and compelling them likewise to teach us in turn what would be—if it is right to say so—the darksome greater light, by which we might believe night too is substantially made. But of these things elsewhere—of those who, through the folly of a blasphemous dogma, seem to affirm either non-existent things for existent, or consequent things for primal, or common things for contrary. If anyone not deprived of the eyes of faith should sift these things, he confounds all their devices by easy reasoning. Therefore, as we had begun to say, the soul no otherwise than the sun bestows life upon the flesh when it comes, and causes death when it recedes. And lest anyone think it is consumed by the body's death, let him hear what the Lord defines concerning this in the Gospels by his general authority:
Do not, he says, fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in the hell of fire (Matt. 10:28). Therefore it is agreed that the body is killed while the soul survives; and on that account it is not consequent nor necessary that souls be consumed by the slaughter of bodies. If this is so, then even after the death of the body life is nonetheless lived in the minds. And if this is rightly thought concerning each one of us, how is the fount of life boasted to have lost the power of giving life on account of its participation in the human mind? "But," you say, "both soul and body can be killed in the hell of fire."
This first of all makes nothing against us, because that death is seen to be not of nature's condition, but of crime. For with the fault removed, we are bidden not to fear men, who, though they can kill the body, are yet said to be unable to kill the soul. Next, because this is said to be possible to God only—of whom we do not believe that his only-begotten Son merited this, both by the communion of nature and by equality of power. The Savior therefore assumed the condition of our death, but not so as to make it worse, since contrary to custom he permitted it to lord it over the soul; but rather so that he might prove that it in no way harms the soul, equally of all the righteous and of life. CHAPTER XXIII. But let us suppose—though the Gospels cry out against it—that souls perish.
Is there not in our Savior—although in these he did not repel death—nevertheless a third and special majesty, which human death could not touch? To sum up, let us see: placed upon the cross, what did he promise? Today, he says, you shall be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43). Today, he says—not after three days, when I shall have raised my flesh from the rest of the tomb; not when I shall have shown in myself the first-fruits of the future resurrection. Whose voice do we think this is? Of the majesty, of the mind, or of the body? But no one is ignorant that the body was in the cave. It remains that this voice belongs to the divinity or to the mind. But someone says: We believe this to be the voice of the divinity, not of the soul of Christ. And what do we receive in him to whom it was promised?
Today, he says to the thief, you shall be with me in paradise—he whose body the common death shut up until the future resurrection. The soul, therefore, is that to which the Lord promised and granted this. If, then, when the body is dead, the soul is presently called to paradise, do we believe anyone still so impious that he would dare to say that the soul of our Savior, during those three days of bodily death, is consigned to custody among the powers below? "And who is it," you say, "who, with the passion of Christ pressing on, groaned, saying: My soul is sorrowful even unto death (Matt. 26:38)?" Sorrowful even unto death, on account of the affection of the assumed flesh, not after death, when the fellowship of the deity pledges blessedness. That death is not the beginning of mourning, but its end.
Nor after this do the scourgings of the righteous begin, but they cease, when they both lay aside the impediments of the wavering matter and now grasp their author by the contemplation of a fuller understanding. CHAPTER XXIV. "Therefore," you say, "the Son of God neither endured death in the soul, nor felt it in his majesty? What then will you say it was that he endured?" He felt it indeed and endured it, but by participation in another's malady, not by the property of his own wound. He felt it as all feel it who, when the flesh is dying, live in their minds: not as the impious, who, as the same Lord says, are slain in both parts by the fires of hell. Some indeed define the common death even in this manner;
saying that it is nothing other than that, when by the consent of diverse things making up life there has been, as it were, through some dissension a departure of one from the other. If this is man's death—which does not consume the things joined, but divides them, while it restores each to its own origin—what shall we now say of the Savior's soul, which, that I may not say on account of the indwelling divinity and on account of its singular righteousness, but at least on account of the common lot of dying, could so forsake the body during those three days that it itself could not utterly perish? "Was not, then," you say, "the soul of Christ among the powers below, and not the divinity?" It was, I say.
For I do not see how he could otherwise have raised his own flesh, if I should declare that the power of God, as of one absent, was not among the powers below. Nor yet on that account let anyone believe that we preach a local presence of God; of whom we say these things on account of the manifestation of a certain work, because he was somewhere as one who was nowhere lacking. He lay, as to the flesh, dead in the tomb; raising the dead in hell; giving life to all things in heaven: not leaving the world did he ascend to heaven, nor forsaking heaven did he come to earth; but at one and the same time he wholly filled the whole, who, being somewhere more present by the manifestation of his works, denied the recognition of his presence to the unworthy, yet did not procure the absence of his immense deity.
CHAPTER XXV. Do you wish to know what I think concerning this death of the Mediator? Of all the things that have been scattered by me in the foregoing by the necessity of incidental questions, this in sum is my opinion: by which I believe that the Son of God died, not according to the penalty of injustice which he in no way had, but according to the law of nature which he assumed for the redemption of the human race; by that death of which it is said: What man is there who shall live and not see death (Ps. 88:49)? not that of which Isaiah says: But the dead shall not see life (Isa. 26:14). That death which according to nature is general to all, not that which is special to the wicked. Let us therefore suppose this to be in a manner the force and power of the seed, by which both a soul may restore souls,
and by the flesh of us all he may, when the judgment is at hand, raise up our flesh; while by the operation of his own deity giving life to all things, out of the one grain of the assumed man he is to render an innumerable harvest to the Father. Then he shall separate the standing crop from the tares (Matt. 13:30), when he shall have begun to render the reward to the just.