I’ve been enjoying my Church History class these past two weeks, and today stumbled across something I really enjoyed and thought worthy of a rare-as-of-late blog post.
This is a translation of Rufinus of Aquileia’s (Tyrannius Rufinus) work, Commentarius in Symbolum Apostolorum, a commentary on the Apostle’s Creed. In this section, Rufinus describes God’s “transaction” with the devil in the act of Atonement. I really enjoyed the simile presented here:
The purpose of the incarnation … was that the divine virtue of the Son of God might be as it were a hook hidden beneath the form of human flesh … to lure on the prince of this age to a contest; that the Son might offer him his flesh as a bait and that then the divinity which lay beneath might catch him and hold him fast with its hook.
… Then, as a fish when it seizes a baited hook not only fails to drag off the bait, but is itself dragged out of the water to serve as food for others; so he that had the power of death seized the body of Jesus in death, unaware of the hook of divinity concealed therein. Having swallowed it, he was caught straightway; the bars of hell were burst, and he was, as it were, drawn up from the pit, to become food for others. …