Toccata and fugue in Hebrews 5:7
Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2018 8:49 pm
In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.
(Hebrews 5:7)
It is clearly implicit the idea that only in virtue of the his being "in the flesh", Jesus is suffering (and not only because of the cross), the implication being that "the days of the his flesh" coincide strictly with the his short drama in the lower heavens (or on earth). This idea is not found in the Gospels, where a distinction occurs between the suffering of the cross and a state of not-suffering before the Passion. So the same Docetists could think that Jesus was fully human before the Passion. Hence the insistence of an Ignatius that Jesus suffered really precisely on the cross.