In illud Pater

Of our holy father Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium, a discourse against heretics on the text: "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me." Again, as a lawful soldier, I take up the battle against the heretics, with Stephen, the general of piety, commanding as my captain. For just as when Moses prayed, Joshua routed the enemies, so also I, with the martyr cooperating, subdue the enemies of the truth. I say these things not trusting in an abundance of words, but trusting in the prayer of the martyr; therefore I also confidently lay hold of the arguments. For I do not fear their verbal bombast. I am unafraid of the problems of their crafty deceit. For I have learned not to fear a fear where there is no fear. For they say that Christ feared and dreaded death, but we, for Christ's sake, choose to die as many times as the days we live in the flesh, so that with bare head we may triumph over the truth. Hence, as one already holding the victorious vote, I advance against them. For Christ encourages me through the prophet, saying: "Son of man, do not be afraid of their face, for they will rave around you in a circle. For you dwell in the midst of scorpions." For I do not fear scorpions that sting. For I do not walk with bare foot; for I have the sandals of the gospel of peace, so that even if I am bitten, I may not be harmed. "And having shod," it says, "the feet in the readiness of the gospel of peace." Come then, let us trample the many-formed head of the heretics with the sandals of peace, so that by advancing fearlessly against them, we may teach them that they are greatly mistaken in attaching fear and timidity to the nature of the Only-begotten.

For those who think and speak without judgment or reason, and who do not understand the saying, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me," condemn Christ for cowardice and say that he is deficient and inferior because he prays to the Father and seeks deliverance from the impending necessity. Since, therefore, they slander the Word of God to the dishonor of God and sing the letter to the neglect of the Spirit, mocking and tearing apart the economy of Christ, and with cleverness of expression and eloquence of words they conceal their venomous bites, robbing the more innocent of their salvation, come, as men inexperienced in words, let us call upon the Word of God himself, that he, becoming the interpreter of his own words, may expose their folly and strengthen our understanding. Explain to us the meaning of what was said, O Lord; unfold the leaf of the letter and show the fruit of the Spirit, so that we may not die by attending to the letter, but that we may enjoy life by running to the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Teach us as a child, and discipline the heretics as fools; for you are the discipliner of fools and the teacher of children. For us as children, bare the breast of grace and offer the nipple of the Spirit. Let the pure milk of evangelical teaching be poured out. And make manifest the folly of the heretics. For if they were not fools, they would not have woven blasphemous doctrine for the destruction of your divinity. For the fool says in his heart, it is said, "There is no God.

Strip away their pretense of piety, so that the drama of hypocrisy may be revealed. Show that they carry your name for this reason, to conceal the blasphemy of their own choice. Tell me, then, Lord, why, when you came to the passion, do you beg to avoid suffering, and why do you fear the threat of the Jews, you who instruct others not to fear those who kill the body? But if you fear death, why do you not beg to avoid death? For if it lies within you to suffer or not to suffer, you say superfluously: "If it is possible, let this pass." For it is in your power either to accept or to decline the passion. But if it does not lie within you, you naturally tremble as one unwilling and dragged against your will to the passion. But if you undergo death for us unwillingly, how can you say: "I have authority to lay down my soul and I have authority to take it back again"? And how, in another place, did you mock the threat of the Jews, saying: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it"? Therefore, you who many times before death prefigured death and before the cross traced the trophy of the cross, you who said that the Son of Man must be betrayed and crucified and buried and rise on the third day, why, now that you have come under the cross, do you beg to avoid death? For if the Son of Man must be betrayed, how can you say: "If it is possible, let this cup pass from me"? But if you wished not to suffer, why did you put on a passible body? And if you bear a passible body and come to the passion, why are you grieved and distressed?

How is it that when you described death, when you recounted the passion, when you prefigured the cross, you were angry at Peter saying, "Mercy on you, Lord, this shall not happen to you," and you were so angry as to say, "Get behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me, because you do not think the things of God, but the things of men"? If, then, it is a human thought to deprecate death, why do you now seek what you formerly forbade? How is it that you now pray to avoid death, you who formerly rebuked the disciple for fearing the assault of death? Are you not the one proclaimed beforehand by the law and the prophets? Did not the prophet Hosea say concerning you, "Thus says the Lord, 'I will ransom them from the hand of Hades, so that they may say, "Where is your victory, O Death, where is your sting, O Hades?"'" If, then, you are the one who ransoms from Hades, how do you fear death? But if you fear death, through whom we hope to conquer death, our hope is vain, our expectation useless. And if you fear death, in whom shall we henceforth place our hopes of life, and how do you say, "I am the life and the resurrection"? For life does not fear death, resurrection does not dread suffering. But you are the life and the resurrection. Why, then, do you frighten my soul, why do you loosen the sinews of my mind by uttering words of cowardice? Was the matter of Lazarus a phantom? Was the matter of Jairus's daughter a dream? Was the matter of the widow's son a shadow? But these things that happened were truth. How, then, does the one who despoiled death fear death, and how does the one who raises stinking corpses with authority pray and fear lest he fall into death?

Why are you altogether afraid of falling? For even if you fall, he will set you free. For he who raises others, much more will he raise his own body. Either explain to me the meaning, master, or cease from the word and do not divide my soul, or cause my reason to falter. For if you are the one who knows all things before their generation, how is it that now you do not know whether it is possible or impossible to pass by the cup? For if you do not know, Paul lies when he says, "No creature is hidden before you, but all things are naked and exposed to his eyes." But if you know, how can you say, "If it is possible?" That is the inquiry of one who does not know, not the declaration of one who knows. Explain to us, then, master, the meaning of what has been said. For now Eunomius rejoices, now Arius delights, snatching the word as a pretext for blasphemy. But they rejoice in vain. For it is not for the impious to rejoice, says the Lord. I do not fear death, as they say; I do not refuse the passion, as they suppose. For if I did not wish to bestow life through death upon the race of men, I would not, being an impassible Word, have entered into a passible flesh. But since I saw the race of men held by deceit and not by necessity, by the sorcery of demons and not by force, I entered into your body, so that by contraries I might construct contraries and through every deception set man free.

For the tyrant was greatly puffed up because, having found sin and through sin introduced death, he made Adam, the citizen of paradise, the appointed lord of the inhabited world, a slave, a robber, and a tiller of the soil. For this reason I sojourned on the earth as a king, having my flesh as a purple robe, so that, by cutting off the tyrant’s boldness, I might undo deceit with deceit, march righteousness against sin, and apply life to death. Therefore I am not afraid of death and do not shrink back; for the deed is not involuntary, but the achievement is of my own free choice. For I am the good shepherd who willingly offers his own soul for the sheep. Just as, while existing in the form of God, I emptied myself, taking the form of a slave with no one compelling me, so also I undergo death willingly, not constrained by force, but coming to the passion of my own accord. And why did you suffer, master? For the salvation of men, he says. And I will tell the manner. For since the race of men was subjected to a sentence of death because of Adam, who was formed from virginal earth, and I was the one who issued the sentence of death, and it was impossible for man to be released from the punishment unless I myself revoked my own sentence, for this reason, taking human form from a virginal womb in likeness to Adam, I undergo death, so that as God I may annul the sentence and as man I may accept death on behalf of men. And I do this so that I may free man not by authority but by compassion. For if, when man sinned, it was God who accomplished the correction, the achievement would not be great.

Now for this reason I have become man, and for the sake of the one who transgressed the law I have fulfilled the law, so that the race of men may be ennobled by the kinship of the one who accomplished the right. Hence also now I receive the sentence of death in the person of Adam, so that he may obtain through me the grace of resurrection. Adam, having stumbled, brought in death; I, having accomplished the right, have brought in resurrection in its place. And since death reigned from Adam until Moses, and reigned because it had the body as its subject, the co-worker of sin, for this reason I took on the same body, which seemed to be the instrument of sin, so that, having abolished sin, I might show man free from sin. Otherwise, since men lived an evil life entangled with sin, so that their life was worse than death, for this reason, preferring the good death to the evil life, I undergo death, so that those who share in the good death may enjoy the true life; and they enjoy it through baptism. For all who are baptized are baptized into my death, so that, just as I rose from the dead, so they too may walk in newness of life. And let no one, doubting, say that darkness does not produce light, nor black produce white; how did death give birth to life? That the matter is beyond nature is clear. But in my case do not seek the order of nature. For I am the master of nature, who sometimes allows nature to be borne according to nature, and sometimes guides it beyond nature.

For whenever I wish to administer something extraordinary, then nature, denying its own order, does those things which my nod commands. And this is clear from the visible order of the universe—what I mean is this: the sun and the moon are fire by nature, and water is the crystallized firmament, which I called heaven. If, then, you seek the course of nature, how is fire preserved by water, or how is the crystallized firmament not dissolved and melted by the heat of fire? And so that I may not occupy your mind with the visible order of the universe, I lead you by the hand to the economy itself and persuade you that it is not necessary to seek the course of nature in paradoxical miracles. For consider that, being God, I put on a human body. This is first of all contrary to nature. For how could the three-dimensional human body contain the uncontainable, the immeasurable, the one who is everywhere, the one who encompasses the whole inhabited world, the one who measures heaven by the span and the earth by the handful and the sea by the cup? Tell me. That it did contain him is clear, since the whole fullness of the divinity dwelt in the flesh bodily. But how this happened, I know, he says. For I know what I administer, but you cannot hear it; for the knowledge of the mysteries surpasses mortal hearing to such an extent that, even if I ever wish to interpret something out of an abundance of compassion, I interpret it not as nature is, but as you are able to learn. For this reason, too, suppressing the arrogance of those who think themselves wise, I said: He who thinks he knows something does not yet know anything as it ought to be known. For you have heard that I, being Word, became flesh, but you do not know how.

For how was I in the flesh—as a body in a body, or as a soul in a body? Therefore, I suffered together with the passible body, but I did not suffer. For the nature of God does not fall into passion. Just as I became flesh without falling from being God, so also I underwent passion without falling into passion. I was born by economy, I died for the salvation of men; or rather, I died for this reason, because I was born. Do not, then, seek from me either the order of birth or the manner of death. For what nature does not do, power accomplishes. Being God, I therefore entered a human body. This is first contrary to nature; but it did not become impossible because of nature, since it lay in my authority, who made nature. And I again permitted that very body to fall into generic death, so that life, which dominates death, might display the energy of life even in death itself. For a living thing to live is nothing marvelous, but to give life to a dead thing—this is great and paradoxical. Therefore I allowed it to be dissolved, and after it was dissolved I raised it up, in order to show that even when the body was subjected to death, I remained so impassible that I not only raised my own body, but also raised up together with it the bodies of the righteous who had previously fallen asleep. Willingly, then, out of love for humanity I undergo death, and willingly again, according to some economy, I shrink from death. For I shrink from death in order to deceive death. Just as in the desert, if I had not hungered, the devil would not have approached. And I hungered for this reason, so that, not thinking me to be another Adam, he might bring the snare. So also here, I utter a word of cowardice as bait, in order to hook death to myself.

Since the devil saw that I had performed many signs—strengthening a paralytic, articulating the tongues of the mute, opening the ears of the deaf, giving sight to the blind, turning the swell of the sea into calm, drying up the sources of the woman with the hemorrhage through the touch of the hem, raising Lazarus by a word, restoring the daughter of Jairus, calling back the widow’s son from the dead—having seen all these things and being convinced by the deeds themselves that I am the Son of God who appeared in the form of a man according to the prediction of the prophets, he fears and hesitates to nail me to the cross and deliver me to death, lest, entering the form of a corpse, I should set the dead free. What then do I do, in order both to turn the devil’s cowardice into audacity and to make death rush in? I flee so that he may pursue, I am timid so that he may take courage, I use humble words so that, thinking me one of the many, he may run up and swallow me. For if he does not swallow me, he cannot vomit up those he has swallowed. Hence I utter words of cowardice, so that

I will deceive the deceiver and undo the deception. He deceived Adam with treacherous words; I deceive the treacherous one with words of cowardice. But he uttered deceitful words in order to destroy the man; I utter words of cowardice in order to free the world. I am a fisherman fishing for fishermen. For just as the fisherman, placing the worm around the hook, extends the rod and sometimes lets out the hook, sometimes draws and pulls it in, so that by making the worm appear to be fleeing he may cause the fish to rush upon it, so too I, placing my body like a worm around the hook of my divinity—for I am a worm and not a man—sometimes draw death as if cowering, sometimes let out the hook as if confident, so that the devil, like a fish leaping upon the worm, that is, attacking the flesh, may unawares fall upon the hook of my divinity and, having fallen, be drawn in, so that what was said by Job may be fulfilled upon him: "You will draw the serpent with a hook." Therefore, not fearing death, I said, "My soul is very sorrowful." Nor, cowering at suffering, do I say, "Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me." For I do everything so that death may not escape me. I cower as a man, so that, having been swallowed as a man, I may work as a god. I have used humble words, so that, having swallowed the leaven of my body, he may find the coal of my divinity burning him terribly. I cower, so that he may chew my body, a grain of mustard; he will find the pungency of my divinity torturing him violently. I cower, so that he may swallow me as a man.

If he swallows me, he will find the solid rock of divinity shattering his teeth, so that what is written about him may be fulfilled: "God will crush his teeth in his mouth." Therefore I hide the authority of divinity and put forward the cowardice of the flesh, so that he may not be caught by the power of divinity, but rather be brought down by the weakness of the body. For lest he think highly of himself as being defeated by a god, I deceive him through the flesh, so that he may be ensnared by the very means by which he plotted. Thus I conquer him through the weakness of the body, so that he may not think highly of himself as being refuted by divine power. For being defeated by divinity would bring him glory rather than disgrace. Hence I now conquer him through a cowardly, humble, and weak flesh, not tempting but being tempted, not striking but being struck, not killing but dying, not crucifying but being crucified, not beating but being beaten, so that the victory may not be ascribed to me, but so that through the form of a man the prizes may be awarded to the human race. Therefore I appear to be cowardly, so that the devil may fall like a fish upon the bait, and death may be caught like a sparrow in birdlime. For since he deceived wickedly, he is now deceived rightly. Since he beguiled the human race through bodily pleasure, he is now driven from the race through a body. What he did, he suffers; what he did to many, he endures from one. But what he did was destructive to those who suffered it, while what I do to him will be salvific for the world.

For I deceive the deceiver through the body, so that, having been refuted, he may no longer be able to deceive those whom he himself deceived through the body. He brings death; through him I provide the resurrection. Unwittingly he benefits the race. For through the means by which he brings death, he brings the occasion of resurrection. The plotter of all has suddenly become the benefactor of the world. He benefited the world by being deceived, devising a deception beneficial to the world and a trophy against his own tyranny. Just as one who hurls a stone against a rock will not shatter the rock but will shatter the stone, so also the devil, having hurled death like a stone against my body, did not destroy my body—for you will not allow your holy one to see corruption—but shattered his own barbs, unable to withstand the hardness of the resistance. Let no one, therefore, out of ignorance, condemn me for cowardice, nor attribute humble words to the divinity. I am a shepherd according to the word of divinity: for it says, "O shepherd of Israel, pay attention, O leader of Joseph as a sheep," but a sheep according to the economy of the flesh: for I was led as a sheep to slaughter and as a lamb voiceless before its shearer. Since, therefore, the devil lies in wait for me, wishing to snatch my flesh as a sheep, but fearing the divinity as a shepherd, he withdraws and flees; for this reason I hide my divinity as a shepherd, and I put forward the flesh as a sheep, so that he may take courage and approach, and having approached, may snatch, and having snatched my flesh as a sheep, may be destroyed by the two-edged sword of the spirit. Cease, then, heretic, condemning me for cowardice and ignorance.

I am afraid, in order to show the flesh's assumption to be without illusion. I say: "My soul is troubled," so that you may learn that I have not assumed a soulless body, as the error of Apollinarius wishes. Do not, then, cast the passions of the flesh upon the impassible Word; for I am God and man, heretic. God as I guarantee the miracles, man as I witness the sufferings. Since, then, I am God and man, say who it is that suffered. If God suffered, you have spoken blasphemy; but if the flesh suffered, why do you attach the passion to him to whom you do not ascribe the fear? For when another suffers, another is not afraid, and when a man is crucified, God is not troubled. And that the flesh suffered, while the Word remained impassible, Isaiah is witness, who in spirit saw me bloodied and asked: "Why are your garments red?" "Your garments," he says, "are red, and not you." For the body is wounded, but the Word of divinity is not impaired. And Jacob the patriarch is also witness, who says concerning me: "He will wash his garment in wine and his cloak in the blood of the grape." What garment? The body. With what blood? That which flowed from the side. But if you do not reject my testimony, I testify for myself. For my testimony is true, even if you do not wish it, which I spoke to the Jews: "Why do you wish to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you?" He said "man," heretic, not "God." So this man Jesus, killed by the Jews, is himself afraid. And do not confuse the matter with your ignorance. For this reason I am afraid, so that death may grapple with me as a man and be defeated as by God. But even while afraid, I do not altogether renounce the passion.

For if I had refused, I would not have said: "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass." For I knew that nothing is impossible for the Father. But if I asked that death be taken away, and He did not take it away, two absurdities arise. For if He did not take it away because He was unable, or if He delivered me over out of neglect, you, heretic, are found to be attributing cowardice to me and powerlessness to the Father. But while you have an excuse for saying that I am cowardly because of the flesh, by imputing powerlessness to the Father you commit an unforgivable error, declaring the power of God to be weaker than death. Moreover, you make me out to be stronger than the Father. And I will explain how. For if I, while living in the flesh, raised Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus, and the widow's son, and after dying again in the flesh I plundered more than five hundred corpses from their tombs, but my Father, who has experienced neither flesh nor death, was unable to rescue me, the son whom He loved, as He Himself says: "This is my beloved son," from dangers, see what you suffer, heretic. That by not granting me equality, you unwillingly provide me with superiority, and you, who think to disparage me for weakness, declare me stronger than the Father; because I, even without being entreated, rescued the souls held in Hades—for it says, "Lord, you brought up my soul from Hades"—but He, even when entreated, did not free my troubled soul from the impending evils. But let it not be so! For neither does the

Father, either sparing me or being powerless, did not free me from suffering, nor did I, refusing the suffering, ask that the cup pass by. For if the suffering were involuntary, I would truly have been cowardly; but if death were voluntary, I seemed to be cowardly, in order to outwit the devil and free the man. Hence, not perceiving this, the devil dragged me as though about to swallow me, not knowing that he would also have to disgorge those he had swallowed. For as soon as I stood before Hades, I plundered his tombs, I stripped his coffins. And I stripped them not by fighting openly, but by providing resurrection invisibly. For I released no one, and all were set free; I said nothing, and freedom was proclaimed; I called no one, and all ran together. For as soon as I stood as king, the tyrant was despised; I shone as light, and the darkness was dissolved. For one could see every prisoner beholding freedom, every captive dancing at the resurrection; so that the dead themselves marveled at me for the victory, and mocked death for its defeat, saying: "Where is your sting, O Death? Where is your victory, O Hades?" And so it is with these things. But for what has been said, let us send up glory to Christ, the universal king of all, because glory, honor, and worship are due to him, together with the immaculate Father and the all-holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.