CHAPTER 13

That even when He was made Man, He remained in the Nature that cannot suffer, or be harmed, or embodied.

AND since this is so, there is no need to be disturbed in mind on hearing of the Birth, human Body, Sufferings and Death of the immaterial and unembodied Word of God. For just as the rays of the sun's light undergo no suffering, though they fill all things, and touch dead and unclean bodies, much less could the unembodied Power of God suffer in its essence, or be harmed, or ever become worse than itself, when it touches a body without being really embodied. For what of this? Did He not ever and everywhere reach through the matter of the elements and of bodies themselves, as being the creative Word of God, and imprint the words of His own wisdom upon them, impressing life on the lifeless, form on that which is formless and shapeless by nature, stamping His own beauty and unembodied ideas on the qualities of matter, moving things by their own nature lifeless and immovable, earth, air, fire, in a wise and harmonious motion, ordering all things out of disorder, increasing and perfecting them, pervading all things with the divine power of reason, extending through all places and touching all, but yet receiving hurt from naught, nor defiled in His own nature. And the same is true of His relation to men (as well as nature). Of old He appeared to a few easily numbered, only the prophets who are recorded and the just men, now to one, now to another, but finally to us all, to the evil and unholy, to the Greeks as well as the Hebrews, He has offered Himself as Benefactor and Saviour through the surpassing goodness and love of the Father, Who is all-good, distinctly announcing it thus: "They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick: I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Yea, the Saviour of all cried unto all, saying: " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,

and I will refresh you." He called and healed ungrudgingly through the human organism which He had assumed, like a musician showing his skill by means of a lyre, and exhibited Himself as an example of a life wholly wise, virtuous, and good, unto the souls diseased in human bodies, just as the most clever physicians heal men with (169) remedies akin to and resembling them. For, now, He taught them truths not shared by others, but laid down as laws by Him or by the Father in far distant periods of time for the ancient and pre-Mosaic Hebrew men of God. And now He cared as kindly for their bodies as for their souls, allowing them to see with eyes of physical sight the things done by Him in the flesh, and giving His teaching to their physical ears again with a tongue of flesh. He fulfilled all things by the Humanity that He had taken, (b) for those who only in that way were able to appreciate His Divinity. In all this, then, for the advantage and profit of us all the all-loving Word of God ministered to His Father's Counsels, remaining Himself immaterial and unembodied, as He was before with the Father, not changing His essence, not dissolved from His own nature, not bound with the bonds of the flesh, not falling from divinity, and neither losing the characteristic power of the Word, nor (c) hindered from being in the other parts of the Universe, while He passed His life where His earthly vessel was. For it is the fact that during the time in which He lived as a man, He continued to fill all things, and was with the Father, and was in Him too, and had care of all things collectively even then, of things in heaven and on earth, not being like ourselves debarred from ubiquity, nor hindered from divine action by His human nature. But He shared His own gifts with man, and received nothing from mortality in return . He supplied something of His (d) divine power to mortals, not taking anything in return for His association with mortals. He was, therefore, not defiled by being born of a human body, being apart from body, neither did He suffer in His essence from the mortal, being untouched by suffering. As when a lyre is struck, or its strings torn asunder, if so it chance, it is unlikely that he who played it suffers, so we could not say truly that, when some wise man is punished in his body, that the wisdom in him, or the soul in his body, is struck or burned.

(170) Much less is it reasonable to say that the nature or power of the Word received any hurt from the sufferings of the body. For it was granted in our illustration of light that the rays of the sun sent down to earth from heaven are not defiled by touching all the mud and filth and garbage. We are not even debarred from saying that these things are illuminated by the rays of light. Whereas it is impossible to say that the sun is defiled or rendered muddy (b) by contact with these materials. And these things could not be said to be foreign to one another. Whereas the immaterial and unembodied Word of God, having His life and reason and everything we have said in Himself, if He touch aught with divine and unembodied power, the thing touched must necessarily live and exist with the light of reason. Thus therefore, also, whatever body He touches, that body is made holy and illuminated at once, and all disease and weakness and all such things depart. Its emptiness is exchanged for the fullness of the Word. And (c) this was why a dead body, though but a small part of it came in contact with the power of the Word, was raised up to life, and death fled from life, and darkness was dissolved by light, the corruptible put on incorruption, and the mortal immortality.