Chapter 2
The Divine Dilemma and its Solution in the Incarnation
(6) We saw in the last chapter that, 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.
(7) 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. What--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.
(8) 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
father--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.
(9) 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.