Challenge for Christians

[Inevitable Droid]

On another thread, a congenial fellow suggested that Christianity was logical.  I like this fellow because I find him to at least be intellectually honest.  My response to him was to pose a set of questions, the answers to which, I conceded, would amount to a Christianity 101 primer.  It is my contention that these questions have never been answered logically by any Christian, ever.  I pose them here to any Christian who cares to take up the challenge.  If my congenial fellow prefers to answer these questions here rather than on that other thread, I am happy to have him do so.

For purposes of this thread, we will accept uncontested and take for granted that the universe was created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving entity who incarnated in the body of a Jew named Jesus two millennia ago.  Given all that -

1. Why was it necessary that Jesus be crucified?

2. Why is it necessary that people believe in the crucifixion and what it meant?

3. Is it reasonable and just that many people are born in places where the likelihood of their coming to believe the Christian creed is almost nill?  If so, how is it reasonable and just?

4. Is it reasonable and sane to accept the Christian creed while rejecting the Muslim or Buddhist ones?  If so, how is it reasonable and sane?

5. Are the myriad varieties of suffering reasonable and just under the auspices of an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving God?  If so, how are they reasonable and just?

Any Christian who answers these questions in a manner that is neither absurd nor grotesque nor riddled with holes will, as far as I'm concerned, be the best candidate on the planet for Pope of all Popes, for this person will have accomplished what no theologian in two millennia has accomplished, and I strongly recommend that this person write a book and pursue publication.  I confess that I won't be holding my breath, nor even postponing dinner.

[Achronos]

On another thread, a congenial fellow suggested that Christianity was logical.  I like this fellow because I find him to at least be intellectually honest.  My response to him was to pose a set of questions, the answers to which, I conceded, would amount to a Christianity 101 primer.  It is my contention that these questions have never been answered logically by any Christian, ever.  I pose them here to any Christian who cares to take up the challenge.  If my congenial fellow prefers to answer these questions here rather than on that other thread, I am happy to have him do so.

Yes I will deluge here if you don't mind, but I must also request proper time for follow up rebuttals. Also:

For purposes of this thread, we will accept uncontested and take for granted that the universe was created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving entity who incarnated in the body of a Jew named Jesus two millennia ago. Given all that

I am glad that you have brought this up for it is of very importance to take this into consideration when we speak of Jesus Christ and how important his coming down to Earth really is. Also we must take into account that the Word of the Father is Himself divine, that all things that are owe their being to His will and power, and that it is through Him that the Father gives order to creation, by Him that all things are moved, and through Him that they receive their being.

1. Why was it necessary that Jesus be crucified?

I'm going to take this back before he was crucified and for this I must reference Athanasius because he says it best; He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. I will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same 'agent' for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning. From it we know that, because there is Mind behind the universe, it did not originate itself; because God is infinite, not finite, it was not made from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing and out of non-existence absolute and utter God brought it into being through the Word. He says as much in Genesis: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" Paul also indicates the same thing when he says, "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which we see now did not come into being out of things which had previously appeared." For God is good; or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, He made all things out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ and of all these His earthly creatures He reserved especial mercy for the race of men. Upon them, therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lackedâ€"namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in limited degree they might continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise. But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two thingsâ€"namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. This is what Holy Scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, "Of every tree that is in the garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die." "Ye shall surely die"â€"not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption.

You may be wondering why I am discussing the origin of men when we set out to talk about the Word's becoming Man. The former subject is relevant to the latter for this reason: it was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who were the cause of His taking human form, and for our salvation that in His great love He was both born and manifested in a human body. For God had made man thus (that is, as an embodied spirit), and had willed that he should remain in incorruption. But men, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, they were in process of becoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its dominion. For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but he bears also the Likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that Likeness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it affirmed in Wisdom: "The keeping of His laws is the assurance of incorruption." And being incorrupt, he would be henceforth as God, as Holy Scripture says, "I have said, Ye are gods and sons of the Highest all of you: but ye die as men and fall as one of the princes."

This, then, was the plight of men. God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word. Then, turning from eternal things to things corruptible, by counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, though they were by nature subject to corruption, the grace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping from the natural law, provided that they retained the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is to say, the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption, as also Wisdom says: God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world." When this happened, men began to die, and corruption ran riot among them and held sway over them to an even more than natural degree, because it was the penalty of which God had forewarned them for transgressing the commandment. Indeed, they had in their sinning surpassed all limits; for, having invented wickedness in the beginning and so involved themselves in death and corruption, they had gone on gradually from bad to worse, not stopping at any one kind of evil, but continually, as with insatiable appetite, devising new kinds of sins. Adulteries and thefts were everywhere, murder and rapine filled the earth, law was disregarded in corruption and injustice, all kinds of iniquities were perpetrated by all, both singly and in common. Cities were warring with cities, nations were rising against nations, and the whole earth was rent with factions and battles, while each strove to outdo the other in wickedness. Even crimes contrary to nature were not unknown, but as the martyr-apostle of Christ says: "Their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature; and the men also, leaving the natural use of the woman, flamed out in lust towards each other, perpetrating shameless acts with their own sex, and receiving in their own persons the due recompense of their pervertedness."

Because death and corruption were gaining ever firmer hold on them, the human race was in process of destruction. Man, who was created in God's image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone. The law of death, which followed from the Transgression, prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape. The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting. It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As, then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than, having been created, to be neglected and perish; and, besides that, such indifference to the ruin of His own work before His very eyes would argue not goodness in God but limitation, and that far more than if He had never created men at all. It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself. Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not meet the case. Whatâ€"or rather Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.

For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father's Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw that corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human fatherâ€"a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death; yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father's Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. It was by surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required. Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word's indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all. You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.

This great work was, indeed, supremely worthy of the goodness of God. A king who has founded a city, so far from neglecting it when through the carelessness of the inhabitants it is attacked by robbers, avenges it and saves it from destruction, having regard rather to his own honor than to the people's neglect. Much more, then, the Word of the All-good Father was not unmindful of the human race that He had called to be; but rather, by the offering of His own body He abolished the death which they had incurred, and corrected their neglect by His own teaching. Thus by His own power He restored the whole nature of man. The Savior's own inspired disciples assure us of this. We read in one place: " For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that, if One died on behalf of all, then all died, and He died for all that we should no longer live unto ourselves, but unto Him who died and rose again from the dead, even our Lord Jesus Christ." And again another says: "But we behold Him Who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He should taste of death on behalf of every man." The same writer goes on to point out why it was necessary for God the Word and none other to become Man: "For it became Him, for Whom are all things and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering. He means that the rescue of mankind from corruption was the proper part only of Him Who made them in the beginning. He points out also that the Word assumed a human body, expressly in order that He might offer it in sacrifice for other like bodies: "Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself assumed the same, in order that through death He might bring to nought Him that hath the power of death, that is to say, the Devil, and might rescue those who all their lives were enslaved by the fear of death." For by the sacrifice of His own body He did two things: He put an end to the law of death which barred our way; and He made a new beginning of life for us, by giving us the hope of resurrection. By man death has gained its power over men; by the Word made Man death has been destroyed and life raised up anew. That is what Paul says, that true servant of Christ: For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Just as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive," and so forth. Now, therefore, when we die we no longer do so as men condemned to death, but as those who are even now in process of rising we await the general resurrection of all, "which in its own times He shall show," even God Who wrought it and bestowed it on us.

This, then, is the first cause of the Savior's becoming Man. There are, however, other things which show how wholly fitting is His blessed presence in our midst. When God the Almighty was making mankind through His own Word, He perceived that they, owing to the limitation of their nature, could not of themselves have any knowledge of their Artificer, the Incorporeal and Uncreated. He took pity on them, therefore, and did not leave them destitute of the knowledge of Himself, lest their very existence should prove purposeless. For of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker? How could men be reasonable beings if they had no knowledge of the Word and Reason of the Father, through Whom they had received their being? They would be no better than the beasts, had they no knowledge save of earthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they may be able to perceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed life.

But, as we have already seen, men, foolish as they are, thought little of the grace they had received, and turned away from God. They defiled their own soul so completely that they not only lost their apprehension of God, but invented for themselves other gods of various kinds. They fashioned idols for themselves in place of the truth and reverenced things that are not, rather than God Who is, as St. Paul says, "worshiping the creature rather than the Creator." Moreover, and much worse, they transferred the honor which is due to God to material objects such as wood and stone, and also to man; and further even than that they went, as we said in our former book. Indeed, so impious were they that they worshiped evil spirits as gods in satisfaction of their lusts. They sacrificed brute beasts and immolated men, as the just due of these deities, thereby bringing themselves more and more under their insane control. Magic arts also were taught among them, oracles in sundry places led men astray, and the cause of everything in human life was traced to the stars as though nothing existed but that which could be seen. In a word, impiety and lawlessness were everywhere, and neither God nor His Word was known. Yet He had not hidden Himself from the sight of men nor given the knowledge of Himself in one way only; but rather He had unfolded it in many forms and by many ways.

God knew the limitation of mankind, you see; and though the grace of being made in His Image was sufficient to give them knowledge of the Word and through Him of the Father, as a safeguard against their neglect of this grace, He provided the works of creation also as means by which the Maker might be known. Nor was this all. Man's neglect of the indwelling grace tends ever to increase; and against this further frailty also God made provision by giving them a law, and by sending prophets, men whom they knew. Thus, if they were tardy in looking up to heaven, they might still gain knowledge of their Maker from those close at hand; for men can learn directly about higher things from other men. Three ways thus lay open to them, by which they might obtain the knowledge of God. They could look up into the immensity of heaven, and by pondering the harmony of creation come to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father, Whose all-ruling providence makes known the Father to all. Or, if this was beyond them, they could converse with holy men, and through them learn to know God, the Artificer of all things, the Father of Christ, and to recognize the worship of idols as the negation of the truth and full of all impiety. Or else, in the third place, they could cease from lukewarmness and lead a good life merely by knowing the law. For the law was not given only for the Jews, nor was it solely for their sake that God sent the prophets, though it was to the Jews that they were sent and by the Jews that they were persecuted. The law and the prophets were a sacred school of the knowledge of God and the conduct of the spiritual life for the whole world.

So great, indeed, were the goodness and the love of God. Yet men, bowed down by the pleasures of the moment and by the frauds and illusions of the evil spirits, did not lift up their heads towards the truth. So burdened were they with their wickednesses that they seemed rather to be brute beasts than reasonable men, reflecting the very Likeness of the Word. What was God to do in face of this dehumanising of mankind, this universal hiding of the knowledge of Himself by the wiles of evil spirits? Was He to keep silence before so great a wrong and let men go on being thus deceived and kept in ignorance of Himself? If so, what was the use of having made them in His own Image originally? It would surely have been better for them always to have been brutes, rather than to revert to that condition when once they had shared the nature of the Word. Again, things being as they were, what was the use of their ever having had the knowledge of God? Surely it would have been better for God never to have bestowed it, than that men should subsequently be found unworthy to receive it. Similarly, what possible profit could it be to God Himself, Who made men, if when made they did not worship Him, but regarded others as their makers? This would be tantamount to His having made them for others and not for Himself. Even an earthly king, though he is only a man, does not allow lands that he has colonized to pass into other hands or to desert to other rulers, but sends letters and friends and even visits them himself to recall them to their allegiance, rather than allow His work to be undone. How much more, then, will God be patient and painstaking with His creatures, that they be not led astray from Him to the service of those that are not, and that all the more because such error means for them sheer ruin, and because it is not right that those who had once shared His Image should be destroyed.

What, then, was God to do? What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this be done save by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Savior Jesus Christ? Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels have done it, for they are not the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father Who could recreate man made after the Image.

In order to effect this re-creation, however, He had first to do away with death and corruption. Therefore He assumed a human body, in order that in it death might once for all be destroyed, and that men might be renewed according to the Image. The Image of the Father only was sufficient for this need. Here is an illustration to prove it. You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep, even as He says in the Gospel: "I came to seek and to save that which was lost. This also explains His saying to the Jews: "Except a man be born anew..." a He was not referring to a man's natural birth from his mother, as they thought, but to the re-birth and re-creation of the soul in the Image of God.

Nor was this the only thing which only the Word could do. When the madness of idolatry and irreligion filled the world and the knowledge of God was hidden, whose part was it to teach the world about the Father? Man's, would you say? But men cannot run everywhere over the world, nor would their words carry sufficient weight if they did, nor would they be, unaided, a match for the 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 put straight in others what is warped in yourself. Perhaps you will say, then, that creation was enough to teach men about the Father. But if that had been so, such great evils would never have occurred. Creation was there all the time, but it did not prevent men from wallowing in error. Once more, then, it was the Word of God, Who sees all that is in man and moves all things in creation, Who alone could meet the needs of the situation. It was His part and His alone, Whose ordering of the universe reveals the Father, to renew the same teaching. But how was He to do it? By the same means as before, perhaps you will say, that is, through the works of creation. But this was proven insufficient. Men had neglected to consider the heavens before, and now they were looking in the opposite direction. Wherefore, in all naturalness and fitness. desiring to do good to men, as Man He dwells, taking to Himself a body like the rest; and through His actions done in that body, as it were on their own level, He teaches those who would not learn by other means to know Himself, the Word of God, and through Him the Father.

He deals with them as a good teacher with his pupils, coming down to their level and using simple means. St. Paul says as much: "Because in the wisdom of God the world in its wisdom knew not God, God thought fit through the simplicity of the News proclaimed to save those who believe." Men had turned from the contemplation of God above, and were looking for Him in the opposite direction, down among created things and things of sense. The Savior of us all, the Word of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which He, the Word of God, did in the body. Human and human minded as men were, therefore, to whichever side they looked in the sensible world they found themselves taught the truth. Were they awe-stricken by creation? They beheld it confessing Christ as Lord. Did their minds tend to regard men as Gods? The uniqueness of the Savior's works marked Him, alone of men, as Son of God. Were they drawn to evil spirits? They saw them driven out by the Lord and learned that the Word of God alone was God and that the evil spirits were not gods at all. Were they inclined to hero-worship and the cult of the dead? Then the fact that the Savior had risen from the dead showed them how false these other deities were, and that the Word of the Father is the one true Lord, the Lord even of death. For this reason was He both born and manifested as Man, for this He died and rose, in order that, eclipsing by His works all other human deeds, He might recall men from all the paths of error to know the Father. As He says Himself, "I came to seek and to save that which was lost."

When, then, the minds of men had fallen finally to the level of sensible things, the Word submitted to appear in a body, in order that He, as Man, might center their senses on Himself, and convince them through His human acts that He Himself is not man only but also God, the Word and Wisdom of the true God. This is what Paul wants to tell us when he says: "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the length and breadth and height and depth, and to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge, so that ye may be filled unto all the fullness of God." The Self- revealing of the Word is in every dimensionâ€"above, in creation; below, in the Incarnation; in the depth, in Hades; in the breadth, throughout the world. All things have been filled with the knowledge of God.

For this reason He did not offer the sacrifice on behalf of all immediately He came, for if He had surrendered His body to death and then raised it again at once He would have ceased to be an object of our senses. Instead of that, He stayed in His body and let Himself be seen in it, doing acts and giving signs which showed Him to be not only man, but also God the Word. There were thus two things which the Savior did for us by becoming Man. He banished death from us and made us anew; and, invisible and imperceptible as in Himself He is, He became visible through His works and revealed Himself as the Word of the Father, the Ruler and King of the whole creation. There is a paradox in this last statement which we must now examine. The Word was not hedged in by His body, nor did His presence in the body prevent His being present elsewhere as well. When He moved His body He did not cease also to direct the universe by His Mind and might. No. The marvelous truth is, that being the Word, so far from being Himself contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself. In creation He is present everywhere, yet is distinct in being from it; ordering, directing, giving life to all, containing all, yet is He Himself the Uncontained, existing solely in His Father. As with the whole, so also is it with the part. Existing in a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole; and He is revealed both through the works of His body and through His activity in the world. It is, indeed, the function of soul to behold things that are outside the body, but it cannot energize or move them. A man cannot transport things from one place to another, for instance, merely by thinking about them; nor can you or I move the sun and the stars just by sitting at home and looking at them. With the Word of God in His human nature, however, it was otherwise. His body was for Him not a limitation, but an instrument, so that He was both in it and in all things, and outside all things, resting in the Father alone. At one and the same timeâ€"this is the wonderâ€" as Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father. Not even His birth from a virgin, therefore, changed Him in any way, nor was He defiled by being in the body. Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it. For His being in everything does not mean that He shares the nature of everything, only that He gives all things their being and sustains them in it. Just as the sun is not defiled by the contact of its rays with earthly objects, but rather enlightens and purifies them, so He Who made the sun is not defiled by being made known in a body, but rather the body is cleansed and quickened by His indwelling, "Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." You must understand, therefore, that when writers on this sacred theme speak of Him as eating and drinking and being born, they mean that the body, as a body, was born and sustained with the food proper to its nature; while God the Word, Who was united with it, was at the same time ordering the universe and revealing Himself through His bodily acts as not man only but God. Those acts are rightly said to be His acts, because the body which did them did indeed belong to Him and none other; moreover, it was right that they should be thus attributed to Him as Man, in order to show that His body was a real one and not merely an appearance. From such ordinary acts as being born and taking food, He was recognized as being actually present in the body; but by the extraordinary acts which He did through the body He proved Himself to be the Son of God. That is the meaning of His words to the unbelieving Jews: "If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not; but if I do, even if ye believe not Me, believe My works, that ye may know that the Father is in Me and I in the Father."

Invisible in Himself, He is known from the works of creation; so also, when His Godhead is veiled in human nature, His bodily acts still declare Him to be not man only, but the Power and Word of God. To speak authoritatively to evil spirits, for instance, and to drive them out, is not human but divine; and who could see-Him curing all the diseases to which mankind is prone, and still deem Him mere man and not also God? He cleansed lepers, He made the lame to walk, He opened the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind, there was no sickness or weakness that-He did not drive away. Even the most casual observer can see that these were acts of God. The healing of the man born blind, for instance, who but the Father and Artificer of man, the Controller of his whole being, could thus have restored the faculty denied at birth? He Who did thus must surely be Himself the Lord of birth. This is proved also at the outset of His becoming Man. He formed His own body from the virgin; and that is no small proof of His Godhead, since He Who made that was the Maker of all else. And would not anyone infer from the fact of that body being begotten of a virgin only, without human father, that He Who appeared in it was also the Maker and Lord of all beside?

Again, consider the miracle at Cana. Would not anyone who saw the substance of water transmuted into wine understand that He Who did it was the Lord and Maker of the water that He changed? It was for the same reason that He walked on the sea as on dry landâ€"to prove to the onlookers that He had mastery over all. And the feeding of the multitude, when He made little into much, so that from five loaves five thousand mouths were filledâ€"did not that prove Him none other than the very Lord Whose Mind is over all? All these things the Savior thought fit to do, so that, recognizing His bodily acts as works of God, men who were blind to His presence in creation might regain knowledge of the Father. For, as I said before, who that saw His authority over evil spirits and their response to it could doubt that He was, indeed, the Son, the Wisdom and the Power of God? Even the very creation broke silence at His behest and, marvelous to relate, confessed with one voice before the cross, that monument of victory, that He Who suffered thereon in the body was not man only, but Son of God and Savior of all. The sun veiled his face, the earth quaked, the mountains were rent asunder, all men were stricken with awe. These things showed that Christ on the cross was God, and that all creation was His slave and was bearing witness by its fear to the presence of its Master.

Thus, then, God the Word revealed Himself to men through His works. We must next consider the end of His earthly life and the nature of His bodily death. This is, indeed, the very center of our faith, and everywhere you hear men speak of it; by it, too, no less than by His other acts, Christ is revealed as God and Son of God.

We have dealt as far as circumstances and our own understanding permit with the reason for His bodily manifestation. We have seen that to change the corruptible to incorruption was proper to none other than the Savior Himself, Who in the beginning made all things out of nothing; that only the Image of the Father could re-create the likeness of the Image in men, that none save our Lord Jesus Christ could give to mortals immortality, and that only the Word Who orders all things and is alone the Father's true and sole-begotten Son could teach men about Him and abolish the worship of idols But beyond all this, there was a debt owing which must needs be paid; for, as I said before, all men were due to die. Here, then, is the second reason why the Word dwelt among us, namely that having proved His Godhead by His works, He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all, to settle man's account with death and free him from the primal transgression. In the same act also He showed Himself mightier than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits of the resurrection.

You must not be surprised if we repeat ourselves in dealing with this subject. We are speaking of the good pleasure of God and of the things which He in His loving wisdom thought fit to do, and it is better to put the same thing in several ways than to run the risk of leaving something out. The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it. Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord's body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished. Death there had to be, and death for all, so that the due of all might be paid. Wherefore, the Word, as I said, being Himself incapable of death, assumed a mortal body, that He might offer it as His own in place of all, and suffering for the sake of all through His union with it, " might bring to nought Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver them who all their lifetime were enslaved by the fear of death."

Have no fears then. Now that the common Savior of all has died on our behalf, we who believe in Christ no longer die, as men died aforetime, in fulfillment of the threat of the law. That condemnation has come to an end; and now that, by the grace of the resurrection, corruption has been banished and done away, we are loosed from our mortal bodies in God's good time for each, so that we may obtain thereby a better resurrection. Like seeds cast into the earth, we do not perish in our dissolution, but like them shall rise again, death having been brought to nought by the grace of the Savior. That is why blessed Paul, through whom we all have surety of the resurrection, says: "This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality; but when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?"
"Well then," some people may say, "if the essential thing was that He should surrender His body to death in place of all, why did He not do so as Man privately, without going to the length of public crucifixion? Surely it would have been more suitable for Him to have laid aside His body with honor than to endure so shameful a death." But look at this argument closely, and see how merely human it is, whereas what the Savior did was truly divine and worthy of His Godhead for several reasons. The first is this.

The death of men under ordinary circumstances is the result of their natural weakness. They are essentially impermanent, so after a time they fall ill and when worn out they die. But the Lord is not like that. He is not weak, He is the Power of God and Word of God and Very Life Itself. If He had died quietly in His bed like other men it would have looked as if He did so in accordance with His nature, and as though He was indeed no more than other men. But because He was Himself Word and Life and Power His body was made strong, and because the death had to be accomplished, He took the occasion of perfecting His sacrifice not from Himself, but from others. How could He fall sick, Who had healed others? Or how could that body weaken and fail by means of which others are made strong? Here, again, you may say, "Why did He not prevent death, as He did sickness?" Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body, and to prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection. And as to the unsuitability of sickness for His body, as arguing weakness, you may say, "Did He then not hunger?" Yes, He hungered, because that was the property of His body, but He did not die of hunger because He Whose body hungered was the Lord. Similarly, though He died to ransom all, He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the Life Himself. Someone else might say, perhaps, that it would have been better for the Lord to have avoided the designs of the Jews against Him, and so to have guarded His body from death altogether. But see how unfitting this also would have been for Him. Just as it would not have been fitting for Him to give His body to death by His own hand, being Word and being Life, so also it was not consonant with Himself that He should avoid the death inflicted by others. Rather, He pursued it to the uttermost, and in pursuance of His nature neither laid aside His body of His own accord nor escaped the plotting Jews. And this action showed no limitation or weakness in the Word; for He both waited for death in order to make an end of it, and hastened to accomplish it as an offering on behalf of all. Moreover, as it was the death of all mankind that the Savior came to accomplish, not His own, He did not lay aside His body by an individual act of dying, for to Him, as Life, this simply did not belong; but He accepted death at the hands of men, thereby completely to destroy it in His own body.

There are some further considerations which enable one to understand why the Lord's body had such an end. The supreme object of His coming was to bring about the resurrection of the body. This was to be the monument to His victory over death, the assurance to all that He had Himself conquered corruption and that their own bodies also would eventually be incorrupt; and it was in token of that and as a pledge of the future resurrection that He kept His body incorrupt. But there again, if His body had fallen sick and the Word had left it in that condition, how unfitting it would have been! Should He Who healed the bodies of others neglect to keep His own in health? How would His miracles of healing be believed, if this were so? Surely people would either laugh at Him as unable to dispel disease or else consider Him lacking in proper human feeling because He could do so, but did not.

Then, again, suppose without any illness He had just concealed His body somewhere, and then suddenly reappeared and said that He had risen from the dead. He would have been regarded merely as a teller of tales, and because there was no witness of His death, nobody would believe His resurrection. Death had to precede resurrection, for there could be no resurrection without it. A secret and unwitnessed death would have left the resurrection without any proof or evidence to support it. Again, why should He die a secret death, when He proclaimed the fact of His rising openly? Why should He drive out evil spirits and heal the man blind from birth and change water into wine, all publicly, in order to convince men that He was the Word, and not also declare publicly that incorruptibility of His mortal body, so that He might Himself be believed to be the Life? And how could His disciples have had boldness in speaking of the resurrection unless they could state it as a fact that He had first died? Or how could their hearers be expected to believe their assertion, unless they themselves also had witnessed His death? For if the Pharisees at the time refused to believe and forced others to deny also, though the things had happened before their very eyes, how many excuses for unbelief would they have contrived, if it had taken place secretly? Or how could the end of death and the victory over it have been declared, had not the Lord thus challenged it before the sight of all, and by the incorruption of His body proved that henceforward it was annulled and void?

There are some other possible objections that must be answered. Some might urge that, even granting the necessity of a public death for subsequent belief in the resurrection, it would surely have been better for Him to have arranged an honorable death for Himself, and so to have avoided the ignominy of the cross. But even this would have given ground for suspicion that His power over death was limited to the particular kind of death which He chose for Himself; and that again would furnish excuse for disbelieving the resurrection. Death came to His body, therefore, not from Himself but from enemy action, in order that the Savior might utterly abolish death in whatever form they offered it to Him. A generous wrestler, virile and strong, does not himself choose his antagonists, lest it should be thought that of some of them he is afraid. Rather, he lets the spectators choose them, and that all the more if these are hostile, so that he may overthrow whomsoever they match against him and thus vindicate his superior strength. Even so was it with Christ. He, the Life of all, our Lord and Savior, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those others His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be recognized as finally annulled. A marvelous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonor and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death's defeat. Therefore it is also, that He neither endured the death of John, who was beheaded, nor was He sawn asunder, like Isaiah: even in death He preserved His body whole and undivided, so that there should be no excuse hereafter for those who would divide the Church.

So much for the objections of those outside the Church. But if any honest Christian wants to know why He suffered death on the cross and not in some other way, we answer thus: in no other way was it expedient for us, indeed the Lord offered for our sakes the one death that was supremely good. He had come to bear the curse that lay on us; and how could He "become a curse" otherwise than by accepting the accursed death? And that death is the cross, for it is written "Cursed is every one that hangeth on tree." Again, the death of the Lord is the ransom of all, and by it "the middle wall of partition" is broken down and the call of the Gentiles comes about. How could He have called us if He had not been crucified, for it is only on the cross that a man dies with arms outstretched? Here, again, we see the fitness of His death and of those outstretched arms: it was that He might draw His ancient people with the one and the Gentiles with the other, and join both together in Himself. Even so, He foretold the manner of His redeeming death, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Myself." Again, the air is the sphere of the devil, the enemy of our race who, having fallen from heaven, endeavors with the other evil spirits who shared in his disobedience both to keep souls from the truth and to hinder the progress of those who are trying to follow it. The apostle refers to this when he says, "According to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience." But the Lord came to overthrow the devil and to purify the air and to make "a way" for us up to heaven, as the apostle says, "through the veil, that is to say, His flesh." This had to be done through death, and by what other kind of death could it be done, save by a death in the air, that is, on the cross? Here, again, you see how right and natural it was that the Lord should suffer thus; for being thus "lifted up," He cleansed the air from all the evil influences of the enemy. "I beheld Satan as lightning falling," He says; and thus He re-opened the road to heaven, saying again, "Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors." For it was not the Word Himself Who needed an opening of the gates, He being Lord of all, nor was any of His works closed to their Maker. No, it was we who needed it, we whom He Himself upbore in His own bodyâ€"that body which He first offered to death on behalf of all, and then made through it a path to heaven.

Fitting indeed, then, and wholly consonant was the death on the cross for us; and we can see how reasonable it was, and why it is that the salvation of the world could be accomplished in no other way. Even on the cross He did not hide Himself from sight; rather, He made all creation witness to the presence of its Maker. Then, having once let it be seen that it was truly dead, He did not allow that temple of His body to linger long, but forthwith on the third day raised it up, impassable and incorruptible, the pledge and token of His victory.

It was, of course, within His power thus to have raised His body and displayed it as alive directly after death. But the all-wise Savior did not do this, lest some should deny that it had really or completely died. Besides this, had the interval between His death and resurrection been but two days, the glory of His incorruption might not have appeared. He waited one whole day to show that His body was really dead, and then on the third day showed it incorruptible to all. The interval was no longer, lest people should have forgotten about it and grown doubtful whether it were in truth the same body. No, while the affair was still ringing in their ears and their eyes were still straining and their minds in turmoil, and while those who had put Him to death were still on the spot and themselves witnessing to the fact of it, the Son of God after three days showed His once dead body immortal and incorruptible; and it was evident to all that it was from no natural weakness that the body which the Word indwelt had died, but in order that in it by the Savior's power death might be done away.

A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is supplied by a present fact, namely this. All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead. Before the divine sojourn of the Savior, even the holiest of men were afraid of death, and mourned the dead as those who perish. But now that the Savior has raised His body, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing, and prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection. But that devil who of old wickedly exulted in death, now that the pains of death are loosed, he alone it is who remains truly dead. There is proof of this too; for men who, before they believe in Christ, think death horrible and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it so completely that they go eagerly to meet it, and themselves become witnesses of the Savior's resurrection from it. Even children hasten thus to die, and not men only, but women train themselves by bodily discipline to meet it. So weak has death become that even women, who used to be taken in by it, mock at it now as a dead thing robbed of all its strength. Death has become like a tyrant who has been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and foot the passers-by sneer at him, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage, because of the king who has conquered him. So has death been conquered and branded for what it is by the Savior on the cross. It is bound hand and foot, all who are in Christ trample it as they pass and as witnesses to Him deride it, scoffing and saying, "O Death, where is thy victory? O Grave, where is thy sting?

Is this a slender proof of the impotence of death, do you think? Or is it a slight indication of the Savior's victory over it, when boys and young girls who are in Christ look beyond this present life and train themselves to die? Every one is by nature afraid of death and of bodily dissolution; the marvel of marvels is that he who is enfolded in the faith of the cross despises this natural fear and for the sake of the cross is no longer cowardly in face of it. The natural property of fire is to burn. Suppose, then, that there was a substance such as the Indian asbestos is said to be, which had no fear of being burnt, but rather displayed the impotence of the fire by proving itself unburnable. If anyone doubted the truth of this, all he need do would be to wrap himself up in the substance in question and then touch the fire. Or, again, to revert to our former figure, if anyone wanted to see the tyrant bound and helpless, who used to be such a terror to others, he could do so simply by going into the country of the tyrant's conqueror. Even so, if anyone still doubts the conquest of death, after so many proofs and so many martyrdoms in Christ and such daily scorn of death by His truest servants, he certainly does well to marvel at so great a thing, but he must not be obstinate in unbelief and disregard of plain facts. No, he must be like the man who wants to prove the property of the asbestos, and like him who enters the conqueror's dominions to see the tyrant bound. He must embrace the faith of Christ, this disbeliever in the conquest of death, and come to His teaching. Then he will see how impotent death is and how completely conquered. Indeed, there have been many former unbelievers and deriders who, after they became believers, so scorned death as even themselves to become martyrs for Christ's sake.

[Achronos]

PART II

If, then, it is by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ that death is trampled underfoot, it is clear that it is Christ Himself and none other Who is the Archvictor over death and has robbed it of its power. Death used to be strong and terrible, but now, since the sojourn of the Savior and the death and resurrection of His body, it is despised; and obviously it is by the very Christ Who mounted on the cross that it has been destroyed and vanquished finally. When the sun rises after the night and the whole world is lit up by it, nobody doubts that it is the sun which has thus shed its light everywhere and driven away the dark. Equally clear is it, since this utter scorning and trampling down of death has ensued upon the Savior's manifestation in the body and His death on the cross, that it is He Himself Who brought death to nought and daily raises monuments to His victory in His own disciples. How can you think otherwise, when you see men naturally weak hastening to death, unafraid at the prospect of corruption, fearless of the descent into Hades, even indeed with eager soul provoking it, not shrinking from tortures, but preferring thus to rush on death for Christ's sake, rather than to remain in this present life? If you see with your own eyes men and women and children, even, thus welcoming death for the sake of Christ's religion, how can you be so utterly silly and incredulous and maimed in your mind as not to realize that Christ, to Whom these all bear witness, Himself gives the victory to each, making death completely powerless for those who hold His faith and bear the sign of the cross? No one in his senses doubts that a snake is dead when he sees it trampled underfoot, especially when he knows how savage it used to be; nor, if he sees boys making fun of a lion, does he doubt that the brute is either dead or completely bereft of strength. These things can be seen with our own eyes, and it is the same with the conquest of death. Doubt no longer, then, when you see death mocked and scorned by those who believe in Christ, that by Christ death was destroyed, and the corruption that goes with it resolved and brought to end.

What we have said is, indeed, no small proof of the destruction of death and of the fact that the cross of the Lord is the monument to His victory. But the resurrection of the body to immortality, which results henceforward from the work of Christ, the common Savior and true Life of all, is more effectively proved by facts than by words to those whose mental vision is sound. For, if, as we have shown, death was destroyed and everybody tramples on it because of Christ, how much more did He Himself first trample and destroy it in His own body! Death having been slain by Him, then, what other issue could there be than the resurrection of His body and its open demonstration as the monument of His victory? How could the destruction of death have been manifested at all, had not the Lord's body been raised? But if anyone finds even this insufficient, let him find proof of what has been said in present facts. Dead men cannot take effective action; their power of influence on others lasts only till the grave. Deeds and actions that energize others belong only to the living. Well, then, look at the facts in this case. The Savior is working mightily among men, every day He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world, both within and beyond the Greek-speaking world, to accept His faith and be obedient to His teaching. Can anyone, in face of this, still doubt that He has risen and lives, or rather that He is Himself the Life? Does a dead man prick the consciences of men, so that they throw all the traditions of their fathers to the winds and bow down before the teaching of Christ? If He is no longer active in the world, as He must needs be if He is dead, how is it that He makes the living to cease from their activities, the adulterer from his adultery, the murderer from murdering, the unjust from avarice, while the profane and godless man becomes religious? If He did not rise, but is still dead, how is it that He routs and persecutes and overthrows the false gods, whom unbelievers think to be alive, and the evil spirits whom they worship? For where Christ is named, idolatry is destroyed and the fraud of evil spirits is exposed; indeed, no such spirit can endure that Name, but takes to flight on sound of it. This is the work of One Who lives, not of one dead; and, more than that, it is the work of God. It would be absurd to say that the evil spirits whom He drives out and the idols which He destroys are alive, but that He Who drives out and destroys, and Whom they themselves acknowledge to be Son of God, is dead.

In a word, then, those who disbelieve in the resurrection have no support in facts, if their gods and evil spirits do not drive away the supposedly dead Christ. Rather, it is He Who convicts them of being dead. We are agreed that a dead person can do nothing: yet the Savior works mightily every day, drawing men to religion, persuading them to virtue, teaching them about immortality, quickening their thirst for heavenly things, revealing the knowledge of the Father, inspiring strength in face of death, manifesting Himself to each, and displacing the irreligion of idols; while the gods and evil spirits of the unbelievers can do none of these things, but rather become dead at Christ's presence, all their ostentation barren and void. By the sign of the cross, on the contrary, all magic is stayed, all sorcery confounded, all the idols are abandoned and deserted, and all senseless pleasure ceases, as the eye of faith looks up from earth to heaven. Whom, then, are we to call dead? Shall we call Christ dead, Who effects all this? But the dead have not the faculty to effect anything. Or shall we call death dead, which effects nothing whatever, but lies as lifeless and ineffective as are the evil spirits and the idols? The Son of God, "living and effective, is active every day and effects the salvation of all; but death is daily proved to be stripped of all its strength, and it is the idols and the evil spirits who are dead, not He. No room for doubt remains, therefore, concerning the resurrection of His body.

Indeed, it would seem that he who disbelieves this bodily rising of the Lord is ignorant of the power of the Word and Wisdom of God. If He took a body to Himself at all, and made it His own in pursuance of His purpose, as we have shown that He did, what was the Lord to do with it, and what was ultimately to become of that body upon which the Word had descended? Mortal and offered to death on behalf of all as it was, it could not but die; indeed, it was for that very purpose that the Savior had prepared it for Himself. But on the other hand it could not remain dead, because it had become the very temple of Life. It therefore died, as mortal, but lived again because of the Life within it; and its resurrection is made known through its works. It is, indeed, in accordance with the nature of the invisible God that He should be thus known through His works; and those who doubt the Lord's resurrection because they do not now behold Him with their eyes, might as well deny the very laws of nature. They have ground for disbelief when works are lacking; but when the works cry out and prove the fact so clearly, why do they deliberately deny the risen life so manifestly shown? Even if their mental faculties are defective, surely their eyes can give them irrefragable proof of the power and Godhead of Christ. A blind man cannot see the sun, but he knows that it is above the earth from the warmth which it affords; similarly, let those who are still in the blindness of unbelief recognize the Godhead of Christ and the resurrection which He has brought about through His manifested power in others. Obviously He would not be expelling evil spirits and despoiling idols, if He were dead, for the evil spirits would not obey one who was dead. If, on the other hand, the very naming of Him drives them forth, He clearly is not dead; and the more so that the spirits, who perceive things unseen by men, would know if He were so and would refuse to obey Him. But, as a matter of fact, what profane persons doubt, the evil spirits knowâ€"namely that He is God; and for that reason they flee from Him and fall at His feet, crying out even as they cried when He was in the body, "We know Thee Who Thou art, the Holy One of God," and, "Ah, what have I in common with Thee, Thou Son of God? I implore Thee, torment me not."

Both from the confession of the evil spirits and from the daily witness of His works, it is manifest, then, and let none presume to doubt it, that the Savior has raised His own body, and that He is very Son of God, having His being from God as from a Father, Whose Word and Wisdom and Whose Power He is. He it is Who in these latter days assumed a body for the salvation of us all, and taught the world concerning the Father. He it is Who has destroyed death and freely graced us all with incorruption through the promise of the resurrection, having raised His own body as its first-fruits, and displayed it by the sign of the cross as the monument to His victory over death and its corruption.

2. Why is it necessary that people believe in the crucifixion and what it meant?

Put shortly, it is necessary because it is practically the foundation of our faith. People, I am assuming, you mean Christians.

3. Is it reasonable and just that many people are born in places where the likelihood of their coming to believe the Christian creed is almost nill?  If so, how is it reasonable and just?

God didn’t leave the world without a proper testimony about himself (Acts 14,17) and doesn’t condemn anybody without first revealing his grace. Although this may not offer an acceptable answer to the question which you ask, nobody’s salvation depends on how convincing such an answer could be. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross is and remains the only ground for human salvation. Rejecting it (by those who have heard about him) cannot be justified by the lack of intellectual satisfaction one gets from polemical debates.

4. Is it reasonable and sane to accept the Christian creed while rejecting the Muslim or Buddhist ones?  If so, how is it reasonable and sane?

Yet is it unreasonable and insane to reject Christ who is the salvation for humanity? If Christ is the way, the truth, and the life and nobody can see the Father without going through him, then the other two religions must be rejected.

5. Are the myriad varieties of suffering reasonable and just under the auspices of an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving God?  If so, how are they reasonable and just?

I hope I have exhausted this question thoroughly enough for you, if not please by all means help me so I can elucidate it further. You say that our sufferings are to be blamed upon God, but isn't it that we have free will amongst men to do how we please amongst one another without a divine intervention? If we did not have the free ability to choose it would go against the very nature of the goodness of God and the relationship he wants with His people, for true love itself must require both parties to act upon choice and not something that is of required.

I confess that I won't be holding my breath, nor even postponing dinner.

Could you postpone dinner only if you are cooking up ribeye steaks? Craving them at the moment, along with A1 Steak Sauce

[Inevitable Droid]

Yes I will deluge here if you don't mind, but I must also request proper time for follow up rebuttals.

And it is quite the deluge.  Thank you for the time and effort involved.

For purposes of this thread, we will accept uncontested and take for granted that the universe was created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving entity who incarnated in the body of a Jew named Jesus two millennia ago. Given all that

I am glad that you have brought this up for it is of very importance to take this into consideration when we speak of Jesus Christ and how important his coming down to Earth really is.

The ground rule was also simply necessary, because without it, no atheist would allow this discussion to proceed a single step, and I wanted it to proceed.

Upon them, therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lackedâ€"namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in limited degree they might continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise.

Non-human animals, therefore, were suffering and dying, even before humanity sinned?  If so, then God imposed on non-human animals a severe penalty in response to no crime at all, since I presume you would say that in order to commit a crime, one must, first, "share in the reasonable being of the Word," as you put it.  I say it is grotesque to impose a severe penalty in response to no crime.  If, instead, you answer that non-human animals didn't begin to suffer until after humanity sinned, then I will call that grotesque, since a severe penalty is being imposed on X in response to a crime committed by Y.  Either way, the suffering of non-human animals is grotesque, given the assumption of their being created by an omnipotent and omniscient entity.  It also violates our operating assumption that this omnipotent and omniscient entity is all-loving, thus leaving us in absurdity unless we reject our operating assumption.

But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption.

God, therefore, allowed humans to "share in the reasonable being of the Word," such that, sin was possible, and then, when sin occurred, God's response was to impose a severe penalty, as severe as all the penalties humanity has ever imposed on its members, since, of course, God's penalty includes all the penalties humanity has ever imposed, since they all involve suffering, and all suffering is the penalty from God.  This is grotesque, because God had other options.  He had the same options human parents have, in raising their children, only magnified titannically by virtue of God's omnipotence and omniscience.  It is very reasonable to argue that, given unlimited time, which God of course would have, and given omnipotence and omniscience, God could raise through parental techniques a species of animals that "share in the reasonable being of the Word," yet voluntarily eschew all sin.  That God chose otherwise is grotesque.  It also violates our operating assumption that this omnipotent and omniscient entity is all-loving, thus leaving us in absurdity unless we reject our operating assumption.

I'll stop here, because everything that follows hinges on the foregoing, such that, if the foregoing demonstrates grotesquerie and absurdity, then all that follows from it shares in those undesirable attributes, the very ones I predicted must always accompany any explication of Christianity.

[Inevitable Droid]

The law of death, which followed from the Transgression, prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape. The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting. It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption.

I decided to continue pointing out grotesqueries and absurdities.  In the above, we have God making the classic mistake of foolish human parents.  He threatened a penalty he really shouldn't have, and then had to follow through, lest he break his word.  An omniscient being would have known in advance not to make such a threat, and therefore wouldn't have made it, thereby avoiding the trap.  Hence God either isn't omniscient or isn't all-loving, or else the line of reasoning quoted above yields absurdity.

Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God.

The above implies that God was unable, not merely unwilling, but unable, to overcome the power of corruption.  Couple that with the doctrine of omnipotence and we drop ourselves into absurdity.

For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required.

The only way this makes sense is if we treat suffering and death like a financial debt.  Humanity owed the equivalent of a financial debt to God, and Jesus paid the debt, balancing the ledgers.  It also only makes sense in the context of the hypostatic union of God and mortal man.  As God, Jesus wouldn't have to suffer in order to cancel the debt, since he could simply declare it cancelled by fiat, but as mortal man he owed the debt, and so he couldn't just cancel it.  Meanwhile, as mortal man, his single, paltry death wouldn't suffice to cancel the debt, but as God, his death caused omnipotence and omniscience to suffer and cease, and that sufficed to cancel the debt.  All very clever, except it stipulates that as mortal man, Jesus owed the debt.  Yet Christian doctrine stipulates that Jesus was sinless!  Even the alleged stain of original sin never touched him.  Without sin, he owed no debt.  The logic has a hole in it.  Sinless, Jesus could, by virtue of being God, simply cancel the debt by fiat.  Becoming man was pointless, thus the crucifixion was pointless.  The only way to remedy this is to impute original sin to Jesus by virtue of being born a mortal man.  A minor doctrinal change, perhaps, except it brings to the forefront the doctrine of original sin, which is grotesque.  Imputing the sins of the ancestor to the innocent descendant is grotesque.

I'll stop here, perhaps to return later.

[Achronos]

I'll try to be a bit more concise regarding God and Man. Man was originally created to commune with God but because of his fall from grace man was cut off. Man’s curse was that life itself would be hard on him. As a consolation, God allowed man to have temporary companionship here on earth (a wife). Now I think you can better understand the transgression because God not only hates sin but it goes against His very goodness. When A&E listened to the serpent and ate the fruit that God forbid, it caused the communion between Man and God to be broken off. It was just punishment in this context and remember God warned Adam (it is noted just a few verses that Eve knew as well ) that he would surely die.

Not only was the tree a symbol of obidence but it also demonstrated a choice; go against God or follow Him. Man had the choice and now justly suffered the consquences. Again God could not go back on His word because it would falsify himself, hence why the corruption remained but God had a plan for salvation for God is merciful.

Non-human animals, therefore, were suffering and dying, even before humanity sinned?  If so, then God imposed on non-human animals a severe penalty in response to no crime at all, since I presume you would say that in order to commit a crime, one must, first, "share in the reasonable being of the Word," as you put it.  I say it is grotesque to impose a severe penalty in response to no crime.  If, instead, you answer that non-human animals didn't begin to suffer until after humanity sinned, then I will call that grotesque, since a severe penalty is being imposed on X in response to a crime committed by Y.  Either way, the suffering of non-human animals is grotesque, given the assumption of their being created by an omnipotent and omniscient entity.  It also violates our operating assumption that this omnipotent and omniscient entity is all-loving, thus leaving us in absurdity unless we reject our operating assumption.

What do you mean animals are suffering? Plus man was created in the image of God; in his own image. And it was the creation which had dominion over all other lifes on Earth.

It is very reasonable to argue that, given unlimited time, which God of course would have, and given omnipotence and omniscience, God could raise through parental techniques a species of animals that "share in the reasonable being of the Word," yet voluntarily eschew all sin.  

From what I understand you are saying that removal of sin would mean removal of choice to do bad. But God does not want robots, he wants us to have a choice. It would be against the very goodness of God that free will would be eliminated and all that would be left is forced worship in God. Not only is that a false relationship, but not real love between Man and God.

[Inevitable Droid]

Man was originally created to commune with God but because of his fall from grace man was cut off. Man’s curse was that life itself would be hard on him.

That curse was imposed by God.  This is sufficient evidence that God doesn't love man.  One doesn't curse one's loved ones.  One especially doesn't do it in response to a single transgression, and one absolutely doesn't do it if one is omnipotent and omniscient and thus capable of patiently parenting one's loved ones in such a way as to eventually preclude any likelihood that such a transgression will recur.  

Omnipotence and omniscience, taken together, signify the capability of accomplishing anything, literally and unequivocally anything, unreservedly and undilutedly anything.  The only reason an omnipotent and omniscient being doesn't attempt something, since anything attempted will without exception be accomplished, will always be the fact that the omnipotent and omniscient being doesn't choose to attempt it, because it doesn't want to attempt it.  Your God could have patiently parented humanity toward a mature and wise rejection of sin without cursing us to all the myriad sufferings we have endured since first emerging on the Earth.  Your God chose not to, because your God didn't want to.  Ergo your God doesn't love man.

Again God could not go back on His word because it would falsify himself

All your omniscient God had to do, was avoid saying something he knew would bind him to a savage course when the outcome he knew would occur, occurred.

What do you mean animals are suffering?

They endure injury, illness, hunger, thirst, suffocation, frustration, terror, their own deaths, and the deaths of kin, the last being relevant to higher animals only, but relevant to them nonetheless.  If God is all-loving, then God loves animals.  He obviously doesn't love animals, so he isn't all-loving.

From what I understand you are saying that removal of sin would mean removal of choice to do bad.

No.  I'm saying that God has infinite time, infinite power, and infinite knowledge, and therefore is capable of infinitely effective and efficient parenting, such that, after however many eons it would require, his adopted children, humanity, would be led to a condition of such maturity and wisdom that sin would be unthinkable, since I presume you would agree that maturity and wisdom are contrary to sin and thus, in sufficient quantity, its perfect antidote.

What I have argued, and continue to argue, is that our Earth as it exists today is impossible in a reality wherein an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving entity dwells.  That entity must either not exist at all, or else must lack omnipotence, or lack omniscience, or lack all-love.

[Gawen]

Is it reasonable and sane...

He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men.

OOooookay...the second sentence from Achronos' reply pretty much shot himself in the foot.

[Asmodean]

He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men.

OOooookay...the second sentence from Achronos' reply pretty much shot himself in the foot.

That thing about goodness and love...   A joke, yes? Thought everyone knew Yahweh was unpleasant... He's more of an alcoholic stepfather with a baseball bat and the will to use it than the nice grandpa who chases away the closet monster.

[Persimmon Hamster]

What do you mean animals are suffering?

They endure injury, illness, hunger, thirst, suffocation, frustration, terror, their own deaths, and the deaths of kin, the last being relevant to higher animals only, but relevant to them nonetheless.  If God is all-loving, then God loves animals.  He obviously doesn't love animals, so he isn't all-loving.

Debaters, humbly requesting your attention:  I am lurking and am very interested in this part of the discussion.  Might I request/suggest a concentrated, directed effort to focus in on this?  I think you have struck upon a key incongruity in the theist's thinking.  Do not let him sidestep it.
 

[Achronos]

He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men.

OOooookay...the second sentence from Achronos' reply pretty much shot himself in the foot.

That thing about goodness and love...   A joke, yes? Thought everyone knew Yahweh was unpleasant... He's more of an alcoholic stepfather with a baseball bat and the will to use it than the nice grandpa who chases away the closet monster.

It's still important to understand that when Orthodox talk about God's wrath, punishment, justice, et cetera, we usually mean something different from what a lot of Westerners mean. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, I'm just saying I think there is a real distinction.

Well for one thing, some Protestants can't even agree on how the atonement works, so obviously they acknowledge distinctions among themselves. As far as I know, the patristic doctrine is that Christ payed a penalty that the sinner owed to God in order to dissolve man's just penalty. I know I saw a passage in St. John C's commentary on one of my epistle readings a short time ago about Christ taking substitutionary punishment, but I can't find it after 2 hours of searching...I think the words move around on the page while I'm not looking, unless I was just hallucinating. In any event, I am perfectly content with this as it stands.

There are a few things about the Protestant version of Penal Substirution that I think are problematic. For one, they always say that God "has" to punish in order to be "righteous" or "holy" or whatever. They say this is like an equation. This places justice higher than God, and it has God tripping all over Himself trying to appease His own justice. Somehow God ends up competing with God. If He is trying to forgive us, why is He demanding punishment? If His Will is to punish, what is posessing Him to forgive us? If He has to punish us just because He does, then who set justice above God?

The other issue raised by a strict literal interpretation of substitutionary punishment as explained by Protestants is that it leaves no room for the other aspects of redemption. In the West, different "atonement theories" (e.g. Penal Sub, Satisfaction, Governmental, Christus Victor, ransom from Satan) are seen as being in opposition to one another. In Orthodoxy, we accept several views simultaneously, treating them as complementary. If we are forgiven because Christ took God's punishment *period*, then why do we talk about forgiveness as a consequence of the Resurrection as well as the Passion? Why does St. Paul say we are justified by His Resurrection in the same breath that he says we are forgiven through His death (Rom. 4:25)?

Here I talked about God's justice in the context of the Atonement. It is not a matter in which I can offer positive explanations, because I do not know God's mind. As for the other things I mentioned, such as wrath, I would say that God's thoughts are not like human thoughts, nor is God's wrath like man's wrath, nor His love like our love. It is plain old apophatic theology: God cannot be described positively in human terms.

If anybody cares to disagree, I will be glad to read people's explanations, as long as they can substantiate what they are saying. I know that some people feel rather strongly about this issue, but let's not get totally carried away with this.

Also in regards to the animal suffering, I will follow up with a response this evening or on Wednesday and I don't think it is an issue that should be sidestepped, it's obviously something important to consider.

[Gawen]

The PoE is most definitely "a key incongruity" in theists thinking.It cannot be reconciled without special pleading, as no doubt you have seen and will continue to see.

[Inevitable Droid]

Here I talked about God's justice in the context of the Atonement. It is not a matter in which I can offer positive explanations, because I do not know God's mind.

This is the kind of statement an outsider looking in will deny you the right to make.  You claim God exists.  You claim God has a mind.  You claim this mind makes decisions.  You claim those decisions are accurately described in scripture, creed, and tradition.  Yet when called upon to talk about those decisions or more importantly the mind that made them, you plead ignorance.  You can't have it both ways.  You can't claim a thing exists while simultaneously pleading ignorance as to its attributes.  A thing that has no attributes cannot exist, nor can its existence be known if its attributes cannot be known.  A word that denotes a thing whose attributes cannot be known is a word that denotes nothing at all.  Either the attributes of God's mind are to some extent known, or we must conclude that he has no mind, and stick to that conclusion until some attributes become known.  

As for the other things I mentioned, such as wrath, I would say that God's thoughts are not like human thoughts, nor is God's wrath like man's wrath, nor His love like our love. It is plain old apophatic theology: God cannot be described positively in human terms.

Not just in human terms.  Apophatic theology claims he can't be described positively at all.  This form of theology must be rejected on principle.  That which cannot be described positively cannot be known, and that which cannot be known, cannot legitimately be claimed to exist, for that claim would be unfalsifiable.  Anyone who claims God, or God's mind, exists, must, to be taken seriously, make positive claims about the attributes of God or God's mind, so that one could identify God or God's mind if one encountered him or it.

The alternative to the above would be to continually let you off the hook whenever we found God to be evil or incompetent.  You would never have to defend God against these accusations, but would always be able to say, "God's mind is unknowable," and then sit back, smiling and unblinking.  None of us will let you get away with that.  If you claim God is good and wise, then you must be prepared to defend him against accusations of evil and incompetence.  Your only legitimate alternative is to retract your claim that God is good and wise.  And remember, good and wise is an understatement as to what you actually claim.  You claim perfect love and omniscience.

[Achronos]

You can't claim a thing exists while simultaneously pleading ignorance as to its attributes.  A thing that has no attributes cannot exist, nor can its existence be known if its attributes cannot be known.

That something (God in this case) is not observable does not mean it has no attributes, nor does it mean it does not exist. God cannot be scientifically shown to exist, but that need presupposes that scientific proof is the end-all, which science cannot prove, so it breaks its own standard. Scientific proof is an untestable, unprovable, arbitrary axiom, just like theism is.

Not just in human terms.  Apophatic theology claims he can't be described positively at all.  This form of theology must be rejected on principle.  That which cannot be described positively cannot be known, and that which cannot be known, cannot legitimately be claimed to exist, for that claim would be unfalsifiable.  Anyone who claims God, or God's mind, exists, must, to be taken seriously, make positive claims about the attributes of God or God's mind, so that one could identify God or God's mind if one encountered him or it.

The Father cannot be known, nor can the inner life of the Trinity, so that's true. The only interaction we have with God is through the Son and the Holy Spirit. So "God" is both knowable (though Christ) and unknowable (the Father). We have to have it both ways, because it's the only way it makes sense. If God is all-unknowable, then it is as you say. But if God is all-knowable, then he really can't be God. This is only paradox if it is considered in oversimplified terms (such as using "God" rather than the persons of the Trinity) and basically ignore Trinitarianism.

But I don't think anybody says apophatic theology is the only way to speak about God. It is a technique.

The alternative to the above would be to continually let you off the hook whenever we found God to be evil or incompetent.  You would never have to defend God against these accusations, but would always be able to say, "God's mind is unknowable," and then sit back, smiling and unblinking.  None of us will let you get away with that.  If you claim God is good and wise, then you must be prepared to defend him against accusations of evil and incompetence.  Your only legitimate alternative is to retract your claim that God is good and wise.  And remember, good and wise is an understatement as to what you actually claim.  You claim perfect love and omniscience.

That assumes God is open to our scrutiny. Can you prove that premise?

[Ned]

I find myself nodding in agreement at pretty much everything Achronos writes.