? Who, other than the Word of God Himself, who also in the beginning created everything out of nothing? It was His part, and His alone, to bring again the corruptible to the incorruptible, and to respond to the consistency of His Father's character in all things. Since He alone is the Word of the Father and is first of all, He subsequently became able to recreate everything and was worthy to suffer for everything and to be a messenger for everyone from the Father. (8) For this purpose, the immaterial and immaterial and incorruptible Word of God entered our world. In a sense, in reality, He was not far from this before, since no part of creation ever existed without Him, who, being in union with the Father, fills all. But now He entered the world in a new way, entering on our level in His love and personal revelation to us. He saw an intelligent race, a race of people, similar to Himself in the expression of the Mind of the Father, but dragging out existence and death, ruling over all to decay. He saw that decay held us all very tightly, because it is the punishment for the Crime. He saw also how improbable it was for a law to be annulled before it was fulfilled. He saw how terrible it would be that what He Himself had created should disappear. He saw how the superior evil of people rose up against themselves; He also saw their universal tendency towards death. He saw all this and took pity on our race, was imbued with compassion for our limitations, unable to overcome this death and its slavery, but most of all, that His creation must perish and the work of His Father for us would be reduced to zero. And He took upon Himself a body, a human body just like our own. Nor did He want to simply become incarnate or simply appear; if this were so, He could have shown His Divine greatness in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only that, but He took it from a spotless, immaculate virgin, without the intervention of a human father, a pure body, uncontaminated by human contact. He, the Mighty One, the Creator of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a church for Himself, and accepted it for Himself, as an instrument through which He became known and in which He dwelt. Thus, having assumed a body like ours, which is prone to the corruption of death, He gave His body to die for all and offered it to the Father. He did this out of obvious love for us, so that in His death everyone could die and the law of death would thus be abolished because it was fulfilled in His body, which was appointed for this purpose and gave its power to people. This He did in order to convert men to incorruption who had turned to corruption, and to quicken them through death by the consecration of His body and the grace of His resurrection. Thus He removed death from them, just as stubble disappears in the fire. (9) The Word understood that it was impossible to get rid of corruption except through death; yet He Himself as the Word, immortal and Son of the Father, was one who could not die. For this reason He took on a body capable of death, so that it, through belonging to the Word who is above all, could become a sufficient substitute for all in death and, itself remaining incorruptible through His abiding in it, could thereafter put an end to corruption also for all others by the grace of resurrection. This was accomplished by putting to death the body which He accepted as an offering and sacrifice without spot or blemish, and He thereby abolished the death of His human brothers by offering substitution. For it is natural that because the Word of God was first, when He offered His own church and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He accomplished in death all that was required. Naturally, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were endued with incorruptibility in the promise of resurrection. In such a union with the presence of the Word in the human body, corruption, which accompanies death, lost its power over everyone. You know that when a certain great king enters a large city and stays in one of the houses, then because of his stay in that particular house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to harass him. Also in this case with the King of all; He entered our country and dwells in our body, in many people, and subsequently this will interfere with the enemy’s projects against humanity and the decay of death, which previously held them in power, but which will simply cease to exist someday. For the human race would perish unless the Lord of all had a Savior, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death. (10) This great work is truly worthy of the goodness of God. The king who founded the city, despite the neglect of its own inhabitants from the attacks of robbers, avenges it and saves it from destruction, taking into account only his own honor, and not the people's negligence. How much more then does the Word of the all-good Father neglect humanity, which He called into being. But rather, by the offering of His own body He abolished the death they suffered and corrected their neglect of His own teaching. Thus by His own power He restored the whole nature of man. His Spirit-inspired disciples tell us this. We read in one place: “For the love of Christ compels us, reasoning in this way: if One died for the sake of all, then all died, and He died for all, so that we should no longer live on our own, but for Him, who died and rose again from the dead, our Lord Jesus Christ.” And again in another: “But we see Him who was a little humbled before the angels, Jesus, who, because He suffered death, was crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He was made to taste death for every man.” The same author continues to guide us in this why it was necessary for God the Word and no one else to become Man: “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, bringing many sons to glory, the Author of their salvation, to be perfected through suffering.” He points out that the salvation of mankind from corruption was within the power of Him alone, Who created them in the beginning. He also points out that the Word took on a human body so that He could offer it as a sacrifice for others: “And since the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He Himself also accepted them, in order through death to defeat the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and to save those who were enslaved to the fear of death all their lives.” For by the sacrifice of His own body He did two things: He put an end to the law of death that stood in our way, and He provided a new beginning of life for us by giving us the hope of resurrection. Through man, death gained power over people, but because the Word became Man, death was defeated and life rose again. This is what Paul says as a true servant of Christ: “Just as death comes through man, so also came the resurrection of the dead through man. Just as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive,” etc. Therefore, when we die today, we no longer die as people condemned to death, but as those who are now even in the process of resurrection, waiting for the resurrection of all, “which in due time He will reveal Himself,” the God who did it and gave it to us. This is the first reason for the Savior becoming a Man. There is, however, something else that shows the reasons that explain the complete consistency of His blessed presence among us; and these we must now continue to consider. Chapter 3. Divine dilemma and solution in the incarnation - continued (11) When God Almighty created mankind by His own Word, He saw that they, due to the limitations of their nature, could not have knowledge of their Creator, the Immaterial and Uncreated. He took pity on them and did not leave them without knowing Himself, so that their existence would not be aimless. For what is the point of a creature existing if it cannot know its Creator? How can men be intelligent if they have no knowledge of the Word and Mind of the Father through Whom they received their existence? They would be no better than animals, having no knowledge except earthly things, and why should God have created them at all if He had not caused them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God gave them a share in His own image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and even made them in His own image and likeness. Why? Simply so that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they could feel the Absolute Image, which is the Word Himself, and through Him know the Father. This knowledge of their Creator is the only truly happy and blessed life for people. But since we have already seen that people, foolish in themselves, thought little of the grace they received and turned away from God, they desecrated their own soul so much that they not only lost their consciousness of God, but also invented for themselves other gods of various kinds. They sculpted idols for themselves instead of the truth and worshiped that which is not God, like St. Paul speaks of “worshipping the creature instead of the Creator.” Moreover, and much worse than this, they transferred the honor that belongs only to God to material objects such as wood and stone, as well as to man; and the further they went, the worse it became, as we said in our previous book. Indeed, so wicked were they that they worshiped evil spirits as gods to satisfy their passions. They sacrificed animals and people as if to their deities and thus fell deeper into madness. Magic was also taught among them, soothsayers in various places led people astray and looked for the reason for everything in human life in the stars, as if nothing existed except them, and only they were telling something. In a word, fearlessness of God and lawlessness were everywhere, and neither God nor His Word were known. Yet He did not hide Himself from people and did not make Himself known in only one way, but unfolded it in many forms and in many ways. (12) God knew the limitations of humanity. And although the grace of man being created in His image was sufficient to give them the knowledge of the Word and through Him the Father as a guarantee against their neglect of this grace, He also gave the works of creation as the means by which the Creator could be known. But that was not all. Man's neglect of grace tends to increase, and against this further hindrance God also made a provision for Himself by giving them a law and sending prophets, men whom they knew. Thus, if they looked more closely into the heavens, they could gain knowledge of their Creator, who created them with His hand. For people can learn higher things from other people. So there are three ways that are open to them by which they could gain knowledge of God. They might look into the immensity of heaven and, pondering the harmony of creation, come to know the Ruler, the Word of the Father, whose all-ruling providence makes the Father knowable to all. Or, if this is not for them, then they could communicate with holy people and through them learn to know God, the Creator of all, the Father of Christ, and consider the worship of idols as a denial of the truth and complete fearlessness of God. Or, in third place, they could stop their ridicule and lead a good life simply by knowing the law. For the law was not given only for the Jews, and it was not exclusively for them that God sent the prophets, although they were sent to the Jews and the Jews persecuted them. The Law and the Prophets were a sacred school for the knowledge of God and the conduct of spiritual life for the whole world. The goodness and love of God was so great. Yet people bowed to momentary pleasures and the frauds and illusions of evil spirits, without raising their heads to the truth. So burdened were they with their evil that they seemed more animals than rational people, reflecting the very likeness of the Word. (13) What could God do in the face of this dehumanization of humanity, the universal concealment of the knowledge of Himself by the cunning of evil spirits? Should He have remained silent in the face of such great wrong and allowed people to continue to be so deceived and left in ignorance of Himself? If so, what would be the benefit of creating them in His own image from the beginning? Of course, it would be better for them to always be beasts than to turn away from the state when they shared the nature of the Word. And again, given what they had become, what good was it for them to ever have knowledge of God at all? Of course, it would be better for God to never give it, than for people to later be unworthy of receiving it. Also, what good was God who created people if they did not worship Him, but considered others as their creators? It would be the same as doing them for others, and not for yourself. Even an earthly king, although he is only a man, does not allow the country he has colonized to pass into other hands or be given over to other rulers, but sends letters and friends and even visits them himself to remind them of their devotion rather than allow His work to be destroyed. How much should God be patient and condescending towards His creatures, so that they do not wander away from Him before serving those who are not God, and especially because such a mistake means obvious ruin for them, and also because those who once had communion with His image must now perish. What then should God do? What else could He do, being God, if not to renew His image in humanity so that through this people could once again return to the knowledge of Him? And how could this be accomplished except by the coming of the very image, our Savior Jesus Christ? Humans could not do this as they are only created in the image and angels could not accomplish this as they are not the image of God. The Word of God came personally because He alone is the image of the Father who could restore man created in His image. To accomplish this re-creation He was not at first involved in death and corruption. Therefore, He took on a human body in order to defeat death in it one day for everyone, so that people could be renewed according to His image. The image of the Father alone was enough for this. There is an illustration to prove this. (14) You know what happens when a portrait painted on canvas becomes faded from external influences. The artist does not throw it away, but the one from whom the portrait was painted must come and sit down again to do it, and then the likeness will be restored anew on the same material. The same is the case with the All-Holy Son of God. He, the image of the Father, came and lived among us to renew humanity created after Him and to find His lost sheep, as He says in the Gospel: “I have come to claim and save what was lost.” This also explains His saying to the Hebrews: “Unless a man is born again...” He was not referring to the natural birth of man from his mother, as they thought, but to the regeneration and re-creation of the soul in the image of God. This was not the only thing the Word could do. When the madness of idolatry and false religion filled the world and the knowledge of God was hidden, whose part was it to teach the world about the Father? Do you think human? But people cannot go around the whole world without their words carrying enough weight, and if they did so, they would be helpless in the competition with 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 correct something in others if it is distorted in yourself. Perhaps you will say then that creation was sufficient to teach people concerning the Father. But if this were so, then such great atrocities would never have occurred. Creation already existed, but it did not prevent people from falling into error. And then only the Word of God could do this, Who sees everything in man and moves everything in the universe, Who alone could fulfill the needs of the current situation. This was His part and His alone, whose reign in the universe reveals the Father renewing according to the same doctrine. But how can He do this? By the same means as before, you may say, that is, through the work of creation. But this has been proven not to be enough. People had forgotten to look at the heavens before and now they were looking in the opposite direction. Therefore, in all His naturalness and in accordance with the desire to do good to people, He lived as a Man, taking Himself a body like others and through His works performed in this body, since it was on their level, He taught those who would not have learned by other means to know Him, the Word of God, and through Him the Father. (15) He treated them as a good teacher treated his students, condescending to their level and using simple means. St. Paul says this: “Since the world through its wisdom did not know God in His wisdom, God saw fit to save those who believe through the simplicity of the message preached.” People turned from looking at God on high and sought Him in the opposite direction, below, among created things and sensuality. Our Savior, the Word of God, in His great love took upon Himself a body and lived as a Man among people, responding to their feelings, so to speak, in part. He Himself became an object for the senses, so that those who sought God in the senses could taste the Father through the works that He, the Word of God, did in the body. A person, by reasoning in the ways given to him, can find the truth in the rational world. But were they amazed by the greatness of creation? They saw this by recognizing Christ as Lord. Did their minds tend to regard humans as gods? The uniqueness of the Savior’s works distinguished Him, One of the people, as the Son of God. Were they drawn aside by evil spirits? They were drawn by the Lord and knew that the Word of God is the only God and that evil spirits are not gods at all. Were they inclined towards some kind of hero worship and cult of the dead? But the fact that the Savior rose from the dead showed them how false other deities are and that the Word of the Father is the only true Lord, even the Lord of death. For this He was born and appeared as a Man, and for this He died and rose again, in order to surpass all other human affairs with His deeds. He can turn people from all ways of error to the knowledge of the Father. As He Himself says: “I came to seek and save what was lost.” (16) When the minds of men had fallen at last to the level of earthly sensuality, the Word appeared in body, that He, as Man, might concentrate their senses upon Himself, and convince them, through His human works, that He Himself was not only man, but also God, the Word and Wisdom of the true God. This is what Paul wants to tell us in these words: “So that you, strengthened and grounded in love, may become strong, to know with all the saints what is length and breadth and height and depth, and to know the love of God, which surpasses understanding, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” The revelation of the Word is in every dimension - above, in creation; below - in the Incarnation; in the depths - in the underworld; in latitude throughout the world. Everything is filled with the knowledge of God. For this reason, He did not offer a sacrifice for everyone immediately as soon as He appeared, because if He had given His body to death and then resurrected immediately, He would have ceased to be the object of our feelings. Instead, He remained in His body and allowed Himself to be seen in it, doing works and giving signs that told of Him that He was not only a man, but also the Word of God. So there were two things that the Savior did for us by becoming Man. He took death away from us and renewed us; and, invisible and unnoticeable by nature, He became visible through His works and revealed Himself as the Word of the Father, Ruler and King of all creation. (17) There is a paradox in this last statement which we must now examine. The Word was not confined to His body, and His presence in the body did not prevent Him from appearing elsewhere. While He lived in His body, He did not cease to rule the universe with His Mind and Power. It is amazing that, being the Word, He was not held back by anything, but actually contained everything Himself. In creation He is present everywhere, yet different from it; ruling, arranging, giving life to everyone, containing everything, He Himself is not a creation, existing exclusively in His Father. Existing both in everything and in every part in the human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is the Source of life for the whole universe, the creatures in every part of it, but He is still outside it; and He was revealed through the works in His body and through His activities in the world. It is indeed the function of the soul to contemplate what is outside the body, but it cannot give them life or move them. A person cannot move things from one place to another, for example, simply by thinking about them; and you and I cannot move the sun and stars by sitting at home and looking at them. But with the Word of God in His human nature, however, it was different. His body was not a limitation for Him, but an instrument so that He could be both in it and in everything and outside of everything, being only in the Father. At the same time, it is amazing how as a Man he lived a human life and as the Word, He contained the life of the universe, and as a Son, He was in constant union with the Father. Even His birth from a virgin did not change Him in any way, nor was He defiled by life in the body. Moreover, He sanctified the body by remaining in it. For His being in everything does not imply that He shares the nature of everything, but only that He gives everything its existence and contains everything in it. Just as the sun is not defiled by contact of its rays with earthly objects, but rather enlightens and purifies them, so He, Who created the sun, is not defiled by never appearing in the body, but rather the body is purified and enlivened by His presence. “He committed no sin, neither was there any deceit in His mouth.” (18) You must understand that when the writers on this sacred subject speak of Him as One who ate and drank and was born, they mean that the body, like the ordinary human body, was born and supported by food suitable to its nature; and God the Word, Who was united with Him - man, at the same time ruled the universe and revealed Himself through His bodily affairs as not only a man, but as God. Those works are rightly considered His works, because the body in which He did them really belonged to Him and to no one else; moreover, it is right that they should be thus attributed to Him as a Man, to show that His body was real, and not merely an appearance. In such ordinary matters as birth and eating, He should be recognized as actually living in the body; but by the wonderful works which He did through the body, He proved that He was the Son of God. This is the meaning of His words to the unbelieving Jews: “If I do not the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, then even if you do not believe Me, then believe Me because of My works, by which you can know that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Invisible in Himself, He was revealed through the works of creation, and although His Divinity is hidden in human nature, His bodily actions prove that He will be not only a man, but the Power and Word of God. To deal with evil spirits with power, for example, and drive them out, is not something human, but divine. And who could see Him healing all the diseases to which mankind is prone, and still consider Him a mere man, and not God also? He cleansed the lepers, He made the lame walk, He opened the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind, there was not a single disease or disease that He did not heal. Even the most casual observer can see that these were the works of God. Healing a man born blind, for example. Who other than the Father and Creator of man, the Ruler of all, could thus restore a function missing from birth? The One who can live like this must, of course, be the Lord of birth Himself. This is also proven in His becoming Man. He formed His own body from a virgin and this is no small proof of His Divinity, for He who created him is the Creator of all. And is there anyone who denies the fact that in the body in which He appeared, born of a virgin without a human father, there was also the Creator and Lord of all? Look at the miracle at Cana. Has anyone seen that water has become wine and will begin to believe that it is not the Lord and Creator of the water that He turned? For the same reason He walked on the sea as on dry land, to prove to the witnesses that He had dominion over everything. And having fed a multitude of people, when He made a lot out of a little so that from five loaves five thousand people were fed, does not He prove that He is none other than the Lord Himself, whose Mind is above everything? (19) All this the Savior considered necessary to do so that, recognizing His bodily actions as the works of God, people, blind to His presence in creation, could be restored to the knowledge of the Father. For, as I said before, who saw His power over evil spirits and their reaction to it, and could doubt that He was truly the Son, Wisdom and Power of God? Even creation itself did not remain silent by His will and, in amazement, recognized with one voice before the cross the power of His victory, that He who suffered in His body was not only a man, but the Son of God and the Savior of all. The sun disappeared, the earth shook, the mountains split, all the people were struck with fear. This showed that Christ on the cross was God and that all creation was His slave and testified with their fear to the presence of their Master. Thus, God's Word revealed Himself to people through His works. We must now consider the end of His earthly life and the nature of His bodily death. This is in fact the very center of our faith and everywhere you will hear people talking about it; and by this also, no less than by His other works, Christ was revealed to be God and the Son of God. (20) We have understood the reason for His bodily appearance, as far as circumstances and our own understanding allowed it. We saw that in order to turn the corruptible to incorruption there was no other way than the appearance of the Savior Himself, Who in the beginning created everything out of nothing. Only the image of the Father could refresh the likeness of His image in men, and that no one but our Lord Jesus Christ could give immortality to mortals, and that only the Word, Who rules over all and the only, true and only begotten Son of the Father, could teach men about Him and abolish the worship of idols. But besides this there was a debt that had to be paid; for, as I said before, all men had to die. Then there is a second reason why the Word dwelt among us. And this is precisely what His Divinity proved through His works: He could offer a sacrifice for all, putting to death His own church for all, calling man out of death and freeing him from the main consequence of the first crime. In this work He also showed Himself to be more powerful than death, showing the first fruits of the resurrection, that is, that His own body was incorruptible. You shouldn't be surprised if we repeat ourselves about this. We are talking about what is pleasing to God and what He in His wisdom and love has seen fit to do, and in one task to accomplish everything in several ways in order to avoid the risk of leaving something unresolved. The body of the Word, being a real human body, although it was uniquely formed from a virgin, was mortal like other bodies subject to death. But the presence of the Word in him freed him from this natural responsibility, so that corruption could not touch him. Thus, it became so that two opposing miracles took place at once: death, as is inherent in everyone, could strike the body of the Lord; yet, since the Word was in him, death and corruption were abolished in the same body. In him death was to be accomplished, and death for all, so that the debt of all could be paid. Otherwise, the Word, as I said, being in Himself not subject to death, took on a mortal body, which He could offer for everyone, and suffering for everyone in this body: “... to defeat him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and to deliver those who all their lives were enslaved by the fear of death.” (21) Then there is no fear left. Since our Savior died for us, we who believe in Christ no longer die the way people used to die under the curse of the law. That condemnation has passed and now, by the grace of the resurrection, corruption is expelled and removed, we are free from our mortal bodies at a time favorable for each of us, to thus receive a better resurrection. Like sowing seeds in the ground, we do not perish, but like them we rise again. Death is abolished by the grace of the Savior. That is why blessed Paul, through whom we all have the assurance of the resurrection, says: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this corruptible puts on the incorruptible, and this mortal puts on immortality, then what was said will be fulfilled, “death is swallowed up in victory.” Oh death, where is your sting? O hell (lit. grave), where is your victory? “Well,” some may say, “if He had to give His body to death for everyone, then why didn’t He just act like a Man without going to the cross for everyone? It would be more convenient for him to do this with honor without a body than to endure such a shameful death.” But look at this argument closer, and you will see how simply human it is, while what the Savior did is truly divine and worthy of His Divinity for several reasons. The first is that the death of people under ordinary circumstances is the result of their natural weakness. They are essentially fickle and over time, becoming sick and worn out, they die. But the Lord is not like them. He is not weak, He is the Power of God and the Word of God and Life Itself. If He died peacefully in His bed like other people, would it look according to His nature and so He would really be no more than other people. But since He was the very Word and the Life and the Power, His body was made strong, and therefore through the death He suffered, He perfected not Himself, but others by His sacrifice. If He were sick, who would heal others? Or how could that body be weak and fail if through it others became strong? Here again you may say, “Why did He not prevent death as He prevented disease?” Because He took on a body precisely in order to die, and if there had not been His death, then there would have been no resurrection. And you can argue that the disease did not dwell in His body: “Wasn’t He hungry?” Yes! He starved because it was natural for His body to do so, but He did not die of hunger because He Whose body starved was the Lord. And although He died for the ransom of all, He did not see corruption. His body was resurrected in perfect health, for it was the body of none other than Life Itself. (22) Someone else might say, perhaps, that it was better for the Lord to avoid the attacks of the Jews against Him and thus preserve His body from death altogether. But look how inconsistent this was with Him. Just as it would not have been suitable for Him to give up His body to death Himself, as the Word and Life, so it was also not compatible with Him to avoid death from others. And moreover, He did not strive for this to the last, nor in the desire of His nature did He leave His body to His own authority and did not avoid the conspiring Jews. And this action showed no limitation or weakness in the Word; since He was waiting for death in order to defeat it and hasten the sacrifice for everyone. Moreover, since it was death for all mankind for which the Savior came, and not for His own, He did not leave His body to death as a private matter, for this was simply not characteristic of Him, as Life, but He accepted death at the hands of men and thus completely defeated it in His own body. There are some other considerations that make it possible to understand why the Lord's body had such an end. The highest purpose of His coming was to be the resurrection of the body. This was to be a monument to His victory over death, a guarantee to all that He Himself had conquered corruption and that their own bodies also would ultimately be incorruptible; and this was a symbol and pledge of the future resurrection, namely, that He kept His body incorruptible. But if His body had fallen in sickness and the Word had left it in this state, how unbecoming it would have been for Him! Should He who healed the bodies of others forget to keep His own body healthy? How could His miracles of healing be believed if this were so? Of course people would either laugh at Him as being unable to dispel disease or consider Him inferior in the ordinary human sense because He could do it, but it was not so. (23) Suppose, without any illness, He hid His body somewhere, and then suddenly appeared and said that He had risen from the dead. He would have been regarded simply as a storyteller and since there would have been no witness to His death, no one would have believed His resurrection. Death had to precede the resurrection, for without it there could be no resurrection. A secret and unwitnessed death would leave the resurrection without any evidence or evidence to support it. Why did He have to die a secret death when He declared the fact of His resurrection openly? Why did He cast out evil spirits and heal a man born blind and turn water into wine, all in public? To convince people that He was the Word and also to declare to everyone that His mortal body was incorruptible, and so that they would believe that He was Life? And how could His disciples have the courage to speak of the resurrection if they could not declare the fact that He died first? Or how could their hearers believe their statement unless they themselves also bore witness to His death? For if the Pharisees at one time refused to believe and forced others to deny, but although it happened before their eyes, how many excuses would they have invented for unbelief if death were a secret? Or how could death and victory over it be preached if the Lord had not revealed them before everyone and proved by the incorruption of His body that henceforth it would be annulled and ineffective? (24) There are some other possible objections that also need to be addressed. Some might argue that even imagining His death with all subsequent faith in the resurrection, He would have been better off arranging a noble death for Himself and thus avoiding the shame of the cross. But even this would give room for the suspicion that His power over death was limited to the special kind of death which He chose for Himself; and this would again provide justification for distrust of the resurrection. Death came into His body, therefore, not from Himself, but from the enemy's action, so that the Savior could cancel death in any form that they would offer Him. A strong and strong fighter would not choose his opponents himself, lest they think that he is afraid of them. On the contrary, he would allow the spectators to choose them, and by winning, he would prove his superior power over them, the more so the more hostile they are. It was the same in this case with Christ. He, the Life of all, our Lord and Savior, did not arrange for Himself the method of His own death, so as not to appear to be afraid of some other kind of death. No, He accepted and suffered death on the cross from others, namely His special enemies, a death that was most terrible for them and in no way desirable. He did this so that, having destroyed death, they could believe in Him as Life and recognize its power as finally abolished. Thus a marvelous and powerful paradox took place, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him in shame and disgrace became a glorious monument to the defeat of death. He did not suffer the death of John the Baptist, who was beheaded, and He was not sawn apart like Isaiah. Even in death He maintained the integrity of the body and was not divided, so that there would be no future justification for those who divided the Church. (25) There are so many objections from outsiders regarding the Church. But if any honest Christian wants to know why He suffered death on the cross and in no other way, then we answer this way: in no other way did the Lord please to offer one death for all, it was precisely this that was primarily pleasing to Him. He came to bear the curse that was upon us and how could He “become a curse” other than to accept the death of the damned? And this death is on the cross, for it is written “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” And the death of the Lord is a propitiation for everyone and with it the “wall of separation” is destroyed and the access of the pagans is opened. How could He call us if He was not crucified, for only on the cross does man die with outstretched arms? Here again we see the correspondence of His death in His outstretched hands: it was to draw His ancient people on the one side with the Gentiles on the other, and unite them together in Himself. He predicted the manner of His death as an atonement: “When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to Me.” Air is the sphere of the devil, he is the enemy of our race, who, having fallen from heaven, tries, with other evil spirits who shared his disobedience and keep souls from the truth, to hinder the progress of those who follow it. The Apostle, discussing this, says, "According to the prince of the power in the air, the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience." But the Lord came to overthrow the devil and clear the air and make a “way” for us to heaven, as the apostle says, “through the veil, that is, His flesh.” This had to be accomplished through death, and by what other kind of death could it be accomplished except by death in the air, that is, on the cross? Here again you see how right and natural it was for the Lord to suffer in this way; for thus “exalted,” He purified the air from all the evil influences of the enemy. “I saw Satan as the fall of lightning,” He says; and thus He opened the way to heaven again, saying: "Lift up your gates, O princes, and rise up, you eternal doors." For the Word Himself did not need to open the gates, He is the Lord of all, and none of His works is closed to their Creator. No, we needed it, we whom He Himself exalted in His own body, so that the body which He first put to death for all would then pave the way to heaven. (26) His death on the cross is entirely fitting for us, and we can see how justified it was and why the salvation of the world could not be accomplished in any other way. Even on the cross He did not hide Himself from view; moreover, He made all creation a witness to the presence of its Creator. Then, having once allowed him to see that the body was dead, He did not allow the church of His body to linger long in the tomb, but on the third day He raised it up, imperishable and incorruptible, the pledge and symbol of His victory. Of course, it was in His power to resurrect His body and show it alive immediately after death. But the all-wise Savior did not do this, so that no one would deny that it had truly and completely died. Besides this, if the interval between His death and resurrection were two days, then the glory of His incorruptibility might not appear. He waited one whole day to show that His body was truly dead, and then on the third day He showed it incorruptible to everyone. The interval was not longer, lest people forget about it and doubt whether it was the same body. No, while everything was still ringing in their ears and their eyes remembered everything, they were still tense and their minds were confused, and while those who put Him to death were still alive and were themselves witnesses of these facts, the Son of God after three days showed His once dead body immortal and incorruptible. And it was obvious to everyone that the body in which the Word lived did not die from any natural weakness, but that by this death on the cross, by the power of the Savior, death could be overcome. (27) A strong proof of this defeat of death and the victory of the Cross is the following fact, namely, that all the disciples of Christ despised death. They stepped on it and, instead of fearing death, with the sign of the Cross and faith in Christ they trampled on it as something dead. Before the divine appearance of the Savior, even the holiest of people feared death and mourned the dead as if they were lost. But now that the Savior had risen in the body, death no longer terrified them, but all who believed in Christ trampled upon it as nothing and preferred to die rather than deny faith in Christ, knowing very well that when they die they do not perish, but live and become incorruptible through the resurrection. But the devil, who has long triumphed viciously in death, now that the bonds of death have become untied, alone remains truly dead. There is also another proof of this: people who, before they accepted the faith of Christ, were horrified by the thought of death and were afraid of it, but having converted, they overcame it so completely that they go impatiently to meet it, and themselves become witnesses of the resurrection of the Savior. Even children are in a hurry to resolve, and not only men and women are preparing to meet it with spiritual exercises. So weak has death become that even women who used to be captured by it now mock it as a dead thing, devoid of all strength. Death became like a tyrant who was completely defeated by the rightful king; The previously shackled hands and feet of passersby trample on him, pushing and cursing him, and are no longer afraid of his cruelty and anger due to the king who defeated him. So it is with death, defeated and branded by Him who is the Savior on the cross. The once chained hands and feet of all who are in Christ trample on her, passing over her and testifying of Him who mocked her and saying: “O death, where is your victory? O hell (lit. grave), where is your sting? (28) Isn’t this a harmonious proof of the powerlessness of death, do you think? Or is this a small sign of the Savior’s victory over it, when boys and girls who are in Christ turn back to their present life and prepare themselves to enter a new one? Everyone by nature fears death and bodily decay, but the miracle of miracles is that those who share faith in the cross despise this natural fear and, for the sake of the cross, no longer cowardly tremble in the face of death. The natural property of fire is to burn. Suppose then that there is a substance such as Indian asbestos, as is known, which is not afraid of fire, but rather shows the powerlessness of fire, asserting its incombustibility. If anyone doubted the truth of this, all he had to do was put on the substance in question and then touch the fire. Or, to return to our former image, if one wished to see the tyrant bound and helpless, who was usually such a terror to others, he could do so simply by entering the country of the conqueror of the tyrant. In this case, if anyone still doubts about the victory over death after so much evidence and martyrdom in Christ with such contempt for the death of His faithful servants, then he certainly should not be surprised at the miracle of such great facts and should not be stubborn in unbelief and ignoring obvious events. But he must be like a man who wants to prove the properties of asbestos and like one who enters the domain of a conqueror to make sure that the tyrant is defeated. He must accept the faith of Christ, and this non-believer in victory over death will come to His teaching. Then he will see how powerless death is and how it is completely defeated. Indeed, there used to be many unbelievers and scoffers who, after they became believers, despised death and even became martyrs for the sake of Christ. (29) If death is trampled upon by the power of the cross and faith in Christ, then it is clear that it is Christ Himself and no one else but the Arch-Conqueror over death and who has deprived it of its power. Death was strong and terrible, but now, since the coming of the Savior and His death and resurrection of His body, it has been defeated. And it is obvious that this was done by Christ himself, who was lifted up on the cross and that she was defeated and finally defeated. When the sun rises after night and the whole world is illuminated by it, no one doubts that it is the sun that shines so much everywhere and disperses the darkness. It is also clear that since the extreme humiliation and trampling of death followed the appearance of the Savior in the body and His death on the cross, He Himself brought death to shame and daily raises up monuments of His victory in His disciples. How can you evaluate this differently when you see people naturally weak for death, not frightened by the prospect of corruption, fearless to descend into the underworld and even with an impatient soul, going towards it, not moving away from torture, but preferring to rush towards death for the sake of Christ rather than remain in this life? If you see with your own eyes women and children who accepted death for the sake of the faith of Christ, then how can you be so extremely stupid and distrustful and damaged in your mind so as not to understand that Christ, of whom they testify, Himself gives victory to everyone over death, which is completely powerless for those who hold to His faith and the sign of His cross? No one doubts that a snake is dead when he sees it trampled underfoot, especially when he knows how insidious it is by nature. And if anyone sees how boys joke about a lion, then he has no doubt that the beast is either dead or completely devoid of strength. You can see this with your own eyes and it is the same with victory over death. There is no longer any doubt, when you see death ridiculed and despised by those who believe in Christ, it means that by the death of Christ it was defeated and the corruption that accompanies it was defeated and put an end to it. (30) What we have said is indeed no small proof of the destruction of death and the fact that the cross of the Lord is a monument to His victory. But the resurrection of the body into immortality, which completes the work of Christ, our Savior and the true Life of all, is more reliable by facts than by the words of sane people. For if, as we have shown, death was defeated and everyone tramples on it because of Christ, how much more did He Himself first trample it and defeat it in His own body! If death, slain by Him, is conquered, then what other consummation could there be than the resurrection of His body and the appearance as a sign of His victory? How could the defeat of death have appeared at all if the Lord had not been resurrected? But if someone finds even this insufficient, then let him find proof of what was said in real facts. Dead people cannot act effectively; their power of influence on others lasts only until the grave. Deeds and actions that provide strength to others belong only to the living. Okay, then let's look at the facts in this case. The Savior works mightily among men, every day He invisibly persuades multitudes to accept His faith and be obedient to His teaching throughout the world both within and without the Greek-speaking world. Can anyone, in the face of this, still doubt that He has risen and lives, or moreover, that He is Life Himself? Can a dead person prick the conscience of people so that they throw all the traditions of their fathers to the wind and bow before the teachings of Christ? If He is no longer active in the world, if He is dead, then how is it that He induces the living to cease their affairs, unfaithful spouses to turn away from their adultery, murderers from murder, the unjust from greed, and worldly and godless people to become pious? If He is not resurrected but is still dead, then how does He defeat and persecute and overthrow the false gods that unbelievers think are alive and the evil spirits that they worship? For where Christ is called, idolatry is destroyed and the cunning of evil spirits is overthrown. Indeed, no spirit can bear this Name, but flees from it. This is the work of the One who lives and is not dead. And moreover, this is the work of God. It would be absurd to say that the evil spirits whom He casts out and the idols which He destroys are alive, but that He who casts out and destroys, and whom they themselves affirm as the Son of God, is dead. (31) Then those who do not believe in the resurrection have no basis in fact, unless their gods and evil spirits conquer, as they think, the dead Christ. Moreover, He testified of them that they were dead. We agree that a dead man can do nothing, but the Savior works mightily every day, drawing men to godliness, inspiring virtue in them, teaching them to shun wickedness, quickening their thirst for heavenly things, revealing the knowledge of the Father, giving strength in the face of death, appearing to everyone, displacing the false religion of idols. While the gods and evil spirits of unbelievers cannot do any of this, but rather fade in the presence of Christ and all their ostentatious luxury is sterile and not alive. By the power of the cross, everyone abandons magic and witchcraft, all idols are left desolate and rejected, all insensitive pleasure ceases, since the eyes of faith look from earth to heaven. Who will we call dead? Shall we call Christ dead, who does all this? But a dead person cannot produce anything. Or will we call death dead, which cannot do anything, but lies lifeless and disarmed, like evil spirits and idols? The Son of God "living and active" is active every day and gives salvation to all, but the disempowerment of death is daily confirmed, and idols and evil spirits are dead, not He. There is no room for doubt about the resurrection of His body. Indeed, it seems that anyone who does not believe in the bodily resurrection of the Lord does not know about the power of the Word and the Wisdom of God. If He took upon Himself a body in general and made it an instrument for the fulfillment of His purpose, as we have shown, then what was the Lord to do with it and what was the eventual fate of this body in which the Word appeared? Mortal and offered death for all, he had no choice but to die. Indeed, this was the very purpose for which the Savior prepared him for Himself. But on the other hand, it could not remain dead, because it had become the very church of Life. Therefore it died as a mortal, but came to life again because of the Life within it; and the resurrection is confirmed by the works now taking place. (32) It is in accordance with the nature of the invisible God that He should thus be known by His works; and those who doubt the resurrection of the Lord because they now do not see Him with their own eyes might as well deny the very laws of nature. They have reason to be distrustful when the works are few, but when the works cry out and prove the fact so clearly, why do they deliberately deny the resurrected life so clearly demonstrated? Even if their mental faculties are defective, their eyes can give them irrefutable proof of the Deity and Authority of Christ. A blind man cannot see the sun, but he knows that it is higher than the earth by the senses that allow him to feel its warmth. In the same way, let those who are still in the blindness of unbelief acknowledge the Godhead and resurrection of Christ, which He has revealed through His manifested power in others. Obviously He would not cast out evil spirits or cast down idols if He were dead, for evil spirits will not obey one who is dead. If only His name drives them out, then it is clear that He is not dead. And moreover, the spirits who see what is unseen by men would know if He were dead and would refuse to obey Him. But, in fact, what the stupid ones doubt, the evil spirits are completely convinced of, namely, that He is God. And for this reason they run from Him and fall at His feet and shout as they shouted when He was in the body: “We know You, who You are, the Holy One of God” and, “What have I in common with You, Son of God? I beg You, don’t torture me.” And from the confession of evil spirits and from the daily testimony of His works, it is clear that no one can doubt that the Savior has risen in His body and that He is the very Son of God, from God as the Father, whose Word and Wisdom and whose Power He is. He is the One who in these last days took on a body to save us all and taught the world about the Father. He is the One who defeated death and freely gave us all incorruption through the promise of resurrection, resurrecting His body as the firstborn and revealing it with the sign of the cross as a monument to His victory over death and corruption. Chapter 6. Refutation of the Jews (33) We have by this time dealt with the incarnation of our Savior and have found clear evidence of the resurrection of His Body and His victory over death. Let us now proceed and examine the unbelief and ridicule with which Jews and Gentiles regard the same facts. It seems that in both cases the points in the problem are the same, namely, the inconsistency or incompatibility (as it seems to them) of both the cross and the becoming of the Word by man in general. But we have no hesitation in arguing against these objectors, for the evidence on our side is extremely clear. We will look at the Jews first. Their unbelief is refuted in the Holy Scriptures, which they themselves read; for from page to page in the inspired Book these things are clearly taught both in their entirety and in actual words. The prophets predicted the miracle of the Virgin and the Birth from her, saying: “Behold, a virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and they will call His name Immanuel, which means “God is with us.” And Moses the great, whose word the Jews trust less faithfully, also pointed out the importance and truth of this matter. He puts it this way: “A star will rise from Jacob and a man from Israel, and He will crush the princes of Moab.” And again: “How beautiful are your dwellings, O Jacob, and your tents, O Israel! Like wooded valleys they give shade and like groves by the rivers, like tents that the Lord has blessed, like cedar trees by the streams. From there He will come from his seed, and He will reign over many nations.” And Isaiah also says: “Before the child can call for father or mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria will be taken by the king of Assyria.” These words predict that Man is about to appear. And Holy Scripture further declares that He who comes is the Lord of all. “Behold, the Lord is seated on a cloud and will enter Egypt, and the images of Egypt will be shaken.” And from Egypt also the Father calls Him, as it is said: “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” (34) Moreover, Holy Scripture is not silent about His death. On the contrary, it mentions it with utmost clarity. It also does not hide its reasons. He endured it, it testifies, not for His own benefit, but for the sake of immortality and the salvation of all, and it also contains evidence of the conspiracy of the Jews against Him and all the outrages that He suffered at their hands. Of course, no one who reads the Holy Scriptures can excuse ignorance of the facts as an excuse for error! There is, for example, the following passage: “... he who was smitten and knew weakness, we also turned away from Him. He was disgraced and humiliated and bore our sins and suffered for us. And we thought that He was struck and beaten and that He was treated wrongly, but for our sins He was tormented and for the sake of our iniquity He became weak. The chastisement of our world was upon Him, and by His stripes we were healed.” Oh, how wonderful is the love of the Word for people, for for our sake He was disgraced in order to bring us to honor. “For we all,” the prophet continues, “turned aside like sheep from the path, and the Lord laid our sins on Him, but He did not open His mouth, enduring cruelty. As He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb He was silent before the shearers, so He opened His mouth; and in His humiliation our condemnation was extinguished.” Thus the Holy Scripture meets the suppositions of anyone who thought of His sufferings as those of an ordinary man, and shows what power was at work in Him. “Who can say from what race He comes? For He is lifted up from the land of the living. For the iniquities of the people He suffered death and His funeral was decided with the villains, but He was buried with a rich man, since He did not commit any iniquity and there was no deception in His mouth. But it pleased the Lord to strike Him.” (35) You have heard the prophecy of His death, and now perhaps you want to know what evidence there is about the cross. Even this is not ignored; on the contrary, the sacred authors declare it with utmost clarity. Moses predicts this first in the words: “You will see your Life hanging before your eyes and you will not believe it.” After him, the prophets also testify: “But I was sacrificed like an innocent lamb. They plotted against Me, saying, “Come, let us throw wood into His bread and remove Him from the land of the living.” And again: “They pierced My hands and My feet, counted all My bones, and divided My clothes among themselves and cast lots for them.” Death with the ascension on the tree cannot be other than death on the cross; it is also the only death in which the arms and legs are pierced. Since the coming of the Savior, all peoples everywhere began to know God, and the Holy Scripture itself clearly mentions this: “The Root of Jesse will appear and He will reign over the nations and the tribes will trust in Him.” Not only are these not the only places in evidence of what happened, but the entire Holy Scripture is replete with a refutation of Jewish unbelief. For example, which of the righteous people and holy prophets and patriarchs mentioned in the Holy Scriptures ever had a bodily birth only from a virgin? Abel was born from Adam, Enoch from Jared, Noah from Lamech, Abraham from Terah, Isaac from Abraham, Jacob from Isaac, right? Judah is from Jacob and Moses and Aaron are from Amiram, right? Samuel from Elkanah, David from Jesse, Solomon from David, Hezekiah from Ahaz, Josiah from Ammon, Isaiah from Amos, Jeremiah from Hilkiah, and Ezekiel from Buzi. Did not each of them have a father as the author of his being? So who is He, born only of a virgin, the sign of which the prophet so strongly emphasizes? And also, which of all these people was born into the world with a star in the heavens? When Moses was born, his parents hid him. David was unknown even in his own neighborhood, so much so that the mighty Samuel himself was unaware of his existence and asked whether Jesse had other sons. Abraham became known to his neighbors as great only after his birth. But with Christ it was different. The witness of His birth was not a man, but a star shining from the heavens from which He came. (36) When has any king ever reigned and taken tribute from his enemies before he had the power to call his father or mother? Was not David thirty years of age when he ascended the throne, and when Solomon became a youth? Joash began to reign at the age of seven, and Josiah some time later at about the same age, and both of them were quite capable by this time of calling their father or mother. Was there one who reigned and conquered his enemies before he was born? Let the Jews who have investigated this question tell us whether there has ever been such a king in Israel or Judah, a king in whom all nations will trust and have peace, instead of hostility with him, each on his own! As long as Jerusalem exists, there is a constant war between them and they all fought against Israel. The Assyrians oppressed Israel, the Egyptians persecuted them, the Babylonians attacked them, and what's strange is that even the Syrians, their relatives, were at war with them. And did not David fight against Moab and defeat the Syrians, and Hezekiah feared the boasting of Sennacherib? Didn’t Amalek fight with Moses and the Amorites oppose him, and didn’t the inhabitants of Jericho rise up against Joshua? Have not the nations always looked upon Israel with implacable hostility? Then it is worth asking, who is the one in whom the nations will trust? Obviously there must be someone, for the prophet could not tell a lie. But which of the holy prophets or early patriarchs died on the cross for the salvation of all? Which of them was tortured and killed for the healing of all? Did the idols of Egypt fall before any righteous man or king who came there? Abraham went there, but idolatry still prevailed and Moses was born there, but the unfaithful worship did not stop. (37) Does Scripture speak of someone whose hands and feet were pierced or hanged on a tree and who through the cross made his sacrifice for the salvation of all? It was not Abraham, for he died in his bed, nor Isaac and Jacob. Moses and Aaron died on the mountain, and David ended his days in his home without any conspiracy against him. Of course, Saul was looking for him, but he was kept unharmed. And Isaiah was sawn apart, but he was not hanged on a tree. They mocked Jeremiah, but he did not die from the trial. Ezekiel suffered, but not for all people, but only to show them what would happen. In addition, all of them, even when they suffered, were just people like others, and He, Whom the Holy Scriptures speak of as suffering for everyone, is not just a person, but the Life of all, although in fact He shared our human nature. “You will see your Life hanging before your eyes” and “who can tell about His origin?” We can trace the path of every saint from the beginning, and see exactly where he came from, but we cannot trace where the Divine Word comes from, tell about His origin, for He is Life. Who then is He of whom Holy Scripture speaks in this way? Who is He, so great that even the prophets predict His mighty deeds? There is no one like it at all in the scriptures except our Savior of all, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. He came from a virgin and came as a man to earth, He is the One whose earthly origin cannot be traced, because He alone received His body not from a human father, but from a virgin. We can trace the paternal line of David and Moses and all the patriarchs. But in the case of the Savior we cannot do so, for He Himself caused a star to announce His bodily birth and it was fitting for Him that when the Word came down from heaven they should show a sign of it and it befits Him that the King of creation at His coming should be visibly revealed to the whole world. He was born in Judea, but people from Persia came to worship Him. He is the One who defeated His demonic opponents and accepted gifts from the idolaters even before His bodily appearance, and now all the pagans from every region abandon the tradition of their fathers and the false worship of idols and now place their hope in Christ and give their allegiance to Him. This is happening before our eyes, here in Egypt, and thus another prophecy is fulfilled, for at no other time did the Egyptians cease their false worship, except the time when the Lord of all, as on a cloud, descended here in body and dishonored the idols and subjugated everyone to Himself and through Himself the Father. He is the One who was crucified with the sun and moon as witnesses, and through His death salvation came to all people and all creation was redeemed. He is the Life of all, and He, like a sheep, gave His body to death and His life for our salvation. (38) Yet the Jews do not believe this. This argument does not satisfy them. Okay, then let them be convinced of their own prophecies by other things. About whom, for example, do the prophets say, “I revealed myself to those who did not seek me, and I was found by those who did not ask about me?” I said, “Here am I,” to the people who were called by my name. I have stretched out My hands to disobedient and contradictory people." Who is this man who revealed himself, let us ask the Jews? If the prophet speaks about himself, then they must tell us how he was first hidden in order to later be revealed. Also, who exactly is this prophet if he not only revealed himself after being hidden, but also stretched out his hands on the cross? This did not happen to any of the righteous people, it happened only to the Word of God, Who, being by nature without a body, appeared in the body for our sake and suffered for us all. And if even this is not enough for them, then there is another strong evidence with which they can be silenced. Holy Scripture says: “Strengthen your hanging hands and weak knees, take courage, you of little faith, be strong, and do not be afraid. Behold, our God will announce judgment and Himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf will hear, and the tongue-tied will speak clearly.” What can they say to this and how can they face everyone? For the prophecy not only declares that God will be here, but also gives several signs and times of His coming. When God comes, the blind will see, the lame will walk, the deaf will hear, and the tongue-tied will speak clearly. Can the Jews tell us when such phenomena occurred in Israel, or when anything similar took place in Judah at all? Naaman the leper was cleansed, that's true, but no deaf man heard, no lame man walked. Elijah raised the dead and so did Elisha, but no one gave sight to a man born blind. Raising the dead is truly a great thing, but the Savior did more than that. And the Holy Scriptures do not remain silent regarding the leper and the dead son of the widow and the lame man who walked, and they also mention the blind man who received his sight. The silence of the Jews about this proves that such cases never took place. When did this happen before the Word of God Himself entered the body? Was it with His coming that the lame began to walk, the tongue-tied to speak, and the blind from birth received sight? And the Jews, who saw it for themselves, testified to this fact, that such a thing had never happened before, “since the world began,” as they said. “For no one has ever heard of anyone opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this Man was not from God, He could do nothing." (39) But they, of course, cannot fight against obvious facts. How can it be that, without rejecting what is written, they adhere to the fact that they are still waiting for it and that the Word of God must yet come, for this is the topic about which they always trumpet most loudly, despite all the evidence against them. But they must be refuted in this main point more clearly than in any other, and that not by us, but by the wise Daniel, the actual time of the coming of the Savior and also His Divine presence in our midst is shown. “Seventy weeks,” he says, “are measured out for your people and for the holy city to put an end to sin and to seal sins, to blot out iniquities, to make atonement for iniquities and to seal the vision and the prophet and to anoint the Holy of Holies. Therefore know and understand that from the appearance of the Word and the building of Jerusalem until Christ the Ruler.” As for other prophecies, they may try to find excuses for postponing their fulfillment until the future, but what will they say to this? How can they even stand in front of him? And not only does it clearly mention the Anointed One, who is Christ, but it even says that the anointed one is not only a man, but the Holy of Holies! It says that Jerusalem must stand until His arrival and that after that the prophet and vision must cease in Israel! David was anointed and Solomon and Hezekiah, but then Jerusalem still stood and the prophets prophesied, Gad and Asaph and Nathan and the later ones: Isaiah and Hosea and Amos and others. Moreover, those who were anointed were of course called saints, but not one of them was called the Holy of Holies. And it makes no sense for the Jews to resort to an explanation with the help of the Captivity and say that Jerusalem did not exist then, but then what about the prophets? But the fact is that at the beginning of the Captivity there was Daniel and Jeremiah was in it and Ezekiel and Haggai and Zechariah also prophesied. (40) So the Jews engage in fiction and shift the present tense to the future. When did the prophet and vision cease in Israel? Hasn't this been the case since Christ, the Holy of Holies, came? This is the actual sign and well-known proof of the coming of the Word, that Jerusalem no longer stands, and that there are no prophets and no vision among them. And naturally, since He has come, what need is there still to wait for someone? And when the Truth appeared, why are shadows needed? Only about Him they prophesied constantly, until the fullness of time came for the manifestation of Righteousness, who became the Propitiation for the sins of all. For the same reason, Jerusalem stood until this time, so that people could have a foretaste of the images before the Truth was revealed. And as soon as the Holy of Holies came, the vision and prophecy were sealed. And the kingdom of Jerusalem ceased at that very time, because the kings were anointed among them only until the Holy of Holies was anointed. Moses also prophesies about this, namely, that the kingdom of Israel should endure until Him, saying: “The ruler of Judah will not cease, and the rulers from between his feet, until the Expectation of all nations comes.” And so the Savior Himself always said: “The Law and the Prophets were before John.” So if there is still a king or a prophet or a vision among the Jews, then they are right in denying that Christ came, but if there is neither a king nor a vision, and since that time all the prophecies have been sealed, and the city and church captured, how can they be so unbelieving, how can they be so ignorant of the facts, denying Christ who fulfilled all these things? And yet, they see the pagans leaving idols and trusting through Christ in the God of Israel, why do they still deny Christ, who was born from the root of Jesse and began to reign? Of course, if the pagans worshiped some other god and did not recognize the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses, then they could prove that God did not come. But if the Gentiles honor the same God who gave the law to Moses and the promises to Abraham, the God whose Word was also reviled by the Jews, why do they not recognize, or why do they deliberately refuse to acknowledge, that the Lord of whom the Holy Scriptures prophesied has shone forth to the world and appeared to it in bodily form? Holy Scripture speaks about this repeatedly. “The Lord, God appeared to us” and also “He sent His Word and healed them.” And again, “It was not a messenger or an angel who saved us, but the Lord Himself.” The Jews are like some drunken man who sees the earth illuminated by the sun, but denies the sun that illuminates it! What else will the One they are waiting for do when He comes? Will he call the pagans? But they have already been called. Will the prophecy and the king and the vision cease? But this has also already happened. Will expose the apostasy of idols? It has already been exposed and condemned. Or will death destroy? It's already destroyed. What did not happen that Christ would not have done? What is left undone that the Jews do not believe so unenlightened? It is an obvious fact, as I said, that there is no longer any king or prophet, no Jerusalem, no sacrifice, no vision among them, yet the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of God and the Gentiles, leaving atheism, now have recourse to the God of Abraham through the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ. Then it should be more shameless for them that Christ has come and that He has enlightened all people everywhere and given them the true and divine teaching about His Father. Thus the Jews can be refuted by these and other arguments of Divine teaching. Chapter 7. Refutation of the Gentiles (41) We have now come to the unbelief of the pagans, and it is very surprising that they laugh at what is not at all funny, and yet are not able to see the shame and absurdity of their own idols. But our side's arguments do not lack weight, so we will refute them also on reasonable grounds from what we ourselves see. First of all: What is absurd or funny for them in our faith? Are we the only ones who say that the Word appeared in a body? But if they themselves really love the truth, then they will agree with us that there is no absurdity in this at all. If they deny that there is a Word of God in general, then this is very unusual, because then it is funny that they do not know this. But suppose that they acknowledge that there is the Word of God and that He is the King of all things, that in Elim the Father is the creator, that by His providence all things receive light and life and existence, and that He is the King over all and is known through the works of His providence, and through Him the Father. Suppose they admit all this, then what? Don't they unconsciously turn the ridicule against themselves? The Greek philosophers say that the universe is a great body and they say it correctly, for we perceive the universe and its parts with our senses. But if the Word of God abides in the universe, which is a body and has entered into every part of it, then what is surprising or absurd in our saying that He also entered into human nature? If it is absurd for Him to incarnate at all, then it will be absurd for Him to enter the universe and give light and movement by His providence to everything in it, because the universe, as we have seen, is a body. But if it is fitting and fitting for Him to enter into the universe and manifest Himself through it, then because humanity is a part of the universe along with the rest of its parts, it is no less fitting for Him to appear in a human body and enlighten and act through it. And of course, if it would be absurd for any part of the universe to be used for the manifestation of His Divinity to men, it would be much more untrue if He manifested Himself through everything! (42) Let's take a parallel example. A person's personality activates and animates his entire body. If someone says that it is not proper for a person's power to be in his toe, he will be thought of as stupid, because the personality penetrates and activates his whole body, and he denies its presence in any part. Also, no one who recognizes the presence of the Word of God in the entire universe should think that it is not fitting for Him to be in a separate human body and for it to be activated and enlightened by Him. But maybe because humanity was created and formed from nothingness, they consider the appearance of the Savior in our nature absurd? If so, then they must also reject Him in creation; for it also came from non-existence by the Word. But on the other hand, if the creation is actually created, then if it is not fitting for the Word to be present in it, then it is not fitting for Him to be in man. But man is a part of creation, as I said before; and the reasoning applied to each part of it is acceptable to the other. Everything came from the Word, light and movement and life, just as the pagan authors themselves say: “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Very good. If so, then it is by no means absurd for the Word to remain in man. But if it is as we have said, and the Word used this way to express itself, then what is funny about it? He might not use it and not exist in it, but we have already accepted that He is present in everything and in parts. What is then incredible about His appearance in the body in which He was? By His own power He enters completely into part and into everything and controls everywhere with His will, and He wished to reveal both Himself and the Father through the sun or the moon or the sky or the earth or fire or water. If He did this, then no one can rightly accuse Him of acting inconsistently with Him, since He contains everything at once in one whole, abiding invisibly not only in everything, but also in each particular part. If this is so, then He wished to reveal Himself through people who are part of everything and there can be nothing funny in His use of the human body to reveal the truth and knowledge of the Father. Does not the mind of man permeate his whole being and yet find expression only through one part, namely the tongue? Does anyone say that Reason has degraded? Of course not. But then there is no problem in the fact that the Word penetrates everything and appears in the human body. For, as I said before, if it is not fitting for Him to exist in such a way in a part, then it will be equally unsuitable for Him to exist in everything. (43) Some may then ask: “Why did He not appear through other and nobler parts of creation and use some nobler instrument, such as the sun or moon or stars or fire or air, instead of mere man? The answer is simple. The Lord did not come to simply show Himself. He came to heal and teach suffering people. For the one who would like to appear has only the goal of appearing and blinding the observers. But He came to heal and teach, and for this it was necessary to live among those who needed Him and to appear according to the image in which they could understand it, without distorting the value of the Divine appearance and increasing their ability to understand Him. Moreover, nothing in creation has deviated from God's purpose except man. The sun, the moon, the heavens, the stars, the water, the air, not one of them strayed from their order, but, knowing the Word as their Creator and King, remained such as they were created. Only people alone rejected what was good and invented nonentities instead of truth and attributed the honor of God and the knowledge of Him to demons and images in the form of stones. Obviously Divine goodness could not miss such a serious issue. But people could not recognize Him as the ruler of the entire creation. And what does He do? He takes upon Himself the instrument of a part of the whole, namely the human body, and enters into it. Thus He provided that men should acknowledge Him in part, which they could not do in all, and that those who could not lift their eyes to His invisible power might recognize and see Him in their likeness. For, being men, they would naturally learn to know His Father more quickly, both by His presence in the body, which corresponded to their own, and by the Divine works accomplished through him. For, comparing His works with their own, they would judge that His works were not human, but Divine. And if, as they say, it was not fitting for the Word to show Himself through bodily actions, then it will equally not be fitting for Him to show Himself through works in the universe. His presence in creation does not imply that He shares its nature; on the contrary, what is created is dependent on His power. And although He used the body as an instrument, He did not separate anything bad from it, but rather sanctified it by His presence. Even Plato, whom the Greeks consider so great, says that the Creator of the Universe, seeing it destroyed and in danger of falling into a state of chaos, takes the helm of the Life Force of the universe and comes to rescue and return everything to the right track? What is then incredible in our statement that when humanity was lost, the Word descended to it and appeared as a man in order to save it from chaos by His goodness and control? (44) However, although ashamed that this objection is invalid, the Greeks wish to raise another. They will say that if God wanted to instruct and save mankind, He could do it not through the taking of a body by His Word, but as through creation in the beginning, simply by an act of His will. The reasonable answer to this is: The circumstances in the two cases are very different. In the beginning, nothing existed at all, which means that all that had to be done was to give everything existence, and in this case, His will could only manifest itself in this way. But since man already existed, it was what already existed, and not what did not exist, that required healing. This means that the Healer and Savior had to reconcile Himself with pre-existing things in order to correct the existing evil. For this reason, He became a man and used the body as His human instrument. If this was not in accordance with His desire to use any instrument at all, what else could the Word have done? And where could He have taken any means for Himself, if not from among those that already existed and needed His Divinity through one like Himself? What does not exist does not need to be saved, because the problem of what does not exist can be solved with a creative word, but a person who already exists and is already in the process of decay and destruction can only be saved. It was natural and right for the Word to use a human instrument and through it to reveal itself to all. You should also know that decay was not external to the body, but inside it. Therefore, life was needed, which had to appear in the place of corruption so that, just as death was in the body, life could also appear in it. If death was external to the body, then life could be correspondingly the same. But if death was within the body, in the very tissues of its being, and dominated it as one with it, then Life was needed, which had to be inserted in place of the former so that the body, thus sharing unity with life, could throw away corruption from itself. Suppose the Word came outside the body instead of coming in it. He, of course, will defeat death, because death is powerless against Life. But the corruption inherent in the body would nevertheless remain in it. Therefore, naturally the Savior took the body upon Himself, so that the body, united with life, would no longer remain mortal, but enslave death, but as endowed with immortality and resurrected from death, it should henceforth remain immortal. Being corruptible, it could not be resurrected if it were not endowed with Life, and besides this, death by its nature could not appear otherwise than in the body. Therefore He put on a body, so that in the body He could conquer death. And indeed, how would the Lord prove that He is Life if He did not endow with life that which was subject to death? Let's take an illustration. Wood is a substance that is naturally susceptible to fire. And she remains exposed to it from the threat of fire, which has the natural ability to consume her, even if the fire is far from her. But suppose that instead of simply storing it from fire, someone impregnated the wood with asbestos, a substance believed to be fire-resistant. Then the wood is no longer afraid of fire, because it has something that fire cannot touch and is therefore safe. Also in relation to the body and death. Having removed death from the body by a simple command, it will still remain mortal and corruptible in nature. To prevent this, it puts on the immaterial Word of God and therefore no longer fears death or corruption, for it has put on Life as a garment and in it corruption has been removed. (45) The Word of God worked so consistently in taking on the body and using human instruments to give life to other bodies. He was consistent in working through man to manifest Himself everywhere as well as through the other parts of His creation, so that nothing remained untouched by His Divinity and knowledge. I return now to the point I spoke of before, namely, that the Savior did this to fill everything with the knowledge of Himself, since everything was already filled with His creative presence, just as the Holy Scriptures say: “...the whole universe was filled with the knowledge of the Lord.” If a man looks to the heavens, he will see His structure there, but if he cannot look as high as the heavens, but only in the sphere of men, then through His works, which he sees, His power, incomparable with man, would make him convinced that He alone among men is the Word of God. Or if a person is lost from the action of demons and is afraid of them, then he can see that this Man casts them out and judges them, which means He is truly their Master. And yet, if a person believes in water and thinks that it is God, as the Egyptians believe and worship water, then he can see that its very nature has been transformed by Him and know that the Lord is the Creator of everything. And if a person has descended into the Underworld and stands, gripped by fear of the heroes who have descended there, and considers them gods, then he can see the fact of the resurrection of Christ and His victory over death and judge from this that He alone is the Lord and God Himself. For the Lord has touched every part of creation and freed them all from every deception. Like St. Paul says: “He disarmed the principalities and powers, and He gained the victory on the cross,” so that no one would remain deceived, but could find the Word of God everywhere. For thus man, surrounded on every side by the works of creation, in heaven, in hell, in men, and on earth, beholding the revealed Divinity of the Word, was no longer deceived about God, but worshiped Christ alone, and through Him truly knew the Father. On these grounds of reasoning and principle we silence the heathen in their counter-arguments. But if they consider these arguments insufficient to refute them, then we will continue others in the next chapter, in which we will prove our point of view with facts. Chapter 8. Refutation of the pagans. Continuation. (46) When did people begin to abandon the worship of idols, if not since the Word of God Himself came to people? When did the predictors stop broadcasting and their message became meaningless among the Greeks and everywhere except at the time of the Savior’s appearance on earth? When have those whom poets call gods and heroes been condemned to the fate of mere mortals, except since the Lord took on a mortal body and preserved it incorruptible by rising from the dead? Or when has the deceit and fury of demons been trampled upon, except since the Word, by the power of God, the Lord of all, condescended to the weaknesses of mankind and appeared on earth? When did the practice and teaching of magic begin to be rejected, if not with the revelation of the Divine Word to men? When did the wisdom of the Greeks become stupidity if not since the true Wisdom of God revealed itself on earth? In the past, the whole world was under the delusion of idol worship and people thought that only idols could exist. But now all over the world people are leaving the fear of idols and running to Christ and, worshiping Him as God, through Him they come to know the Father, Whom they did not know before. And here's what's surprising. The objects of worship were formerly varied and innumerable; every place had its own idol, and the so-called god in one place could not go to another to persuade the people there to worship him, but was only worshiped by his own people. Isn't that right?! No one worshiped his neighbor's god, but each man had his own idol and thought that it was the Lord of all. But now only Christ is worshiped as the only and the same God among all nations everywhere. And what the insignificance of idols could not do, namely, convince those nearby, He did. He convinced not only His own, but literally the whole world to worship the same Lord and, through Him, the Father. (47) In former times every place was full of the fraud of soothsayers, and their sayings in Delphi and the Dordogne and in Boethia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and Kabiri and Pythonesus were considered amazing to the people. But now, since Christ is preached everywhere, their madness also ceased and there were no soothsayers left among them at all. Demons deceived human minds into thinking that their place of residence was in streams or rivers or trees or stones, and so they deceived ordinary people with their fraud. But now, since the Divine appearance of the Word, all this fantasy has ceased because of the sign of the cross, and if a person uses it, then he drives out their deceptions. People used to regard as gods those who are mentioned by poets: Zeus and Kronos and Apollo and the heroes, and in worshiping them they went astray. But now, when the Savior appeared among people, they began to be revered as mortal people, and only Christ was recognized as the true God, the Word of God, God Himself. And who could say about magic that it is so amazing? Before the coming of the Word, it was strong and active among the Egyptians and Chaldeans and Hindus and filled all who saw it with horror and wonder. But by the coming of Truth and the appearance of the Word, it was also refuted and completely destroyed. Regarding Greek wisdom and the noisy controversy among philosophers, I think that no one requires us to argue about an amazing fact accessible to everyone, for everything that they wrote so abundantly failed to convince even some of their own neighborhood in immortality and a virtuous way of life. Christ alone, using ordinary speech and through people who did not know how to use their languages, convinced entire nations throughout the world to despise death and listen to eternal life, to cast aside the temporal and peer into the eternal, not to think about earthly glory and to strive only for immortality. (48) What we have said are not just words: They are attested by actual experience. Anyone can see the proof of glory in the virgins of Christ and in the young men who have continence as part of their piety and their confidence in immortality on such a large scale that they associate with the martyrs. Anyone can take what we have said as proof of experience in another way. In the presence of the fraud of demons and self-proclaimed soothsayers and miracles of magic, let him apply the sign of the cross, which they all mock, say in the Name of Christ, then he will see how the demons are defeated through Him and the predictions cease and all magic and witchcraft are confused. Who is this Christ and how great is He, Whose Name and presence overshadows and conquers all this everywhere, Who alone is so strong against all and has filled the whole world with His teaching? Let the Greeks answer us, who mock Him shamelessly. If He is a man, then how did one man prove his power over all those whom they consider to be gods and show them by His power that they are nothing? If they call Him a miracle worker, then how does this miracle worker destroy all magic, instead of establishing it? Did He defeat only some miracle workers, or was He superior to only one of them, so that they could reasonably judge that He surpassed the others with His great skill? But there is a fact that His cross conquered all magic completely and even the name of the cross. It is obvious that the Savior is not a miracle worker, for the very demons whom miracle workers call upon flee from Him as from their Master. Who is He then? Let the Hellenes, whose most serious goal is ridicule, answer us! Perhaps they will say that He is also a demon, and that is why He was victorious. But even in this case, laughter is on our side, since we can refute them with the same evidence as before. How does He, being a demon, cast them out? If there were only a few whom He drove out, they might reasonably believe that He was conquering them by the power of their prince, as the Jews believed, wishing only to blaspheme Him. But the fact that at the mere mention of His Name, all the madness of the demons is defeated and put to flight, shows that the Greeks are mistaken, and our Lord and Savior, Christ, is not a demonic force, as they believe. If the Savior is neither just a man, nor a miracle worker and not one of the demons, but by His Divinity overthrows the opinions of poets and the errors of demons and the wisdom of the Greeks, then it should be clear and acceptable to everyone that He is in truth the Son of God, the eternally existing Word and Wisdom and Power of the Father. This is the reason why His deeds are not simple human deeds, but proper to God and, in comparison with human ones, superhuman, in truth the deeds of God. (49) What man ever formed a body for himself from a virgin? Or what man ever healed so many diseases as the Lord of all? Who restored what was missing in human nature or made the blind from birth sighted? Aesculapius was idolized by the Greeks because he practiced the art of healing and found herbs as remedies for bodily illnesses, and of course he did not himself form them from the earth, but explored them through the study of nature. But what is this compared to what the Savior did, when not only by healing, He also formed something in a person and restored to health what He created? Hercules is also worshiped as a god because he fought against other people and killed wild animals in the fight. But what does this compare to what the Word did with people dying of disease and demons and even death itself? Dionysus is worshiped because he taught people drunkenness, but they mock the true Savior and Lord of all, who taught people sobriety. Enough about this for now. What will they say about the other miracles of His Divinity? When did the sun darken and the earth shake at the death of any person? Why are people dying now and dying before and this never happened? How do such miracles happen from their point of view? Now shall we leave behind the works He did in His earthly body and mention those that took place after His resurrection? Was there ever or anywhere else a man who had such a doctrine that prevailed everywhere as in one place from one end of the earth to the other so that he was worshiped everywhere? If, as they say, Christ is only a man and not the Word of God, then why do not the Greek gods prevent His entry into their regions? Or why does the Word, being with us, bring them to an end and cover them with shame from the fear of idols, so that we can listen to His teaching? (50) Before Him there were many kings and tyrants of the earth, history also tells of many among the Chaldeans and Egyptians and Hindus who were sages and miracle workers. But which of them, I do not even say after his death, but during his life, was ever able to prevail so much as to fill the whole world with his teaching and restore so great a multitude of people from the cowardly fear of idols, as our Savior subjugated them to Himself? The Greek philosophers collected many works with persuasiveness and great skill in words, but what kind of fruit do they have in comparison with the cross of Christ? Their wise thoughts were convincing enough until they died, yet even while alive their apparent influence was outraged by competition with each other, as they jealously fought and contradicted each other. But the Word of God, by the strangest paradox, teaching in a simple language, displaced the most chosen wise men into the shadows and, having overcome their teaching, drew all people to Himself and filled His own people. In addition, there is another amazing thing, namely, that having humiliated himself as a Man to death, He conquered all the sonorous sayings of the sages about idols. For whose death has ever cast out demons, or whose death has ever caused them to fear, except Christ's? For where the Savior is called, there we cast out every demon. For who ever delivered men from their natural passions so that fornicators became chaste, murderers no longer wielded the sword, and those who had previously been cowardly cowards began to live boldly? What convinced the barbarians and pagan people everywhere to cast aside their madness and listen to the teachings of peace, except faith in Christ and the sign of the cross? What else gave people such faith in immortality other than faith in Christ and the resurrection of His body? The Greeks told all sorts of false tales, but they could never claim that their idols rose from death. Indeed it never entered into their scriptures that the body could exist again after death. And one would be especially willing to listen to them about this, because with these opinions they exposed the weakness of their own idolatry, at the same time conceding to Christ the possibility of the triumph of His bodily resurrection so that through this He would be recognized by all as the Son of God. (51) Who among people, before or after his death, taught about virginity and did not consider this dignity impossible for people? But Christ our Savior and King has so conquered everyone by His teaching on this subject that even children, not yet reaching the proper age, take a vow of virginity, which exceeds the law. And who among men has ever been able to penetrate even the Scythians and Ethiopians, or the Parthians or the Armenians, or those who live beyond Hirkanija, or even the Egyptians and Chaldeans, people who listen to magic and are more than naturally enslaved by the fear of demons and wild in their habits. Moreover, who would be going to preach to them in general about worthy living and abstinence and against the worship of idols, except the Lord of all, the Power of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? Yet He is not only preached by His disciples, but also acts so convincingly upon men's understanding, that, laying aside their wild habits and abandoning the worship of their hereditary gods, they are taught to know Him, and through Him to worship the Father. And although they were all idolaters, the Greeks and Barbarians always fought with each other and were even cruel to their own relatives and family. No one could travel by land or sea at all unless armed with a sword due to their conflicting feuds with each other. Indeed, their whole life is spent with weapons and the sword replaced for them a staff and a stronghold of all help. All this time, as I said, they served idols and made sacrifices to demons, for in all this counterfeit fear that accompanied this idol worship, nothing could take them away from that warlike spirit. But it is strange that since they came to learn from Christ, as people initiated into real repentance, they put aside their murderous cruelty and were no longer inclined to war. On the contrary, for them everything is the world and there is nothing left except the desire for friendship. (52) Who then is He who did this and reconciled those who hated each other, except the beloved Son of the Father, the universal Savior Jesus Christ, who by His own love suffered for our salvation? Even from the beginning of this world, which He was to rule, this was predicted, for the Holy Scripture says: “They will beat their swords into harrows and their spears into pruning hooks, and nation will not rise up against nation and will not learn to fight.” And this is not incredible. Modern barbarians are naturally savages in their habits, and while they offer sacrifices to idols, they rage against each other in fury and cannot bear to be without weapons for even an hour. But when they hear the teaching of Christ, they immediately turn from fighting to farming and, instead of wielding swords, lift up their hands in prayer. In a word, instead of fighting each other, they take up arms against the devil and demons and defeat them with command and soundness of soul. These facts are proof of the Divinity of the Savior, since He taught people that they could never learn among idols. This is also no small revelation of the weakness and insignificance of demons and idols, for it was because they knew their own weakness that demons always led people to fight each other, fearing that if they stopped fighting, they would turn to attack the demons themselves. For, in truth, the disciples of Christ, instead of fighting each other, stood in line against the demons with their virtues and pious deeds, persecuting them and dishonoring their prince, the devil. Even their youth is self-controlled, and they endure times of trial and persevere in difficult circumstances. When they are insulted, they are patient; when they encounter robbery, they find light in it, and surprisingly, they find light even in death itself and become martyrs of Christ. (53) There is another proof of the Divinity of the Savior, which is truly extremely surprising. How could a simple man or a miracle worker or a tyrant or a king ever do so much alone? Who ever fought against the whole system of idolatry and the prince of all the demons and all the magic and all the wisdom of the Greeks at the same time, when they were all in power and prosperous and captured, except our Lord, the very Word of God? He even now invisibly exposes the errors of every person and without outside help wins all people away from all this so that those who worshiped idols now trample them underfoot. Seeming miracle workers burned their books, and the sages preferred the study of interpretations of the Gospels to everything else. They leave those whom they formerly worshiped, they worship and confess as Christ and God the One whom they mocked. Their so-called gods are broken by the sign of the cross and the crucified Savior is preached throughout the world as God and the Son of God. Moreover, the gods who were worshiped among the Greeks now fall into disrepute because of the shameful things they did, for those who accept the teachings of Christ are more chaste in life than they are. If these and similar ones are human deeds, then let someone show us similar deeds performed by people in the past and so convince us. But if they are shown that these are not the works of man, but of God, then why will the unbelievers not believe, so as not to recognize the Sovereign who made them? They can be considered as those who do not recognize God the Creator in the works of creation. For if they knew His Godhead by His power in the universe, then they also recognize that the works of Christ in the body are not human, but the works of the Savior of all, the Word of God. And if they had known this, as Paul says, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (54) He who desires to see God, who by nature is invisible and insensible, can yet feel and know Him through His works, and let him who does not see Christ with his understanding at least consider Him in bodily works and try whether they are from God or from man. If they are from man, then let him mock, but if they are from God, then let him not laugh at what is in no way a subject of contempt, but let him recognize the fact and miracle that the Divinity appeared to us in such a humble form, which through mortal immortality was revealed to us. Through the Incarnation of the Word, Reason, from Whom everything comes, was revealed as the Messenger and Holy One, the Word of God Himself. He actually took on humanity so that we could become God 2 . He appeared in body so that we could feel the Mind of the invisible Father. He suffered shame from people so that we could inherit immortality. He Himself was not wounded by this, since He is eternal and incorruptible, but with His own eternity He saved and healed the suffering people for whom He suffered. The achievements of the Savior after His Incarnation are so numerous that trying to count them is like looking out into the open sea and trying to count the waves. It is impossible to see all the waves with the eyes, since such attempts will lead to dispersion of the senses. Even if a person wants to note all the achievements of Christ in the body, he cannot do this, even recognizing them, for a superior understanding is always more than what he thinks he has understood. Since we cannot discuss even parts of His works, it would be better not to speak about them in general terms. So we'll mention one more thing and then leave it to you to be amazed. For indeed, all this is amazing and wherever a person turns his gaze to them, he sees the Divinity of the Word and is overwhelmed with awe. (55) The essence of what we said can be summarized as follows. Since the Savior came to live among us, not only has idolatry no longer increased, but it has diminished and gradually ceased. In the same way, not only does the wisdom of the Greeks no longer progress, but even disappears. And the demons, seeking to overcome people with their deceptions and predictions and witchcraft, are defeated by the sign of the cross, even if they try to fight. On the other hand, while idolatry and everything that opposes the faith of Christ are daily exhausted and weakened and falling, be sure that the teaching of the Savior is developing everywhere! Worship then the Savior, “Who is before all things” and mighty, the very Word of God, condemning those who are overcome by Him and abolished by Him. When the sun has risen, darkness no longer prevails, everything dark and hidden is driven out. Also now that the Divine manifestation of the Word has occurred, the darkness of idols no longer prevails and all parts of the world in every direction are enlightened by His teaching. When a king reigns somewhere and lives only in his own house and does not show himself, it often happens that some unbalanced people take advantage of his resignation and will declare themselves in his place. And each of them, putting on the guise of kingship, misleads the simple, who cannot enter the palace and see the real king and are misled only by hearing the name of the king. When the real king appears, he puts everything differently. Unjust officials are exposed by his presence, and people, seeing the real king, abandon those who previously led them astray. In the same way, demons enslaved people before, presenting themselves with the honor of God. But since the Word of God appeared in the body and revealed the Father to us, the deception of the demons was exposed and disappeared; and people, turning their eyes to the true God, the Word of the Father, leave idols and come to the knowledge of the true God. This is proof that Christ is God, the Word and Power of God. For when humanity ceases, but Christ remains, it is clear to everyone that what ceases is temporary, but that He who remains is God and the very Son of God, the only begotten Word. (56) Behold, Macarius, lover of Christ, we briefly taught you the confirmation of the faith of Christ and the manifestation of His Divinity to us. This is a beginning and you must continue to confirm this truth by studying the Holy Scriptures. They were written and inspired by God and we, who learned this from inspired teachers who read the Holy Scriptures and became martyrs for the Divinity of Christ, make a further contribution to your zeal to learn. From the Holy Scriptures you will also learn about His second coming to us, glorious and divine, when He will come not in humility, but in His glory, not in humiliation, but in greatness, to suffer no more, but to give us all the fruit of His cross, resurrection and incorruption. He will no longer be judged, but on the contrary, He will be the Judge Himself, He will judge each and everyone according to the deeds they have done in the body, either good or bad. Then for the good there will be the kingdom of heaven, but for those who do evil there will be outer darkness and eternal fire. So the Lord Himself says: “I say to you, after this you will see the Son of Man, on the right hand of Power, coming on the clouds of heaven in the glory of His Father.” For this Day we have one of His sayings for our preparation. “Be ready and watch, for you do not know the hour in which He will come.” And blessed Paul says: “We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, where everyone will receive according to what he did in the body, good or bad.” (57) But to study and truly understand the Holy Scriptures, a good life and a pure soul and Christian dignity are needed to guide the mind through an understanding, as far as human nature allows, of the truth about God's Word. It is impossible to understand the teachings of the saints if a person does not have a pure mind, but tries to imitate their life. Anyone who wants to look at sunlight will naturally rub their eyes, cleaning them first, to get a little closer to the purity that they are looking at. And if anyone wants to see a city or country, then he goes to that place. In the same way, anyone who wants to understand the thought of the sacred authors must first purify his own life and look up to the saints, imitating their deeds. Thus united with them in the communion of life, he will understand what is shown to them by God and will avoid the danger that threatens sinners in judgment and will receive what is reserved for the saints in the Kingdom of Heaven. This award is written about: “That which no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor has entered into the heart of any one, that God has prepared...” to those who live godly lives and love God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom and through whom to God the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit be honor and dominion and glory forever and ever. Amen. Note Translator: Perhaps this means the “Shepherd” of Hermas In the sense that they could join in with God’s nature.