Relevant
books
available at Amazon
Amidon
Philip R., S.J (1997), The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia: Books 10 and 11 (Bks.10 & 11)
(Oxford)
---------------
Kelly,
J. N. D. (1978), Rufinus: A Commentary on the Apostles' Creed (Ancient Christian Writers
-20)
---------------
Scheck,
Thomas P. (2010), Apology for Origen: with On the Falsification of the Books of Origen by Rufinus (Fathers of the Church Patristic Series
- 120)
---------------
Clark
E. A. (1992), The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton Legacy Library)
- pages 159 - 193
|
14. HE WAS CRUCIFIED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE AND WAS
BURIED: HE DESCENDED INTO HELL. The Apostle Paul teaches us that we ought to
have “the eyes of our understanding enlightened” “that we may understand what is
the height and breadth and depth.” “The height and breadth and depth” is a
description of the Cross, of which that part which is fixed in the earth he
calls the depth, the height that which is erected upon the earth and reaches
upward, the breadth that which is spread out to the right hand and to the left.
Since, therefore, there are so many kinds of death by which it is given to men
to depart this life, why does the Apostle wish us to have our understanding
enlightened so as to know the reason why, of all of them, the Cross was chosen
in preference for the death of the Saviour. We must know, then, that that Cross
was a triumph. It was a signal trophy. A triumph is a token of victory over an
enemy. Since then Christ, when He came, brought three kingdoms at once into
subjection under His sway (for this He signifies when he says, “That in the name
of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and
things under the earth”), and conquered all of these by His death, a death was
sought answerable to the mystery, so that being lifted up in the air, and
subduing the powers of the air, He might make a display of His victory over
these supernatural and celestial powers. Moreover the holy Prophet says that
“all the day long He stretched out His hands” to the people on the earth, that
He might both make protestation to unbelievers and invite believers: finally, by
that part which is sunk under the earth, He signified His bringing into
subjection to Himself the kingdoms of the nether world.
15. Moreover,—to touch briefly some of the more recondite topics,—when God made
the world in the beginning, He set over it and appointed certain powers of
celestial virtues by whom the race of mortal men might be governed and directed.
That this was so done Moses signifies in the Song in Deuteronomy, “When the Most
High divided the nations, He appointed the bounds of the nations according to
the number of the angels of God.” But some of these, as he who is called the
Prince of this world, did not exercise the power which God had committed to them
according to the laws by which they had received it, nor did they teach mankind
to obey God’s commandments, but taught them rather to follow their own perverse
guidance. Thus we were brought under the bonds of sin, because, as the Prophet
saith, “We were sold under our sins.” For every man, when he yields to lust, is
receiving the purchase-money of his soul. Under that bond then every man was
held by those most wicked rulers, which same bond Christ, when He came, tore
down and stripped them of this their power. This Paul signifies under a great
mystery, when he says of Him, “He destroyed the hand-writing which was against
us, nailing it to His cross, and led away principalities and powers, triumphing
over them in Himself.” Those rulers, then, whom God had set over mankind, having
become contumacious and tyrannical, took in hand to assail the men who had been
committed to their charge and to rout them utterly in the conflicts of sin, as
the Prophet Ezekiel mystically intimates when he says, “In that day angels shall
come forth hastening to exterminate Ethiopia, and there shall be perturbation
among them in the day of Egypt; for behold He comes.” Having stript them then of
their almighty power, Christ is said to have triumphed, and to have delivered to
men the power which was taken from them, as also Himself saith to His disciples
in the Gospel, “Behold I have given you power to tread upon serpents and
scorpions, and upon all the might of the enemy.” The Cross of Christ, then,
brought those who had wrongfully abused the authority which they had received
into subjection to those who had before been in subjection to them. But us, that
is, mankind, it teaches first of all to resist sin even unto death, and
willingly to die for the sake of religion. Next, this same Cross sets before us
an example of obedience, in like manner as it hath punished the contumacy of
those who were once our rulers. Hear, therefore, how the Apostle would teach us
obedience by the Cross of Christ: “Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ
Jesus, Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with
God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking upon Him the form of a servant,
being made in the likeness of men; and, being found in fashion as a man, He
became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.” As, then, a consummate
master teaches both by example and precept, so Christ taught the obedience,
which good men are to render even at the cost of death, by Himself first dying
in rendering it.
16. But perhaps some one is alarmed at hearing us discourse of the death of Him
of Whom, a short while since, we said that He is everlasting with God the
Father, and that He was begotten of the Father’s substance, and is one with God
the Father, in dominion, majesty, and eternity. But be not alarmed, O faithful
hearer. Presently thou wilt see Him of Whose death thou hearest once more
immortal; for the death to which He submits is about to spoil death. For the
object of that mystery of the Incarnation which we expounded just now was that
the divine virtue of the Son of God, as though it were a hook concealed beneath
the form and fashion of human flesh (He being, as the Apostle Paul says, “found
in fashion as a man”), might lure on the Prince of this world to a conflict, to
whom offering His flesh as a bait, His divinity underneath might catch him and
hold him fast with its hook, through the shedding of His immaculate blood. For
He alone Who knows no stain of sin hath destroyed the sins of all, of those, at
least, who have marked the door-posts of their faith with His blood. As,
therefore, if a fish seizes a baited hook, it not only does not take the bait
off the hook, but is drawn out of the water to be itself food for others, so He
Who had the power of death seized the body of Jesus in death, not being aware of
the hook of Divinity inclosed within it, but having swallowed it he was caught
forthwith, and the bars of hell being burst asunder, he was drawn forth as it
were from the abyss to become food for others. Which result the Prophet Ezekiel
long ago foretold under this same figure, saying, “I will draw thee out with My
hook, and stretch thee out upon the earth: the plains shall be filled with thee,
and I will set all the fowls of the air over thee, and I will satiate all the
beasts of the earth with thee.” The Prophet David also says, “Thou hast broken
the heads of the great dragon, Thou hast given him to be meat to the people of
Ethiopia.” And Job in like manner witnesses of the same mystery, for he says in
the person of the Lord speaking to him, “Wilt thou draw forth the dragon with a
hook, and wilt thou put thy bit in his nostrils?”
17. It is with no loss or disparagement therefore of His Divine nature that
Christ suffers in the flesh, but His Divine nature through the flesh descended
into death, that by the infirmity of the flesh He might effect salvation; not
that He might be detained by death according to the law of mortality, but that
He might by Himself in his resurrection open the gates of death. It is as if a
king were to proceed to a prison, and to go in and open the doors, undo the
fetters, break in pieces the chains, the bars, and the bolts, and bring forth
and set at liberty the prisoners, and restore those who are sitting in darkness
and in the shadow of death to light and life. The king, therefore, is said
indeed to have been in prison, but not under the same condition as the prisoners
who were detained there. They were in prison to be punished, He to free them
from punishment.
|
