Orth. -The passion is never connected with the name "God."
Eran. -But even I do not affirm that God the Word suffered apart from a body, but say that He suffered in flesh.
Orth. -You affirm then a mode of passion, not impassibility. No one would ever say this even in the case of a human body. For who not altogether out of his senses would say that the soul of Paul died in flesh? This could never be said even in the case of a great villain; for the souls even of the wicked are immortal. We say that such or such a murderer has been slain, but no one would ever say that his soul had been killed in the flesh. But if we describe the souls of murderers and violators of sepulchres as free from death, far more right is it to acknowledge as immortal the soul of our Saviour, in that it never tasted sin. If the souls of them who have most greatly erred have escaped death on account of their nature, how could that soul, whose nature was immortal and who never received the least taint of sin, have taken death's hook?
Eran. -It is quite useless for you to give me all these long arguments. We are agreed that the soul of the Saviour is immortal.
Orth. -But of what punishment are you not deserving, you who say that the soul, which is by nature created, is immortal, and are for making the divine substance mortal for the Word; you who deny that the soul of the Saviour tasted death in the flesh, and dare to maintain that God the Word, Creator of all things, underwent the passion?
Eran. -We say that lie underwent the passion impassibly.
Orth. -And what man in his senses would ever put up with such ridiculous riddles? Who ever heard of an impassible passion, or of an immortal mortality? The impassible has never undergone passion, and what has undergone passion could not possibly be impassible. But we hear the exclamation of the divine Paul: "Who only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no than can approach unto."
Eran. -Why then do we say that the invisible powers too and the souls of men, aye and the very devils, are immortal?
Orth. -We do say so; that God is absolutely immortal. He is immortal not by partaking of substance, but in substance; He does not possess an immortality which He has received of another. It is He Himself who has bestowed their immortality on the angels and on them that thou hast just now mentioned. How, moreover, when the divine Paul styles Him immortal and says that He only hath immortality, can you attribute to Him the passion of death?
Eran. -We say that He tasted death after the incarnation.
Orth. -But over and over again we have confessed Him immutable. If being previously immortal He afterwards underwent death through the flesh, a change having preceded His undergoing death; if His life left Him for three days and three nights, how do such statements fall short of the most extreme impiety? For I think that not even they that are struggling against impiety can venture to let such words fall from their lips without peril.
Eran. -Cease from charging us with impiety. Even we say that not the divine nature suffered but the human; but we do say that the divine shared with the body in suffering.
Orth. -What can you mean by sharing in suffering? Do you mean that when the nails were driven into the body the divine nature felt the sense of pain?
Eran. -I do.
Orth. -Both now and in our former investigations we have shewn that the soul does not share all the faculties of the body but that the body while it receives vital force has the sense of suffering through the soul. And even supposing us to grant that the soul shares in pain with the body we shall none the less find the divine nature to be impassible, for it was not united to the body instead of a soul. Or do you not acknowledge that He assumed a soul?
Eran. -I have often acknowledged it.
Orth. -And that He assumed a reasonable Soul?
Eran. -Yes.
Orth. -If then together with the body He assumed the soul, and we grant that the soul shared in suffering with the body, then the soul, not the Godhead, shared the passion with the body; it shared the passion, receiving pangs by means of the body. But possibly somebody might agree to the soul sharing suffering with the body, but might deny its sharing death, because of its having an immortal nature. On this account the Lord said "Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul." If then we deny that the soul of the Saviour shared death with the body, how could any one accept the blasphemy you and your friends presumptuously promulgate when you dare to say that the divine nature participated in death? This is the more inexcusable when the Lord points out at one time that the body was being offered, at another that the soul was being troubled.
Eran. -And where doth the Lord shew that the body was being offered? Or are you going to bring me once more that well worn passage "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up"? Or with your conceited self-sufficiency are you going to quote me the words of the Evangelist? "But He spake of the temple of his body. When therefore He was risen from the dead His disciples remembered that He had said this unto them and they believed the Scripture and the words which He had said."
Orth. -If you have such a detestation of the divine words which preach the mystery of the incarnation, why, like Marcion and Valentinus and Manes, do you not destroy texts of this kind? For this is what they have done. But if this seems to you rash and impious, do not turn the Lord's words into ridicule, but rather follow the Apostles in their belief after the resurrection that the Godhead raised again the temple which the Jews had destroyed.
Eran. -If you have any good evidence to adduce, give over gibing and fulfil your promise.
Orth. -Remember specially those words of the gospels in which the Lord made a comparison between manna and the true bread.
Eran. -I remember.
Orth. -In that passage after speaking at some length about the bread of life, he added, "The bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world." In these words may be understood alike the bounty of the Godhead and the boon of the flesh.