Breviloquium

Concerning the mode of suffering, this is to be held: Christ suffered the most universal passion, the most bitter passion, the most ignominious passion, the death-dealing but life-giving passion. — A most universal passion, I say, with respect to human nature, not only according to all the principal members of the body, but also according to every power of the soul, although he could suffer nothing according to the divine nature. — He also suffered the most bitter passion, not only by sorrowing, as one suffering through wounds, but also by compassionating, as one suffering with others on account of our sins. — He also suffered the most ignominious passion, both on account of the gibbet of the cross, which was the punishment of the worst criminals, and on account of his association with the wicked, namely, thieves, with whom he was assigned¹. — He also suffered the death-dealing passion through the separation of soul from body, while the union of both with the Deity remained safe. For anathema is he who says that the Son of God ever abandoned the nature he had once assumed.

The reason for understanding the foregoing is this: the restorative principle, just as it produced the human race in an ordered manner, so also had to restore it in an ordered manner. It therefore had to restore it in such a way that freedom of choice would remain safe, and nevertheless the honor of God would remain safe, and likewise the order of the governance of the universe². — Since, therefore, it had to restore it with freedom of choice safe, it restored it by giving the most efficacious example. That example is most efficacious which invites and instructs toward the summit of the virtues. Nothing, however, instructs man in virtue more than the example of enduring death on account of justice and divine obedience—death, I say, not any death, but one of the greatest punishments. Nothing incites more than such goodness, by which the highest Son of God laid down his soul for us without our merits, indeed with many of our demerits³; and this goodness is shown to be so much greater insofar as he sustained or willed to suffer graver and more abject things for us. For God did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; how did he not also, with him, give us all things? From this we are invited to love him and imitate the beloved.

Again, because it had to restore with the honor of God safe, it restored by offering satisfactory service. “To satisfy is to repay the honor due to God”⁴. The honor taken from God through pride and disobedience with respect to the thing to which man is bound is in no way better restored than through humiliation and obedience toward that thing to which he was in no way bound. Since, therefore, Christ Jesus, insofar as God, was equal to the Father in the form of God, while insofar as innocent man he was in no way a debtor of death, when he emptied himself and became obedient even unto death⁵, he paid God what he had not seized through the service of perfect satisfaction, and offered the sacrifice of supreme sweetness for the perfect appeasement of God.

Finally, because it had to restore with the order of the governance of the universe safe, it restored through the most fitting remedy. But the most fitting remedy is that contraries be cured by contraries⁶. Since, therefore, man, wishing to be wise like God, sinned by wishing to delight in the forbidden wood, so that he was inclined toward lust and raised up in presumption, and thereby the whole human race was infected, lost immortality, and incurred the death due to it, it follows that, in order that man might be restored by a fitting remedy, God, made man, willed to be humbled and to suffer on wood: against universal infection, to suffer the most universal passion; against lust, the most bitter passion; against presumption, the most ignominious passion; against due and unwilling death, he willed to suffer a death not merited but voluntary⁷.

Since, therefore, the universality of corruption in us had infected not only body and soul⁸, but also every part of the body and every power of the soul, it follows that Christ suffered in every part of the body and in every power of the soul, and in the superior portion of reason, which supremely delighted in God as reason and because of its union with what is higher, and supremely suffered as nature and because of its conjunction with what is lower, because Christ was at once a wayfarer and a comprehensor.

Again, because lust had vehemently infected soul and flesh in us, both with respect to carnal and with respect to spiritual sins⁹, it follows that Christ suffered in the flesh with the most bitter passion and compassionated in the soul with the most bitter passion. And because in the flesh there was the greatest balance of temperament and perfect vitality of the senses, while in the soul there was the highest charity toward God and the highest piety toward neighbor, it follows that each pain was most intense.

Furthermore, because the swelling of pride sometimes rises inwardly from presumption, and sometimes outwardly from ostentation and the praise of others, Christ therefore, to remedy all pride, suffered both kinds of disgrace, both in himself as he suffered and in the company he had during the passion.

Finally, because all these things touched not the impassible divine nature but only the human nature, it follows that in Christ’s death the separation of soul from flesh took place in such a way that the unity of the person and the union of both flesh and soul with the Deity nevertheless remained safe. — And because the union of soul with body makes a man and makes him alive, it follows that Christ was not a man during those three days, although soul and flesh were united with the Word¹⁰. Since, therefore, death in human nature could not bring death into the person, who was always alive, death therefore died in life, and through Christ’s death death was swallowed up in victory¹¹, and the prince of death was vanquished; and consequently man was freed from death and the cause of death through the merit of Christ’s death, as through the most efficacious means.