Eran. -After the complete union.
Orth. -And what date do you assign to this?
Eran. -I have said again and again, that of the conception.
Orth. -Yet after the conception He was an unborn babe in the womb; after His birth. He was a babe and was called a babe, and was worshipped by shepherds, and in like manner became a boy, and was so called by the angel. Do you acknowledge all this? or do you think I am inventing fables?
Eran. -This is taught in the history of the divine gospels, and cannot be gainsaid.
Orth. -Now let us investigate what follows. We acknowledge, do we not, that the Lord was circumcised?
Eran. -Yes.
Orth. -Of what was there a circumcision? Of flesh or Godhead?
Eran. -Of the flesh.
Orth. -Of what was then the growth and increase in wisdom and stature?
Eran. -This, of course, is not applicable to Godhead.
Orth. -Nor hunger and thirst?
Eran. -No.
Orth. -Nor walking about, and being weary, and failing asleep?
Eran. -No.
Orth. -If then the union took place at the conception, and all these things came to pass after the conception and the birth, then, after the union, the manhood did not lose its own nature.
Eran. -I have not stated my meaning exactly. It was after the resurrection from the dead that the flesh underwent the change into Godhead.
Orth. -Then, after the resurrection, nothing of all that indicates its nature remained in it?
Eran. -If it remained, the divine change did not take place.
Orth. -How then was it that He shewed His hands and His feet to the disciples who disbelieved?
Eran. -Just as He came in when the doors were shut.
Orth. -But He came in when the doors were shut just as He came out from the womb, though the virgin's bolts and bars were undrawn, and just as He walked upon the sea. Then according to your argument not even yet had the change of nature taken place?
Eran. -The Lord shewed His hands to the Apostles in the same way as He wrestled with Jacob.
Orth. -No; the Lord does not allow us to understand it in this sense. The disciples thought they saw a spirit, but the Lord dispelled this idea, and shewed the nature of the flesh, for He said "Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." And observe the exactness of the language. He does not say "is not flesh and bones," but "has not flesh and bones," in order to point out that the nature of the possessor and the nature of that which is possessed are distinct and separate. Just in the same way that which took and that which was taken are separate and distinct, and the Christ is beheld made one of both. Thus the part possessing is entirely different from the part possessed; and yet does not divide into two persons Him who is an object of thought in them. The Lord, indeed, while the disciples were still in doubt, asked for food and took and ate it, not consuming the food only in appearance, nor satisfyingto the need of the body.
Eran. -But one of these alternatives must be accepted; either He partook because He needed, or else, needing not, He seemed to eat, and did not really partake of food.