V. Take, in the next place, the subjection
by which you subject the Son to the Father. What, you say, is He
not now subject, or must He, if He is God, be subject to God? S. Gregory would here
shew that the subjection of Christ of which S. Paul speaks in the
passage quoted, is that of the Head of the Church, representing the
members of His body. Cf. S. Ambrose, de Fide V. vi., quoted by
Petavius, de Trin. III. v. 2. You are fashioning your argument as if
it concerned some robber, or some hostile deity. But look at it
in this manner: that as for my sake He was called a
curse, Gal. iii. 13. Who destroyed my
curse; and sin, 2 Cor. v. 21. who taketh away the
sin of the world; and became a new Adam 1 Cor. xv. 45. to
take the place of the old, just so He makes my disobedience His own as
Head of the whole body. As long then as I am disobedient and
rebellious, both by denial of God and by my passions, so long Christ
also is called disobedient on my account. But when all things
shall be subdued unto Him on the one hand by acknowledgment of Him, and
on the other by a reformation, then He Himself also will have fulfilled
His submission, bringing me whom He has saved to God. For this,
according to my view, is the subjection of Christ; namely, the
fulfilling of the Father’s Will. But as the Son subjects
all to the Father, so does the Father to the Son; the One by His Work,
the Other by His good pleasure, as we have already said. And thus
He Who subjects presents to God that which he has subjected, making our
condition His own. Of the same kind, it appears to me, is the
expression, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me?” Ps. xxii. 1. It was not He
who was forsaken either by the Father, or by His own Godhead, as some
have thought, as if It were afraid of the Passion, and therefore
withdrew Itself from Him in His Sufferings (for who compelled Him
either to be born on earth at all, or to be lifted up on the
Cross?) But as I said, He was in His own Person representing
us. For we were the forsaken and despised before, but now by the
Sufferings of Him Who could not suffer, we were taken up and
saved. Similarly, He makes His own our folly and our
transgressions; and says what follows in the Psalm, for it is very
evident that the Twenty-first I.e. Ps. xxii. A.V. Psalm refers to
Christ.