Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book I/Chapter LXII

by Arnobius

62. But, you will say, He was cut off by death as men are. Not Christ Himself; for it is impossible either that death should befall what is divine, or that that should waste away and disappear in death which is one in its substance, and not compounded, nor formed by bringing together any parts. Who, then, you ask, was seen hanging on the cross? Who dead? The human form,^[1] I reply, which He had put on,^[2] and which He bore about with Him. It is a tale passing belief, you say, and wrapt in dark obscurity; if you will, it is not dark, and is established by a very close analogy.^[3] If the Sibyl, when she was uttering and pouring forth her prophecies and oracular responses, was filled, as you say, with Apollo’s power, had been cut down and slain by impious robbers,^[4] would Apollo be said to have been slain in her? If Bacis,^[5] if Helenus, Marcius,^[6] and other soothsayers, had been in like manner robbed of life and light when raving as inspired, would any one say that those who, speaking by their mouths, declared to inquirers what should be done,^[7] had perished according to the conditions of human life? The death of which you speak was that of the human body which He had assumed,^[8] not His own—of that which was borne, not of the bearer; and not even this death would He^[9] have stooped to suffer, were it not that a matter of such importance was to be dealt with, and the inscrutable plan of fate^[10] brought to light in hidden mysteries.

Footnotes

1. So the ms., followed by Hildebrand and Oehler, reads and punctuates quis mortuus? homo, for which all edd. read mortuus est? “Who died?”
2. Here, as in the whole discussion in the second book on the origin and nature of the soul, the opinions expressed are Gnostic, Cerinthus saying more precisely that Christ having descended from heaven in the form of a dove, dwelt in the body of Jesus during His life, but removed from it before the crucifixion.
3. So the ms. by changing a single letter, with LB. and others, similitudine proxim-a (ms. o) constitutum; while the first ed., Gelenius, Canterus, Ursinus, Orelli, and others, read -dini proxime—“settled very closely to analogy.”
4. In the original latronibus; here, as in the next chapter, used loosely to denote lawless men.
5. So emended by Mercerus for the ms. vatis.
6. So read in the ms.—not -tius, as in LB. and Orelli.
7. Lit., “the ways of things”—vias rerum.
8. The ms. reads unintelligibly assumpti-o which was, however, retained in both Roman edd., although Ursinus suggested the dropping of the o, which has been done by all later edd.
9. The ms. reads, quam nec ipsam perpeti succubuisset vis—“would his might,” i.e., “would He with His great power have stooped.” Orelli simply omits vis as Canterus, and seemingly the other later edd. do.
10. The ms. and 1st ed. read sati-s, which has clearly arisen from f being confounded with the old form of s.