The heretics' dilemma and Christ's answer

it lies within your power either to accept the passion or to refuse it. But if it does not lie within you, then you fear with good reason, as one dragged to the passion unwillingly and against your will. And if you take up death for us unwillingly, how can you say, “I have authority to lay down my life, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:18)? And how, again, when you were mocking the threat of the Jews in another place, did you say, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19)? You who many times and in many ways prefigured death before death, and sketched the trophy of the cross before the cross—you who said that the Son of Man must be handed over and crucified and buried and rise on the third day—why do you now, when you have come under the cross, refuse death? For if the Son of Man must be handed over, how can you say, “If it is possible, let this cup pass”? And if you did not want to suffer at all, why did you put on a body capable of suffering? But if you put on a body capable of suffering and are going to the passion, why are you grieved and distressed? And how is it that when you were describing death, when you were narrating the passion, when you were prefiguring the cross, you were angry with Peter for saying, “Far be it from you, Lord; this shall never happen to you” (Matthew 16:22)—and you were so angry that you said, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, because you are not thinking the things of God but the things of men” (Matthew 16:23)? If refusing death is a human way of thinking, why do you now seek what you once prevented? And how do you now pray to escape death, you who once rebuked your disciple for fearing the assault of death? Are you not the one proclaimed beforehand by the law and the prophets? Was it not about you that the prophet Hosea said, “Thus says the Lord: I will deliver them from the hand of Hades, so that they may say, ‘Where is your victory, death? Where is your sting, Hades?’” (Hosea 13:14)? If you are the one who delivers from Hades, how do you fear death? And if you fear death—the death through which we hope to conquer death—then our hope is empty and our expectation is useless. If you fear death at all, in what shall we have hope of life from now on? And how can you say, “I am the life and the resurrection” (John 11:25)? For life does not fear death, and resurrection does not fear the passion. But you are the life and the resurrection. Why then do you frighten my soul? Why do you weaken the strength of my mind by bringing out words of fear? Were the things concerning Lazarus a phantom? Were the things concerning Jairus's daughter a dream? Were the things concerning the widow's son a shadow? No, what happened was truth. How then does the one who stripped death fear death? How does the one who raised stinking corpses with authority pray and fear to fall into death? And why do you fear falling into it at all? For even if you fall into it, you will free yourself. The one who raises others will far more raise his own body. So either explain the meaning to me, Master, or stop the saying and do not tear my soul apart or make my reasoning give way. For if you are the one who knows all things before they come into being, how do you now not know whether it is possible or impossible for the cup to pass? If you do not know, then Paul lies when he says, “No creature is hidden from your sight, but all things are naked and laid open to his eyes” (Hebrews 4:13). But if you do know, how can you say, “If it is possible”? A question belongs to one who does not know, not a statement to one who knows. So explain to us, Master, the meaning of what you have said. For now Eunomius rejoices; now Arius celebrates, seizing the saying as material for blasphemy. But they rejoice in vain. For there is no joy for the wicked, says the Lord (Isaiah 57:21). I do not fear death, as they say; I do not refuse the passion, as they suppose. For if I had not wanted to give life to the human race through death, I would not, being the impassible Word, have entered into flesh capable of suffering. But since I saw the human race held by deception and not by force, by the sorcery of demons and not by violence, I entered into your body, so that by preparing opposites from opposites I might set humanity free through every deception. For since the tyrant was boasting greatly that he had found sin and through sin brought in death, and had made Adam—the citizen of paradise, the appointed master of the world—a slave, a robber, and a tiller of the ground, for this reason I came to the earth as a king, having the flesh as a purple robe, so that having shorn the tyrant's boldness, I might dissolve deception with deception, march righteousness against sin, and set life against death. It is not because I fear death that I am afraid; for the matter is not involuntary, but the achievement is freely chosen.