Why He Wept and Was Troubled

So then, just as he is said to have advanced when the flesh advanced, because the body was his own, so also what is said at the time of his death, that he was troubled and that he wept, must be taken in the same sense. For they go up and down, as though recommending their heresy afresh by it, and allege: “Look, ‘he wept,’ and he said, ‘Now my soul is troubled,’ and he begged that the cup might pass away. How then, if he spoke like this, is he God, and the Word of the Father?” Yes, you enemies of God, it is written that he wept, and that he said, ‘I am troubled’; and on the cross he said, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”; and he begged that the cup might pass away. It is certainly written so. But again I would ask you (for the same answer must of necessity be given to each of your objections): if the speaker is a mere man, let him weep and fear death, as being a man. But if he is the Word in flesh (for one must not be unwilling to repeat it), whom had he to fear, being God? Or why should he fear death, who was himself Life and was rescuing others from death? Or how, when he said, “Do not fear him who kills the body,” should he himself be afraid? And how should he who said to Abraham, “Do not fear, for I am with you,” and encouraged Moses against Pharaoh, and said to the son of Nun, “Be strong and of good courage,” himself be terrified before Herod and Pilate? Further, does he who helps others against fear (for “the Lord,” says Scripture, “is on my side; I will not fear what man can do to me”) himself fear governors, mortal men? Did he who had come against death feel terror of death? Is it not both unfitting and impious to say that he was terrified of death or of Hades, he whom the gatekeepers of Hades saw and shuddered? But if, as you would have it, the Word was terrified, why, when he spoke long beforehand of the plot of the Jews, did he not flee? Why did he even say, when they actually came looking for him, “I am he”? For he could have avoided death, as he said, “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again,” and, “No one takes it from me.” [a]

But these sufferings did not belong to the nature of the Word, insofar as he was Word. Rather, the Word was in the flesh that underwent them, you enemies of Christ and ungrateful Jews! For he did not say all this before he had flesh; but when “the Word became flesh” and became man, then it is written that he said this, that is, humanly. Surely the one of whom this is written is the one who raised Lazarus from the dead, made the water wine, granted sight to the man born blind, and said, “I and my Father are one.” If, then, they make his human attributes a reason for low thoughts about the Son of God, and even regard him as wholly a man from the earth and not from heaven, why do they not recognize from his divine works the Word who is in the Father, and from now on give up their self-willed impiety? For they are given to see how he who did the works is the same as he who showed that his body could suffer, by letting it weep and hunger and show the other properties of a body. By such things he made it known that, though as God he was beyond suffering, he had taken flesh that could suffer; yet from the works he showed himself to be the Word of God, who had afterward become man. He was saying, ‘Though you do not believe me when you see me clothed in a human body, yet believe the works, so that you may know that “I am in the Father, and the Father in me.”’ And Christ’s enemies seem to me to show plain shamelessness and blasphemy. For when they hear, “I and the Father are one,” they violently twist the sense and separate the unity of the Father and the Son. But when they read of his tears or sweat or sufferings, they do not look to his body; on account of these they rank among the creatures him through whom the creation was made. In what, then, do they still differ from the Jews? For as the Jews blasphemously put down God’s works to Beelzebub, so these too, ranking with the creatures the Lord who did those works, will suffer the same condemnation as theirs, without mercy. [d]

But when they hear, “I and the Father are one,” they ought to see in him the oneness of the Godhead, and that he belongs to the Father’s substance as his own; and again, when they hear ‘he wept’ and the like, they ought to say that these belong to the body. All the more since on each side they have a reasonable ground: the one is written as of God, the other with reference to his humanity. For the properties of a body would not have been in the bodiless one unless he had taken a body that was corruptible and mortal; for Holy Mary, from whom his body came, was mortal. So of necessity, when he was in a body that suffered and wept and toiled, these things, which belong to the flesh, are ascribed to him together with the body. If, then, he wept and was troubled, it was not the Word, considered as the Word, who wept and was troubled; it belonged to the flesh. And if he also begged that the cup might pass away, it was not the Godhead that was terrified; this suffering too belonged to the humanity. And the evangelists nonetheless declare that the words ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ are his, in keeping with the explanations already given, though he suffered nothing, for the Word was beyond suffering. For the Lord became man, and these things are done and said as from a man, so that he himself might lighten these very sufferings of the flesh and set it free from them. So the Lord cannot be forsaken by the Father, he who is always in the Father, both before he spoke and when he uttered this cry. Nor is it lawful to say that the Lord was terrified, he at whom the gatekeepers of Hades shuddered and set Hades open, and the graves gaped, and many bodies of the saints arose and appeared to their own people. So let every heretic be silent, and not dare to ascribe terror to the Lord, from whom death flees like a serpent, at whom demons tremble and the sea is alarmed, for whom the heavens are torn open and all the powers are shaken. For look: when he says, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ the Father showed that he was always, and even then, in him. For the earth, knowing its Lord who spoke, at once trembled; the veil was torn, the sun was hidden, the rocks were split, the graves, as I have said, gaped, and the dead in them arose. And, what is wonderful, those who were present then and had earlier denied him, seeing these signs, then confessed that “truly he was the Son of God.” [f]

As for his saying, “If it is possible, let the cup pass,” notice how, though he spoke this way, he rebuked Peter, saying, “You are not minding the things of God, but the things of men.” For he willed what he prayed to be spared, since that was why he had come. The willing was his, for he came for this; but the terror belonged to the flesh. So as man he speaks these words too; and yet both were said by the same one, to show that he was God, willing in himself, but having become man, had flesh that was terrified. For the sake of this flesh he joined his own will to human weakness, so that, by destroying this suffering, he might in turn make man unafraid in the face of death. See, then, a truly strange thing! He to whom Christ’s enemies attribute words of terror, by that so-called terror makes men unafraid and fearless. And so the blessed apostles after him, from such words of his, came to have so great a contempt of death that they did not even care about those who questioned them, but answered, “We must obey God rather than men.” And the other holy martyrs were so bold that they thought they were passing to life rather than undergoing death. Is it not absurd, then, to admire the courage of the servants of the Word, and yet to say that the Word himself was terrified, he through whom they despised death? But the most steadfast purpose and courage of the holy martyrs show that it was not the Godhead that was terrified, but that the Savior took away our terror. For as he abolished death by death, and by human means all human evils, so by this so-called terror he removed our terror, and brought it about that men should never again fear death. His word and his deed go together. The sayings ‘Let the cup pass’ and ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ were human; and divine was the act by which the same one made the sun fail and the dead rise. Again, he said humanly, “Now my soul is troubled”; and he said divinely, “I have power to lay down my life, and power to take it again.” For to be troubled belonged to the flesh; but to have power to lay down his life and take it again when he wills was no property of men, but of the Word’s power. For a man dies not by his own power, but by the necessity of nature and against his will. But the Lord, being himself immortal yet having mortal flesh, had power, as God, to separate from the body and to take it again when he wished. David speaks of this too in the Psalm: “You will not leave my soul in Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption.” For it was fitting that the flesh, corruptible as it was, should no longer remain mortal according to its own nature, but should remain incorruptible because of the Word who had put it on. For as he, having come in our body, was made like us in our condition, so we, receiving him, share in the immortality that comes from him. [g]

Empty, then, is the excuse for stumbling, and petty are the notions about the Word, of these Ario-maniacs, because it is written, ‘He was troubled’ and ‘He wept.’ For they seem not even to have human feeling, if they are so ignorant of man’s nature and its properties. These things only make it the greater wonder that the Word should be in such a suffering flesh, and should neither stop those who were plotting against him nor take vengeance on those who were putting him to death, though he was able, he who kept some from dying and raised others from the dead. And he let his own body suffer, for that was why he came, as I said before: so that he might suffer in the flesh, and from then on the flesh might be made beyond suffering and immortal; so that, as we have said many times, insults and other troubles might come to an end at him and fall short of others after him, being utterly done away by him; and so that from then on men might remain incorruptible forever, as a temple of the Word. Had Christ’s enemies dwelt on these thoughts, and recognized the church’s aim as an anchor for the faith, they would not have made shipwreck of the faith, nor been so shameless as to resist those who would gladly recover them from their fall, and to treat as enemies those who urge them to be godly. [h]