Sophronius. [He employed this word] against those who think that he died not for us but was in his own death as all men, and that both living and dead he was an ordinary man and that he possessed nothing more [than ordinary men], for they know not that he is the Son of God and that his blood is the blood of God and not that of a man.
Nestorius. Do you say this, that the body and blood are the ousia of the Son of God, or that the body and blood are of human ousia and have become the nature of the divinity? For, as you say, the flesh is not flesh, because it has been changed by him into the ousia of God the Word by means of a mixture and a union. And it [is what] the blessed Apostle meant when he mocked exceedingly at |31 those who confessed his body and his blood and [yet] supposed it impure.
Sophronius. He said not this against those who by no means confess the body in truth, nor against those who change or corrupt the ousia as by fire or [who suppose] the ousia of the flesh impure through mixture, but against those who confess the flesh and the blood and [yet] think that it is common. /
Nestorius. As it seems to me, the opinion to which thou dost cling is not more in harmony with these, but with those who change the ousia into the nature of flesh and blood without thinking that the ousia of the flesh and blood of our Lord is common, but that it is of God the Word and not of men.
Sophronius. Then one ought not to return answer to these but a reprimand for having used contradictory expressions. But speak of those who supposed that the flesh was of the ousia of God.
40. How one ought to understand: 'He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one.'
Nestorius. Thou art mistaken, for the Apostle said not two contradictory things. For he wished to say that he who sanctifies and he who is sanctified are of one and brothers of one and not of different ousias, and his children as those who are sprung from him. Thus he said: For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of them of one? The blood then whereby we have been sanctified and which has been poured out on our behalf is of one; thereby also are we his brothers, as if of one father, but again also his sons, [as those who] possess one ousia, wherein we are also sons. In God the Word in fact there is not anything whereby he and we should be of one, / or whereby we should be called sons in his likeness, that for this [reason] we should become his brothers, in that we have no reason for such a likeness, as those who are brothers and of one father; nor further that we should become his sons, because we do not participate |32 in the same ousia. So then the blessed Paul said this, accusing those who are not persuaded to admit that the blood of men can sanctify and who suppose that it is impure as being the blood of a man and consequently regard as impure the blood of the covenant whereby we have been sanctified and rescued from death through the true death of a man. And thereby he tells us that we are of one, and thereby he calls us his brothers on account of the nature which is born of our fathers and died for us; for in that he was born he is of our race and we are all of one; but, in that he died on our behalf and has renewed the future state by immortality and incorruptibility, we are his sons; for he is the father of the world to come. Are we not all in consequence of that one body in one? For we all receive from this same one bread, whereby he makes us participate in the same blood and flesh, which are of the same nature, and we participate with him in the resurrection from the dead and in immortality. So we are to him his body just as is the bread; even indeed as the bread is one, / so are we all one body, for we all receive of this one bread.
41. Concerning this: that, if in Christ the ousia of the body was changed into the divinity, we also are changed into the ousia of God the Word; for we are all one bodily frame and one body.
We then also have been changed into his flesh and we are his body, and we are therefore not the body and blood of man, but his own body. The bread indeed is one, wherefore we all are one body, in that we are the body of Christ. You indeed are the body of Christ and members in your parts. Is the bread the body of Christ by a change of ousia? Or are we his body by a change? Or is the body of the Son of God one with God the Word by nature? But if they are one by nature, there is then no more bread nor again is there [any] body. But to those who thought that the body of the Son of God was polluted the Apostle says that |33 they are trampling underfoot the Son of God in rejecting him and denying him, against those who confess that the body is of our own nature and who regard it as polluted, although [they admit] that it was given for the salvation of us all because it was pure and unstained and saved from sins, and that for all our sins he accepted death and became as it were an offering unto God. For if we are not of one, we are naturally not called / his brothers nor his sons, nor are we any more his bread and his bodily frame; but, if all these belong truly to Christ, we are his body and consubstantial with him, in that we are that which is also the ousia of his body. And these things are also known through the words of the dogma of those who are changed now into this and now into that, because they possess not the truth.
42. Against those who say that the union took place in the ousia of God the Word and that the nature of the divinity effected the transfusion of the nature of humanity.
From these again another sect has arisen who in some things are like them and in others are distinct from them, while they indeed agree with the Arians but also dissent from them; but in another way they are clothed in the prosôpon of the orthodox, whereby again they keep aloof from the one but so fall into the weakness of the first. They confess indeed that the body of our Lord is of the nature of our fathers and therein they are to be likened to those against whom we have spoken a little before; but they are distinct from them in denying the change of the flesh into the ousia of the divinity and in accepting the union without mixture and without confusion. But they incline towards the Arians in saying that the union resulted in one nature, not by change |34 of ousia but by combination and natural composition, as the soul and the body are combined in one nature, and by natural force the soul naturally suffers the sufferings of the body, / and the body the sufferings of the soul. That which each one of them by its nature cannot accept, such as the sufferings and the activity, it has accepted in the natural combination by mixture, by one sensibility. They place the union not in revelation and in use, but by natural force in a passible nature, and they say that the union took place for this [purpose], that they should naturally participate in their activities and in their sufferings. But, further, they are distinct from the Arians in saying that there was an animal body and soul and that God the Word is consubstantial with the Father and that he naturally endured union with the nature, not by command but of his own will in order to accept on our behalf all the sufferings of human nature, not in any other nature but in his own.
The Apollinarians. He has not surely made a pretence ofour salvation in schema, either by a change of likeness or by a change of ousia in such a way as not to endure sufferings in his own nature; for this would be [the action] of him who wished not to become incarnate because by nature he became man. But if, since he wished not or since he could not enter where there was an intelligence, he united himself by a natural union to the sensitive and vegetative soul and to the body so as to complete and fulfil the nature of man [and so as, starting] from impassibility and immortality, to suffer natural suffering naturally and to be delivered unto death naturally in the nature of the soul and of the body, from no / nature he became and he is the nature of a man. He had not been in a man but he was man truly, in that he was with the nature of man |35 and he was bound to the soul and the body in order to complete [them] and not to dwell [in them]. For he who dwells [in anything] is far removed from that in which he dwells and accepts neither the nature nor the name of that wherein he dwells. Consequently, seeing that he dwelt in all the saints, he is not said to have become incarnate and become man in any one of them, but only when he became truly man for the natural completion of the nature of man by constituting himself the intelligence ruling naturally in the body and the soul, and when he constituted a natural union. And therefore it was united without intelligence that he might not be supposed as it were to have dwelt in man, but to have been united for the completion of the human nature. That then is their [view]. But those who wish rather to adhere to the orthodox attribute to him a body and an intelligent soul and agree to the union in one nature for the completion of the nature. And as the body and the soul and the intelligence are the completion of the nature of man, so also the union of God the Word took place with the body and an intelligent soul for the completion of the nature. He became man in truth, since he had according to nature all [the properties] of a man; he was not the half of a complete [man], that is flesh only, or animal soul, for it is not in this that he became man, / in possessing nothing of man except animal bodily frame and soul without reason, but [in possessing] a rational soul and a rational body and a rational life, and not [all these] without reason. For all that is combined for the completion of nature participates in the same things and in one nature, since it participates both in suffering and in activity.
43. Against those who confess a body endowed with soul and a soul endowed with intelligence but [ say that ] the union of the divinity resulted in one nature by composition.
Nestorius. According to the former the statements of the latter are well said, that neither the animal soul nor again the bodily frame of the irrational soul are the body of a man; nor consequently is he----neither soul, nor body, nor divinity----a man who has nothing of a man; for the nature of man is not |36 constituted of an animal soul and divinity and body. How then did he become man by the combination of things which make not the nature of a man, unless perhaps he became by fusion another nature apart from our own nature? But nothing like that has taken place in anything nor in all natures which have aforetime existed; and now [forsooth], after all creation has been completed another nature has come into being apart from those which were when it existed not!
/ 44. Concerning this: that if the union of the divinity and the humanity resulted in one nature, that one nature is neither that of God nor that of man, but another nature which is foreign to all natures.
But generally the same things are said [in answer] also to these: that by man we understand and mean him who from the body and the rational and intelligent soul has become the nature of man in the combination of nature, but not him who from divinity and a rational soul and a human body has become man by a combination of natures; for this is impossible. For human nature is definite, and [the things] which he possesses who is man in ousia and in nature ought to be his who comes to be in the nature of man neither more nor less; since the [properties] of the nature are definite. Either then [he became] man in such a way that the union of God the Word with the body and the soul took place not with a view to [forming] one nature but in order to serve for the dispensation on our behalf; or he had the [properties] of another nature apart from that of men and of God, which is an animate body and God the Word, which nature is neither that of a man nor that of God, but a new nature, to which belongs [something] of all our natures.
45. Concerning this: that if the union of God / the Word with the body resulted in one nature, he is not to be conceived apart from the flesh, in that it is [ possible ] for him to become this in his nature.
God therefore is no more of an impassible but of a passible nature, being conceived as of that which he became by the natural union, while he became anew that which was newly created. |37 If then God the Word, who is consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, has been united in a natural union, and thereby has that which he is, he exists not apart from it, since in it and by it he is united and unites himself, like the body and the soul which are united in one nature of a man, and are not to be conceived apart from their nature----but the body [is] in the soul and the soul in the body together with their sufferings and their operations, the body being natural and [the soul ] not in a voluntary habitation, [both] mutually receiving and giving in a perceptible manner by natural mixture and fusion for the fusing of the nature.
46. Concerning this: that in the union two natures are not conceived as one nature.
What after all is the nature in this natural union which you predicate? Is it that of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, an impassible nature, immortal, eternal and without needs? Or is it [a nature] mortal and passible and with needs, which came into being yesterday and to-day and which belongs neither to men nor to God nor to any other nature, but is mixed from two natures for the completion of one nature? If then they say / that it is the ousia of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit united by a natural union, this is not a natural union with the flesh but a voluntary, since they are united for the use of the prosôpon and not of the nature; since [those things] which are united in one nature are not united voluntarily but by the power of the Creator, who combines them and brings them to a fusion in such a way that whatever is not of and belongs not to each of them obtains it in virtue of a natural and not a voluntary union, by which it has been united in one nature. By whom then are these united in nature? It is evident that that which has been united has been so [united] by the creator of the nature. If anyone says that anything is united of itself, I do not suppose that it is right; for when the natures are united in the ousias in one nature, it possesses also a certain kind of change of ousia and it is necessary that that nature which has been united should |38 be bound in virtue of an equality of nature and not by the will.
47. Concerning this: that natures which are united voluntarily are not said to be united naturally, but prosôpically.
The natures indeed which are united voluntarily acquire the union with a view to [forming] not one nature but a voluntary union of the prosôpon of the dispensation. If then they say that the union of the natures resulted in one nature, even though we ourselves should concede to them that it took place voluntarily, / yet, after it took place, the union existed not voluntarily in that the natures have acquired it. And it suffers as being united, whether it will or not, and accepts the sufferings of that nature to which it has been united, since it is defined by it and not by impassibility nor by immortality nor by infinity. For the definition and circumscription of all nature is that in which it has to be. And if it has been united to a nature, it is in that [nature] that it has to be and also [has to be] as that which exists by the nature. And from this it is established that both the Father and the Holy Spirit, who are of the same nature, are of a passible and created nature; for that which the Son has accepted in his nature, the Father also can accept. For it is impossible that he should be able to accept in nature that which he is not capable of accepting. If the Son accepted in virtue of his acceptance of the union of this nature, whereas the former did not accept, how are they of one nature who are opposed to one another in accepting or not accepting? And after a change of nature you are compelled to take the word 'union' according to the interpretation of the Arians, that the nature of the Son has been united by the Creator of nature, in the same manner as he who created and made the soul and the body also united them; for the very work of creation also requires that he should unite |39 the soul / and the body in one nature, in that to him also belongs the realization of the creation of each one of them.
48. Concerning this: that a natural union is the work of a second creation.
The union in fact in one nature of natures which have been united is the work of a second creation. That which is not of itself naturally united to each one of them receives this from a second genesis. For indeed to hunger and to thirst and to perceive sensations by the senses belongs not to the body of itself, nor to the soul of itself, but comes to them from a second genesis. So if there had also been a union of nature with the soul and the body for God the Word, in such a way that he received from the union of nature that which he had not in his nature of itself: hunger and thirst and weariness and strife and fear and death, in the one genesis indeed of a second creation [would be found] the first creation both of his ousia and necessarily also [of] the Creator's, if he endured these things not in fiction but naturally. And vainly do you give the name of consubstantial to one from whom you were compelled anew to take it away and were compelled to join either the Arians or Manichaeans in such a way as to admit either that he suffered not naturally any one of these things or only in illusion and in fiction. Or, by granting that in nature naturally, by a passible sensibility, / he accepted sufferings, you evacuate him of impassibility and of immortality, and of being consubstantial with the Father, because he acquired a change of nature, seeing that [the Son] accepts and [the Father] accepts not [these sufferings]. Or if he had not had one change of ousia in his nature, while that of the Father and the Holy Spirit was without needs and accepted neither suffering nor death, he would have been deprived of being God in that he was not in everything of an ousia without needs.
49. Concerning this: that things united by nature endure natural sufferings naturally and not voluntarily.