Sophia Scriptura

On the Union of the Body with the Godhead in Christ

De unione · Περὶ τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ ἑνότητος τοῦ σώματος πρὸς τὴν θεότητα

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Contents

  1. 1Christ's body was holy from conception because it was united to the Godhead; his birth was also a descent from heaven.
  2. 2Christ's body is not to be called a creature by itself, since it shares the name of the uncreated God to whom it is united.
  3. 3The lowly things of the body, such as birth, servanthood, and descent from Abraham, must also be confessed of Christ.
  4. 4Names drawn from either side of Christ are said of the whole, which is not divided in fact or name.
  5. 5In Christ created and uncreated form one nature, as body and soul form one human nature.
  6. 6God made man remains Lord, Spirit, and uncreated, emptying himself in the servant's form without change in his divine substance.
  7. 7In John 17:5 the whole Christ asks for glory, which properly concerns the body and the eternal glory of the Godhead.
  8. 8Christ is of one substance with God and with humans, each name including the other side, without change to either nature.
  9. 9Paul speaks of the one Son, not of the flesh or the Godhead separately, as born of David and as being in the form of God.
  10. 10In John 17:19 Christ says he sanctifies himself, keeping the one person, not as one being sanctifying another.
  11. 11Creatures are sanctified and the Word sanctifies; in Christ the flesh is sanctified by its union with the Godhead, and the incarnation itself is sanctification.
  12. 12In John 10:36 the sanctification is that of the flesh by the Godhead, by which the body lived instead of by a human soul.
  13. 13Christ's sanctification was his virgin birth, in which the Spirit's power, not human seed, formed the holy child.
  14. 14Exaltation and the name above every name properly concern the flesh but are said of the whole Christ.
  15. 15The Word kept his equality with God; the flesh received what it lacked, and so the name above every name is said to be given to the whole.
  16. 16The gift of the name cannot be referred to the Word alone, who has it by nature and cannot receive it.
  17. 17Bodily and divine things are both said of the whole Christ, while what is proper to each is recognized.

About this work

Author
Apollinaris of Laodicea
Attribution
pseudonymous · Transmitted as the fifth letter of Julius, bishop of Rome (Pseudo-Julius, in Greek, Syriac and Armenian). Lietzmann (1904) showed that it is a work of Apollinaris of Laodicea circulated under Julius's name; the ascription to Julius is rejected, and Apollinaris's authorship is Lietzmann's judgment.
Standing
Not honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by the Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant traditions. Circulated under the name of Julius of Rome and was never condemned as a text; the Apollinarian authorship is a modern scholarly finding.
Date
ca. 360–390 (approximate) · If by Apollinaris; Lietzmann dates it to the 370s or earlier.
Written at
Laodicea, Syria (disputed)
Language
Greek
Genre
treatise
Reference system
section (Lietzmann's numbers 1–17)
SBL abbreviation
Un.Not yet checked
Clavis
CPG (number not yet checked)
Text from
Hans Lietzmann, Apollinaris von Laodicea und seine Schule: Texte und Untersuchungen (Tübingen: Mohr, 1904), 185–192 (Printed edition in the public domain; Greek text from our own Tesseract OCR of the Internet Archive scan)
Critical editions
Hans Lietzmann, ed., Apollinaris von Laodicea und seine Schule (Tübingen: Mohr, 1904) (cited only) (cited, not reproduced)