CHAPTER VIII. Answer to the objection based on the fact that Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified with insult.

Why did Christ, when brought before the high-priest and Pilate the governor, work no miraculous sign, and show no manifestation which seemed worthy of Him, nor any mighty word begotten of wisdom ? Why did He appear in humble fashion, with utterance restrained and brief, and with heavy look ?

It was in order that He might not make prophecies void of meaning, nor convict the sacred tablets of falsity, and make of none effect the toil of holy men, which they endured in their godly preaching of the message of the dispensation, as they wrote the mystery of His coming and unveiled the manner of His Passion long before. As the great Isaiah with voice of might says, "We have seen him, and he had no form nor comeliness, but his form was without honour " (Isa. liii. 2); and again, "a man smitten, and knowing how to bear sickness," and, "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb he was dumb." And when speaking in the Person of Christ he says, "I gave my back to scourges, my cheeks to blows ; my face was not turned away from the shame of spitting" (Isa. 1. 6). And it is possible to find thousands of other things spoken by the holy prophet concerning Him. If then, as you suggest, He had uttered violent words when standing before the high-priest or the governor, He might indeed have smitten them with divine signs, and made these men afraid by some novel sight; He might have made them suddenly fall prone to the ground by some act of miracle; but He would have flung away all prophetic testimony, He would have disregarded the foreknowledge of the noble men of old, and stultified the words of those far-famed pillars; He would have made of none effect the divine revelations of the Holy Spirit, |54 and He would simply have thrust aside all the expectation concerning Him, by fulfilling the dispensation of death by means of a phantom of the air, enslaving all things to the necessity of their fears, and constraining those who stood there by the force of His terrible brow. And if by virtue of His Godhead He had made the rock tremble at His word, or shaken the house; if by a word He had produced a thick atmosphere or made an onslaught against the purpose of these savage brutes, then He would have done wrong by forcing the governor and the high-priests into subjection, He would have erred in compelling that which was evil¹¹⁰ to admit of that which was just. And in this He would have come under the suspicion that He was working these marvellous novelties by means of magic. Accordingly, He would have been judged one of those who are regarded as Gorgons. If He had terrified Pilate with fateful portents, if He had frightened the priests with signs of a novel kind, if He had reduced the Jewish nation by the sight of apparitions, it would have resulted in that which was false combating the truth. For the wonderful works which had been done by Him would have admitted of a base suspicion among men, as though they had been wrought, not in accordance with judgment,¹¹¹ but merely in phantom form and lying semblance. Hence that which had come to pass in a godly way long before, whether on land or sea, whether in town or country, would have been maligned and judged as an illusive dream and not a reality. The other result would have been the non-fulfilment of the foreknowledge of the men of old time, for Jeremiah would have made a mistake in describing Him as a guileless lamb which was led as a sacrifice (Jer. xi. 19). But, in addition to this, there would have been no truth whatever in God being enrolled among men as the Word. For he who does things foreign to the nature of men does not remain among their number, but has a separate place of vantage of his own. Again, it would have been an utter lie when some |55 one else, speaking in the Person of the Only Begotten, says (Ps. lxviii. 22), "They gave me gall for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." For who would have dared, if struck by the lightning of His visitation, to make ready vinegar and offer Him gall? Who would not have trembled when they saw Him stern and fearsome, and combining with His words a terrifying look, first speaking and then forthwith concealing Himself, suddenly seen and then again invisible ? Tell me, who would not have hidden himself from a countenance so full of portents? Who would have forged cross or tree, or goad or sharp nails ? Who would have ventured to master Him who could not be mastered, or to seize as a man Him whose speech and deed were more than human? But if the cross had not been set up in the ground and no nail had been sharpened as a horn,¹¹² then the Passion would not have atoned through the Cross, nor would He have won healing by being pierced with evil. Nor would Habakkuk have made any clear revelation when he prophesied that He had horns in His hands, that is, the nails of the cross or its horn-like arms ¹¹³ (Hab. iii. 4). And again, Moses would not be worthy of credit in declaring Him first and foremost as life that was hanged (Deut. xxviii. 66). All would have been false, with no more than verbal truth, and fr.r from the deeds of godliness, and so it would have been lawful to seek and expect another Jesus. For He who was heralded in the books of the Bible would not have come, for, as I have said, He would not have kept to such a fashion, but would have become man in the guise of a strange marvel. For if He had acted like Apollonius,¹¹⁴ and had made a sport of His life by magic art, and, when speaking to the Emperor solemnly in the midst of his palace somewhere, He had been digging garden herbs at the same moment for those who kept gardens, the world would really have been justly deceived, and all creation would have been enveloped in the cloud of His deceit, since it would |56 become the blind slave of a wizard philosopher, who was able by his knavery to snatch away his body and to conceal by his phantoms the name of godliness. If He had done this He would have been judged to be neither God nor the Son of God, but one of those wizards who spend their lives in cheating.

It was in order that no stumbling-block of this kind should turn His saving Passion into mockery, and that no suspicion of the laws of magic should tamper with the mystery of the dispensation, that He bore as man the experiences of insult. And yet no shame really touched Him, for He had the indwelling of One who was not subject to human affections,¹¹⁵ and He did not admit the principle of shame. For just as a vessel when filled with fire within does not receive any impression of coldness that is brought to it from without, but thrusts it away by virtue of its inward warmth, so Jesus, having the in-dwelling of God, who is a divine Fire which cannot be destroyed nor spent, reckoned as nothing the coldness of the insults, and when He saw the revilings He was not influenced thereby. Just as a child, though he sees the laughter of his comrades being turned upon him in abundance, feels no shame, so Christ turned His face from the taunts of the Jews, as though they came not from men but from babes. Even as a rock which receives the trail of countless reptiles, feels neither trace nor track nor mark, for it carries moving things upon its natural hardness, and yet is not scratched by them at all; so Jesus, when the band of the Jews rushed upon Him like reptiles, remained firm and unharmed like a rock, receiving no shame by their impress.

And there is another reason for what He did. It was fitting that before the Passion He should have kept His divine power in check, in order that after it, and while it was in progress, and when He had burst the bands of Hades and cleft the earth and raised again a band of men with souls and bodies, and revealed the company of those who have passed from hence --- He should show who He was that endured the Passion, and who it was that dwelt |57 within Him. For if creation in one point¹¹⁶ has been conquered by Him who seemed to be subject to human affections,¹¹⁷ it was undoubtedly the God and Creator in Him that shook the world, and quenched the orgies of the foolish. And, indeed, it is not before the shock of battle but after it, that a soldier's qualities became manifest to his enemies. What greater thing could there be than to return from Hades after three days ? ¹¹⁸

We conclude therefore that Christ, by working no new marvel when brought before Pilate, illustrates a rule, and the conduct which results from it, seen in the theatre; namely, that a man should not rouse up the malice of the wild beasts against him by some novel and terrible mask, but should rather provoke them to the contest by a humble one, and should overcome their savagery by excelling both in skill and in strength. So He who had appeared humble in the contest, was seen to be most terrible after it, such as earth could not bear, nor could heaven endure to look upon the conflict, for the former fled hither and thither, and by its quakings made mighty efforts to escape, while the latter shut (so to speak) the eye of its light, and no longer had power to look upon that which was coming to pass. Concerning the Passion then, you may accept such points as these by way of answer.