Chapter XXX.—How the Son Was Forsaken by the Father Upon the Cross. The True Meaning Thereof Fatal to Praxeas. So Too, the Resurrection of Christ, His Ascension, Session at the Father’s Right Hand, and Mission of the Holy Ghost.

However, if you persist in pushing your views further, I shall find means of answering you with greater stringency, and of meeting you with the exclamation of the Lord Himself, so as to challenge you with the question, What is your inquiry and reasoning about that?  You have Him exclaiming in the midst of His passion: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”419    Matt. xxvii. 46. Either, then, the Son suffered, being “forsaken” by the Father, and the Father consequently suffered nothing, inasmuch as He forsook the Son; or else, if it was the Father who suffered, then to what God was it that He addressed His cry?  But this was the voice of flesh and soul, that is to say, of man—not of the Word and Spirit, that is to say, not of God; and it was uttered so as to prove the impassibility of God, who “forsook” His Son, so far as He handed over His human substance to the suffering of death.  This verity the apostle also perceived, when he writes to this effect: “If the Father spared not His own Son.”420    Rom. viii. 32. This did Isaiah before him likewise perceive, when he declared: “And the Lord hath delivered Him up for our offences.”421    This is the sense rather than the words of Isa. liii. 5, 6. In this manner He “forsook” Him, in not sparing Him; “forsook” Him, in delivering Him up. In all other respects the Father did not forsake the Son, for it was into His Father’s hands that the Son commended His spirit.422    Luke xxiii. 46. Indeed, after so commending it, He instantly died; and as the Spirit423    i.e., the divine nature. remained with the flesh, the flesh cannot undergo the full extent of death, i.e., in corruption and decay. For the Son, therefore, to die, amounted to His being forsaken by the Father. The Son, then, both dies and rises again, according to the Scriptures.424    1 Cor. xv. 3, 4. It is the Son, too, who ascends to the heights of heaven,425    John iii. 13. and also descends to the inner parts of the earth.426    Eph. iv. 9. “He sitteth at the Father’s right hand”427    Mark xvi. 19; Rev. iii. 21.—not the Father at His own. He is seen by Stephen, at his martyrdom by stoning, still sitting at the right hand of God428    Acts vii. 55. where He will continue to sit, until the Father shall make His enemies His footstool.429    Ps. cx. 1. He will come again on the clouds of heaven, just as He appeared when He ascended into heaven.430    Acts i. 11; Luke xxi. 37. Meanwhile He has received from the Father the promised gift, and has shed it forth, even the Holy Spirit—the Third Name in the Godhead, and the Third Degree of the Divine Majesty; the Declarer of the One Monarchy of God, but at the same time the Interpreter of the Economy, to every one who hears and receives the words of the new prophecy;431    Tertullian was now a [pronounced] Montanist. and “the Leader into all truth,”432    John xvi. 13. such as is in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, according to the mystery of the doctrine of Christ.

CAPUT XXX.

Alioquin si ultra pergas , potero tibi durius respondere, et te cum ipsius Domini pronuntiatione committere, uti dicam: Quid de isto quaeris? Habes ipsum exclamantem in passione: Deus, meus, Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti? Ergo aut Filius patiebatur a Patre derelictus, et Pater passus non est, qui Filium dereliquit; aut si Pater erat qui patiebatur, ad quem Deum exclamabat? Sed haec vox carnis et 0195B animae, id est hominis, non Sermonis, nec spiritus, id est non Dei, propterea emissa est, ut impassibilem Deum ostenderet, qui sic Filium dereliquit, dum hominem ejus tradidit in mortem. Hoc et Apostolus sensit, scribens (Rom., VIII, 32): Si Pater Filio non pepercit. Hoc et Esaias (Is., LIII, 6) prior pronuntiavit: Et Dominus eum tradidit pro delictis nostris. Sic reliquit, dum non parcit; sic reliquit, dum tradit . Caeterum, non reliquit Pater Filium, in cujus manibus Filius spiritum suum posuit. Denique posuit, et statim obiit: Spiritu enim manente in carne, caro omnino mori non potest. Ita, relinqui a Patre, mori fuit Filio. Filius igitur et moritur (I Cor., XV, 3 et seq.) et resuscitatur a Patre, secundum Scripturas. Filius ascendit in superiora coelorum, qui et descendit 0195C in interiora terrae: hic sedet ad dexteram Patris, non Pater ad suam. Hunc videt Stephanus cum lapidatur , adhuc stantem ad dexteram Dei, ut 0196A exinde sessurum, donec (Ps. CIX, 2) ponat illi Pater omnes inimicos sub pedibus suis. Hic et venturus est rursus super nubes (I Cor., XV) coeli, talis qualis et ascendit. Hic interim acceptum a Patre munus effudit, Spiritum Sanctum, tertium nomen divinitatis, et tertium gradum majestatis , unius praedicatorem monarchiae, sed et oeconomiae interpretatorem, si quis sermones novae prophetiae ejus admiserit, et deductorem omnis veritatis, quae est in Patre et Filio et Spiritu Sancto, secundum christianum sacramentum.