14. Wherein those who say [ this ] agree with the Manichaeans and wherein they are supposed to be distinct from them.
Has it then been revealed to thee wherein they are imagined [to be] the same and wherein they are supposed to have differences and abide by the same? And we ought to leave out the things which follow these, in order that we may not vainly suppress the truth in what is confessed.
Nestorius says: I for my part say: Let us not entirely neglect this point, although thou dost wish to run over it as one which is confessed. Since it has been so unscrupulously said as to / be accounted absurd by the hearers, I suppose that it is so also to thee. I will now explain this inquiry to any one who wishes in order that that which surely is supposed may come to explanation; for I do not see in it anything like or akin to anything [else]. For they are quite as far removed from one another as fiction is far from truth and [as] the body of fiction [is] from the body [of truth]. I see many who strongly insist on these [theories] as something [based] on the truth and ancient opinion. And for this reason I wish thee to examine them not cursorily but with all care, in order that the words of the faith may not be [treated] without investigation and lightly, but may be clear and known to all men, as things which are somehow defined by definitions and natural likenesses, and not like things which are represented by their shadows [and] resemble this or that so long as they |13 are figured in the same likeness. In what then dost thou say that they say the same thing, in that they are like the Manichaeans even in the things wherein they reprimand them?
Sophronius. Those who say this are not repudiated by them as though they hold our body in contempt, for both of them deny that the body was taken, but because they do not say 'in truth', but that the nature of the flesh is illusion. We see then also their readiness in these things, [in bringing forward] what plea is justly theirs, lest their blasphemies should extend beyond what is right.
/ 15. The refutation of those who say that God the Wordbecame the ousia of the flesh without having taken a body.
Nestorius says : I say therefore generally [in reference to] what they say more [insistently] than those who depend on themselves, in order that they may not suppose that they have been condemned because they had not an advocate nor a helper: for you seem like to me to be fully convinced of what they say, and with many words you are capable of making their words prevail, so as to be able to make also the hearers believe that they are so. So then, constrain thou me also to speak unto them. Take each one of the words that has been spoken by me and thine also, and bid me give an answer to each one of them if I can. But I can, if God wills and gives me that which ought to be said [in order] to instruct according to my own ability. For I indeed am of no worth; but it is for the sake of those who knock and seek at the door of the truth, when it is the truth.
Sophronius. I say that what I have said is a proof of the divine power to be able to become truly flesh, being God. For he who says 'God in truth' attributes to him the [quality] of being able [to do] everything; for everything that he wishes he does. He wished indeed to become flesh and he became flesh, not the schema of the flesh / but the nature of the flesh, that is truly flesh. And thereby did he truly become incarnate,because he was man by nature and not by anything else; |14 and the Trinity was the Trinity without having accepted the addition of another ousia . Speak then in answer to these [assertions]: for they appear to use the common words and views in such a way that to dispute against them would be great boldness.
1 6. Concerning this: that he who has become body in ousia ceases to be God and omnipotent and to be as God.
Nestorius. In truth hast thou spoken, and we ought not to dispute what has been said in truth; for indeed [thou hast said] that God is all-powerful and does all that he wishes. And because of this his ousia became not flesh, for that which becomes flesh in its nature ceases to be able to do everything, in that it is flesh and not God. For it appertains to God to be able to effect everything, and not to the flesh; for it cannot do everything that it wishes. But in remaining God he wills not everything nor again does he wish not to become God so as to make himself not to be God. For he is God in that he exists always and can do everything that he wishes, and not in that / he is able to make himself not to be God; for he into whose ousia the nature of the flesh has entered makes himself not to be God, and further cannot do everything that he wishes.
Sophronius. He is not able to wish not to be what he is, but only to be that which he is not. And for this reason he became in truth man, which he was not; that is, he became truly flesh and man, but not in nature. For that which he is, he is in nature; but that which he became, he became it not indeed in nature, but truly he was that which he became.
17. Whether it is assumed by them that God the Word became truly a body in ousia or in illusion. |15
Nestorius. Dost thou attribute 'truly' as in ousia ' or 'in illusion and in fiction'?
Sophronius. [Yes,] for both of them can truly be assumed.
18. Concerning this: If God the Word became flesh by nature and remained God as he was, then God the Word was two ousias naturally.
Nestorius. If that which is supposed to be in ousia is [so] ----thou sayest therefore that truly God is in ousia / and that he is according to the flesh----[then] after he became flesh there were two ousias, that in which he was by nature and that in which he became, the one of God and the other of the flesh.
Sophronius. There is not one ousia and another, but the same ousia of God, which became also the ousia of the flesh; and for this reason there is one ousia. Just as when water is running and when it is congealed there are not two ousias of water but one, which exists both in the liquid and in the solid state, although the solid is supposed [to be] the opposite of the running state, so also God: the same is body and without body, but in that he is body he is distinct from that which is without body.
19. Concerning this: that those things which have no distinction in nature and are distinct, are said to be distinct in schema.
Nestorius. I say therefore that they have no distinction in nature; and things which have no distinction in nature and are distinguished are distinct in the prosôpon. But [to be distinguished] by the prosôpon without nature is a schema without hypostasis in another schema. Or dost thou say, like the Manichaeans, concerning the flesh and the things of the flesh that [they came about] in fiction and illusion, alleging that the incarnation took place by deception? What then dost thou |16 suppose is true? That we should concede / that the flesh issued naturally from the ousia of God and [that] the two ousias become one, and become that which it is impossible that they should become, that is, that he is not God but flesh, or that he became flesh in illusion?
Sophronius. Things which should properly be received with faith you accept with 'natural logic' and reduce them to impossibilities. Then you deprive us in truth of the Christian faith as heathens or Manichaeans who stumble at the Cross of Christ.
Nestorius. And who are those who like heathens and Manichaeans stumble at the Cross of Christ? Are they not those who accept his humanity as a change of the ousia? For it appertains to the heathen to say that God works by a change in [his] likenesses in any ousia whatsoever and in ... into the nature of which he has been changed; and further they set aside the nature, [even] that which was in the beginning. And the Manichaeans also have taken [these opinions] from them and say that the change of likeness resulted in a schema without hypostasis. And you, in saying that, are following them, and you speak as those who stumble at the Cross of Christ.
20. Concerning this: that those who say that the Incarnation [ lay in ] a change of likeness confess that Christ is neither God nor man.
/ You do not confess that he is God in ousia in that you have changed him into the ousia of the flesh, and he is no more a man naturally in that you have made him the ousia of God; and he is not God truly or God by nature, nor yet man truly and man by nature.
21. Concerning this: that he who comes into being by ousia from a preceding hylê is that which he has become and not that which he was before he became [ so ] , as from a woman there came into being a statue of salt.
And it is nothing else than this, that, as a man of wood and stone is not truly called man, being the nature of wood and stone, so also neither is he who has become man from the |17 ousia of God called man by nature, so long as the divine nature subsists.
Sophronius. Then, O admirable man, from stones God can raise up children unto Abraham, and from a human bodily frame a pillar of salt, and from the earth a man; and nothing has prevented God nor yet is anything preventing him from doing that which he wishes, preventing him from becoming flesh.