On the Union of the Body with the Godhead in Christ

It is rightly confessed that the Lord was a holy offspring from the beginning, even according to the [body], and in this he differs from every body; for he was not conceived in the womb without the Godhead at all, but united to it, as the angel says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the holy one who is born will be called Son of God”; and there was a descent from heaven, not only a birth from a woman. For it is said not only “born of a woman, born under the law,” but also “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”

And one cannot call the body a creature in its own right, since it is wholly inseparable from him whose body it is; rather it has come to share in the name of the uncreated and in the title of God, because it was joined to God into unity, as it is said that “the Word became flesh,” and in the apostle, “the last Adam [became] a life-giving spirit.”

But just as we attach the glorious things to the body by reason of the divine conception and the unity with God, so also we must not deny the inglorious things that come from the body: being “born of a woman,” according to the apostle, and being “formed from the womb a servant to God,” according to the prophet; being called simply man and Son of Man; being counted many generations after Abraham, after which he became man.

Yet one must speak and listen in a human way: so that, when the whole is called man, no one denies the divine substance, which is shown together with the body by the name; and when he is called servant according to the body, no one denies the lordly nature, which is shown together with the body by the name of servitude; and again, when a heavenly man is proclaimed as having come down from heaven, no one denies the union of the body from the earth with the Godhead. For he is not cut apart, either in fact or in name, when the Lord is called servant and when the uncreated is named as formed, by his conjunction with the form of the servant and with the body that is formed.

In him it is confessed that the created is in unity with the uncreated, and the uncreated in blending with the created, one nature being constituted from each part, the Word also contributing a partial activity to the whole together with the divine perfection. This ⟨also⟩ happens in the case of the ordinary human being, from two incomplete parts which make up one nature and are signified by one name: for the whole is called flesh without the soul being taken away thereby, and the whole is called soul without the body being taken away, even though it is something other than the soul.

God, then, who became man, is Lord and prior to his birth, even if he was born from a woman; he is Lord, even if he took form like the servants; he is Spirit, even if he has been shown to be flesh by the union with the flesh; he is not a man, according to the apostle, even if he is proclaimed a man by the same apostle; and, to say it all, he is invisible God transformed by a visible body, uncreated God made manifest in a created covering, who emptied himself in taking the form (of a servant), but who is not emptied, unaltered, and undiminished in the divine substance (for there is no alteration in the divine nature), neither diminished nor increased.

And when he says, “Glorify me,” the voice comes from the body and the glorification concerns the body, though it is said of the whole, because the whole is one. And again, when he adds, “with the glory that I had with you before the world was,” he shows the Godhead that is always glorious, even though this belongs properly to the Godhead, while it is said in common of the whole.

So too he is of one substance with God according to the invisible Spirit, the flesh also being included in the name, because it has been united to the one who is of one substance with God; and again he is of one substance with human beings, the Godhead also being included with the body, because it was united to what is of one substance with us. The nature of the body is not changed in the union with the one who is of one substance with God and in sharing the name “of one substance,” just as the nature of the Godhead has not been changed in sharing the human body and in being named flesh of one substance with us.

For Paul too, when he says, “who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,” said that the Son of God had taken on this birth, and did not name the flesh separately and say, “The flesh was born of the seed of David.” And when he says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,” he did not separate and say, “whose Godhead, in the form of God, …”; he says, “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,” although the Godhead was neither named Jesus before the birth from the Virgin nor had the anointing in the Holy Spirit, since the Word of God is the giver of the Spirit, not one sanctified in the Spirit.

And he says, “For their sake I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth,” not separating and saying, “I sanctify the flesh,” but joining and saying, “I sanctify myself,” although, for one who examines it precisely, it is not possible for him to be sanctified by himself. For if the whole sanctifies, what is sanctified? If the whole is sanctified, what sanctifies? Yet, preserving the one person and the undivided presentation of one living being, he has applied both sanctifying and being sanctified to the whole, so that it may be precise and clear to us that it is not in the prophetic or apostolic way that one sanctifies another, as the Spirit sanctifies the prophets and the apostles; as Paul says of the whole church, “called saints and sanctified in Christ Jesus,” and the Saviour himself says of the apostles, “Sanctify them in the truth.”

For the whole of human nature is in being sanctified and not in sanctifying. Likewise the order of angels and all creation are sanctified and enlightened, while the Spirit sanctifies and enlightens. The Word sanctifies and enlightens through the Spirit, but is in no way sanctified, for he is Creator and not creature. But here being sanctified is where being embodied is; the realities are distinct, but they are united by the union of the flesh with the Godhead, so that the one who sanctifies is not distinguished as one and the one sanctified as another; and this incarnation itself, as a whole, is sanctification.

For the Saviour, to those who said, “You, being a man, make yourself God,” gave an account of his own humanity, saying, “Do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” What sanctification does he mean here, if not that of the flesh by the Godhead? For thus the body lived by the sanctification of the Godhead and not by the equipment of a human soul, and the whole was altogether in conjunction. And here, saying “whom the Father sanctified and sent,” he says that the one who sanctifies and the one sanctified are sanctified together, joining the one who sanctifies to the one sanctified.

And elsewhere he explains that this sanctification was the birth from the Virgin: “For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” For the ordinary human being is ensouled and lives from the will of the flesh and the will of a man, the seminal matter that is emitted carrying the life-giving power into the womb that receives it; but the holy infant from the Virgin is constituted by the coming of the Spirit and the overshadowing of the power, not with seminal matter producing the divine life, but with spiritual and divine power granting the Virgin the divine conception and bestowing the divine childbirth.

Thus, then, in keeping with the mode of the unity, Christ is said both to be exalted and to be granted the name that is above every name, although the exaltation belongs properly to the flesh, which ascends from below; but because it does not ascend on its own, the whole is therefore named in common as exalted, and the granting, too, concerns the flesh that is glorified out of its lowliness. For glory is not added through grace to the Word, who always has the glory. For what he was, he also remained: he was in the form of God and was equal to God.

He says that he is equal to God even in the flesh, according to John, saying that God is his own Father and making himself equal to God. So the equality with God did not lapse, but the Godhead remained unaltered in its identity. What one has, one cannot receive; but since the flesh receives what it does not have (freedom from suffering out of sufferings, the heavenly out of its sojourn on earth, kingship out of servitude under human beings, being worshiped by all creation out of worshiping), it is said of the whole that the name above every name was granted to him.

And if anyone dares to separate the word of grace from “the name that is above every name,” neither will be said properly. For if it was granted to the Word as one who did not have it, [this cannot be, for] the name above every name is never given [to him] through grace. And if he has it not by gift but by nature (as he has it according to the Godhead), it cannot be given to him.

Hence of necessity both what is bodily is said of the whole and what is divine is said of the whole; and anyone who cannot recognize, among the different things that are united, what is proper to each will fall into discordant contradictions; but whoever both recognizes what is proper to each and preserves the union will neither falsify the nature nor be ignorant of the union.