The Firstborn Word

People, he says, “in the resurrection will be like the angels of God” — that is, in freedom from decay, in deathlessness, and in never wasting away. For a nature that cannot decay is not something born: it does not grow, does not sleep, does not go hungry or thirsty, does not tire, does not suffer, does not die, is not pierced by nails and spear, does not sweat, does not drip with blood. The natures of the angels are of that kind, and so are the natures of souls released from the body. Both of them belong to another order, unlike the creatures of this world of ours, which can be seen and which perish. [a]

God is capable of willing, but there is no not-willing in him; for not-willing belongs only to a being that changes and picks between courses. For the things that are coming into being follow the eternal will of God, and by that same will the things already made are held in place.

He was wholly in all things, and everywhere; and though he fills the universe up to all the rulers of the air, he stripped himself bare again. For a short while he cries out that the cup might pass from him, so as to show plainly that he was also a man. But remembering as well the purpose for which he was sent, he carries out the arrangement he was sent to fulfill, and cries out: “Father, not my will,” and, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Take the heifer to Bethlehem for me, Samuel, so as to point out the king born from David — the one anointed by the Father to be king and priest.

Tell me, blessed Mary, what it was that was conceived in you, and what it was that you bore in your virgin womb. It was the firstborn Word of God that came down to you from heaven and was formed in the womb as a firstborn man, so that the firstborn Word of God might be shown to be joined to a firstborn man.

And in the second way — that is, through the prophets, as through Samuel — calling the people back and rescuing them from slavery to the foreigners. And in the third way, the one in which he took flesh, taking humanity to himself from the Virgin; and it was in that character that he saw the city and wept over it.

And this is why three seasons of the year foreshadowed the Savior himself, so that he might fulfill the mysteries prophesied about him. At the Passover season, so as to show himself as one destined to be sacrificed like a sheep, and to prove himself the true Passover lamb — as the apostle says, “Christ,” who is God, “our Passover was sacrificed for us.” And at Pentecost, so as to signal in advance the kingdom of heaven, since he himself first went up into heaven and brought man to God as a gift.

And the ark of wood that does not rot was the Savior himself. For by it was signified the tent of his body, which does not rot and cannot decay, and which bred no rot of sin. For the man who has sinned also has this confession to make: “My wounds stank and festered because of my foolishness.” But the Lord was without sin. In his humanity he was wood that does not rot — that is to say, he was from the Virgin and the Holy Spirit — and he was covered, as it were, inside and out, with the purest gold of the Word of God.

He it was who rescued from the depths of Hades the first-formed man, made of earth, when he was lost and bound in the chains of death. He came down from above and lifted the earthly on high. He became the bringer of good news to the dead, the ransomer of souls, and the resurrection of the buried. He was made the helper of defeated man, having been made like him: in the Virgin the firstborn Word made himself acquainted with the first-formed Adam. The spiritual one sought out the earthy one in the womb. The ever-living one sought out the one who through disobedience is subject to death. The heavenly one called the earth-born up to the things above. The nobly born one sought, by his own submission, to declare the slave free. He turned into adamant the man who had crumbled into dust and been made food for the serpent, and he declared the one who hung on the tree to be Lord over the conqueror — and so, through the tree, he is found the victor.

For those who do not now recognize the Son of God come in the flesh will recognize, in the one who comes as Judge in glory, the very one they now despise in the body of his humiliation.

And when the apostles came to the tomb on the third day, they did not find the body of Jesus — just as the sons of Israel went up the mountain and looked for the grave of Moses and did not find it.

Under the figure of Egypt he described the world; under the things made with hands, the worship of idols; and under the earthquake, the overturning and dissolving of the earth itself. And he pictured the Lord the Word as a light cloud, the purest tent; seated on it, our Lord Jesus Christ came into this life in order to overturn error.

Hippolytus, martyr and overseer of Rome, in his second discourse on Daniel, speaks as follows:

Then Azariah stood up with the others, and they gave thanks to God with song and prayer in the middle of the furnace. They began with his holy and glorious and honored name, and then came to the works of the Lord themselves. They named the things of heaven first, and glorified him, saying: “Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord.” Then they passed on to the sons of men; and taking up their hymn in order, they named next the spirits below the earth, in Tartarus, and the souls of the righteous, so that these too might praise God along with them.

Now someone might say that these men and those who hold a different opinion are nevertheless next-door neighbors, since they are caught up in the same kind of error. For these men either claim that Christ came into our life as a mere man and deny the talent of his divinity, or else, while granting that he is God, deny his humanity instead, and teach that his appearances to those who saw him as a man were an illusion — since he did not carry true manhood about with him, but was a kind of phantom showing. Marcion and Valentinus are of this class, and the Gnostics, who cut the Word away from the flesh and so throw away the one talent, his coming in the flesh.

The body of the Lord presented both of these to the world: the sacred blood and the holy water.

And his body, though dead in the way a man’s body is dead, holds great power of life in it. For streams flowed out of him that do not flow from dead bodies — blood and water — so that …