De docta ignorantia

With these shown, it is easy to see that Christ is the firstborn from the dead. For none could rise before him, when human nature, not yet having arrived in time at the maximum, was united in Christ unto incorruptibility and immortality. For all were impotent, until he should come, who says: I have power to lay down my soul and to take it again. In Christ, therefore, human nature put on immortality, who is the firstfruits of them that sleep. But there is only one indivisible humanity and specific essence of all men, through which all particular men are men distinct numerically among themselves, so that the same humanity is of Christ and of all men, with the numeral distinction of individuals remaining unconfused. Hence it is manifest that the humanity of all men, who temporally were or will be before or after Christ, put on immortality in Christ. Hence this reasoning evidently concludes: Christ the man rose; hence all men shall rise through him, after all temporal motion of corruptibility, so as to be perpetually incorruptible. And although the humanity of all men is one, yet the individuating principles contracting it unto this or that supposit are various and diverse; so that in Jesus Christ there were only the most perfect and most potent, closest to the essence of humanity, which was united unto the divinity, in whose virtue Christ was potent to rise by his own virtue; which virtue indeed came unto him through the divinity itself, on account of which God is said to have raised him from the dead; who since he was God and man, rose by his own virtue, and no man except him will be able to rise unto heaven, except in the virtue of Christ, who is God. Christ is therefore he through whom human nature contracted immortality according to the nature of humanity, and through whom also above time we shall rise into his likeness with motion ceasing, we who were wholly born under motion; this will be at the end of the ages. But Christ, who only as he proceeded from his mother was temporally born, did not await the whole flux of time in resurrection, because time did not wholly apprehend his nativity. Mark that nature put on immortality in Christ; on account of which indeed all, whether good or bad, shall rise, but not all shall be changed through the glory transforming us into sons of adoption through Christ the son of God. All shall rise, therefore, through Christ, but not all as Christ, and in him through union, except those who are of Christ through faith, hope, and charity. Thou seest, unless I err, no perfect religion leading men unto the ultimate most desired end of peace, which does not embrace Christ the mediator and savior, God and man, the way, the life, and the truth. Come, how absurd is the credulity of the Saracens, who affirm Christ the maximal and most perfect man born of a Virgin and translated alive unto the heavens, and deny God. They are blinded indeed, for they assert the impossible. But to one having intellect it can appear clearer than light, even from such premises, that no man can be through all things most perfect and maximal, born of a virgin above nature, who is not at once God. Those are without reason persecutors of the cross, ignorant of its mysteries, whose divine fruit of redemption also they shall not taste, nor from their law of Mahomet, which promises nothing other than the fulfilling of the desires of pleasure; which in the death of Christ are extinct in us, awaiting those things unto which we hoping aspire to the apprehension of incorruptible glory.

The Jews equally with them confess a maximal, most perfect, and immortal Messiah as man, whom they deny as God, held by the same diabolical blindness; who also do not hope for, as future, the supreme beatitude of the fruition of God, otherwise than we the servants of Christ, so neither shall they obtain it. And what I judge more marvelous is that both the Jews themselves and the Saracens believe the general resurrection to come, and do not admit the possibility through a man, who is also God. For although it were said that, with the motion of generation and corruption ceasing, the perfection of the universe could not be without resurrection, since human nature is one essential part of the universe, without which it would be not only not perfect, but not the universe, and that on account of this it is necessary, if motion ever ceases, that either the whole universe perish or men rise unto incorruptibility, in whom the nature of all intermediates is completed, so that it is not necessary for other animals to rise, since man is their perfection; or if the resurrection were said to be future on that account, that the whole man receive from the just God the condign retribution of merits; yet above all these it is necessary to believe Christ man and God, through whom alone human nature can arrive at incorruptibility. Blinded therefore are all believing the resurrection and lacking Christ the medium of its possibility, since the faith of the resurrection is the affirmation of the divinity and humanity of Christ and of his death and resurrection itself, who is the firstborn from the dead, according to the premises. For he rose, that thus he might enter into glory through the ascension unto the heavens. Which ascension I deem must be so understood; for since according to the divinity he is everywhere, yet there his proper place is said to be, where there is never any change, passion, sadness, and the rest which befall temporality. And this place of eternal joy and peace we name to be above the heavens, although it is not apprehensible, describable, or definable by place. He himself is the center and circumference of intellectual nature, and, since the intellect embraces all things, he is above all. Yet in holy rational souls and intellectual spirits, which are the heavens narrating his glory, he rests as in his temple. Thus above every place and all time unto the incorruptible mansion, above all that can be said, we understand Christ to have ascended, in that he ascended above all heavens, that he might fulfill all things; who since he is God, is all in all, and he himself reigns in those intellectual heavens, since he is the truth itself, and not according to place sitting rather in the circumference than the center, since he is the center of all rational spirits, as their life. And on account of this he himself affirms this kingdom of heavens to be also within men, who is the fount of the life of souls and their end.