Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| What remains after this but to say what cause lay behind the very climax of the whole: I mean the much-discussed end of his life, the manner of his passion, and the great wonder of his return to life after death? Once we have considered these things, we shall confirm them all by testimonies.
2| He made use of a mortal instrument, then, for the reasons we have given, as of a statue worthy of God; and through it, like a great king speaking through an interpreter, he passed through human life and did everything in a way worthy of divine power. Now if, after his sojourn among men, he had in some other way vanished and suddenly flown off, stealing away his interpreter and his own statue in secret and trying to escape death by flight, and then had himself somewhere wiped out the mortal part by decay and destruction, he would have seemed a phantom to everyone; nor would he have done what befitted himself, he who is life, the Word of God and the power of God, if he had handed over his own interpreter to decay and destruction.
3| Nor would his deeds against the demons have been crowned with their consummation through his struggle with death; nor would anyone have known where he had gone when he departed; nor would he have won belief from those who had not witnessed it; nor would he have been shown stronger than the nature of death; nor would he have freed the mortal from its own nature; nor would he have been heard of through the whole inhabited world of men; nor would he have convinced his disciples to despise death; nor would he have set before those who follow his teaching the hope of life after death with God; nor would he have made good the promises of his words; nor would he have brought about outcomes in harmony with the prophetic predictions about him; nor would he have gone through the last contest of all, and that was the contest against death. For all these reasons, then, since it was altogether necessary that the mortal instrument, after the sufficient service it had rendered to the divine Word, should meet an end worthy of God, his death too was ordered in some such way. Two courses were left for the end: either to hand the whole over to decay and destruction and make the close of his life the most shameful ending of the whole drama, or to show himself stronger than death by making the mortal immortal through divine power. The first was foreign to what he had promised. It is not the nature of fire to chill, nor of light to darken; just as little is it the nature of life to put to death, or of the divine Word to act against reason. How then could the Word who promised life to others look on while his own instrument perished, hand over his own statue to destruction, and let death ravage the interpreter of his divinity, he who pledges immortality to those who take refuge in him?
5| The second course, then, was necessary: I mean, to show himself stronger than death. How then ought this to be done? Secretly and by stealth, or conspicuously and plainly before all? An achievement done by him in darkness and secrecy and known to no one would have helped no one; but once shown and heard of everywhere, it offered everyone the benefit of the wonder. Fittingly, then, since his instrument had to be shown stronger than death, and this done not in hiding but before people's eyes, he does not flee death, for then he would have been thought a coward and weaker than death; instead, through his struggle with death, as with an opponent in the games, he made the mortal immortal, having taken up this contest for the salvation, life and immortality of all.
6| Just as, if someone wanted to show us a vessel that could not be burned and was stronger than fire, he could not demonstrate the wonder in any other way than by putting the thing in his hands into the fire and then taking it out again whole and unharmed, so the Word of God, who gives life to the universe, wishing to show that the mortal instrument he had used for the salvation of humankind was stronger than death, and to make it a sharer in his own life and immortality, carried out a most useful plan. For a short time he left the body and gave the mortal over to death, as a test of its own nature; then, not long after, he took it back again from death, as a display of the divine power by which he showed that the eternal life he had proclaimed was stronger than every death.
7| The cause is plain and clear. His followers needed to see with their own eyes a vivid rebirth into life after death, the rebirth on which he taught them to hang their hopes as he prepared them to be stronger than death; and so he fittingly let them see it with their eyes. Those who were to pursue a godly life had to receive this first and most necessary lesson of all through clear sight, and far more those who were very soon to proclaim him to the whole inhabited world and to announce to all people the knowledge of God that he had set before all the nations.
8| They had to take hold of the firmest conviction of life after death, so that, undaunted and unafraid of death, they might eagerly take up the contest against the polytheistic error of the nations; for had they not trained themselves to despise death, they would never have prepared themselves to face dangers. So, of necessity, arming them against the dominion of death, he did not hand on the lesson in mere phrases and words, nor did he compose an argument on the immortality of the soul in persuasive and plausible terms, as human discourses do; by the deed itself he displayed to them his trophies over death.
9| This, then, is the first and greatest reason for our Savior's battle against death: he showed his followers that death, which all fear, is nothing, and he set before their own eyes, in clear sight, the life he had promised, making that life the firstfruits of our common hope of life with God and of immortality. A second reason for the return to life would be the demonstration of the divine power that dwelt in the body. Since formerly people deified mortal men who had been conquered by death, and named heroes and gods those whom death had overpowered, the Word of God, the lover of humankind, fittingly showed himself on this account as well, displaying to human beings a nature stronger than death. He led the mortal, after its dissolution, on to a second life, and let all see a trophy of immortality raised over death; and he taught them to confess as true God him alone who, in death, had bound on the prizes of victory over death. I could also sketch for you a third reason for the saving death.
11| It was a sacrifice offered up on behalf of the common race to the all-ruling God of the universe, a victim consecrated on behalf of the human flock, a sacrifice to turn away demonic error. When the one sacrifice, the great victim, the all-holy body of our Savior, had been slaughtered on behalf of the human race and offered up as a life in exchange for all the nations once held fast in the impiety of demonic error, then at last the whole power of the impure and unholy demons was overthrown, and at once every earthly and deceitful error was undone and set aside by a stronger power.
12| The saving victim taken from among men, the bodily instrument of the Word itself, was consecrated on behalf of the common human flock; and this was the victim given over to death of which the voices of the sacred scriptures cry aloud, at one time saying something like this: "Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world"; at another proclaiming beforehand: "He was led like a sheep to slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is dumb." And they teach the cause as well, adding: "This one bears our sins and is in pain for our sake, and we reckoned him to be in toil and in affliction and in ill-treatment; but he was wounded because of our sins and made weak because of our lawless deeds. The chastisement that brought our peace was upon him; by his bruise we were healed. We went astray, and the Lord handed him over for our sins."
13| For these reasons, then, the human instrument of the divine Word was consecrated. But the great high priest, consecrated to the all-governing and all-ruling God, who is other than the victim, the Word of God, God's power and God's wisdom, soon called the mortal back from death and presented it to the Father as the firstfruits of our common salvation, raising it up on behalf of all people as a trophy of victory over death and over the demonic battle line, and as a safeguard against the human sacrifices performed of old.
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