ACC ~ Acts 2 v24

THE TRAVAIL OF DEATH. CHRYSOSTOM: “But God raised him up, having freed him from the pangs of death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.” Here he hinted at something great and sublime, for the expression “it was impossible” is in itself that of one assigning something. It shows that even death itself, when it held him, experienced birth pangs and suffered terribly (by pangs of death the Old Testament means danger and disaster). It also shows that he so rose as never again to die. For the words “because it was impossible for him to be held in its power” mean that his resurrection was not common to the rest. HOMILIES ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 6.

NEVER HELD BY THE PANGS OF DEATH. AUGUSTINE: And if one is hard put to explain how the pangs of hell were loosed by him—for he did not stay in them as in bondage and hence did not loose them as if they were chains that bound him—it is easy to understand that they might have been loosed like the snares of hunters, not because they held him, but so that they might not hold him. That is how we can believe that he loosed the pangs that did not bind him but did bind others whom he knew he was to set free. LETTER 164.

HE DIED AND ROSE AS MAN. THEODORET OF CYR: Peter said, “God has made this Jesus both Lord and Christ” and said too, “This Jesus whom you crucified God has raised up.” Now it was the humanity, not the Godhead, that became a corpse, and he who raised it was the Word, the power of God, who said in the Gospel, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” So when it is said that God has made him who became a corpse and rose from the dead both Lord and Christ, what is meant is the flesh, and not the Godhead of the Son. DIALOGUE 3.

WE CAN RISE WITH HIM. GREGORY OF NYSSA: But since it was also fitting that he should implant in our nature the power of rising again from the dead, he becomes the “firstfruits of them that slept” and the “firstborn from the dead,”in that he first by his own act loosed the pains of death, so that his new birth from the dead was made a way for us also, since the pains of death, wherein we were held, were loosed by the resurrection of the Lord. REFUTATION OF EUNOMIUS’S “CONFESSION OF FAITH” 2.8.

Acts