Chapter 1 (70)
Distinction XXII | 93
DISTINCTION XXII
Chapter 1 (70) 1. WHETHER CHRIST WAS A MAN IN DEATH. Here it is asked whether Christ was a man during the three days of his death.
2. THE OPINION OF SOME PEOPLE. To some, this does not seem to be the case, because he was dead, and a dead man is not a man.—They also add that, if he was then a man, then either he was a mortal or an immortal one; but he was not mortal, because already dead, nor immortal, because this would be so only after the resurrection.
3. RESPONSE, BY WHICH IT IS CONFIRMED THAT, AND HOW, HE WAS A
MAN. To them we answer that, although he was a dead man, yet God was man in death; and he was neither mortal, nor immortal, and yet truly a man. For those kinds of quibbles have their place in the case of creatures, but the mystery of faith is free from philosophical arguments.—AMBROSE.
Hence Ambrose: "Put aside your arguments, where faith is required. Let dialectic be silent, even in her own schools. We believe fishermen, not dialecticians."'—And so we say that in Christ's death God was truly man, and yet the man was dead; and this man was neither mortal, nor immortal, because he was united to the severed soul and flesh. It is for a different reason that God is called man, or man God, than [a man is called] Martin or John. For the man is called God, and vice versa, because of the taking on of the man, that is, of the soul and flesh. AUGUSTINE. Hence Augustine: "Such was that taking as to make God to be man, and man to be
God."' And so, since that taking was not undone by death, and God continued to be united to the man and the man to God as before, truly God was then still man and vice versa, because he was united to soul and flesh.
But the man was dead, because the soul was divided from the flesh. He was dead because of the separation of the soul from the flesh, but a man because of the union of the two in himself.—For he was not a man in such a way as to exist from conjoint soul and flesh, which is the reason why anyone else is called a man; perhaps he was a man in this way too before his death, and then again after the resurrection. But in his death he was a man only because of the union of soul and flesh in himself, and he was dead because of the division between those two.
'Ambrose, De fide, bk 1 c13 n84.
*Augustine, De Trinitate, bk 1 c13 n28.