Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Regarding the manner of his death, I gather, you try to draw a distinction, denying that the cross's suffering was foretold of the Creator's Christ, and going on to argue that one cannot credit the Creator with handing his own son over to precisely the death he himself had pronounced accursed. "Cursed," it says, "is everyone who hangs on a tree." But I shall put off the meaning of this curse, reserving it for the discussion of the cross alone, which is now our chief question, since in other matters too the proof of the fact comes before the explanation of it. Let me first instruct you in the figures. [2] And indeed it was fitting above all that this mystery be figured in the preaching: the more incredible it was, the more of a scandal it would prove if announced nakedly; and the more magnificent it was, the more it needed to be veiled, so that the difficulty of understanding it might send men seeking the grace of God. And so, first of all, Isaac — handed over by his own father to be a sacrifice, while he himself bore the wood meant for his own offering — already sketched in advance the fate of Christ, handed over as a sacrifice by the Father and bearing the timber of his own suffering. [3] Joseph too prefigured Christ — and not only in this, not to delay the course of my argument, that he suffered persecution from his brothers because of God's favor, just as Christ suffered from the Jews, his brothers according to the flesh — but when his father pronounces this blessing over him: "The majesty of a bull is his, and he bears the horns of a wild ox; with these he shall gore the nations, driving them together to the far corners of the earth" — certainly no rhinoceros was intended by that "wild ox," nor some twin-horned minotaur, but it was Christ who was signified in that figure: a bull for his twofold disposition, fierce to some as judge, gentle to others as savior, whose horns were the outermost tips of the cross. [4] For on the crossbeam too — which is a part of the cross — the extremities are called "horns"; and the "unicorn" is the upright post standing alone in the middle. By this very power and by this appearance, horned, he now tosses all nations through faith, lifting them from earth to heaven; and then, by judgment, he will toss them down, casting them from heaven to earth. [5] The same figure of the bull occurs elsewhere in the same scripture, when Jacob is interpreted spiritually of Simeon and Levi — that is, of the scribes and Pharisees, for from those two the lineage of these is derived: "Simeon and Levi have completed iniquity out of their own sect" — namely the sect by which they persecuted Christ — "let my soul not enter their council, nor my inward parts rest in their assembly, for in their fury they slew human beings" — meaning the prophets — "and in their willfulness they hocked an ox" — meaning Christ, against whom, having already murdered the prophets, they vented their rage with nails, hamstringing him, so to speak, by nailing him up. Otherwise it would be a pointless thing, after acts of manslaughter, to reproach them merely for butchering some ox. [6] Then again, Moses — why, precisely when Joshua was fighting against Amalek, did he pray sitting with hands outstretched, when in such an agitated crisis he ought surely rather to have knelt, and beaten his breast with his hands, and rolled his face upon the ground to press home his prayer — unless it was because there, where the Lord's name was doing battle in advance for the one who would one day fight against the devil, the very posture of the cross was also necessary, the posture through which Jesus was to bring back the victory? [7] The same Moses again — after the making of any likeness of anything had been forbidden — why did he set up a bronze serpent, mounted on a piece of wood, in the attitude of one hanging, as a saving spectacle? Was he not here too pointing to the power of the Lord's cross, by which the serpent, the devil, was publicly exposed, and by which anyone wounded by spiritual serpents, if only he looked upon it and believed, was thereby proclaimed healed of the bites of sin, and saved?
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