Some prate concerning the Economy with flesh of the Only-Begotten and, bringing down to our frail perceptions the Mystery venerable and great and most dear to the Spirits above, whereby also we are saved, pollute the comeliness and beauty of the Truth, whereas they ought, not to try and prop up whatever seems to them right, but rather with subtil and keen eye of the mind to look into the aim of the Sacred Writings and thus to go on the right road, following what the most holy fathers have searched out, who taught by the illuminings of the Holy Ghost, denned for us the Symbol of faith, saying that the God the Word Himself Which was in mode ineffable begotten out of the Essence of the Father, by Whom all things were made which are in Heaven and which are in earth, for us men and for our salvation came down, was made flesh, was made man, suffered, ascended into heaven, will in his season come to judge quick and dead.
But there are certain who deem that they are learned and knowing and are puffed up with pride and swelling, who if they hear these words, mock, and deem that those things which are so rightly said, are mad ravings: while we specially believe that the knowledge of the Truth lay open through the illumination of the Holy Ghost to the holy Fathers. But they, as if they alone could think what is better, deem that not the Only-Begotten Son of God Himself, God the Word Which is out of His Essence, suffered in His own Flesh for us humanly, albeit conceived of as God He have in His own Nature the inability to suffer; but putting as man separately and by himself him that was born of the holy Virgin, and attributing to him to what extent it seems good to them, a kind of glory, they say that he was united to the Word of God the Father. And |232 explaining the mode of the union, they say that there was given him by God equality of dignity or authority and to be called by like name both Christ and Son and Lord. But if the man who is invented by them be said to suffer ought, it must (they say) be referred to God the Word Himself, in that he is connected to Him by equality of worth, while in their severed natures each is what he is.
I will open the force of their opinions, so far as I can, bringing forward instances from the Sacred Writings. Christ hungered, was wearied with the journey, slept, entered into the boat, was stricken with blows by the attendants, was scourged by Pilate, received the spittle of the soldiers, who piercing with the spear His Side, offered vinegar mingled with gall to His Mouth: yea and He tasted death, suffering the Cross and other contumelies of the Jews. All these things they declare to have befallen indeed the man, but to be referred to the Person of the Very Son. But we believe, as in One God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible, so too in One our Lord Jesus Christ His Son. And we refuse to divide Emmanuel into man by himself and into the Word by Himself: but knowing that the Word became truly Man too as we, we say that Himself the Same is God of God, and in human wise Man as we of a woman. And we assert that by reason of the ownness of the flesh He suffered indeed infirmities, yet reserved to His Nature its impassibility, in that He was not Man alone but the Same therewith also God by Nature. And like as the Body was His own, so too the natural and blameless passions of the body and the things which by the frowardness of some were put upon Him.
He suffered without suffering Who did not therefore humble Himself that He might only be like us, but because (as I said before) He had reserved to His Nature superiority to all these things. But if we should say that through conversion or mutation of His own Nature He had passed into the nature of the flesh , it would be in all ways |233 necessary for us even against our will to confess that the Hidden and Divine Nature was passible. But if He have remained unchanged albeit He have been made man as we, and it be a property of the Heavenly Nature that It cannot suffer, and the passible body have become His own through the union:----He suffers when the Body suffers, in that it is said to be His own body. He remains Impassible in that it is truly His property to be unable to suffer.
And if Emmanuel have been glorified through suffering, as Himself says when about to suffer for us the Precious Cross, Now is the son of man glorified, why do they not blush, attributing the glory of the Passion to a man having connection only with Him in Equality of dignity? for as they deem, He connected with Himself according to the Will and Good-pleasure of the Father a man only and made him equal to His own glory, and permitted that by like name he should be styled both Christ and Son and God and Lord:----hence neither is the Word truly Incarnate nor was He at all made man. And haply to call the holy doctors of the whole world false and liars, will do no harm? for either let them say, yea rather come forward and prove that the mode of connection which is brought in by |234 them has the force of incarnation and that that is that the Word was made flesh; or if they think that these things are not so, why do they invent for us a mode of unconnected connection, the truth being neglected? whereas it would be fitting that they should say that the Word of God the Father was united to our humanity, for thus in His own flesh is He conceived to have suffered what belongs to man, but so far as pertains to the Nature of the Godhead, He is free from all that disturbs, as God.
And that by speaking of reference , which I know not how they invented, they withdraw Emmanuel from His Glory and make Him barely one of the Prophets, and set Him amid the measure of the many, and are full surely caught thus doing, I will prove, giving examples from the Divine Scripture.
There once murmured in the wilderness against Moses and Aaron the people of Israel saying, Would we had died, stricken by the Lord in Egypt when we were sitting at the flesh pots and were eating bread even to fulness. Therefore the most wise Moses says (for it were like that he should reply to men so rashly impatient), But who are we? for neither against us is your murmuring but against God. And in those times even God Almighty used to reign through the holy Prophets over the people of Israel, but they in this too, slack of courage approached the Divine Samuel saying, Lo THOU hast grown old and thy sons walk not in thy ways and now set over us a king which may judge us even as the other nations. The Prophet felt this grievously but Almighty God said, Hear the voice of the people even as they have spoken to thee, for not thee have they rejected but Me they have rejected that I should not reign over them.
And elsewhere too has Christ said to the holy Apostles, He who receiveth you hath received Me: and He promiseth that He will address the merciful before His Tribunal, Come, ye blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. And |235 acknowledging as His own their righteous ways towards those to whom they had dealt kindly, He says, In that ye did it to one of these least, to Me did ye it.
Lo in these instances is clearly recognized the mode of reference of what kind it is. The people of Israel were murmuring against Moses and Aaron and the matter had reference to God, yet were Moses and Aaron men as we. In the same way too will you conceive as to the others whereof we have just made mention, yet were some (as I said before) holy men and worthy of admiration, yet men as we. Is it then in this way that the man too who is connected (as they call it) with God the Word, will have reference of his sufferings to Himward? And how will he not now be mere man and apart and nought else? Hence Emmanuel is not truly God, is not Only-Begotten Son, is not God by Nature.
Why then was no one of the rest honoured by God the Word with equality of dignity or of sway, but they contend that this man alone obtained all things equal? specially seeing that God, the Saviour of all men, judgeth not according to the person hut righteous judgement, as Himself maketh mention. Why then doth He co-sit Alone? how will He come as Judge, with Angels waiting on Him? why is He Alone worshipped as well by us as by the spirits above?
But in good truth it is so (says he), for we find that thou also dost the same, for thou confessest that He suffered, in that thou attributest to Him the sufferings of the flesh, albeit thou keepest Him impassible as God.
But we, good sirs, (shall I say) having first united to the Word the human, have to the flesh allotted the sufferings, have kept Him impassible as God: for though He hath become as we, yet are we cognizant of His God-befitting Excellence and of His Supreme Endowments.
Hence first putting the Union as a basis and foundation to the Faith, we confess that He suffered in the flesh, that He remained again superior to suffering in that He possesses Impassibility in His own Nature. But if we are |236 diligent to put apart God and Man, severing the Natures one from another, and then say that in reference only does the Word of God make His own what have befallen His Body; He That is born of the holy Virgin, Emmanuel, which is, interpreted, With us is God, will haply have but the measure of Moses and Aaron.
Thus even though He say through the holy Prophets, My Back have I given to scourges, My Cheeks to blows, My Face I turned not from the shame of spittings, and again, They dug My Hands and My Feet, they told all My Bones, and again, They gave for My meat gall and for My thirst they gave Me to drink vinegar: we shall allot all these things to the Only-Begotten Himself, Who suffered Economically in the flesh according to the Scriptures (for with His wheal were we healed, and Himself hath been weakened because of our sins ), yet do we know that He is Impassible by Nature. For if (as I just said) Himself is Man alike and God, with reason do the Sufferings belong to His Manhood, His own as God is it to be conceived of as superior to suffering.
Thus minded shall we be pious and through such right thoughts advancing, we shall attain unto the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus, through Whom, and with Whom to God the Father be glory with the Holy Ghost unto ages of ages, Amen.
[Footnotes moved to the end and numbered. Biblical references (in the margins) omitted.]
1. See Ep. 1 to the Monks, pp. 6 e, 7, 10.
2. The Latin translation of Marius Mercator here adds (to fill up the sense) de christo, of christ, which is not in the Greek or Syriac.
3. ἀνθρωπίνως , and so Syr. The Lat. version omits this word.
4. In his first Paschal homily, some fifteen years before (A. D. 414) S. Cyril had quoted this verse and explained it, "For the Saviour having not vet assumed our likeness, was departed far from us, as regards the plan of the Incarnation: since much is the interval between the nature of man and that of God the Word: for of us says one of the saints, I am earth and ashes, of the Being of the Only-Begotten the prophet Isaiah says, who shall declare His Generation? Seasonably therefore on us in our much affliction beamed the Saviour made of a woman after the flesh, in order to save man who is out of woman, and that, loosing him from the bonds of death, He might teach him to say rejoicing, where thy victory death, where thy sting o grave?" Hom. Pasch. i. pp. 4e 5 a.
5. intentionum = θεωρημάτων .
6. "He is therefore God who has the angels His own." de recta fide to the Princesses p. 82 a.
7. I have retained the words, the Lord, on the authority of John of Caesarea (who has preserved us the Greek in his Apology for the Council of Chalcedon; of this John nothing else seems to be known, his Defence exists in Rome in a syriac translation as mentioned by Card. Mai, Nova Bibl. Patr. ii. 415, and anonymously in Greek in ms, both at Venice and at Cairo), and of the syriac translation of these scholia. In the ecumenic Epistle to John, Archbishop of Antioch, the syriac translation has the words. On the other hand in S. Cyril's Apology for his 11th chapter against the Eastern Bishops, p. 194 c, the principal mss., the syriac translation (the manuscript of which is as old as the century after S. Cyril) and Mercator all omit the words, as does Mercator here. In the two citations of these words in the Quod Unus Christus (to be given below), the syriac version likewise omits the words. See also below, p. 226.
8. The words, yet we do not say that Jesus Christ was mere man, are wanting in the Latin, apparently from omission by homoeoteleuton, but the Syriac has supplied them.
9. "Paul somewhere says of the Son of God, Who being in the form of God deemed not the being Equal with God a thing to seize but emptied Himself, taking servant's form and found in fashion as a man. The Word of God therefore hath been made man; He came not into a man like as He was in the Prophets [comp. dial. i. p. 398 c, hom. pasch. x, A.D. 423, p. 159 c] but has been made in truth this which we too are, without only sin. He is therefore God in that He is Word of the Father, and the own of His Essence; man, in that He hath been made flesh as it is written, and put about Him our flesh. The faith respecting our Lord Jesus Christ having this definition, let the words [spoken] of Him be discerned according to the ratio befitting them; and if thou hear, I and the Father are One, view the One Godhead of the Son and of the