論基督是一 第 1 章 第 4/5 段

My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; and he fell down also before the Father himself, saying:

Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;

nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.

{A} And indeed this is nothing else than what we were just now saying:

Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death.

But if anyone supposes that Christ came to this point out of faint-heartedness, and was grieved and distressed, being unbearably disposed toward suffering, overcome by fear and mastered by weakness, he is admittedly writing of him as not being God; but he would also, it seems, idly represent him as rebuking Peter for no reason.

{B} How do you mean? {A} For Christ said:

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and they shall mock him, and shall crucify him, and the third day he shall rise again.

But he, since he was a lover of God:

Be it far from thee, Lord, he says; this shall not be unto thee.

And what did Christ say to him? Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art a stumbling-block unto me, for thou savourest not the things of God, but the things of men.

And yet how did the disciple fail of what was fitting, in wishing to ward off the temptation from his teacher, if it was hard for him to bear and least of all endurable, and rather drove him to feebleness and was capable of crushing him—him who enjoined upon his own disciples to make light of the terrors of death and to count it as nothing to suffer, until that which seems good to God should be accomplished by them? But I marvel that, while saying that he was joined to the Only-begotten and declaring the man a sharer of the divine dignities, they cast the terrors of death behind him, so that he might be seen as we are—naked, evidently, and as having gained nothing from the divine dignities.

{B} What, then, is the account of the economy in these matters? {A} Mystical † ... † and deep and admired among those who rightly know the mystery of Christ.

For consider, I pray, the words befitting the emptying, and not unsuited to the measures of humanity, as having come about in due season and out of need, that he who is above all creation might everywhere be shown to have become as we are.

And to this will follow that other point as well.

{A} For since we became accursed through the transgression in Adam, and fell also under the snare of death, having been forsaken by God, but all things became new in Christ, and there came a return of our affairs to the original state, it was of necessity required that the second Adam, the one from heaven, the one greater than all sin, the all-pure and unprofaned firstfruits of the race—the second one, that is, Christ—should both deliver the nature of man from the penalty, and call down again upon it the favor from above and from the Father, and loose the abandonment through obedience and through complete subjection.

For he did no sin, but the nature of man was enriched in him with blamelessness and with what is utterly beyond reproach, so that it might thenceforth be able, out of boldness, to cry aloud:

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? For consider that the Only-begotten, having become man, as one of us and on behalf of the whole nature, sent up such utterances, all but saying:

The first man transgressed, slipped into disobedience, neglected the commandment given, and was carried off by the deceits of the serpent into refractoriness;

for this very reason, and quite fittingly, he was subjected to corruption and came under penalty.

But me thou hast planted as a second beginning for those upon the earth, and I have been called the second Adam.

In me thou seest the nature of man cleansed, having set right what was faultless, holy and all-pure.

I have conquered even Satan himself, who of old prevailed.

For he found in me absolutely nothing of his own.

Such, then, I think, is the sense of the Saviour's words.

For he was calling down the favor from the Father not so much upon himself as upon us ourselves.

For just as into the whole nature of man, as from the first root—I mean Adam—there passed the things that are from wrath—for death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression—so too the things from our second firstfruits, that is, Christ, will again pass into the whole human race; and the all-wise Paul confirms it, saying:

For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more by the righteous act of the one shall the many live.

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

{B} It is therefore unwise and altogether discordant with the sacred Scriptures to suppose and to say that the assumed man, as forsaken by the Word joined to him, made use of the human utterances.

For since they everywhere separate and divide both utterances and deeds, and have apportioned some to the Only-begotten alone and in his own right, but others to one who is another Son alongside him and from a woman, on this account they have missed the straight and most unerring road and the clear knowledge of the mystery of Christ.

{B} Are we not, then, to divide utterances or deeds, when the gospel and apostolic proclamations are brought forward into the midst? {A} By no means—at least as regards two persons and two subsistences divided from one another, and separated utterly into the individual and apportioned.

For since there is one Son, the Word who became man for our sake, I would say that all are his—both utterances and deeds, both those befitting God and moreover those that are human.

{B} Then, even if he is said to have grown weary from the journey, and to have hungered and partaken of sleep, would it be fitting, tell me, to attribute things so small and lowly to God the Word? {A} To one still bare and not yet enfleshed, and before he lowered himself unto emptying, it would least of all befit—for you think rightly.

...thus again, by an economic appropriation proper to him, and according to the mode of the union, the weaknesses of the flesh.

For he was likened in all things to his brethren, apart from sin alone.

And do not marvel if we say that he, together with the flesh, made his own the weaknesses of the flesh; whence also he again attributed to himself the outward insults brought upon him by the perversity of the Jews, saying through the voice of the Psalmist:

All they that see me laughed me to scorn; they shot out the lip, they wagged the head.

{B} Then, even if he should perchance say:

He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.

I and the Father are one—and then, to the Jews:

Why seek ye to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth which I heard from God?—shall we grant that both these and those utterances belong to one and the same? {A} Most assuredly.

For Christ is in no way divided, but is believed by all who worship him to be one and only and the true Son.

For the image of the invisible God, the brightness of the glory of the subsistence of the Father, the express image of his substance, took the form of a servant—not as having joined a man to himself, as they say, but rather having himself come to be in it, and yet having remained even so in the likeness to God and the Father.

The all-wise Paul, at any rate, wrote:

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

For observe how, in the face of Christ, the illumination of the divine and ineffable glory of God the Father shines forth.

For only thus, and not otherwise, is Christ conceived and named.

Or else let the adversaries teach us in what way one could discern, as in a common man, the illumination of the divine glory, or the full knowledge of it.

For we shall not see God in the form of a man, except only in the Word who became as we are and was made man, and yet remained even so by nature and in truth a Son; it was possible to see this too, paradoxically, insofar as he is conceived as God.

And so the steward of his mysteries, having named him Christ Jesus, as having become as we are and been enfleshed, knows him to be, together with this, by nature and in truth God.

But I have written the more boldly unto you in some measure, as putting you in remembrance, because of the grace given me of God, that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God.

And Zacharias too prophesies to his own child, I mean the Baptist:

And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest;

for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare a people for him.

Then the inspired Baptist pointed out the Highest and Lord, saying:

Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.

This is he of whom I said:

After me cometh a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me.

Is it then permitted to doubt that he who is one and only and truly Son is the Word from God the Father, together with the flesh united to him—not a soulless one, as some say, but ensouled rationally, and one person with it everywhere? {B} I would doubt it least of all.

For there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

But if Jesus is said to advance in stature and wisdom and grace, who is the one who came to be in these things? For being full and self-complete, the Word from God the Father—what could he receive, and in respect of what would the increase, or the advance, be? And being himself Wisdom, he could not be said to be receptive of wisdom.†

† We must therefore inquire, they say, concerning whom these things might occur.

...that some are unable to reach the depth of the sacred Scriptures.

For the wise evangelist, having first presented the Word as having become flesh, shows that he, in the economy, permitted his own flesh to proceed by the laws of its own nature.

And to advance in stature and wisdom belongs to humanity—and, I would say, in grace as well—the understanding in each one leaping up, as it were, together with the measures of the body.

For one wisdom is in infants, another again in those who are now children, and yet another beyond this.

For it was not impossible, nor indeed unattainable, for the Word who was begotten of the Father as God, to raise on high the body united to him even from the very swaddling-clothes, and to bring it up to the measure of full-grown stature.

And it would be evident that even in an infant it was easy and ready for him to show forth admirable wisdom.

But the thing was not far from wonder-mongering, and was discordant with the principles of the economy.

For the mystery was being accomplished without noise.

He therefore permitted, in the economy, the measures of humanity to have control over him.

For this too will be ranked in the portion of his likening to us, for whom the advance toward the greater is little by little, time lifting us up to an increase of stature and of an understanding not unsuited to it.

Therefore the Word from the Father, as God, is all-perfect and in need of nothing whatsoever, not even of growth.

Yet he makes our things his own, since indeed he became as we are; but we know that even so he is above us, as God.

Paul, at any rate, ventures, although knowing that he became flesh, gazing upon the excellencies of the Godhead, sometimes even to say in some places that he is not a man:

he writes, at any rate, to those of Galatia:

Paul, an apostle, not from men, neither through man, but through Jesus Christ.

And I make known unto you the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not according to man.

For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

{B} Must we then also apply to him the saying that he advanced in wisdom and stature and grace, just as, of course, that he hungered and grew weary and the like? And perhaps too, even if he is said to have suffered and to have been made alive by the Father, we shall ascribe these things to him?

{A} For we say that the human things belong to him, according to an economic appropriation, and the things of the flesh together with the flesh, since by us no other Son is conceived alongside him, but the Lord himself has saved us, giving his own blood as a ransom for the life of all.

For we were bought with a price, not with corruptible silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who offered himself for us as a fragrant odor to God and the Father.

And to assure us of this very thing, the most learned-in-the-law Paul has written:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, just as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a fragrant odor.

And since Christ became for us a fragrant odor, having displayed in himself human nature as free of fault, we have gained boldness through him and in him toward the Father and God who is in the heavens.

For it is written: Therefore, brothers, having boldness to enter the holy places by the blood of Christ, by the new and living way which he dedicated for us through the veil, that is, through his flesh.

Understand, then, how it says his blood and his flesh, which it also calls a veil, and quite fittingly so, in order that what the sacred veil in the temple effected — concealing very thoroughly the Holy of Holies — something of the same kind might be conceived to be done also by the Lord's flesh, in a way not permitting the supernatural and exceptional preeminence and glory of God the Word who was united to it to be seen by anyone nakedly and unconcealed.

And so some supposed that the Christ was Elijah, others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.

and mocking, they said:

Is not this Jesus the carpenter's son? How then does he now say, I have come down from heaven? For the divine is by nature invisible.

Yet he who by his own nature is not visible was seen by those on earth in a form like ours, and being God and Lord he appeared to us.

God will come manifestly, our God, and will not keep silence.

Those men, however, contend that this is not so at all — far from it.

For in no way do they think fit to ascribe the suffering on the cross to the Word who was begotten of God; rather they say that he merely prepared the man who was conjoined to him on equal terms to undergo the insults from the Jews, and the sufferings on the cross, and indeed death itself, and that this man became the author of our salvation, having run back to life by the power of the Word who was with him, and having abolished the dominion of death.

{A} Would they then be able from the sacred Scriptures to set before us a true argument concerning these things? Or do they innovate upon the faith, speaking the things from their own heart and not from the mouth of the Lord, as it is written — or perhaps not knowing to say:

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

For the all-wise Paul confirms us in this, having written thus:

For it was fitting for him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

For, they say, he in whom are all things and through whom are all things could be no other than the Word begotten of God.

{A} Then we have not been redeemed by God any longer — for how, or whence could it be? — but rather by alien blood.

And some supposititious man and falsely-named son has died for us.

And the venerable and great mystery of the Only-begotten's becoming man was then but idle talk and deception, and he did not even become man at all.

And we shall inscribe as Savior and Redeemer least of all him, but rather that other who gave his own blood for us.

And yet the most holy Paul wrote to certain people:

It was therefore necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

For Christ did not enter into holy places made with hands, copies of the true ones, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us.

Nor was it that he should offer himself often, as the high priest enters the Holy Place every year with alien blood, since then he would have had to suffer often from the foundation of the world.

But now, once at the consummation of the ages, he has been manifested for the putting away of sin through his own sacrifice.

Therefore the type has the making of the approach with alien blood, and that certain ones are cleansed; but the true thing, or rather the truth, will surely receive the better, that is, that the Son does this by entering with his own blood — not into some temporary, hand-made tabernacle, the one that is as in shadow and types, but into the heavenly and true one, that is, into heaven.

For it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be cleansed with these — clearly, with the typical and alien ones — but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

We must therefore necessarily seek in Christ the better than the types, I mean the true thing, which is that which is in his own blood.

{A} But since they raise up against us the apostolic saying as though it were spoken about a common man, come, let us speak, taking up the written words from the beginning down to the conclusion that suffices for the argument.

For it was fitting for him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

For both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one;

for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying:

I will declare your name to my brothers.

Behold, I and the children whom God has given me.

Since therefore the children have shared in blood and flesh, he himself also in like manner partook of the same, so that through death he might bring to nought him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

For surely it is not of angels that he takes hold, but he takes hold of the seed of Abraham.

Wherefore he was obliged to be made like his brothers in all things.

For behold, behold, very clearly, in saying that he was made lower than the angels because of the suffering of death, yet was crowned for that very reason with honor and glory, he makes plainly manifest the one about whom he is making his words — clearly, the Only-begotten.

For he says that he partook of blood and flesh in like manner with us, and that he took hold not rather of angels, but of the seed of Abraham.

For it was fitting for God and the Father, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, when the Son had condescended to self-emptying and become man, as one taking the form of the servant, to make him perfect through sufferings, consecrating his own flesh as a ransom for the life of all.

For Christ, the unblemished victim, has been sacrificed for us, and by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified, refashioning human nature back to its original state.

For that God and the Father gave for us his own Son, the [all-wise] Paul will no less assure us, writing concerning him:

He who indeed did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all — how shall he not also with him freely give us all things? And we say that the Son proper to God is the Word who has shone forth from his very essence.

And the saying that he suffered was no blame to him;

for he suffered not in the nature of the Godhead, but in his own flesh.

For God and the Father, as I said just now:

He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

{B} Do we then conceive that he became sin, or rather that, because he was made like to those under sin, he is for this reason also called sin? {A} You have spoken rightly.

Just as, therefore, he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him — for human nature has been justified in him — so too he prepared him who knew no death — for the Word is life and life-giving — to suffer in the flesh, while remaining outside of suffering insofar as he is conceived as God, that we might live through him and in him.

For if we have become united with the likeness of his death, we shall also be of his resurrection.

For the Word was living even while his holy flesh tasted death, so that, death being conquered and corruption trampled, the power of the resurrection might come upon the whole human race.

For it is true that, As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.

For in what way do we say that the mystery of the Only-begotten's economy with flesh has benefited human nature, if the Word, being God, did not become flesh? If he did not lower himself to self-emptying and descend into our condition, he who is above all creation? If that which was subject to corruption did not become a body of life, that it might come to be beyond death and corruption? {B} Do we then say that the Word himself, from God the Father, suffered in the flesh for us? {A} Most assuredly, if indeed Paul is true when he says concerning him:

whether dominions, or principalities, or powers — all things have been created through him and unto him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together, and he is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might have the preeminence.

For behold, behold, very clearly, he says that the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, both visible and invisible, through whom are all things and in whom are all things, has been given as head to the Church, and that he is also the firstborn from the dead.

For he appropriates, as I said, the things of his own flesh, and He endured the cross, despising the shame.

For we do not say that a mere man, somehow honored — I know not how — by conjunction with him, was given for us, but it is he himself, the Lord of glory, who was crucified.

For if they had known, he says, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

But he suffered for us and on our behalf in the flesh, according to the Scriptures — he who according to the flesh is of the Jews, who is over all, God blessed forever.

For thus has the most holy Paul written, being a herald and apostle and having Christ himself within him:

Tell me also this besides, how could the saying of Christ to the woman of Samaria be understood:

You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews.

And yet it was no ambassador, no angel, but the Lord himself who saved us — not by an alien death, with a common man mediating, but by his own blood.

For this very reason, and quite fittingly, the all-wise Paul said:

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

How much worse punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled the Son of God, and counted the blood of the new covenant common, and outraged the Spirit of grace, by which he was sanctified? But if the precious blood is not rather that of the Son who is Son in truth and who became man, but of some other, illegitimate one beside him, who has sonship by grace, how do they not say that he is common? Therefore, even if he is said to suffer in the flesh, even so the impassibility is preserved for him insofar as he is conceived as God.

Therefore the inspired Peter also says:

For Christ also once died for sins on our behalf, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.

For someone might say, I suppose: Why did the Spirit-bearer not say simply or without distinction that he suffered, but added "in the flesh"? Because he knew — he knew that he was speaking concerning God.

Therefore he assigned impassibility to him insofar as he is conceived as God, most skillfully applying the suffering to the flesh, in respect of which suffering could occur.

{B} But they say that this resembles monstrous nonsense, and inclines far too much toward the implausible — namely, the necessity of saying that the same one both suffered and did not suffer.

{A} And yet how would it not be a proof — and a very clear one — of a feeble mind, both to say such things and indeed to choose to think them? For God and the Father did not give for us a common man, taken as in the rank of a mediator, having a counterfeit glory of sonship and honored by a relative conjunction; but rather him who is above all creation, the Word who has shone forth from his essence, who became in a form like ours for our sake, that he might be seen worthy in exchange for the life of all.

But it is, I think, among the most utterly absurd things, that — the Only-begotten having become flesh according to the Scriptures, as I said, and not having deemed the economy unworthy of him — they should all but reproach him as one who fought against his own glory and chose, contrary to what is fitting, to suffer in the flesh.

But the matter, O noble friend, was salvific for the whole world.

And since he willed for this reason to suffer — he who is beyond the ability to suffer, because of being God by nature — he clothed himself in flesh capable of suffering, and declared it his own, so that the suffering too might be called his, because it was not the body of some other, but his own body that suffered.

the manner of the economy granting to him without reproach both to choose to suffer in the flesh and not to suffer in the Godhead — for he was the same, at once both God and man. Those on the opposite side talk superfluously, and most senselessly adulterating the power of the mystery, they suppose perhaps that they make the union † ... † full of praise.

For it seemed somehow to attach some reproach to him, namely that he chose at all to suffer in the flesh; but in another way it was glorious.

For that he is mightier than death and corruption, being life and life-giving as God, the resurrection has borne witness;

for he raised up his own temple.

Therefore the inspired Paul says:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel;

for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God; and to those very ones who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

And indeed the Son himself, when about to go up to the saving passion:

Now is the Son of Man glorified, he says, and God is glorified in him; and God will glorify him in himself, and will straightway glorify him.

For he came back to life, having despoiled Hades — and that not after a long time, but as it were straightway and hard on the heels of the suffering.

{B} And yet the all-wise Paul says:

If you seek a proof of Christ speaking in me — who is not weak toward you, but is mighty in you.

For indeed he was crucified out of weakness, but he lives out of the power of God.

Then how could anyone say that the Word himself was weak, and yet lived out of the power of God? {A} Do we not say up and down that the Word of God both became flesh and became man? {B} Yes.

For how not? {A} Therefore, he who was weak in the flesh, insofar as he appeared as man, this same one lived out of the power of God — and not of an alien power, but of the one that was in him.

{B} And yet the Father is said to have raised him;

for it is written: According to the working of the might of his power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named.

{A} But we say that he himself is the life-giving power of the Father, and that he naturally exults in the dignities of the One who begot him; and even though he became flesh, he himself will come forward as his own witness, saying:

For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he wills.

And being well able to accomplish this without toil, he proclaimed to the crowds of the Jews, saying: