And that is why Jesus fasted when he was tempted, when he was still in need of food before his death. Although he ate and drank when he was glorified, he was not in need of food after his resurrection.^[1] On the first occasion, you see, he was demonstrating in himself our pain. On the second he was demonstrating in us his consolation.^[2] Both instances occurred within a period of forty days. I mean, he fasted for forty days, when he was being tempted in the desert, as it is written in the Gospel, before his death in the flesh;^[3] and again he was with the disciples for forty days, as Peter puts it in the Acts of the Apostles, going out and coming in, eating and drinking^[4] after his resurrection in the flesh.

This number forty seems to signify the course of this age in those who are being called to grace, through the one who did not come to undo the law but to fulfill it.^[5] There are, after all, ten commandments of the law, now spread by the grace of Christ throughout the world (and the world is four-cornered, and ten multiplied by four makes forty); since those who have been redeemed by the Lord, from the regions he has gathered them together, from east and west and north and the sea.^[6] And so by fasting for forty days before his death in the flesh, it is as though he was crying out, Hold yourselves in check from the desires of this world; while by eating and drinking for forty days after his resurrection in the flesh, it is as though he was crying out, Behold, I am with you until the end of the world.^[7]

Prophetic language affirms that the conversion of those in error is the work of God. For they went astray in the wilderness in a thirsty land, the psalmist says, and then he adds, So he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the city where they dwelled, and when the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion.^[1] In like manner also the comfort of the afflicted is ascribed to God, Paul thus says, Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who comforts us in all our tribulation.^[2] Again, the psalmist says, speaking in the person of God, You called on me in trouble, and I delivered you.^[3] And the setting upright of those who stumble is ascribed innumerable times by Scripture to the power of the Lord: You have held me by the hand that I might fall, but the Lord was my help,^[4] and Though he fall, he shall not be cast away, for the Lord upholds him with his hand, and The Lord helps them that are fallen.^[5] And the recovery of the distressed admittedly belongs to the loving-kindness of God, if Eunomius^[6] means the same thing of which we learn in prophecy, as the Scripture says, You laid burdens on our backs; you allowed people to ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, and you brought us to a place of abundance.^[7]

Many other monks coming from Phbow^[1] by boat reached the island, and we were three hundred in number. About the eighth hour of the twenty-sixth of the month of Athyr,^[2] Theodore called all of us and gathered us near himself, and he told Theodore the Alexandrian to interpret what he was going to say to all: God revealed to me long ago what I have to say but told me to keep silence for a while. Now, as I was standing, I have just been ordered to say it to you, and it is this: In almost every place where the name of Christ is being preached, many of those who have sinned after holy baptism have kept the apostolic faith in which we also stand and have wept for their sins. The Lord, accepting the genuineness of their repentance, has wiped away their sins.^[3] Therefore all those among you who up to this day have wept truly over the sins committed after your baptism shall know that you have received forgiveness. Let each of you, therefore, confess to the Lord his mercies and say, You have changed my grief into joy; you have stripped off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.^[4]

Let the word weakness teach us that Jesus was not nailed to the tree as the Almighty, the uncircumscribed, the immutable and invariable, but that the nature enlivened by the power of God, according to the apostle’s teaching, died and was buried—both death and burial being proper to the nature of a servant. He broke the gates of brass and cut the bars of iron in sunder and destroyed the power of death and in three days raised his own temple. These are proofs of the divine nature in accordance with the Lord’s words Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Thus through the sufferings of the one Christ we contemplate the manhood and through the miracles we apprehend the godhead.

Now among the Greeks I know there was only one Phaedon, not a second, and one Polemon,^[1] who devoted themselves to philosophy, after a licentious and most wicked life. However, with Jesus there were not only at the time we are speaking of, the twelve disciples, but many more at all times, who, becoming a band of temperate people, speak in the following way of their former lives: For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward humankind appeared, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he shed on us richly,^[2] we became such as we are. For God sent forth his Word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions, as the prophet taught in the book of Psalms.

Becoming confused by his efforts to accuse us, Celsus^[1] contradicts himself, appearing at one time to know a person without sin and a righteous individual who can look up to God [adorned] with virtue from the beginning. At another time he accepts our statement that there is no human being who is altogether righteous or without sin. He seems to admit this truth when he remarks, This is indeed apparently true, that somehow the human race is naturally inclined to sin. In the next place, as if all people were not invited by the word, he says, All people, then, without distinction, ought to be invited, since all indeed are sinners. And yet, in the preceding pages, we have pointed out the words of Jesus: Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.^[2] All people, therefore, laboring and being heavily burdened on account of the nature of sin, are invited to the rest spoken of in the word of God, for God sent his Word,^[3] and healed them and delivered them from their destructions.

For, if it would be unreasonable to suppose that the unbegotten and immutable substance of God the Almighty was changed into the form of man and, in turn, that the eyes of the beholders were deceived by the illusion of something created and that such things were falsely invented by the Scripture, who else could be proclaimed God and the Lord who judges all the earth and passes sentence, appearing in the shape of a man—if it is not proper to call him the first cause of all things—than his preexistent word alone? And concerning him it was also said in the Psalms: He sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions. Of him Moses speaks very clearly, calling him a second Lord after the Father, when he says, The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord.^[1] The divine Scripture also calls him God, when he again appeared to Jacob in the form of a man, saying to Jacob: Your name shall not be called Jacob, but your name shall be Israel, because you have been strong with God, when also he called the name of the place the Vision of God, saying, For I have seen God face to face, and my soul has been saved.^[2]

This^[1] clearly proclaims the good news of the descent of God the Word from heaven . . . and of the result of his coming. For it says, He sent his Word and healed them. And we say distinctly that the Word of God was he who was sent as the Savior of all humankind, whom we are taught by the holy Scriptures to consider divine. And it sadly suggests that he even came down to die for the sake of those who had died before him. By revealing the redemption of those who would be saved by him, it gives the reason of his coming. For he saved without assistance from any one of those who had gone before him even to the gates of death; he healed and rescued them from their destruction. He did this simply by breaking what are called the gates of death and crushing the bars of iron. And then the prophecy proceeds to predict the state of desolation of those who rejected him when he came. For it says, He turned rivers into a wilderness and rivers of waters into thirst, a fruitful land into a salty waste for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.^[2] You will understand this if you think of Jerusalem of old, the famous city of the Jewish race, its glory and its fruitfulness, devoid now of its saintly citizens and pious people. For after the coming of Christ it became, as the prophet truly says, without fruit or water and quite deserted, a salty waste for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.^[3]

To this is added very much in the prophetic manner a veiled prediction of the change of the longtime desert and thirsty land, referring either to the individual soul or to the turning of the Gentile church to holiness and of its fertility in divine words. This is clearly predicted in a veiled way when it says, He made the desert into pools of water, and that which follows. But to understand this, one must have wisdom from God; according to the admonition at the end of the psalm, which says, Who is wise, and he will keep this?^[4] and that which follows.

The city near the desert, which Jesus entered when he no longer walked boldly among the Jews, is Ephraim.

Now Ephraim means fruitfulness. He was the brother of Manasseh, the elder of the people because of forgetfulness.^[1]

For after the people because of forgetfulness have been left behind, the fruitfulness of the Gentiles has come about, when God turned the rivers in Israel into a desert and the sources of the waters there into dry ground and their fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of those who dwell in it. But he turned the desert from the Gentiles into pools of waters and their dry land into sources of waters.

And he has placed there the hungry, and they made a city for their habitation, the church. There he sowed fields, according to the seed that fell on the beautiful and good ground and produced a hundredfold, and he planted vineyards, for the Lord’s disciples are branches, which also yielded fruit of produce, and he blessed them and they were multiplied exceedingly.^[2]