The Shape of the Cross

Some people, without thinking it through, twist what we teach and say that we claim Christ was born a hundred and fifty years ago, under Quirinius, and taught what we say he taught later, in the time of Pontius Pilate. Then they object that everyone born before him was left unaccountable. Let us take up that difficulty first and settle it. [a]

We have been taught that Christ is the firstborn of God, and we said above that he is the Word, in whom every race of people has had a share. So those who lived with reason are Christians, even if they were thought to be atheists — among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus and men like them; among the barbarians, Abraham and Hananiah and Azariah and Mishael and Elijah and many others, whose deeds and names we decline to list now, since we know it would take too long. And so those who lived before him without reason were useless, and were enemies of Christ and murderers of those who lived with reason; while those who lived with reason, and who live that way now, are Christians, without fear and without unrest.

Why he was born as a man through a virgin by the power of the Word, according to the will of God, the Father of all and Master, and was named Jesus, and was crucified and died and rose again and went up into heaven — anyone with sense will be able to grasp that from all that has been said already. But since proving that point is not what is needed right now, we will move on for the present to the proofs that press.

Now hear what the Spirit of prophecy said about how the land of the Jews was going to be sacked. The words are spoken as though by the people, marveling at what had happened. They go like this: “Zion has become desolate; Jerusalem has become desolate. The house has become a curse — our holy place, and the glory our fathers blessed; it has been burned with fire, and everything splendid in it has collapsed. And through all this you held back and kept silent and humbled us hard.” [g]

And you are convinced that Jerusalem was laid waste, just as it was foretold it would be. About its desolation, and about no one being allowed to live in it, Isaiah the prophet said this: “Their land is desolate; before their eyes their enemies are eating it up, and there will be none of them left living in it.” And you know perfectly well that it is guarded by you so that no one may be in it, and that death has been fixed as the penalty for any Jew caught entering.

And hear what was said when it was prophesied that our Christ would heal every disease and raise the dead. These are the words: “At his coming the lame man will leap like a deer, and the tongue of those who stammer will speak clearly; the blind will see again, and lepers will be cleansed, and the dead will rise and walk about.” That he did these things you can learn from the records drawn up under Pontius Pilate. [j]

And hear what Isaiah said, to see how the Spirit of prophecy announced in advance that he would be killed, and the people who hoped in him along with him. These are the words: “See how the righteous man has perished, and no one takes it to heart; righteous men are being taken away, and no one notices. The righteous man has been taken away from the face of injustice, and he will be at peace. His burial has been taken out of our midst.”

And again — hear how it was said through the same Isaiah that the peoples of the nations, who were not looking for him, would worship him, while the Jews, who were always looking for him, would not recognize him when he came. The words are spoken as though by Christ himself. They are these: “I became visible to people who were not asking about me; I was found by people who were not looking for me. I said, ‘Here I am,’ to a nation that had not called on my name. I spread out my hands to a people who disobey and argue back, who walk in a way that is not good but follow after their own sins — a people who provoke me to my face.” [m]

The Jews had the prophecies, and they were always expecting the Christ to come; yet when he came they did not recognize him. Not only that — they abused him. But the people from the nations, who had never heard anything at all about Christ until his apostles went out from Jerusalem and told them about him and handed the prophecies over to them, were filled with joy and faith. They renounced their idols and dedicated themselves, through Christ, to the God who was never born.

And to see that it was known in advance that these slanders would be spoken against those who confess Christ, and that the men who slander him and say the old customs are good to keep would be wretched, hear the short saying of Isaiah. It is this: “Woe to those who call sweet bitter and bitter sweet.”

And that he became man for our sake, and endured suffering and dishonor, and that he will come again with glory — hear the prophecies that speak of it. They are these: [p]

“Because they handed his soul over to death, and he was counted among the lawless, he took up the sins of many, and he will make atonement for the lawless. See, my servant will understand; he will be lifted high and greatly honored. Just as many were appalled at you, so your appearance will lose its honor before people, and your glory with it; and so many nations will marvel, and kings will shut their mouths at him. For those who were never told about him will see, and those who never heard will understand. “Lord, who has believed what we heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced him in his presence like a small child, like a root in parched ground. He has no form and no glory. We saw him, and he had no form and no beauty; his appearance was without honor, and it fell short of other people’s. A man under the blow, who knows how to carry weakness — because his face was turned away, he was dishonored and counted as nothing. “This is the one who carries our sins and is in pain for us, and we counted him as a man in trouble, under the blow, beaten down. But he was wounded because of our lawless deeds, and made weak because of our sins. The discipline that brings us peace was laid on him; by his bruise we were healed. All of us wandered off like sheep; each of us wandered his own way. And he handed him over for our sins, and because he was being brutalized he does not open his mouth. He was led like a sheep to slaughter, and like a lamb silent before the man shearing it, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away.”

So after he was crucified, every one of his close friends fell away and denied him. Later he rose from the dead and appeared to them and taught them to work through the prophecies, in which all of this had been foretold as going to happen. They watched him going up into heaven, and they believed, and they received the power he sent them from there. Then they went out to every race of people. They taught these things, and they were called apostles.

And so that the Spirit of prophecy might show us that the one who suffers all this has a descent no one can trace, and that he rules over his enemies, it said this: “Who will describe his generation? For his life is being taken from the earth; he comes to death because of their lawless deeds. And I will give the wicked in exchange for his burial, and the rich in exchange for his death, because he did nothing lawless and no deceit was found in his mouth. And the Lord means to cleanse him of the blow. If you make an offering for sin, your soul will see long-lived offspring. And the Lord means to take his soul out of its pain, to show him light, to shape him with understanding, to count righteous the righteous one who serves many well; and he will carry up our sins himself. That is why he will inherit many, and will divide the spoils of the strong — because his soul was handed over to death, and he was counted among the lawless, and he carried up the sins of many, and was handed over because of their lawless deeds.” [u]

Hear, too, how it was foretold that he would go up into heaven. It was said like this: “Lift up the gates of heaven; be opened, so that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong; the Lord, mighty.” And hear what the prophet Jeremiah said about how he is to come again out of heaven with glory. His words are: “Look — like a son of man he comes on the clouds of heaven, and his angels with him.”

Since, then, we have shown that everything that has already happened was announced by the prophets before it happened, we are bound to believe that the things prophesied in the same way, but still to come, will certainly happen too. Things that had been foretold came about even while people knew nothing of them; in the same way, what is left will come about, even if people know nothing of it and refuse to believe it. [y]

The prophets announced two comings of his: one already past, when he came as a man without honor and open to suffering; and a second, when he is announced to come from heaven with glory, with his army of angels. Then he will raise the bodies of everyone who has ever lived; he will clothe the bodies of those who deserve it so that they cannot decay, and he will send the bodies of the unrighteous — still able to feel, forever — into the everlasting fire along with the wicked demons.

That this too was foretold as going to happen, we will show. Through the prophet Ezekiel it was said: “Joint will be gathered to joint and bone to bone, and flesh will grow back. And every knee will bend to the Lord, and every tongue will confess him.” And hear what was said, in the same way, about the sort of feeling and punishment the unrighteous are in for. It runs like this: “Their worm will not stop, and their fire will not be put out.” And then they will repent, when it does them no good.

And what the Jewish people will say and do when they see him coming in glory was prophesied through the prophet Zechariah, in these words: “I will command the four winds to gather the scattered children; I will command the north wind to bring them, and the south wind not to hold them back. And then in Jerusalem there will be great wailing — not a wailing of mouths or of lips, but a wailing of the heart. They will not tear their clothes but their minds. Tribe will mourn against tribe, and then they will look at the one they pierced through, and they will say: “‘Why, Lord, did you make us wander off your road? The glory our fathers blessed has turned to shame for us.’”

We have many other prophecies we could bring forward, but we will stop here, judging that these are enough to persuade anyone whose ears can both hear and understand — and reckoning that such people can also see for themselves that we are not merely making assertions we cannot prove, the way the myth-makers do about the so-called sons of Zeus. [ab]

What reason would we have to believe that a crucified man is the firstborn of the God who was never born, and that he himself will judge the whole human race, if we had not found testimony about him published before he came and was born as a man, and if we did not see it turning out that way? The land of the Jews laid waste. People of every nation persuaded by his teaching through his apostles, giving up the old customs they had lived by while they were deceived. And we can see ourselves, and we know that the Christians who come from the nations are both more numerous and more genuine than the ones from the Jews and the Samaritans.

For the Spirit of prophecy calls all the other human races “the nations,” but the Jewish and Samaritan stock it calls Israel and the house of Jacob. So we will pass on the prophecy that foretold there would be more believers from the nations than from the Jews and Samaritans. It said this: “Rejoice, barren woman who does not give birth. Break out and shout, you who do not go into labor — because the children of the desolate woman are many more than the children of the woman who has a husband.” For all the nations were desolate of the true God; they served the works of their own hands. But the Jews and Samaritans, who had God’s word handed to them through the prophets, and who always expected the Christ, did not recognize him when he came — except a few, whom the holy Spirit of prophecy said through Isaiah would be saved. It spoke as though in their voice: “If the Lord had not left us offspring, we would have become like Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses records, were cities of ungodly men, which God burned with fire and sulfur and overthrew; nobody in them was saved except a foreigner, a Chaldean by descent, whose name was Lot — and his daughters were rescued with him. Anyone who wants to look can still see their whole country desolate and burned and barren.

And to show that the people from the nations were known in advance to be truer and more faithful, we will pass on what was said through the prophet Isaiah. He said this: “Israel is uncircumcised in the heart; the nations, only in the flesh.” So much, then, that can be seen with the eye is enough to fill a man with conviction and faith, with reason — if he welcomes the truth, is not in love with his own reputation, and is not governed by his passions.

But the men who hand down the myths the poets made bring no proof at all to the young men who memorize them. And we will show that these stories were told to deceive the human race and lead it away, by the working of the wicked demons. The demons had heard it announced through the prophets that the Christ was coming, and that the ungodly among men would be punished by fire. So they put forward a number of figures to be called sons of Zeus, thinking they could make people treat what is said about Christ as a tall tale, like the things the poets said. And these stories were told among the Greeks and in all the nations, especially where the demons heard the prophets announcing that Christ would be believed in. But they did not grasp accurately what they heard the prophets say; they got it wrong, and imitated what is said about our Christ. We will make this plain. [af]

Moses the prophet, as we have already said, was older than all the writers, and this was prophesied through him, as we mentioned before: “A ruler will not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until the one comes for whom it is stored up; and he will be what the nations wait for, tying his colt to the vine, washing his robe in the blood of the grape.” So when the demons heard these prophetic words, they said that Dionysus had been born a son of Zeus; they handed down that he was the one who discovered the vine; they list a donkey among his mysteries; and they taught that after he was torn to pieces he went up into heaven.

And since Moses’ prophecy did not state plainly whether the one who was coming is the Son of God, and whether, riding on a colt, he would stay on earth or go up into heaven — and since the word “colt” can mean the colt of a donkey or of a horse — the demons did not know whether the one announced would bring a donkey’s colt or a horse’s as the sign of his coming, or whether he was God’s son, as we said, or a man’s. So they said that Bellerophon, a man born of human parents, went up to heaven himself on his horse Pegasus.

And because they heard what was said through the other prophet, Isaiah — that he would be born from a virgin and would go up into heaven by his own power — they put Perseus forward and said the words were about him. And when they learned what was said in the prophecies quoted earlier, “Strong as a giant to run his course,” they said Heracles was strong and had traveled the whole earth. And when they found out it had been prophesied that he would heal every disease and raise the dead, they brought forward Asclepius.

But nowhere, and for not one of the so-called sons of Zeus, did they imitate the crucifixion. They did not understand it, because everything said about it, as we have shown, was said in symbols. And this shape — as the prophet said in advance — is the greatest symbol of his strength and his rule; the things that fall under our own eyes prove it as well. [ai]

Look closely at everything in the world, and ask whether it can be managed, or hold together at all, without this shape. The sea is not cut through unless that trophy called a sail stays whole in the ship. The earth is not plowed without it. Diggers do not do their work, and neither do craftsmen, except with tools that have this shape. And the human shape differs from that of the animals that have no reason in nothing else than this: that a man stands upright and can stretch out his hands, and that he carries on his face, running down from the forehead, what is called the nose, through which the creature breathes — and it shows nothing other than the shape of the cross. That is why the prophet said, “The breath before our face is Christ the Lord.”

And your own emblems show the power of this shape — I mean the vexilla and the trophies, the things that lead your processions everywhere. In them you display the signs of your rule and your power, even if you do it without understanding what you are doing. And when your emperors die, you set their images on this shape, and you give them the name of gods in the inscriptions.

So we have urged you by reasoning and by a shape you can see, as strongly as we can. We know that from here on we are not to blame, even if you refuse to believe. Our part has been done, and it is finished.