Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
He therefore went off to Galilee — unwilling, as he was, to display himself to the Jews, for fear of driving them toward a repentance that would cure their impiety — and, once his disciples had assembled again, he laid bare for them both the wording of the sacred writings and what the prophets had kept hidden. None of this could be grasped in any way until after his suffering, since it was his own person and passion that these writings foretold. This is why Moses and those very prophets speak of the law given to the Jews as a 'testament': a testament cannot be ratified, nor can its contents be known, before the one who made it has died, since until then it stays sealed shut. Thus, had Christ not undergone death, this testament would have remained unopened — in other words, God's mystery would never have been unveiled or grasped. Yet the whole of scripture falls into two testaments: the portion preceding Christ's coming and passion, namely the law and the prophets, bears the name 'old', while whatever was set down after his resurrection is termed the 'new testament'. The old belongs to the Jews, the new to us; still, the two are not at odds, since the new brings the old to fulfillment, and one and the same Christ stands as maker of both, who, by accepting death on our behalf, appoints us heirs of the eternal kingdom once the Jewish people has been cast off and disinherited. So Jeremiah the prophet attests, speaking in this way: 'Look, days are approaching, says the Lord, when for Israel's house together with Judah's house I shall bring to completion a testament that is new — unlike the one I set in place for their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from Egypt's land, since they failed to keep faith with that testament of mine, and so I turned away from them, says the Lord.' The same prophet elsewhere says something similar: 'I abandoned my own house, I gave up my inheritance into the grip of its enemies; my inheritance turned against me like a lion in the woods, it raised its voice at me — for that I came to hate it.' Given that his inheritance is the heavenly kingdom, he plainly does not mean that he hates the inheritance as such, but rather the heirs, who turned out ungrateful and godless toward him. 'My inheritance turned against me,' he says, 'like a lion' — meaning, I became prey and food devoured by my very own heirs, who slaughtered me as if I were livestock. 'It raised its voice at me' — meaning, they pronounced verdicts of death and crucifixion upon me. Now where he says above that he would bring the new testament to completion for the house of Judah, he indicates that the earlier testament, delivered through Moses, had never reached perfection, whereas the one to come through Christ would arrive at completion. By 'the house of Judah and Israel' he certainly does not intend the Jews, whom he cast off, but rather ourselves — summoned by him from among the nations to take their place through adoption, and named children of the Jews. This is exactly what the Sibyl proclaims when she declares: 'the sacred lineage of the blessed Jews, dwellers under heaven.' Isaiah, meanwhile, teaches what sort of people this would turn out to be, in the passage where the supreme Father addresses the Son: 'I, the Lord God, summoned you unto righteousness; I will grasp your hand and give you strength, and I have set you as a testament for my people, a light for the nations, so as to open blind eyes, lead out those held fast in chains, and those seated in darkness out from the prison-house.' Seeing, then, that we once sat in darkness like the blind, penned like prisoners within folly's cell, ignorant of God and of truth, we have since been given light by him — he who by his own testament took us in as his own, freed us from wicked chains, brought us forward into wisdom's light, and welcomed us into the inheritance of the heavenly kingdom.
With the preaching of the gospel and of his name now arranged for his disciples, a cloud abruptly enveloped him and carried him up into heaven — this on the fortieth day following his passion, exactly as Daniel had foretold when he wrote: 'and behold, one arriving amid heaven's clouds like a son of man, who came all the way to the Ancient of Days.' Scattered across the provinces, the disciples set church foundations down everywhere, themselves performing wonders great and nearly unbelievable in the name of God, their master, since at his departure he had furnished them with power and authority, so that this fresh proclamation's design could take root and gain confirmation. He also disclosed to them everything still to come — proclaimed by Peter and Paul at Rome, a proclamation that has survived preserved in writing. Among many other astonishing things stated there, they foretold that before long God would dispatch a king to defeat the Jews, raze their cities flat, and lay siege to the Jews themselves until hunger and thirst broke them down. It would then happen that they would resort to eating their own people's flesh and devour each other; at last, once captured, they would fall under enemy control, and would witness, right before their eyes, their wives subjected to the harshest brutality, their maidens defiled and forced into prostitution, their boys snatched away, their infants smashed against the ground, and finally the whole land ravaged by sword and flame — the captives driven from their homeland for good, on account of their scorn toward the Son of God, dearest and most approved of all. And so, once these people had perished — Nero having put them to death — Vespasian erased the very name and nation of the Jews, bringing to pass everything that had been predicted.
What strikes as false and unbelievable those whom the genuine teaching of the heavenly writings has left uninstructed has, I believe, now found its confirmation. Yet, so that we can also refute those excessively — and self-harmingly — shrewd people who withhold their trust from divine things, let us expose their mistake using their own style of argument too, so that eventually they may see plainly that things had to unfold exactly as we have demonstrated they did. And though before impartial judges it would suffice to offer either testimonies unaccompanied by arguments, or arguments unaccompanied by testimonies, we are nonetheless not satisfied with just one, having both available to us, so that no perversely clever opponent is left room either to misread us or to argue back. Such people deny that anything at all could be subtracted from an immortal nature; in short, they deny that it suited God to consent to become man, loading himself with the flesh's frailty so as to submit himself to sufferings, to pain, to death — as if it would not have been simple enough for him to appear before men free of bodily weakness, teaching them righteousness with all the greater authority as one openly declared to be God, since then everyone would surely have obeyed his heavenly commands, had the might and authority of a commanding God backed them. 'Why,' these people ask, 'did he not arrive among men as God to instruct them? What made him lower and weaken himself to such a degree that mortals were able to hold him in contempt and subject him to punishment? Why did he suffer violence at the hands of the weak and the mortal? Why did he fail to drive off men's hands, whether by his power or by evading them through his divinity? Why did he not at least disclose his majesty right at the moment of death, and instead was marched to judgment as if helpless, sentenced as if guilty, put to death as if mortal?' I will take up these objections one by one, and will let no one remain misled. These things happened for a reason both great and marvelous: whoever comes to understand it will not merely stop marveling that God suffered torment at human hands, but will readily perceive that he could not even have been taken for God at all, had the very things now objected to not actually occurred.
Take anyone who lays down rules for men and molds the lives and character of others — I ask: should he himself carry out what he prescribes, or not? Fail to do it, and his rules carry no weight. For when what is prescribed is good, when it puts human life on its best footing, the one prescribing it ought not to remove himself from the group of men among whom he lives; he ought to live exactly as he instructs others to live, lest, living otherwise, he strips his own rules of credibility and makes his teaching seem trivial by undoing in practice what he labors in words to fasten down. Every single hearer of one who issues commands resists having the obligation to obey forced upon him, as though his freedom were thereby being confiscated. So he answers such a teacher along these lines: 'What you order is beyond me, since it cannot be done. You bar me from anger, you bar me from craving, you bar me from being roused by lust, you bar me from sorrow, you bar me from dreading death — yet nature so resists this that every living creature is bound by these very feelings. Or, if you truly believe nature can be overridden this way, then do it yourself, you who issue the order, so I may see that it is possible. But given that you yourself do not do it, what nerve is this — wanting to saddle a man born free with rules you will not keep yourself? Learn your lesson first, teacher, and straighten out your own conduct before you set about mending everyone else's.' Who could call this reply unjust? Rather, a teacher of that stripe earns nothing but ridicule, and finds himself mocked in return, since he will plainly be seen mocking others. So what is left for such a teacher to do, once these charges are leveled at him? How can he strip the defiant of their excuse, except by proving through his own present conduct that what he teaches can actually be done? This is exactly why nobody heeds what the philosophers prescribe. Men, after all, prize examples over words, since talk comes cheap while delivery is costly — if only as many lived rightly as spoke rightly! But those who prescribe without practicing forfeit all credibility: mere men doing so will be dismissed as trivial, while a god doing so will meet the excuse of human weakness. What is left, then, is that deeds must back up words — precisely what the philosophers cannot manage. And so, given that the teachers themselves succumb to the very passions they insist must be conquered, they can train nobody in the virtue they falsely preach, which is why they suppose that a perfectly wise man has never existed at all — meaning one in whom supreme learning and knowledge stood united with supreme virtue and flawless justice; and in this they were not wrong. For no one since the world began has proved to be such a man, except Christ, who conveyed wisdom both in word and confirmed his doctrine through present virtue.
Come, then, let us examine whether a teacher dispatched from heaven could possibly fall short of perfection. I am not yet discussing the one they deny to have come from God at all. Suppose merely that some figure is to be sent down from heaven to lay virtue's foundations under human life and mold men toward justice. Nobody could doubt that a teacher so sent from on high must be flawless in the knowledge of everything, just as in virtue, or else heaven and earth would show no difference whatsoever. In man, after all, there exists no teaching that originates purely from within: a mind confined within earthly organs, hampered by the body's decay, cannot by itself either grasp or hold onto truth unless taught from outside itself. And even granting it the fullest capacity, it still could never reach the summit of virtue or withstand every vice, whose raw material is lodged within the body itself. From this it follows that no earthly teacher can be perfect. The heavenly teacher, though — granted knowledge by his divinity and virtue by his immortality — must inevitably be flawless and whole in teaching, as in every other respect. Yet this cannot come about at all unless he takes up a mortal body of his own. Why it could happen no other way is easy to see. Suppose he were to approach men purely as God — setting aside that mortal eyes could neither behold nor withstand the splendor of his majesty — God as such could never teach virtue, since, lacking a body, he would fail to perform what he taught, leaving his instruction incomplete. Whereas, granted that the height of virtue consists in enduring pain patiently for justice and duty's sake, and that it is virtue not to dread death itself even under threat, but to face it courageously when it comes, that flawless teacher must both prescribe these things and back them up by deed, since anyone laying down rules for living has to eliminate every possible excuse, so as to impose on people the necessity of obeying — through shame rather than compulsion — while still leaving them free, so that a reward stands ready for the obedient, since they could have refused had they wished, and a penalty for the disobedient, since they could have complied had they wished. How, then, can this excuse be eliminated, unless the teacher himself does what he teaches, going ahead, so to speak, as guide, extending a hand to whoever follows? But how can he perform what he teaches unless he resembles the one he is teaching? For should he be immune to every kind of suffering, a man could answer him this way: 'I would rather not sin, truly, but I am defeated — clothed as I am in flesh both weak and fragile; it is this flesh that lusts, that grows angry, that dreads pain and death. So I am driven against my own will into sin, not from wanting it but from being forced; I sense myself sinning, yet the necessity built into my frailty pushes me on, and I have no strength to resist it.' What answer could that teacher of righteousness give to this? How could he confute a man pleading the excuse of the flesh for his own wrongdoing, unless he too had put on flesh, thereby proving that flesh, too, is capable of virtue? Defiance, after all, can only be disproved by example. Men cannot possess the resolve you teach unless you have first shown it yourself, since human nature insists on being seen as drawn toward vice not merely excusably but even justifiably; hence the master and teacher of virtue has to become as close to man as possible, so that by conquering sin in his own person he might teach that man, too, can conquer it. But were he immortal, he could offer man no example whatsoever. For some stubborn person would stand up and say: 'You, of course, do not sin, being free of this body; you feel no craving, since an immortal needs nothing — but I require a great many things simply to keep this life of mine going. You fear no death, since it holds no power over you; you scorn pain, being incapable of suffering any harm — yet I, being mortal, dread both, since they inflict on me torments of the harshest kind, ones my fragile flesh cannot endure.' The teacher of virtue, then, needed to strip away this excuse as well, so that nobody could blame his sinning on necessity rather than his own fault. Therefore, for him to be perfect, the one being taught must have nothing left to object with, so that were the man to say, 'What you command is impossible,' the teacher could reply, 'Look — I do it myself.' 'But I am clothed in flesh, whose very nature is to sin.' 'And I wear that same flesh, yet sin holds no dominion over me.' 'For me, scorning wealth is hard, since in this body one cannot live any other way.' 'Look, a body belongs to me as well, yet still I fight off every desire.' 'I cannot bear pain or death for justice's sake, being frail.' 'Look, pain and death hold sway over me too, and yet I overcome the very things you fear, so as to make you victor over pain and death alike. I go ahead through what you claim cannot be endured: if you cannot follow one who merely commands, then follow one who leads the way.' In this fashion every excuse is stripped away, and a man is forced to admit that his own fault makes him unjust, if he fails to follow the teacher of virtue who also serves as his guide. You can see, then, just how much more complete a mortal teacher is than an immortal one — precisely because he can guide a mortal — since whoever is immune to suffering cannot teach endurance. None of this, however, means I am ranking man above God; I mean only to show that man cannot be a flawless teacher unless he is God as well, so that heavenly authority lets him impose the necessity of obedience on men — nor can God be that teacher unless clothed in a mortal body, so that by fulfilling his own precepts through deeds he binds everyone else to the necessity of obedience. It is therefore entirely clear that whoever is to guide life and teach righteousness must possess a body, and that his teaching can become full and complete, take root and gain foundation, and stand firm and fixed among men in no other way than by his undergoing the weakness of flesh and body and taking on, in his own person, the very virtue he teaches — so as to teach it simultaneously in word and deed — and likewise by being subject to death and every form of suffering, since virtue's duties consist precisely in enduring suffering and undergoing death. All of this, as I have said, the perfect teacher must himself bear, in order to teach that it can indeed be borne.
Let men, then, learn and grasp why the highest God, in sending his envoy and messenger to teach mortal beings the precepts of justice, chose to have him clothed in flesh, subjected to torment, and put to death. Justice being nowhere found on earth, he dispatched a teacher — a law brought to life, as it were — to found a new name and a new temple and to scatter true, devoted worship across the whole world, both by word and by example. Yet, so that his divine sending would be beyond doubt, he could not be born the way a man is ordinarily born, formed from two mortal parents; instead, it had to be plain that, even in taking on humanity, he remained heavenly — he came into being without a begetting father's part in it. His spiritual father was God, and just as the father of his spirit was God without any mother, so the mother of his body was a virgin without any father. He was thus both God and man at once, positioned between the two as mediator — the Greeks name him mesitēs for exactly this — so that he could draw man toward God, meaning toward immortality. Had he been God alone, as noted earlier, he could not have furnished man with examples of virtue; had he been man alone, he could not have driven men toward righteousness, unless an authority and power beyond the human were joined to it. Since man is made up of flesh together with spirit, and the spirit must win eternity by works of righteousness, the flesh — being earthly and therefore mortal — pulls its attached spirit downward with it, dragging it away from immortality into death. A spirit unaccompanied by flesh, then, could never have guided man toward immortality in any way, because it is the flesh that keeps the spirit from following God: fragile as it is and given over to sin, and sin serves as death's nourishment. This, then, is exactly why a mediator arrived — God embodied in flesh — so that the flesh might be capable of following him, and so that he might rescue man from death, whose reign lies over the flesh. He took on flesh for this very purpose: having mastered the flesh's desires, to teach that sinning is not something forced upon us, but a matter of our own choosing and will. For there is one struggle above all others that confronts us, and it is against the flesh, whose limitless desires bear down on the soul and refuse to let it keep command of itself, but instead, having bound it over to pleasures and sweet allurements, hand it over to death without end. So that we might be able to resist these forces, God both opened up and revealed to us a path for overcoming the flesh. And this virtue, complete and lacking nothing in any respect, grants to those who triumph the crown and the prize of immortality.