The Cross Puts the Philosophers to Shame

Many before this man have been kings and tyrants of the world, and many are on record who were wise men and magicians among the Chaldeans, Egyptians and Indians. Which of them, I ask, not after death but while still alive, was ever able to prevail so far as to fill the whole earth with his teaching, and to turn so great a multitude away from the superstition of idols, as our Savior has brought over from idols to himself? The philosophers of the Greeks have composed many works, persuasive and skillfully worded. What result, then, have they shown as great as the cross of Christ has? The refinements they taught were persuasive enough until they died; but even the influence they seemed to have while alive was undercut by their rivalries with one another. They competed and spoke out against one another. But the Word of God, strangest of all, teaching in humbler language, has overshadowed the finest of the sophists. By drawing all to himself he has brought their schools to nothing and filled his own churches. And the marvelous thing is that by going down to death as man, he has brought to nothing the grand pronouncements of the wise about idols. [a]

For whose death ever drove out demons? Whose death did demons ever fear, as they feared the death of Christ? For wherever the Savior’s name is named, every demon is driven out. Who has so freed people from the passions of the natural man that the sexually immoral become chaste, murderers no longer hold the sword, and those once mastered by cowardice act with courage? In short, who persuaded the people of barbarian countries, and pagans in various places, to lay aside their madness and set their minds on peace, if not the faith of Christ and the sign of the cross? Who else has given people such assurance of immortality as the cross of Christ and the resurrection of his body? For though the Greeks have told all kinds of false tales, they were not able to invent a resurrection for their idols, because it never crossed their minds whether it is at all possible for the body to exist again after death. And here one would most especially accept their testimony, since by this opinion they have exposed the weakness of their own idolatry, while leaving the possibility open to Christ, so that by this too he might be made known among all as the Son of God.