Chapter 21. Christ Is the Head of All Things: It Was Fitting That He Should Assume Human Nature and Be Tempted by Satan,
Chapter 21
1. Therefore, in recapitulating all things, he has also recapitulated the battle against our enemy. He both challenged and dashed to pieces him who in the beginning led us captive in Adam; and he tramples on his head. This you have given in Genesis where God said to the serpent: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall observe your head, and you shall observe his heel. To explain, ever since then he who was to be born of the Woman, the Virgin, according to the likeness of Adam, was heralded as observing the head of the serpent. This is the Offspring of whom the Apostle wrote in his Letter to the Galatians: The law of works was enacted until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. He makes this still clearer in the same letter when he says, But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son made of a woman. Certainly, the enemy would not have been justly conquered, unless a man born of a woman had conquered him. For it was through a woman that he got dominion over man in the beginning, setting himself up as man’s Adversary. For that reason, too, the Lord confessed himself to be the “Son of Man,” inasmuch as he recapitulated in himself the original man, out of whom was made the Handiwork [Christ] that is according to a woman. This he did in order that, just as our race descended to death through the man who was conquered, so we might again ascend to life through the man who was victorious. And just as death received the palm over us through the man, so we in turn might receive the palm over death through man.
2. The Lord would not have recapitulated in himself that ancient and original enmity against the serpent, thus fulfilling the Creator’s promise and carrying out his commandment, if he had come from some other Father. But since he who in the beginning fashioned us and who in the end sent his Son is one and the same, the Lord carried out his commandment when he was made of a woman and destroyed our Adversary and perfected man after the image and likeness of God. On this account he did not destroy him by any other means than by the words of the Law, having used the Father’s commandment as an aid for destroying and exposing the Rebel Angel.
First, He fasted forty days, as also Moses and Elijah had done, then he was hungry, that we might understand that his human nature is true and unshakable;—for it is a characteristic of a man who fasts to be hungry—and that the Adversary might have an occasion for attacking him. For just as in the beginning by means of food he deceived man, who was not hungry, to transgress God’s commandment, so in the end he was not able to dissuade Man, who was hungry, to take food that was from God. For when he tempted him and said, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread, the Lord repelled him by the commandment of the Law, saying, It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone.” To his statement, If you are the Son of God, he did not answer; but he blinded him by acknowledging himself to be a man, and he nullified the first attack by the Father’s word. So the satiety of man in the garden by the twofold tasting of the food was undone by the indigence in this world.
When he had been vanquished by the Law, he too, by lying attempted to make an attack by using the Law. He led him up to the highest point of the temple and said: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, “God has given his angels charge of you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” He concealed a lie under a Scripture text, as all heretics do. For this that He had given his angels charge of him was indeed written; but this, throw yourself down, no Scripture text says of him. No, the Devil got this advice from himself. And so the Lord confounded him by the Law by quoting, Again, it is written, “You shall not tempt the Lord Your God.” By this statement from the Law he showed first, with reference to man, that man ought not to tempt God; then, with reference to that one [the Devil], that he should not tempt the Lord his God in the man whom he was seeing. And so the pride of the mind that was in the serpent was undone by the humility that was in the man. Already twice was the Devil overcome by Scripture, when he was exposed as advising things contrary to God’s commandment and was shown to be God’s Adversary by his opinion. Then, having been signally confounded, he, so to say, gathered himself together and threw all his strength into a lie, and third, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, adding, as Luke reminds us, All these I will give to you if falling down you will worship me. At that the Lord exposed him for what he is. Begone, Satan, he said, for it is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” He exposed him by his name and also showed who he himself is; for the Hebrew word Satan means a rebel. So, having conquered him for the third time, he drove him away from himself for good as one who had been vanquished by the Law; and the transgression of God’s commandment that occurred in Adam was undone by the command of the Law, which the Son of Man kept by not transgressing God’s commandment.
3. Who, then, is the Lord God to whom Christ gives testimony, whom no one may tempt, and whom all must adore, and alone serve? It is, by all means and without any doubt, the God who also gave the Law. For these things were foretold in the Law, and by means of the word of the Law the Lord showed that the Law announces the true Lord who is from the Father. On the other hand, the Rebel Angel is destroyed by his voice, when his identity was exposed and he was vanquished by the Son of Man who kept God’s commandment. For since in the beginning he persuaded man to transgress the Creator’s commandment, he had him in his power. But this power is transgression and rebellion, and by these he put man in chains. So contrariwise, it was necessary that by man himself he should be conquered and be put in the same chains by which he had bound man, in order that man, having been loosed, might return to his Lord, by leaving to that one the chains by which he had been bound, that is, by the transgression. For, putting Satan in chains means loosing man, since no one can enter the strong man’s house, and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Therefore the Lord exposed him in matters contrary to the word of God who made all things, and subdued him by means of a commandment—God’s Law is a commandment. Now, in his human nature he showed him to be a fugitive from, and transgressor of, the Law and an apostate from God. Thereafter the Word kept him securely bound as a fugitive from himself and took as spoils his tools, that is, those men who were held captive by him, whom he exploited unjustly. Justly is he led captive who before had led man captive unjustly; but man who had before been led captive has been withdrawn from the power of the possessor by the mercy of God the Father, who had pity on his handiwork and gave him salvation, restoring it through the Word, namely, through Christ, in order that man might learn through actual experience that he receives imperishability not of himself but as a gift from God.