Eran. -No; how could we? We remember the Lord's warning "Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul."
Orth. -But does it not seem to you impious and monstrous in the case of mere men to avoid the invariable connexion of soul and body, and in the case of scriptural references to death and burial, to distinguish in thought the soul from the body and connect them only with the body, while in trust in the teaching of the Lord you hold the soul to be immortal, and then when you hear of the passion of the Son of God to follow quite a different course? Are you justified in making no mention of the body to which the passion belongs, and in representing the divine nature which is impassible, immutable and immortal as mortal and passible? While all the while you know that if the nature of God the Word is capable of suffering, the assumption of the body was superfluous.
Eran. -We have learnt from the Divine Scriptures that the Son of God suffered.
Orth. -But the divine apostle interprets the Passion, and shews what nature suffered.
Eran. -Show me this at once and clear the matter up.
Orth. -Are you not acquainted with the passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews in which the divine Paul says "For which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren saying `I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the Church will I sing praise unto Thee.' And again, `Behold I and the children which God hath given me.'"
Eran. -Yes, I know this, but this does not give us what you promised.
Orth. -Yes: even these suggest what I promised to shew. The word brotherhood signifies kinship, and the kinship is due to the assumption of the nature, and the assumption openly proclaims the impassibility of the Godhead. But to understand this the more plainly read what follows.
Eran. -"Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same that through death He might destroy him that hath the power of death ...and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life subject to bondage."
Orth. -This, I think, needs no explanation; it teaches clearly the mystery of the oeconomy.
Eran. -I see nothing here of what you promised to prove.
Orth. -Yet the divine Apostle teaches plainly that the Creator, pitying this nature not only seized cruelly by death, but throughout all life made death's slave, effected the resurrection through a body for our bodies, and, by means of a mortal body, undid the dominion of death; for since His own nature was immortal He righteously wished to stay the sovereignty of death by taking the first fruits of them that were subject to death, and while He kept these first fruits (i.e. the body) blameless and free from sin, on the one hand He gave death license to lay hands on it and so satisfy its insatiability, while on the other, for the sake of the wrong done to this body, he put a stop to the unrighteous sovereignty usurped over all the rest of men. These firstfruits unrighteously engulfed He raised again and will make the race to follow them.
Set this explanation side by side with the words of the Apostle, and you will understand the impassibility of the Godhead.
Eran. -In what has been read there is no proof of the divine impassibility.
Orth. -Nay: does not the statement of the divine Apostle, that the reason of His making the children partakers of the flesh and blood was that through death He might destroy him that hath the power of death, distinctly signify the impassibility of the Godhead, and the passibility of the flesh, and that because the divine nature could not suffer He assumed the nature that could and through it destroyed the power of the devil?
Eran. -How did He destroy the power of the devil and the dominion of death through the flesh?
Orth. -What arms did the devil use at the beginning when he enslaved the nature of men?
Eran. -The means by which he took captive him who had been constituted citizen of Paradise, was sin.
Orth. -And what punishment did God assign for the transgression of the commandment?
Eran. -Death.
Orth. -Then sin is the mother of death, and the devil its father.
Eran. -True.
Orth. -War then was waged against human nature by sin. Sin seduced them that obeyed it to slavery, brought them to its vile father, and delivered them to its very bitter offspring.
Eran. -That is plain.
Orth. -So with reason the Creator, with the intention of destroying either power, assumed the nature against which war was being waged, and, by keeping it clear of all sin, both set it free from the sovereignty of the devil, and, by its means, destroyed the devil's dominion. For since death is the punishment of sinners, and death unrighteously and against the divine law seized the sinless body of the Lord, He first raised up that which was unlawfully detained, and then promised release to them that were with justice imprisoned.