John of Damascus (650-750 A.D.): The Passion, Death, Resurrection of Our Lord and Us; How the two natures of Jesus is critical in understanding why and how He suffered all that He did for us
Reading Time: 8 minutes
The following is a selection from the renowned treatise, An Accurate Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III, chapters 23-29 and Book IV, chapters 1, 26f. It has been translated by Protopresbyter George Dion. Dragas (who is on our Research Advisory Board and whose lectures can be found here).
As you will quickly see in this exposition, nearly every major question one can conceive of regarding why Jesus suffered all that He did and how He underwent such suffering is answered with a clarity of Biblical insight that is rarely seen (…guess that’s why we’re still reading his work 1250 years later…). The text is formulated as questions followed by answers with Father George adding the Biblical references, which are now hyperlinked.
Enjoy.
And Thank you, Father George!
Biography
In Father George’s words,
St. John Damascene (John of Damascus) was born in Damascus around 650 in a prominent Christian family and lived to be over 100 years old. He became a monk at the famed Monastery of St. Sabbas the Sanctified near Jerusalem, where he was ordained to the priesthood by Patriarch John V of Jerusalem. It was there that he engaged in his remarkable literary work, writing hymns and theological treatises that constitute invaluable treasures of the Orthodox Tradition. He was the most important defender of the use of holy Icons in worship in the early phase of the Iconoclastic controversy.
The Text:
The Passion, Death, Resurrection of Our Lord and Our Resurrection at the End of Time (18 questions and answers)
1. Did Christ experience fear at his passion?
The word fear has a double meaning. For fear is natural when the soul is unwilling to be separated from the body, on account of the natural sympathy and close relationship planted in it in the beginning by the Creator, which makes it fear and struggle against death and pray for an escape from it. It may be defined thus: natural fear is the force whereby we cling to being with shrinking. For if all things were brought by the Creator out of nothing into being, they all have by nature a longing after being and not after non-being. Moreover, the inclination towards those things that support existence is a natural property of them.
Hence God the Word when He became man had this longing, manifesting, on the one hand, in those things that support existence, the inclination of His nature in desiring food and drink and sleep and having in a natural manner made proof of these things, while on the other hand displaying in those things that bring corruption His natural disinclination in voluntarily shrinking in the hour of His passion before the flight of death. For, although what happened did so according to the laws of nature, yet it was not, as in our case, a matter of necessity. For, He willingly and spontaneously accepted that which was natural. So that fear itself, terror, and agony belong to the natural and innocent passions and are not under the dominion of sin.
Again, there is a fear, which arises from treachery of reasoning and want of faith, and ignorance of the hour of death, as when we are at night affected by fear at some chance noise. This is unnatural fear and may be thus defined: unnatural fear is an unexpected shrinking. This our Lord did not assume. Hence, He never felt fear except in the hour of His passion, although He often experienced a feeling of shrinking in accordance with the dispensation. For, He was not ignorant of the appointed time.
2. Why was Christ’s soul troubled?
But the holy Athanasios in his Discourse against Apollinaris says that He did actually feel fear. Wherefore the Lord said: “Now is My soul troubled” (John 12:27). [According to Athanasius] “The ‘now’ indeed means just ‘when He willed,’ but yet points to what He actually was. For He did not speak of what was not, as though it were present, as if the things that were said only apparently happened. For all things happened naturally and actually.” And again after some other matters, he says, “In nowise does His divinity admit passion apart from a suffering body, nor yet does it manifest trouble and pain apart from a pained and troubled soul, nor does it suffer anguish and offer up prayer apart from a mind that suffered anguish and offered up prayer. For, although these occurrences were not due to any overthrow of nature, yet they took place to show forth His real being” (Athanasius Against Apollinaris II). The words “these occurrences were not due to any overthrow of His nature,” prove that it was not involuntarily that He endured these things.
3. Why did Christ need to Pray?
Prayer is an uprising of the mind to God or a petitioning of God for what is fitting. How then did it happen that our Lord offered up prayer in the case of Lazarus, and at the hour of His passion? For His holy mind was in no need either of any uprising towards God, since it had been once and for all united in subsistence with the God-Word, or of any petitioning of God. For Christ is one. But it was because He appropriated to Himself our personality and took our impress on Himself, and became an ensample for us, and taught us to ask of God and strain towards Him, and guided us through His own holy mind in the way that leads up to God. For just as He endured the passion, achieving for our sakes a triumph over it, so also He offered up prayer, guiding us, as I said, in the way that leads up to God, and “fulfilling all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15) on our behalf, as He said to John, and reconciling His Father to us, and honoring Him as the beginning and cause, and proving that He is no enemy of God. For when He said in connection with Lazarus, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You hear Me always, but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that You have sent Me” (John 11:42), is it not most manifest to all that He said this in honor of His Father as the cause even of Himself, and to show that He was no enemy of God?
4. Why did Christ pray: “Let this cup pass from Me?”
Again, when he said, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: yet, not as I will but as You will” (Matthew 26:39), is it not clear to all that He said this as a lesson to us to ask help in our trials only from God, and to prefer God’s will to our own, and as a proof that He did actually appropriate to Himself the attributes of our nature, and that He did in truth possess two wills, natural, indeed, and corresponding with His natures but yet in no wise opposed to one another? “Father” implies that He is of the same essence, but “if it be possible” does not mean that He was in ignorance (for what is impossible to God?), but serves to teach us to prefer God’s will to our own. For, that alone is impossible which is against God’s will and permission. “But not as I, but as You will,” for inasmuch as He is God, He is identical with the Father, while inasmuch as He is man, He manifests the natural will of mankind. For, it is this that naturally seeks escape from death.
5. Why did Christ cry to God, “Why have You forsaken Me?”
Further, these words, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me” (Matt. 26:46)? He said as making our personality His own. For neither would God be regarded with us as His Father, unless one were to discriminate with subtle imaginings of the mind between that which is seen and that which is thought, nor was He ever forsaken by His divinity: nay, it was we who were forsaken and disregarded. So that it was as appropriating our personality that He offered these prayers.
6. How did Christ appropriate the passion and the curse?
It is to be observed that there are two appropriations: one that is natural and essential, and one that is personal and relative. The natural and essential one is that by which our Lord in His love for man took on Himself our nature and all our natural attributes, becoming in nature and truth man, and making trial of that which is natural: but the personal and relative appropriation is when any one assumes the person of another relatively, for instance, out of pity or love, and in his place utters words concerning him that have no connection with himself. And it was in this way that our Lord appropriated both our curse and our desertion, and such other things as are not natural: not that He Himself was or became such, but that He took upon Himself our personality and ranked Himself as one of us. Such is the meaning in which this phrase is to be taken: “Being made a curse for our sakes” (Gal. 3:13).
7. The Lord endured the passion as Man and not as God
The Word of God, then, itself endured all in the flesh, while His divine nature, which alone was passionless, remained void of passion. For since the one Christ, Who is a compound of divinity and humanity, and exists in divinity and humanity, truly suffered, that part, which is capable of passion suffered, as it was natural it should, but that part which was void of passion did not share in the suffering. For the soul, indeed, since it is capable of passion shares in the pain and suffering of a bodily cut, though it is not cut itself but only the body: but the divine part which is void of passion does not share in the suffering of the body.
Observe, further, what we say, i.e. that God suffered in the flesh, but never that His divinity suffered in the flesh, or that God suffered through the flesh. For if, when the sun is shining upon a tree, the axe should cut the tree, and, nevertheless, the sun remains uncut and void of passion, much more will the passionless divinity of the Word, united in subsistence to the flesh, remain void of passion when the body undergoes passion. And should any one pour water over flaming steel, it is that which naturally suffers by the water, I mean, the fire, that is quenched, but the steel remains untouched (for it is not the nature of steel to be destroyed by water): much more, then, when the flesh suffered did His only passionless divinity escape all passion although abiding inseparable from it. For one must not take the examples too absolutely and strictly: indeed, in the examples, one must consider both what is like and what is unlike, otherwise it would not be an example. For, if they were like in all respects, they would be identities and not examples and more so in dealing with divine matters. For, one cannot find an example that is like in all respects whether we are dealing with theology or the dispensation.
8. How did Christ die although He was sinless?
Since our Lord Jesus Christ was without sin (“for He committed no sin, He Who took away the sin of the world, nor was there any deceit found in His mouth,” [Isaiah 53:9 and John 1:29]). He was not subject to death, since death came into the world through sin (Rom. 5:12). He dies, therefore, because He took on Himself death on our behalf, and He makes Himself an offering to the Father for our sakes. For we had sinned against Him, and it was meet that He should receive the ransom for us, and that we should thus be delivered from the condemnation. God forbid that the blood of the Lord should have been offered to the tyrant. Therefore, death approaches, and swallowing up the body as bait is transfixed on the hook of divinity, and after tasting of a sinless and life-giving body, perishes, and brings up again all whom of old he swallowed up. For just as darkness disappears on the introduction of light, so is death repulsed before the assault of life, and brings life to all, but death to the destroyer.
Therefore, although He died as man and His holy spirit was severed from His immaculate body, yet His divinity remained inseparable from both, I mean, from His soul and His body, and so even thus His one hypostasis (person) was not divided into two hypostases (persons). For body and soul received simultaneously in the beginning their existence in the (divine) person (hypostasis) of the Word of God, and although they were severed from one another by death, yet they continued, each of them, having the one subsistence of the Word. So, the one person of the Word of God is also the person of the Word and of the soul and the body. For at no time had either soul or body a separate personal existence of their own, different from that of the Word, and the subsistence of the Word is forever one, and at no time two. So, that the subsistence of Christ is always one. For, although the soul was separated from the body topically, yet hypostatically they were united through the Word.
9. Christ changed the corruptible into incorruptible
The word corruption has two meanings. For it signifies all the human sufferings, such as hunger, thirst, weariness, the piercing with nails, death, that is, the separation of soul and body, and so forth. In this sense we say that our Lord’s body was subject to corruption. For, He voluntarily accepted all these things. But corruption means also the complete resolution of the body into its constituent elements, and its utter disappearance, which is spoken of by many preferably as destruction. The body of our Lord did not experience this form of corruption, as the prophet David says, “For You will not leave my soul in hell, neither will You suffer Your holy one to see corruption” (Ps. 16:10).
Therefore, to say, with that foolish Julianus and Gaianus, [6th century heretics that held the heresy of Aphthartodocetism, which held that our Lord’s body only “seemed” (docetism) to be “incorruptible” (aphthartos)]. That our Lord’s body was incorruptible, in the first sense of the word, before His resurrection is impious. For, if it were incorruptible, it was not really, but only apparently, of the same essence as ours, and what the Gospel tells us happened, viz. the hunger, the thirst, the nails, the wound in His side, the death, did not actually occur. But if they only apparently happened, then the mystery of the dispensation is an imposture and a sham, and He became man only in appearance, and not in actual fact, and we are saved only in appearance, and not in actual fact. But God forbid and may those who so say have no part in salvation. But we have obtained and shall obtain the true salvation. But in the second meaning of the word “corruption,” we confess that our Lord’s body is incorruptible, that is, indestructible, for such is the tradition of the inspired Fathers. Indeed, after the resurrection of our Savior from the dead, we say that our Lord’s body is incorruptible even in the first sense of the word. For our Lord by His own body bestowed the gifts both of resurrection and of subsequent incorruption even on our own body, He Himself having become to us the first fruits both of resurrection and incorruption, and of passion-lessness (I Cor. 15:20). For as the divine Apostle says, “This corruptible must put on incorruption” (I Cor. 15:53).
10. Christ’s descent into Hades (Hell)
The soul when it was deified descended into Hades, in order that, just as the Sun of Righteousness (Mal. 4:2) rose for those upon the earth, so likewise He might bring light to those who sit under the earth in darkness and shadow of death (Is. 9:2): in order that just as He brought the message of peace to those upon the earth, and of release to the prisoners, and of sight to the blind (Is. 61:1, Luke 4:18-19), and became to those who believed the Author of everlasting salvation and to those who did not believe a reproach of their unbelief (I Pet. 3:18-19), so He might become the same to those in Hades: That every knee should bow to Him, of things in heaven, and things in earth and things under the earth (Phil. 2:10). And thus, after He had freed those who had been bound for ages, straightway He rose again from the dead, showing us the way of resurrection.
11. The Implications of Christ’s Resurrection
After Christ had risen from the dead, He laid aside all His passions, I mean His corruption or hunger or thirst or sleep or weariness or such like. For, although He did taste food after the resurrection (Luke 24:43), yet He did not do so because it was a law of His nature (for He felt no hunger), but in the way of economy, in order that He might convince us of the reality of the resurrection, and that it was one and the same flesh which suffered and rose again. But He laid aside none of the divisions of His nature, neither body nor spirit, but possesses both the body and the soul intelligent and reasonable, volitional and energetic, and in this wise He sits at the right hand of the Father, using His will both as God and as man in behalf of our salvation, energizing in His divine capacity to provide for and maintain and govern all things, and remembering in His human capacity the time He spent on earth, while all the time He both sees and knows that He is adored by all rational creation. For His Holy Spirit knows that He is one in substance with God the Word, and shares as Spirit of God and not simply as Spirit the worship accorded to Him. Moreover, His ascent from earth to heaven and again His descent from heaven to earth are manifestations of the energies of His circumscribed body. “For He shall so come again to you, says he, in like manner as you have seen Him go into Heaven” (Acts 1:11).
12. How does Christ sit on the right side of the Father?
We say that Christ sits on the “right side of the Father” with the body. We do not mean, however, that the “right side of the Father” is to be understood bodily. How could the indescribable have a bodily side? When we speak of right and left sides we speak about things which are describable. The “right side of the Father” is the glory and honor of the Godhead, in which the Divine Word exists pre-eternally as God and as consubstantial with the Father. It is inside this glory and honor that Christ sits bodily since He is the Divine Logos Incarnated in these last days and glorified with Himself in the flesh which He assumed. This is why Christ is worshiped by the entire Creation together with His flesh with one single type of worship.
13. The Antichrist and the Return of Christ
It should be known that the Antichrist is bound to come. Everyone, therefore, who confesses not that the Son of God came in the flesh and is perfect God and became perfect man, after being God, is Antichrist (I John 2:22). But in a peculiar and special sense he who comes at the consummation of the age is called Antichrist. First, then, it is requisite that the Gospel should be preached among all nations, as the Lord said (Matt. 24:14), and then he will come to refute the impious Jews. For the Lord said to them: “I am come in My Father’s name, and you receive Me not: if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive” (John 5:43). And the apostle says, ”Because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved, for this cause God shall send them a strong delusion that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (II Thess. 2:10-12). The Jews accordingly did not receive the Lord Jesus Christ who was the Son of God and God but received the impostor who calls himself God. For that he will assume the name of God, the angel teaches Daniel, saying these words, “neither shall he regard the God of his fathers” (Dan. 11:37). And the apostle says: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son, of perdition: who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sits in the temple of God” (II Thess. 2:3-4), “showing himself that he is God”; in the temple of God he said; not our temple, but the old Jewish temple. For he will come not to us but to the Jews: not for Christ or the things of Christ: wherefore he is called Antichrist.
First, therefore, it is necessary that the Gospel should be preached among all nations (Matt. 25:14): “And then shall that wicked one be revealed, even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, whom the Lord shall consume with the word of His mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming” (II Thess. 2:8-10). The devil himself, therefore, does not become man in the way that the Lord was made man. God forbid! But he becomes man as the offspring of fornication and receives all the energy of Satan. For God, foreknowing the strangeness of the choice that he would make, allows the devil to take up his abode in him.
He is, therefore, as we said, the offspring of fornication and is nurtured in secret, and on a sudden he rises up and rebels and assumes rule. And in the beginning of his rule, or rather tyranny, he assumes the role of sanctity (or righteousness according to some manuscripts). But when he becomes master, he persecutes the Church of God and displays all his wickedness. But he will come “with signs and lying wonders” (II Thess. 2:9), fictitious and not real, and he will deceive and lead away from the living God those whose mind rests on an unsound and unstable foundation, so that even the elect shall, if it be possible, be made to stumble (Matt. 24:24).
But Enoch and Elias the Thesbite shall be sent and shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children (Mal. 4:6, Rev. 11:3), that is, the synagogue to our Lord Jesus Christ and the preaching of the apostles: and they will be destroyed by him. And the Lord shall come out of heaven, just as the holy apostles beheld Him going into heaven perfect God and perfect man, with glory and power (Acts 1:11), and will destroy the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction, with the breath of His mouth (II Thess. 2:8). Let no one therefore look for the Lord to come from earth, but out of Heaven, as He himself has made sure.
14. Concerning the final Resurrection
Furthermore, we also believe in the resurrection of the dead, for there will be in truth a resurrection of the dead; and by resurrection we mean resurrection of bodies (I Cor. 15:35-44). For, resurrection is the second state of that which has fallen. For the souls are immortal, and hence how can they rise again? For if they define death as the separation of soul and body, resurrection surely is the re-union of soul and body, and the second state of the living creature that has suffered dissolution and downfall. It is, then, this very body, which is corruptible and liable to dissolution that will rise again incorruptible. For He, who made it in the beginning of the sand of the earth, does not lack the power to raise it up again after it has been dissolved again and returned to the earth from which it was taken, in accordance with the reversal of the Creator’s judgment.
15. Why there must be a Resurrection of the dead?
For if there is no resurrection, let us eat and drink (Is. 22:13 and I Cor. 15:32): let us pursue a life of pleasure and enjoyment. If there is no resurrection, wherein do we differ from the irrational brutes? If there is no resurrection, let us hold the wild beasts of the field happy who have a life free from sorrow. If there is no resurrection, neither is there any God, nor Providence, but all things are of themselves driven and borne along. For observe how we see most righteous men suffer hunger and injustice and receive no help in the present life, while sinners and unrighteous men abound in riches and every delight. And who in his senses would take this for the work of a righteous judgment or a wise providence? There must be, therefore, there must be, a resurrection. For God is just and he rewards those who submit patiently to Him. Therefore, if it is the soul alone that engages in the contests of virtue, it is also the soul alone that will receive the crown. And if it were the soul alone that revels in pleasures, it would also be the soul alone that would be justly punished. But since the soul does not pursue either virtue or vice separate from the body, both together will obtain that which is their just due.
16. Old Testament witnesses to the Resurrection
Nay, the divine Scripture bears witness that there will be a resurrection of the body. God in truth says to Moses after the flood, ”even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat. And surely the blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whosoever sheds man’s blood, for his blood his own shall be shed, for in the image of God made I man” (Gen. 9:3-6). How will He require the blood of man at the hand of every beast, unless because the bodies of dead men will rise again? Because not for man will the beasts die.
And again, to Moses, ”I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob: God is not the God of the dead (that is, those who are dead and will be no more), but of the living” (Ex. 3:6 and Matt. 22:32), whose souls indeed live in His hand (Wisdom 3:1), but whose bodies will again come to life through the resurrection. And David, sire of the Divine, says to God, “You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust” (Ps. 104:29). See how he speaks about bodies. Then he subjoins this, “You send forth Your Spirit, they are created: and You renew the face of the earth” (Ps. 104: 30).
Further Isaiah says: ”The dead shall rise again, and they that are in the graves shall awake” (Is. 26:19). And it is clear that the souls do not lie in the graves, but the bodies.
And again, the blessed Ezekiel says: ”And it was as I prophesied, and behold a shaking and the bones came together, bone to his bone, each to its own joint: and when I beheld, lo, the sinews came up upon them and the flesh grew and rose up on them and the skin covered them above” (Ez. 36:7). And later he teaches how the spirits came back when they were bidden. And divine Daniel also says: “And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince who stands for the children of your people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such trouble as never was since there was a nation on the earth even to that same time. And at that time your people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book, and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake: some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and out of the multitude of the just shall shine like stars into the ages and beyond” (Dan. 12:1-3). The words, ”many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake”, clearly show that there will be a resurrection of bodies. For no one surely would say that the souls sleep in the dust of the earth.
17. New Testament Witnesses to the Resurrection
Moreover, even the Lord in the holy Gospels clearly allows that there is a resurrection of the bodies. ”For they that are in the graves”, He says, “shall hear His voice and shall come forth: they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28-29). Now no one in his senses would ever say that the souls are in the graves.
But it was not only by word, but also by deed, that the Lord revealed the resurrection of the bodies. First, He raised up Lazarus, even after he had been dead four days, and was stinking (John 2:19-22 and cf. 11:39-44). For He did not raise the soul without the body, but the body along with the soul: and not another body but the very one that was corrupt. For how could the resurrection of the dead man have been known or believed if it had not been established by his characteristic properties? But it was in fact to make the divinity of His own nature manifest, and to confirm belief in His own and in our resurrection that He raised up Lazarus who was destined once more to die. And the Lord became Himself the first fruits of the perfect resurrection that is no longer subject to death. Therefore, the divine Apostle Paul also said: “If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, our faith is vain: we are jet in our sins” (I Cor. 15:35). And “Now, is Christ risen from the dead and become the first-fruits of them that slept” (I Cor. 15:20), “and the first-born from the dead” (Col. 1:18); and again, “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him” (I Thess. 4:14). “Even so,” he said, “as Christ rose again.” Moreover, that the resurrection of the Lord was the union of uncorrupted body and soul (for it was these that had been divided) is manifest: for He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). And the holy Gospel is a trustworthy witness that He spoke of His own body. “Handle Me and see,” the Lord said to His own disciples when they were thinking that they saw a spirit, “that it is I Myself, and that I am not changed: for a spirit has not flesh or bones, as you see Me having” (Luke 24:39). “And when He had said this He showed them His hands and His side, and stretched them forward for Thomas to touch” (John 20:27). Is not this sufficient to establish belief in the resurrection of bodies?
Again the divine apostle says, “for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (I Cor. 15:53). And again: “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory: it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (I Cor. 15:42-44), such was our Lord’s body after the resurrection which passed through closed doors, was unwearied, had no need of food, or sleep, or drink. “For they will be,” says the Lord, “as the angels of God” (Mark 12:25): there will no longer be marriage nor procreation of children. The divine apostle, in truth, says, “For our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus, Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body” (Phil. 3:20-21): not meaning the change into another form (God forbid!), but rather the change from corruption into incorruption.
18. The logic which pertains to the Resurrection
But someone will say, How are the dead raised up? Oh, what disbelief! Oh, what folly! Will He, Who at His solitary will change earth into body, Who commanded the little drop of seed to grow in the mother’s womb and become in the end this varied and manifold organ of the body, not the rather raise up again at His solitary will that which was and is dissolved? “And with what body do they come” (I Cor 15:35)? You fool, if your hardness will not permit you to believe the words of God at least believe His works. For, that which you sow is not quickened except it die” (I Cor. 15:36). “And that which you sow, you sow not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as it has pleased Him, and to every seed his own body (I Cor. 15:37-38). Behold, therefore, how the seed is buried in the furrows as in tombs. Who is it that gives them roots and stalk and leaves and ears and the most delicate beards? Is it not the Maker of the universe? Is it not at the bidding of Him, Who has contrived all things? Believe, therefore, in this wise, even that the resurrection of the dead will come to pass at the divine will and sign. For, He has power that is able to keep pace with His will.
We shall therefore rise again, our souls being once more united with our bodies, now made incorruptible and having put off corruption, and we shall stand beside the awful judgment-seat of Christ (Rom. 14:10): and the devil and his demons and the man that is his, that is the Antichrist and the impious and the sinful, will be given over to everlasting fire (Matt. 25:41): not material fire like our fire, but such fire as God would know. But those who have done good will shine forth as the sun with the angels into life eternal, with our Lord Jesus Christ, ever seeing Him and being in His sight and deriving unceasing joy from Him, praising Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit throughout the limitless ages of ages. Amen.
