Section CLXXV

From these, however, while other things can conveniently be elicited, the following are especially most opportune for the present matter. And at the outset a) the division of the divine will into first and second is approved by Theodoret, is called by him an ἀρίστη διαίρεσις, an excellent division, and is so explained that the first will is that which flows from the benignity innate in God, but the second will that which borrows cause and occasion from us.

Moreover, b) the first will is salutary and universal: salutary because by it God wills men to possess salvation; universal because God wills absolutely all men to arrive at the summit of so great a felicity.

Furthermore, c) it is efficacious and active, because God, moved by it, willed redemption to be obtained by the blood of Christ and so obtained that the harms inflicted by original transgression would be repaired fundamentally.

But d) by the consequent will only those are punished who, enemies to themselves no less than rebels against God, have despised the fountains of mercy poured forth and the opportunity for penance offered.

With these agree exactly those things which Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch—who is properly to be distinguished¹ from Anastasius of Sinai, who is called Μωυσῆς νέος, a new Moses, by the more recent Greeks, and whose illustrious encomiums are found² in Evagrius and Gregory the Great³—committed to writing.—

For, refuting heretics who raved that the divine immensity was ruined by the Incarnation, he says⁴:

Certainly these have not known, nor have they understood, the power of God; indeed rather⁵, “their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” But God most patiently bears these things, “who does not will any to perish, but all to come to penance”; for he wills⁶ “all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” May God bring it about that this wise counsel attain a good outcome in them, they themselves attaining salvation according to the purpose of God, “who⁷ calls those things which are not as those which are.”

Concerning this purpose, after the words of Isaiah⁸, “Behold, the Virgin shall have in her womb and shall bear a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,” and after the song of praise by the same prophet concerning these things⁹, “O Lord my God, I will glorify you; I will praise your name, because you have done wonderful things, a counsel,” Anastasius adds¹⁰:

Τίς δὲ ἦν ἀρχαία βουλὴ τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρός; τὸ σωθῆναι πάντας ἡμᾶς· ὁ γὰρ τὸ εἶναι δούς, πῶς οὐκ ἂν μᾶλλον τὸ εὖ εἶναι δέδωκε, τὸ ἴδιον ἀνακαλούμενος πλάσμα ἐπὶ τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἐνδιαίτημα, καὶ τὴν τῆς ἐντολῆς φυλακήν, δι’ ἣν ἀτελεύτητος ἐν ἡμῖν ἡ τῆς ζωῆς ἐπαγγελία, ἣν ἀπωλέσαμεν εἰκότως, τὴν ἐντολὴν μὴ φυλάξαντες; What, then, was the ancient counsel of God and the Father? Assuredly, the salvation of us all. For he who had given us to be, how would he not much more give us to be well, calling his own creature back to its ancient dwelling and to the observance of the commandment, through which there is in us the promise of immortal life, which we deservedly lost by not observing that commandment?

And indeed he called us back to the ancient dwelling, and through the οἰκονομία of the Only-begotten restored the hope which had been lost and raised up minds which had been cast down. For although¹¹ “he alone perfectly knows the cause of this great descent, together with those to whom he disclosed it and who were worthy of this knowledge; nevertheless, as far as we have attained, instructed by their writings, the cause was that man who had perished miserably might be saved: he who, fashioned by the hand of God and honored by the image, was providently placed by the Creator in paradise, that he might work it and keep it¹², as he had been commanded¹³; but he did not always keep what had been entrusted to him. Through sloth, and approaching forbidden things, he was led on by the deceit of a certain deceptive pleasure. Hence all labor arose for him, and a flood of evils; although these ought otherwise to have been cut away, they were nevertheless increased all the more. For thus it is accustomed to happen to those who are sick without observing any order, and who likewise do not use the precepts of physicians as they ought. Therefore, ‘when he had come into the depth of evils’¹⁴, as the Wise Man says in Proverbs, ‘he despised.’ Hence, because he had fallen from so great an excellence and height, it did not befit the natural goodness of God to pass by him so fallen, without medicine and outside the happy state in which he had been established, as one neglected; for he who once was ‘raised and reared in purple,’ as the prophet says¹⁵, ‘was clothed in dung.’”

Moved, therefore, by the unworthiness of the thing and by his innate goodness, “wisely¹⁶ did that great King, truly of illustrious lineage and truly free among all those who are from the rising of the sun, undertake the business of the economy of the Word of God; for, departing from his own city on account of him who had been exiled from it, he sat upon our dung, upon which we were sitting, stripped of the splendid garment with which we had been clothed—”

“—before the transgression; and because from the foul dung we had received ulcers and wounds which were corrupting the whole fabric of our nature, he took a potsherd that he might scrape away much of the corruption; for he willed to cleanse and wash the wound.

“But what is this potsherd? Assuredly, the terrestrial body by which he cleansed our sin, having been made ‘the Lamb of God’¹⁷ ‘who takes away the sin of the world.’ This is for us the ‘great mystery’¹⁸, ‘hidden from ages and from generations in God who created all things.’”

To fulfill this mystery and heal us, the Only-begotten Son of God “came¹⁹ to us who were far away and, on account of charity, having spontaneously assumed the economy which befitted his natural goodness, put on gross, terrestrial, and mortal flesh, employing the surpassing greatness of his power to conceal his glory and to assume the flesh which he united to himself and in which he dwelt, covering the amplitude of his proper divinity with a shadow. For it was necessary that he who was invisible, whose purpose was to come to those who lived according to sense, should become visible and like to them. Therefore he formed this divine instrument for himself, that through it he might become visible, and that which was of our nature, united also to the divine nature, might minister to divine actions; so that in this manner he might say to all who awaited his redemption²⁰: ‘I who spoke, behold, I am present.’”

For²¹, “since it was his purpose to raise up the whole which had fallen, and the whole race had fallen, he mingled his whole self with the whole Adam—life with the dead—that he might save him, penetrating the whole of him to whom he was united, like the soul of a great body, animating the whole and sensibly imparting life to the whole.” For²² “we had all been sold and made servants of death, which held dominion over all; therefore he willed to be sold for us: we, indeed, for the price of pleasure, but he for silver, since—”

“—he was stronger than pleasure. And we ourselves were sold by ourselves; but he was sold by us, because he is not the seller of liberty but its vindicator. And we abused unto destruction the honors which we had received from him. But the valuation²³ of the free man was the burial of strangers, that it might preserve the bodies of those who ceased to live in a foreign land until he should come who raises bodies, whose souls were redeemed by precious blood; for his blood was poured out that it might be the price of redemption²⁴ for many. But perhaps it is better to say, for all; for all are those who are many.”