Why therefore deniest thou our salvation? Why therefore have you condemned as impious whosoever denies not but confesses [it]? You are then either denying that he is human, as the Manichaeans, or, if you deny not, you cannot condemn him who denies not but confesses [it]. Hear Gregory proclaiming that he who was taken was human; for 'he who begins and gradually advances and is perfected' is not God 'although he is so called on account of the revelation which [was made] little by little'. Seest thou that he says that he who was taken, who begins and gradually advances and is perfected, is man by nature but God by revelation? What then is the obscurity before your eyes, that you see not these things? But if you were to accuse these my [opinions], you ought not to contrast the one [statement] with the other, since it is [useful] in supporting them. / But if you accept these and such like things, it is not right to write of them as impious. I have brought these my charges against those who deny the humanity which has been taken from us and who confess as the Manichaeans; and not simply that, but I have laid down |203 the properties of the natures and of the one prosôpon : and [it is] moreover in some respects two, in that on the one hand which concerns the natures, but in other respects in the union. And thou hast accepted the prosôpon of those men , as if indeed thou wert one of them, whereas thou art in everything the enemy of those who accept my words. For we take from these men and we cast before thee [our doctrine], proclaiming that our salvation has not taken place in phantasy, O men. 'Human is the nature which is of Mary, as the Divine Scriptures say . . . . He indeed who begins and gradually advances and is perfected has not become God, although he is so called on account of the manifestation which [took place] little by little.....'
But even as we call God the Creator of all and Moses a god, for [it is written]: / have made thee a god unto Pharaoh; and Israel the son of God, [for it is written]: Israel is my son, my first-born, and as we call Saul the anointed, for [it is written]: / will not put forth mine hand against him, seeing that he is the Lord's anointed; and [as we say] similarly also of Cyrus: Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, and [as we called] the Babylonians consecrated, [saying]: / indeed / have commanded them; they are consecrated ones, and I shall bring them ; so also we call our Lord Christ and God and Son and consecrated and Christ; yet, whereas on the one hand the participation in the names is like, the honour on the other is not the same. |204
Wherein do you blame these things, O calumniators and wise men? Because I have said that, even as we call God the creator of all and Moses a god, so also [have we called] our Lord Christ God of all and Maker? lint, because Moses is called a god and Christ God and moreover Creator, we do not speak of Moses himself as of Christ; or, because Moses was a god unto Pharaoh, do we say that he was moreover the Maker of all? Far from it! For community of names constitutes not community of honour and equality. For the honour of the Creator of all and that of Moses are diverse: that of the one on the one hand [being] that of the creator, that of the other on the other hand [being] that of the creature which has been commanded to become the chief. Thus also both our Lord and Israel are called son; yet the community of names constitutes not a community of honour: but thus [the one] is by nature God, consubstantial with the Father, Creator and Maker of all; but not the other. So also [with] every single one of the rest of them. As we say of God 'Creator of all', so also do we say of our Lord Jesus Christ 'God and Son and Christ'; for as regards each one of these things which are called by this name, there is therein a difference between the nature which created / all and the honours which are surely bestowed; for the rank and the honour which is more excellent than all is the [divine] nature. For I have said that the name of 'Christ' and [that] of 'Son' are indicative of the two natures, of the divinity and of the humanity----[a thing] with which there is nothing equal in those things which have been said----in such wise that it is not right to take heed of the name but of that which it indicates. Christ on the one hand is God of all and Creator; on the other hand Moses also is called a god, but he is not called in the same way a god nor is he conceived as God.
But they suppose, then, to overwhelm me on the subject of the humanity, [saying] that, if he, who was of Mary, was human nature, as the Holy Scriptures [assert and] yet was God by manifestation and not by nature, thou callest one of them by grace God and Son and holy. But in answer to you |205 I say this only, that, if you, like Gregory and Athanasius, confess him who was of Mary and who began and gradually advanced and was perfected, [to be] human nature, while [he was] God by revelation and distinct from all men through the purpose concerning that name whereof he made use for the distinction, to the same extent the Creator is [one] with the creature because there is one prosôpon ---- thus I also confess. But if you confess not the human nature which began and gradually advanced and was brought to fullness, as Athanasius and Gregory have said, / then you are not to be excused as [one of the] orthodox, but stand forth with the Manichaeans. But Gregory, Athanasius and Ambrose ask you if the flesh is consubstantial with us and if the soul is consubstantial with us. Whatever it is, it is also in the ousia of man; therefore it is man, distinct from us in honour and in rank. In such wise as Israel is called son and as Moses is called a god, so likewise Christ [is to be called] God, [but] not by nature, and Son of God, [but] not by nature. And as God himself was made man but in the nature of men, he was made man in him who [issued forth] from Mary. But if he has not been made man in man, he has saved him[self] and not us; but if he has saved us, he has been made man in us and has been in the likeness of men and has been found in schema as a man and has not himself been man.
Say then these and such like things openly. Why then do you make pretence of not speaking of these things, although you dispute concerning them as if [they were] the things which you are saying, whereas you are not saying them? And those things which you say you say in schema, and you are unwilling to call him who was of Mary human nature, as is said in the Scriptures. Him who calls him not human nature, like one of |206 men, of the natural body of our fathers, whence we also have come in soul and in body----and he has / all [the qualities] of the rational part of the soul except sin----him Gregory accuses [in the same way] as the Manichaeans: for 'he who begins and gradually advances and is perfected is not God, although he is so called on account of the revelation which [was made] little by little.' In that which concerns the humanity he is not by nature divine but by revelation. But in the nature of the divinity there exists a great difference between those who are called gods or lords or christs, but in the humanity he is like them all, and there is one prosôpon in two natures. He is God and he is Lord and he is Christ; for he makes not use of a prosôpon which has undergone a division but makes use of it as of his [own] prosôpon. For all the things appertaining to the ousia are his by virtue of the union and not by nature. Or do you not admit that Christ in his divinity is God and maker of all? He is not like Moses, although Moses is called a god. For community of names constitutes not community of honour; for there is one honour of the servant and one of the lord, although in that which concerns the body he is distinct from the servants.
But if thou sayest that the body and the nature of the body and the soul, rational and intelligent, abide without change and without transformation, but dost not admit the things which indicate the soul and the body, [some] of them in the union and [others] of them in the nature, taking / all of them of one nature, thou beliest the truth, making yea nay and nay yea. And in order to deceive thou callest him who was of Mary human nature, as the Divine Scriptures [affirm], and accountest not among his own [qualities] according to nature those of the humanity. But in virtue of the prosôpon thou raisest him above all humanity, in such wise that he on the one hand, who is eternally even as he is and began not nor gradually advanced nor was perfected, is one, but he who began and gradually advanced and was perfected both in the |207 union and in the manifestation in one prosôpon, is another, God who was made man and man who was made God. He was not transformed and changed from his divinity, just as also the humanity of Christ is not changed in nature from [that of] men except in honour and in prosôpon ; for he is God of all and Lord and Son; and in all the things which are the divinity in ousia, in them exists the humanity in honour, not by another honour but by the same as that of him who took the prosôpon: the humanity making use of the prosôpon of the divinity and the divinity of the prosôpon of the humanity, since for this it has been taken and for this he has taken it, not indeed so that we should not confess him who was taken but that we might confess him. Confess then the taker as he took, and the taken as he was taken, wherein [each is] one and in another, and wherein [there is] one and not two, after the same manner as the manner of the Trinity.
/ Likewise from the same, from the fifteenth roll.
Have this mind in you which was also in Jesus Christ, who, being in the likeness of God, emptied himself and took the likeness of a servant. He says not: 'Have this mind in you which was also in God the Word, who being in the likeness of God took the likeness of a servant,' but he puts the name 'Christ', which is indicative of the two natures, avoiding all risk, and he names him the likeness of a servant which he took and [that] of God, those things which are said in regard to the duality of the natures being divided without blame.
It is also right after this to examine the opinion of every one and first mine; [to ascertain] if it is, as he says, that I say one thing and another and distinguish the divinity somehow as it were by remoteness of place, and confess not that he is one and the same. Yet, avoiding all risk, I have said that he |208 named 'the likeness of a servant' and 'God'; we understand neither that which took nor that which was taken in distinction but that which was taken in that which took, while that which took is conceived in that which was taken; for that which took, therefore, is not conceived of itself, nor again that which was taken, so that he is not [conceived to have been] in the very prosôpon of that which took and of that which was taken.
/ Thou dost censure me, therefore, not for this but because I distinguish the properties of the union which belongs to each of the natures, in such wise that each one of them subsists in its hyposiasis, and I say not that they are referred to God the Word as one who is both of them in ousia ; or that the [properties] of the flesh were taken upon God without [their] hypostasis, that he might be revealed only in the likeness of the flesh and that he might make use of and suffer all the [things] of the flesh, whether he was changed into the nature of the flesh or they were mixed in one nature, or [whether] the [properties] of the flesh are referred to the ousia of God by confusion or by alteration or by natural composition for the fulfilment of the natural composition, in order that he might suffer passibly the sufferings of the body, without the bodily frame's fulfilling any purpose in its own nature in the dispensation on our behalf, and without its performing human actions, either by the will of the soul or by the human imagination, or by the sensibility of the body, but by the imagination and by the will of God; still by the sensibility of God he is sensible of all human things. But in name alone he has a body, without hypostasis and without activity; and for this reason thou callest him man as something superfluous only in word and in name, in that thou art not content to predicate the |209 ousia and activity of man or the existence of two natures, each of them with properties and hypostases and ousia.
But some one perhaps will say: 'It is because thou confessest not that / God the Word and Christ are the same thing.'
For this reason then thou dost censure those who say that Christ is one [thing] and God the Word another, apart from Christ. If then I said 'Christ' and 'God the Word another, apart from Christ', or 'Christ apart from God the Word', you would have said well; but if I have not said and do not say this but confess otherwise, still now saying this same thing, pervert not that which I say, and in the very same thing thou wilt find the distinction of whatsoever it indicates. Now I have said that the name 'Christ' is indicative of two natures, of God indeed one nature [and of man one nature ]. One indeed is the name which indicates two and another [that] which indicates one which is not anything else. Even as if a man were to say of man too that the name 'man' indicates one thing and 'rational soul' another. [It is] not that man is one thing and the soul another apart from man. For he who says 'man' speaks not of him [as] without a soul, because except for a soul he is not man. But the [name] 'man' on the one hand is indicative of the union of two natures, of the soul and of the body, but that of a nature, for the nature is one thing and the union of the natures another. What then? God the Word is nothing else apart from Christ, nor Christ apart from God the Word. Why dost thou make use of the names indistinguishably, as though the same thing were indicated by this or / by that?
But 'Thou makest a division, so that one says not "God the Word" but "Christ", as though "Christ" were one thing and "God the Word" another.'
But hear also from us: He is not one thing and another; for he would be one thing and another if Christ were apart |210 from God the Father. But, if there is not the very same thing in ousia, [this] indicates one thing and another, [for example], the visible and the invisible; and those things from which Christ is [formed] exist in their own ousias and God the Word is not in the nature of both of them. But thou confessest distinct natures of the divinity and of the humanity but one Christ from them both; thou sayest not that God the Word himself has different natures but one; but there is a distinction between him and his concomitant. Thou sayest therefore that Christ himself is one thing and another, because thou predicatest of him the different natures of divinity and of humanity. But the nature of God the Word is one, not different natures. Or, as I have said, [the truth is] that he is not one thing and another, in that Christ exists not apart from God the Word nor again God the Word apart from Christ, but he indicates one thing and another, because Christ is of God the Word and of humanity by union, whereas God the Word is one nature and not of both natures, and it is not his by union to become God the Word.
/ And thou too bearest witness, albeit unwillingly, to these words which I say; but forsooth thou bearest witness when thou sayest that the natures which have been combined in the union are different, whereas one Christ [issues] from them both. For if thou indicatest not the one and the other, wherefore hast thou not been the first to make bold to say that which thou wouldest persuade me to say: that one [issues] from them both, God the Word? But thou wast unable to speak or I was unable unmistakably to hear thine impiety, and for this reason thou hast passed it by without indicating it; thou hast been constrained clearly to confess the truth, so that thou art thereby [proved to be] without reverence and hast no place of refuge. The one and the other indicate one thing and another, but it is not one thing and another: for it is one thing and another from which our Saviour [issues], but he is not one thing and another----far from it!----as he also is in respect to the Trinity. But thou referrest to God the Word the things of the flesh, so that he sees and speaks and suffers |211 the things of the flesh, but only as surely making use of the flesh, as the Arians say when they attribute the activities and the sufferings to the divinity naturally, and as Apollinarius [says when he maintains] that instead of the intelligence it performs naturally the operations of the soul and of the body. Thus this man also makes use of God the Word in all of them, both in the body and in the intelligent soul, that he may suffer the sufferings of the body and perform the activities of the rational soul, [making them] the manner of life and conduct of God the Word. And the properties of his own prosôpon thou dost attribute to the nature / of God the Word and not to the prosôpon of the humanity, which is moved to and fro by the humanity in accordance with the nature of man, but [according to you] by God the Word.
But what is [this] whole man who neither acts nor is acted upon in accordance with the nature of man? In name indeed alone is he man and in name body and in name rational soul, he who is not moved to and fro in the nature of his being, neither as soul by purpose and will nor again as body by sensibility of soul, but [in whom] God the Word has been established to become the will and the purpose and the sensibility in the body and in the soul in such wise that God the Word should act and suffer sensibly these bodily [sensations] and those of the soul: anger and wrath and lusts and fear and dread and thoughts and operations and judgement and voluntary choice; all these things he does and suffers in the place of the soul and in the place of the body, in such wise that by the victory of God the Word won in suffering and nature that nature which had been guilty was victorious, since he had given unto it his own victory, in order that it might be victorious through and by him who had assumed it for his nature. All these things are changes of the nature of God the Word, being naturally given to him that he might suffer, and [that] thou mightest predicate of him a nature passible and changeable and variable. For he, who by his nature was impassible but who through a passible nature became the nature of the other, was passible and corruptible |212 and variable; for he, who by nature is impassible and / unchangeable and invariable, does not even suffer in any manner in the human nature, since it is not his to suffer in his nature. But if thou sayest that the one, whose it is not to suffer in his nature, has suffered in nature, it is a folly to say that he has suffered in another nature; but he who comes to folly surely deceives, and like the Manichaeans makes our very salvation to have taken place in deception.
Speak; what say you? Which is the party of the orthodox: [that] of those who teach that God the Word is unchangeable and invariable or [that] of those who predicate of him the human nature [received] from Mary, who consider him a rational and intelligent soul and a whole man and then deny the properties of the humanity and confess not that they are such as they are in the nature of the man, but attribute to God the Word all things as to a. changeable and variable [being]: birth and growth and upbringing and gradual advance in stature and in wisdom and in grace and the commandments and their observance and their fulfilment and the suffering and the Cross and the death and the resurrection? What say you? Instruct men. How ought they to think and to confess? Is God the Word two ousias in nature, or dost thou imagine that man is in his nature two ousias, of divinity and of humanity? Or is God the Word one ousia, and has his own ousia received no addition / as that which has existed eternally, and is the ousia of man one, of the nature of men, and was it also like the nature of the sons of man and did it [so] comport itself? Thou confessest not these things, nay more thou deniest them.
God the Word was made man that he might therein make the humanity the likeness of God and that he might therein renew [the likeness of God] in the nature of the humanity; and thereupon he renewed his material elements and showed him [to be] without sin in the observance of the commandments, as though he alone sufficed for renewing him who had |213 originally fallen by the transgression of the observance of the commandments. Otherwise he gave himself for him to observe them because he sufficed not to keep himself without sin. In chat case our fall remains untended as a paralytic man who tends himself and remains incapable of walking, but for whom the attendant walks or whom he carries, saying not to him: 'Arise, walk, since thou hast indeed been healed that thou mayest walk.' For this reason he took the likeness of a servant which was without sin in its creation in such wise as even in the observance of the commandments to receive a name which is more excellent than all names and so that whatsoever came into being through the renewal of his material elements might be confirmed by observances and by prudence; for which reason also the renewal of the material elements took place through the incarnation by means of which he might contend against defeat. But if the purpose also of his having been made man / had not been fulfilled, it also would surely not have taken place at all, but all things would be fictitious and foolish, both the disobedience of the first man and the things which made him guilty unto death; for he who had not a nature which could observe [the commandments] would also have been unable to observe them. For this same reason the second man also observed [them] not, but God lived in his stead and observed the commandments, because he was in that nature which sins not. And if this is so, what was the need for the life of the humanity to show that he who was God the Word was able to observe those human things which he who was man was unable to observe? But [there was such need] that he might show that he had not authority, when he wished, to rescue him[self] from death, because the Father wished it not; for all [men] he comported himself and kept himself without sin and, as one who has not sinned, he gave himself for salvation on behalf of all men.
These are [the doctrines] of the orthodox, who confess one |214 ousia of the Father and of the Son and one will and one power; these are (the doctrines] of those who confess that the things of Christ are neither folly nor fiction. He did nothing in schema, in hungering and thirsting and fearing, in learning, in not knowing, and [in] all those things which could convince [one] that he was a man, because / he was God in nature [and] in truth and man in nature and in truth. And because of this it was needful for the divinity to renew the humanity and for the humanity to be renewed and to take the very image [of him] who created it but not his own ousia; and it was needful that it should observe prudently the conduct of the man who had fallen, because especially for that it was created, to conduct itself according to the law which is in the nature of men and to preserve the very image of the Creator by the observance of the commandments without fault, the divinity making use of its own prosôpon in the likeness of a servant in order that the humanity by means of that prosôpon wherein it contended might be victorious, its victory being thereby confirmed. For since the renewal of its material elements it had the image of the sonship from him who created it; but it had need also of a recompense for the observance of the commandments, in order that the prosôpon might be common to him who gave and to him who for the sake of his obedience received the image which, because Adam preserved it not when it was given to him in his material elements, was taken from him. Destroy not therefore the pattern of the Incarnation, but concede the properties of the divinity and concede the properties of the humanity and concede one prosôpon of the union, and all of them [will be] true and all of them orthodox. If you are willing to hear, hear the same things concerning them according to the witnesses which you have cited.
'I said: Have this mind in you which was also in Jesus / Christ, who, being in the likeness of God, emptied himself and took the likeness of a servant. He said not: "Have this mind in you which was also in God the Word, who, being |215 in the likeness of God, took the likeness of a servant", but he took the name "Christ", as a title indicative of two natures, avoiding all risk, and named therewith [both] the likeness of the servant which he took and God.' I said: one and the same Christ, two natures,' 'the likeness of the servant which he took and God,' without distinction. Quote these words of Gregory: '[There are] indeed two natures, God and man, but not two sons; for one and another are those from which our Saviour is, but not one and another----far from it!----but one by mixture, God who was made man and man who was made God'; and again: 'He who begins and gradually advances and is brought to fullness is not God, although he is so called on account of the revelation which [was made] little by little.' He predicated not two natures of God the Word and he came not into being of two natures, neither has the man two natures nor is it [the case] that he is of two natures, but God and man are two natures. For he took a name common to the natures, Son and Saviour, and without separation he is named God and Son; and he divides this twofold [Son and Saviour] into those two natures, from which our Saviour [came into being]; and by the union that which is one thing is called another: thus / 'God who was made man and man who was made God'----not because he was changed in respect to his divinity. And 'He who begins and gradually advances and is brought to fullness is not God, although he is so called on account of his revelation which [was made] little by little.' Whom then does he call one? And whom two? And whom in ousia? And whom by union?
But Ambrose also has said the same and not strange things concerning the union of God and of the flesh: 'The Son of God speaks in both of them, because in him there were two natures. Regard in him on the one hand the glory of God, on the other hand the sufferings of the man.' For he also predicates the union of the two natures, not that two natures |216 [were] one nature but that two natures [were] in the one prosôpon of the Son:----' the glory indeed of the divinity, but the sufferings of the humanity.' For he calls not the one son and God the Word another son, but he indicates something else by prosôpon and ousia. As then is the name 'God', so is the name 'son', the one indeed indicative of the natures but the other of the prosôpon of the Son. The same is God and Son, and there is one prosôpon of the two natures and not of the one ousia. For this reason both of them [are] one Son and in one Son are both the natures. One God the Word is not both natures nor is one divinity both natures; for there has not been confusion nor has there been mixture nor again a change of ousias resulting in one nature of the ousia nor again also a natural composition resulting in a composite nature. / What then have you heard [that is] strange in my words----and you have condemned me, and you have laid down these things? For the former has laid down the name 'Son' and the latter 'Saviour' and Athanasius 'Lord'. But how have they who are called Christians dared to doubt whether the Lord, who was born of Mary, is son in the ousia and in the nature of God the Word, but was born in flesh of the seed of the house of David? For the flesh was of the Virgin Mary. For thou also knowest that he who was of the Virgin Mary was human nature, in nature indeed and in ousia Son of God, in the ousia and in the nature of God the Father, but in flesh human nature from Mary. For he lays down the common name 'Lord', which is conceived of nature and in nature, as well as the things which are indicative of the properties of the natures, indicating them both, the divinity and the humanity, the one from God the Father in nature and the other of a woman in nature. In calling him who was of God the Father 'human', he calls him not of God the Father in his nature, but rather in the human properties he indicates two natures. He is not making the human nature nor the divine without prosôpon and without hypostasis. Nor has the Incarnation taken place on our behalf as something |217 superfluous, unreal, in such wise as to refer human [attributes] to God, as the Arians say that he suffered in nature our own sufferings, in his own nature and in his own prosôpon, the flesh adding not anything [thereto]. But since the humanity is understood completely as the nature of man, it has completely / all [the qualities] of the sons of man, [acting] and suffering, as the nature of men is wont [to do].
Likewise from the same , from the sixteenth roll.
'That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow which is / ; / heaven and on earth and which is under the earth and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Because of him who is clothed I honour him wherewith he is clothed, and because of him who is invisible I adore him who is visible. God is not distinguished from him who is visible; for this reason I distinguish not the honour of him who is not distinct; I distinguish the natures and I unite the adoration.
I seek and would persuade you prudently to look well in every place, lest he blame me for breaking up into several parts and dividing the divinity and the humanity in the likeness of things which are distinguished in place from one another. How is he who is clothed distinguished from his clothing and one who is concealed from one who is revealed? As we have added in our very words: 'God is not distinct from him who is visible.' . . .
But thou sayest unto me that I distinguish the natures. How then are those natures which are indistinguishable distinguished? For in the formula they are known as ousias without confusion, without mixture, in such wise that in the |218 union both the natures are preserved with their natural attributes and naturally with the properties / of the ousia, so that the divine nature is conceived in nature of God and the human nature is conceived in the nature of the humanity in the ousia. He [himself] distinguishes in several parts, he who says that the humanity is conceived by nature in the divinity but that the humanity is not conceived to be the divinity, and that God the Word was not in both the natures either in schema or without the substance of the flesh or in passibility or in the action of the sensibility and in the nature of the flesh. For if he were not so conceived, neither is he to be otherwise conceived without limiting by distinction him who is infinite and unlimited. For this idea he has also in the very thing which he says in his letter: 'The diversities of the natures are not made void by reason of the union'; for in the natural differences he distinguishes the things which are united, having distinguished [them] indistinguishably, for he has made the distinction by the word ousia. For the word and the idea of divinity are one thing and that of humanity another, since things which are distinguishable are distinguishable. But I predicate two natures, that he indeed who is clothed is one and he wherewith he is clothed another, and these two prosôpa of him who is clothed and of him wherewith he is clothed. But thou also confessest 'of two natures'. Neither of them is known without prosôpon and without hypostasis in the diversities of the natures. There are not two prosôpa of the sons conceived nor again two prosôpa / of the men, but of one man who is moved in the same manner even by the other. For the union of the prosôpa took place for the prosôpon and not for the ousia and the nature. It is not indeed that one ousia without hypostasis should be conceived, as if by union into one ousia and there were no prosôpon of one ousia, but the |219 natures subsist in their prosôpa and in their natures and in the prosôpon of the union. For in respect to the natural prosôpon of the one the other also makes use of the same on account of the union; and thus [there is] one prosôpon of the two natures. The prosôpon of the one ousia makes use of the prosôpon of the other ousia in the same [way]. For what ousia seekest thou to make without a prosôpon? That of the divinity? Or that of the humanity? Therefore thou wilt not call God the Word flesh nor the flesh Son.