De docta ignorantia

Christ the man, passible and mortal, could not otherwise arrive at the glory of the father, who is immortality itself, since he is the absolute life, unless the mortal put on immortality. Which could in no way be done apart from death, for how could the mortal otherwise put on immortality, unless it were despoiled of mortality? How would it be absolved from it, unless the debt of death were loosed? On account of which the truth itself says: that they are foolish and slow of heart who do not understand that Christ must die and so enter into glory. But since above we showed that Christ died for us with a most cruel death indeed, it must consequently be said that, since it was not fitting for human nature to be translated unto the temple of immortality otherwise than through the victory of death; hence he underwent death, that with him human nature might rise again unto perpetual life, and the mortal animal body become a spiritual incorruptible one.

A true man could not be except mortal, and he could not carry mortal nature unto immortality, unless despoiled of mortality through death. Unto which the truth itself speaking of this beautifully instructs us, when it says: Unless the grain of wheat falling into the earth have died, it remains alone; but if it have died, it brings much fruit. If Christ therefore had always remained mortal, even if he had never died, how would a mortal man have bestowed immortality on human nature? And if he himself had not died, he would have remained alone mortal without death. It behooved him therefore to be freed by death from the possibility of dying, if he had to bring much fruit, so that, thus exalted, he might draw all things unto himself, when his power would be not only in the corruptible world and earth, but in the incorruptible heaven. But this we shall be able somehow to attain in our ignorance, if we have held in mind those things which were often said. We showed in what went before that the man Jesus the maximal cannot have in himself separately from the divinity a person of subsisting, because maximal. And on account of this the communication of idioms is admitted, that human things coincide with divine, since that humanity, inseparable from the divinity on account of the supreme union, as clothed and assumed through the divinity, cannot personally subsist separately; but man is united of body and soul, whose separation is death. Since therefore that maximal humanity itself is in the divine suppositing person, it was not possible for either soul or body, even after local division, in the time of death to be separated from the divine person, without which that man did not subsist. Christ died not, therefore, as though his person had failed, but without even local division a certain center, in which humanity was supposted, remained hypostatically united unto the divinity, and according to the inferior nature, which according to the truth of its own nature could suffer the division of soul from body, a temporal and local division was made, so that in the same place and at the same time soul and body were not together in the hour of death.

Hence in body and soul corruptibility was not possible, since they were united unto eternity, but the temporal nativity was subjected to death and temporal separation, so that with the circle of return completed unto solidity, with the body embraced absolved from temporal composition, from these temporal motions the truth of humanity, which is above time, as united unto the divinity remaining incorrupt, as its truth required, would unite the truth of the body unto the truth of the soul, so that thus, with the shadowy image of the truth of man dismissed, who appeared in time as true man, absolved from all temporal passion he might rise; so that the same Jesus, above all temporal motions, embraced never to die, might most truly rise through the union of soul unto body above all temporal motion. Without which union indeed the truth of incorruptible humanity would not most truly have been hypostatically united unto the divine person without confusion of nature. Aid the littleness of thy genius and thy ignorance by the example of Christ in the grain of wheat, where the number of the grain is corrupted, with the specific essence remaining sound, by means of which nature resuscitates many grains; but if that grain itself were maximal and most perfect, dying in the best and most fertile soil, it could bring not only the hundredth or thousandth fruit, but as much as the nature of the species embraced in its possibility. This indeed is what the Truth says: How it would bring fruit; for finite multitude is without number. Understand therefore keenly: for the humanity of Jesus, by that very fact that it is considered as contracted unto the man Christ, is simultaneously understood as also united through him unto the divinity; as it is united unto it, it is most absolute; as Christ the true man is considered, it is contracted, that through humanity he be man; and thus the humanity of Jesus is as a medium between the purely absolute and the purely contracted. According to this, therefore, it was not corruptible, except in a certain respect, and simply incorruptible. It was corruptible, therefore, according to the temporality, unto which it was contracted, and according to that whereby it was absolved from time, and above time, and united to the divinity, incorruptible. But the truth, as it is temporally contracted, is as it were the sign and image of the supertemporal truth; so the truth of the body, temporally contracted, is as it were the shadow of the truth of the supertemporal body; and so the truth of the soul is contracted as the shadow of the soul absolved from time; for sense or reason is seen rather than intellect, while it is in time, where without phantasms it does not apprehend, and the intellect, elevated above time, is free and absolved from these. And since that humanity itself was inseparably rooted above in the divine incorruptibility, then, with the corruptible temporal motion completed, no resolution could be made, except toward the root of incorruptibility. Hence after the end of temporal motion, which was death, with all these things removed which temporally acceded unto the truth of human nature, the same Jesus rose not in a heavy, corruptible, shadowy, passible body and the rest which follow temporal composition, but in a true, glorious, impassible, agile, and immortal body, as the truth absolved from temporal conditions required. And this union indeed the very truth of the hypostatic union of human nature with the divine necessarily demanded. Hence it behooved blessed Jesus to rise from the dead, as he himself says: Christ had to suffer so and on the third day rise from the dead.