{"author":"Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)","date_end":1892,"date_label":"1892 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain)","date_start":1892,"edition_year":1892,"edition_year_basis":"Original NPNF Series II Volume III title and contemporary Jackson bibliography, 1892; physical transcription printing unknown; scan/transcription preface dates differ","id":"ws-library-full-note:47d64e78938287ee10a0:cite_note-45","is_genuine_commentary_verified":false,"license_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Reusing_Wikisource_content","public_import_allowed":true,"publication_location":"source-library","record_type":"editorial-footnote","references":[],"rights_approved":true,"section":"Chapter uncertain; original source section: Letter 151, editorial note cite_note-45","semantic_kind_reviewed":false,"source_context":["Wherefore all the human qualities of the Lord Christ, hunger, I mean, and thirst and weariness, sleep, fear, sweat, prayer, and ignorance, and the like, we affirm to belong to our nature which God the Word assumed and united to Himself in effecting our salvation. But the restitution of motion to the maimed, the resurrection of the dead, the supply of loaves, and all the other miracles we believe to be works of the divine power. In this sense I say that the same Lord Christ both suffers and destroys suffering; suffers, that is, as touching the visible, and destroys suffering as touching the ineffably indwelling Godhead. This is proved beyond question by the narrative of the holy evangelists, from whom we learn that when lying in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes, He was announced by a star, worshipped by magi and hymned by angels. Thus we reverent discern that the swaddling bands and the want of a bed and all the poverty belonged to the manhood; while the journey of the magi and the guiding of the star and the company of the angels proclaim the Godhead of the unseen. In like manner He makes His escape into Egypt and avoids the fury of Herod by flight, for He was man; but as the Prophet says “He shakes the idols of Egypt,” for He was by nature God. He is circumcised; He keeps the law; and offers offerings of purification, because He sprang from the root of Jesse. And, as man, He was under the law; and afterwards did away with the law and gave the new covenant, because He was a lawgiver and had promised by the prophets that He Himself would give it. He was baptized by John; and this shews His sharing what is ours. He is testified to by the Father from on high and is pointed out by the Spirit; this proclaims Him eternal. He hungered; but He fed many thousands with five loaves; the latter is divine, the former human. He thirsted and He asked for water; but He was the well of life; the former of His human weakness, the latter of His divine power. He fell asleep in the boat, but he put the tempest of the sea to sleep; the former of His human nature, the latter of His efficient and creative power which has gifted all things with their being. He was weary as he walked; but He healed the halt and raised dead men from their tombs; the former of human weakness, the latter of a power passing that of this world. He feared death and He destroyed death; the former shows that He was mortal, the latter that He was immortal or rather giver of life. “He was crucified,” as the blessed Paul says “through weakness.” But as the same Paul says “Yet He liveth by the power of God.” Let that word “weakness” teach us that He was not nailed to the tree as the Almighty, the Uncircumscribed, the Immutable and Invariable, but that the nature quickened by the power of God, was according to the Apostle’s teaching dead and buried, both death and burial being proper to the form of the servant. “He broke the gates of brass and cut the bars of iron in sunder” and destroyed the power of death and in three days raised His own temple. These are proofs of the form of God in accordance with the Lord’s words “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Thus in the one Christ through the sufferings we contemplate the manhood and through the miracles we apprehend the Godhead. We do not divide the two natures into two Christs, and we know that of the Father God the Word was begotten and that of the seed of Abraham and David our nature was assumed. Wherefore also the blessed Paul says when discoursing of Abraham “He saith not and to seeds as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed which is Christ,” and writing to Timothy he says “Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel.” And to the Romans he writes “Concerning His son Jesus Christ…which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.” And again “Whose are the fathers and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came.” And the Evangelist writes “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham,” and the blessed Peter in the Acts says David “being a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins, He would raise up Christ to sit on his throne, he seeing this before spake of his resurrection,” and God says to Abraham “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed,” and Isaiah “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of His roots; and there shall rest upon Him the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of piety and the spirit of the fear of the Lord shall fill Him.” And a little further on “And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek; and His rest shall be glorious.”"],"source_library_url":"/library/47d64e78938287ee10a0/#ws-library-full-note:47d64e78938287ee10a0:cite_note-45","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers:_Series_II/Volume_III/Theodoret/Letters/Letter_151#cite_note-45","translator":"Blomfield Jackson","verification":{"proof_file":"raw/review/source-library-note-batch-0058/proof-records.jsonl","proof_file_sha256":"d99bcd456b74c226cd5595a9908fd04c9b4bb20b3ada750b4109d294d60ae7ee","proof_record_id":"ws-library-full-note:47d64e78938287ee10a0:cite_note-45"},"verified":true,"work":"Letters","work_id":"ws-npnf2-3-jackson-c695d3001255d93858d1"}