Fragments

If the same one is both complete man and God, the pious mind, not worshiping the man but worshiping God, will be found worshiping and not worshiping the same one, which is impossible. And he himself, as man, would not consider himself one to be worshiped (for he will not be impious), but as God he knows himself to be worshiped; yet it is impossible for the same one both to know himself to be worshiped and not. It is impossible, therefore, for the same one to be both God and complete man; rather he is in the singleness of a blended divine nature made flesh, so that those who worship look to God, inseparable from the flesh, and do not look to one who is not to be worshiped and another who is; nor is there in him one who does not allow himself to be worshiped and another who accepts the worship offered for the salvation of the worshipers; but he is truly one, according to the one substance, and in no way two, subsisting as persons with their own measures and their own dignities.

O new creation and divine mixture! God and flesh have made up one nature.

The body is now seen as something greater because of the one blended with it: greater, I mean, not only than its own body but also than the fiery bodies of the angels. For God is blended with none of them; none of those bodies is life-giving for the world; none of the angels is made equal to God, as the one blended of body and Godhead makes himself equal to God, saying, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”

Christ, then, having the spirit, that is, the mind, as God, together with soul and body, is rightly called “man from heaven.”

And Paul calls the first Adam a soul existing with a body.

“The second man from heaven” is called spiritual.

inasmuch as Paul also calls the first Adam a soul existing with a body and not without a body, the soul giving its name to the whole, even though it too, taken by itself, is called soul by including the spirit.

But Paul calls the last [Adam] a life-giving spirit.

What is the outflow from the divine inbreathing, unless it is believed to be the mind?

And the man Christ pre-exists, not as though the spirit, that is, God, were other than he, but as the ruling element in the nature of the God-man being divine spirit.

“through him we have received the redemption, through his blood the forgiveness of sins, through his flesh.”

the flesh does not become something acquired by the Godhead for the sake of the benefit, but is joined with it in substance and grown together with it.

Since it is written that “in the last days God, who in many parts and many ways spoke formerly to the fathers in the prophets, has spoken to us in a Son,” this is proof that the human element of the God who appeared to us is before the ages.

It is plain in these words that the very man who spoke to us the things of the Father is God, maker of the ages, “radiance of glory, imprint of his hypostasis,” since he is God by his own spirit and does not have in himself a God other than himself; he himself through himself, that is, through the flesh, cleansed the world of sins.

The prophetic word shows by these words that he is of one substance with God not according to the flesh but according to the spirit united to the flesh.

See: the equality of the same Jesus Christ with the Father pre-exists, and his likeness to human beings comes after. And what could be clearer than this, to show that there is not one with another, perfect God with perfect man?

[that he is] God in spirit, having the glory of God, but man in body, having borne the inglorious form of human beings.

the Lord who appeared in the form of a servant

not a man, but as a man, because he is not of one substance with man in the most sovereign part.

having humbled himself in the flesh, but having been highly exalted by God with the divine exaltation.

He is glorified as man, ascending from lack of glory; but he has the glory before the world as God, pre-existing the ages.

For Greeks and Jews openly disbelieve, not accepting to hear that the one born of a woman is God.

But Greeks and Jews would have accepted it, if we said that the one born was an inspired man, like Elijah.

But those who are unbelievers in the guise of faith are ashamed, as they are, of the God born of a woman and crucified by Jews; therefore he too will be ashamed of them.

[that] the one who was crucified had nothing divine in his own nature, not even the most sovereign part, which is spirit.

For who is the holy one born of woman?

Who is wise without being taught?

Who works the works of God with authority?

dividing the activity according to the flesh, but making it equal according to the spirit. … [Fragment 60] which again contains the equality in power and the division of activity according to the flesh, by which he did not give life to all, but to some, whom he willed.

No one died and rose again by his own authority. … “No one takes my life from me. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.”

But they are troubled with the trouble of unbelievers, and they do not remember that this will is said to be proper not to a man from the earth, as they suppose, but to God who came down from heaven: [the will of] what was taken into union with him.

For [there are] not two persons, as though God were one and man another.

For he would not have come to be in the likeness of man, unless he were, like man, an enfleshed mind. … [Fragment 70] If the Lord is not an enfleshed mind, he would be wisdom enlightening a man's mind. But this is in all human beings too. And if so, the coming of Christ was not a sojourn of God but the birth of a man. … [Fragment 71] If the Word did not become an enfleshed mind, but was wisdom in the mind, the Lord did not come down, nor did he empty himself.

For this reason he was also man; for man is mind in flesh, according to Paul.

since he was man, and this earthly one was heavenly.

If, together with God, who is mind, there was also a human mind in Christ, then the work of the incarnation is not accomplished in him. … But if the work of the incarnation is not accomplished in the self-moved and unconstrained mind, the work, which is the undoing of sin, is accomplished in the flesh, which is moved by another and acted on by the divine mind; and the self-moved mind in us shares in the undoing insofar as it makes itself Christ's own.

If one person obtains something more than another, this comes about through discipline; but there is no discipline in Christ; therefore there is no human mind [in him].

Therefore the human race is not saved by the taking up of a mind and of a whole man, but by the assumption of flesh, whose nature it is to be governed; and it needed an unchangeable mind that would not fall under its sway through weakness of understanding, but would fit it to itself without force.

Flesh is fitted to God without force, sharing in pure virtue.

If anyone thinks that a man is united to God beyond all men and angels, he will make the angels and men not self-determining, as the flesh too is not self-determining. But for a self-determining living being, not to be self-determining is its destruction; and a nature is not destroyed by the one who made it. Therefore the man is not united to God.

[Fragment 89] If, then, man is from three, and the Lord is also man, the Lord too is certainly from three: spirit, soul, and body. But he is also the heavenly man and a life-giving spirit. … [Fragment 90] If the heavenly man is made of all the same things as we earthly ones, so as to have also a spirit equal to that of the earthly, he is not heavenly but a receptacle of the heavenly God.

But if we are from three and he is from four, he is not man but man-God.

If [he is] from two perfect [beings], then neither is he man in that in which he is God, nor God in that in which he is man. … [Fragment 93] A man who remains [a man] and is subject to the common corruption of human beings cannot save the world; but neither are we saved by God unless he is mingled with us. And he is mingled by becoming flesh, that is, man, as the gospel says: when he became flesh, then he dwelt among us. But neither does he undo the sin of human beings unless he became a sinless man, nor does he abolish the reign of death over all human beings unless he died and rose as man.

A man's death does not abolish death, nor does one who has not died rise. From all this it is clear that God himself died, inasmuch as it was not possible for Christ to be held by death.

How does God become man without being changed from being God, unless he took his place as mind in a man?

If after the resurrection he became God and is no longer man, how will the Son of Man send his angels, and how shall we “see the Son of Man coming on the clouds”? And how, even before being united and deified, does he say, “I and the Father are one”?

If Christ is united to the Father before the resurrection, how is he not united to the God in him? … [Fragment 101] The Saviour suffered hunger and thirst and weariness and agony and grief.

What cannot admit suffering suffers, not by an unwilled necessity of nature, as a man does, but by the consequence of nature.

It was necessary for the passions to be stirred in the likeness of human beings.

But things clearly refuted and publicly banished throughout the world, some have now attempted to renew again; and they blaspheme that the second man from heaven, handed down by the apostles, is a man from earth like the first, changing the human element of the Word into the activity that is in a man.

The flesh, being moved by another, is moved entirely by what moves and leads it (whatever that may be); and not being a complete living being by itself, but put together so as to become a complete living being, it came into unity with the ruling element and was compounded with the heavenly ruling element, being made its own with respect to its own passive side, and receiving the divine, made its own, with respect to the active side. For thus one living being was constituted from what is moved and what moves, and not two, nor one from two complete and self-moving beings. Therefore a man is a living being other than God and is not God, but a servant of God; and if one is some heavenly power, it is the same. But flesh, having become God's flesh, is a living being, compounded thereafter into one nature.

For Christ is one, moved by the divine will alone, just as we also know his activity as one, proceeding in the different miracles and sufferings of his one nature. For he is, and is believed to be, God enfleshed.

And “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not my will but yours be done” does not show one will and another that do not agree with each other, but one and the same will, acting divinely, but by dispensation declining death, since the one who said this was God bearing flesh, who had no difference in his willing.

It is unlawful that there should be one and the same worship of different substances, that is, of maker and thing made, of God and man. But the worship of Christ is one; and accordingly God and man are understood in the one name. Therefore God and man are not different substances, but one, by the composition of God with a human body.

Intermediates arise when different properties come together into one: as in a mule the property of donkey and of horse, in grey colour the property of white and of black, and in the air spring, which brings about the property of winter and of summer. But no intermediate has either of its extremes entire, but partially mixed. And Christ is an intermediate between God and men. Therefore he is neither wholly man nor God, but a mixture of God and man.

Neither, then, does it make the divine human by the division according to the body, which is in equality with God, creative and renewing … it is impossible that the human element of Christ according to the body, being another nature, should in its equality with God be bounded by a man's bounding, as a man's body and not God's.

His flesh gives us life because of the Godhead joined with it in substance; and what gives life is divine; therefore the flesh is divine, because it was joined to God. And this flesh saves, while we are saved by partaking of it as of food. Now what nourishes, being active in what is nourished, is of one substance with it, and yet is not nourished in the same way. And if what gives life is not given life in the same way as what is given life, it is not of one substance with it; for otherwise it would be a body of death like ours, needing to be given life. But the body of Christ is not a body of death but of life. Therefore the divine is not of one substance with the human.

God, having taken up an instrument, is both God, inasmuch as he acts, and man, according to the instrument. Remaining God, he has not been changed. The instrument and what moves it naturally produce one activity; and if the activity is one, the substance is also one. Therefore one substance has come to be of the Word and the instrument.

For how is the thing not impious, that another substance, created and servile, should have one and the same worship with the Creator and Master?

If what one takes on one is not changed into, and Christ took on flesh, then he was not changed into flesh.

For he also gave himself to us in kinship through the body, in order to save. But what saves is far better than what is saved. Therefore he is far better than we are, even in his embodiment. But he would not be better if he had been changed into flesh.

The simple is one, but the composite cannot be one. So whoever says that he became flesh speaks of a change of the one Word. But if the composite is also one, as a man is, then whoever says, because of the union with flesh, “The Word became flesh,” speaks of what is one by composition.

Becoming flesh is emptying; and the emptying showed the one who emptied himself to be not a man but Son of Man, by clothing, not by change.

So the things of God and of the body are united. Being Creator, worshiped, Wisdom and eternal Power: these are from the Godhead. Son of Mary, born at the last time, worshiping God, advancing in wisdom, strengthened in power: these are from the body. The suffering for sin and the curse went before; [the body] will neither pass away nor be changed into something bodiless.

Human beings are of one substance with the irrational animals according to the irrational body, but of a different substance inasmuch as they are rational. So also God, being of one substance with human beings according to the flesh, is of a different substance inasmuch as he is Word and God. … [Fragment 127] The qualities of things that are blended are blended and not destroyed, so that some are even separated out from what was blended, as wine from water. Nor is this a blending with a body, nor such as of bodies with bodies, but one that also keeps what is unmixed, so that, as is needed at each time, the activity of the Godhead either acts on its own or mixes in. So it happened at the Lord's fast: when the Godhead mixed in with its freedom from need, hunger was prevented; when it did not set its freedom from need against the want, hunger came about, for the overthrow of the devil. And if the mixture of bodies was not changed, how much more that of the Godhead?

If the blending with iron, which shows the iron to be fire so that it does the works of fire, did not change its nature, neither is God's union with the body a change of the body, even though the body supplies the divine activities to those who are able to touch it.

If a man has both soul and body, and these remain while being in unity, much more does Christ, having Godhead with a body, have both remaining and not confused.

For the human shares in the divine activity insofar as it reaches it; but it is different, as the least from the greatest. And man is God's servant, but God is not the servant of man, nor of himself. And the one is God's creature, but the other is neither man's creature nor his own.

If anyone takes “what he sees the Father doing, he too does” of Christ according to the Godhead and not according to the flesh, by which the one made flesh is distinct from the Father, who was not made flesh, he divides two divine activities. But they are not divided. Therefore it does not refer to the Godhead.

As a man is not irrational, though the rational is joined to the irrational, so neither is the Saviour a creature, though the creature is joined to the uncreated God.

The invisible, even when compounded with a visible body and seen through it, also remains invisible; and it remains uncompounded, inasmuch as it is not bounded together with the body. And the body, remaining in its own measure, receives union with God by being given life; nor does what is given life give life.

If not even the blending of soul with body, though it belongs to its nature from the beginning, makes the soul visible through the body or changes it into the other properties of the body, so that it is cut and diminished, how much more is God, who is not natural to a body, united to the body without change!

But let him say these things, babbling. How is what has been joined to God in unity of person not God together with him? How is what has been united to the uncreated in a living unity not uncreated together with him? For if the name is shared, nothing will be so truly blended. And most absurd of all would be if we name the bodiless by the names of the body, saying that the Word became flesh, but do not call the body by the name of the bodiless, in keeping, that is, with its union with it. And if he wonders how the created is united into the title of the uncreated, much more will another justly wonder how the uncreated has been united to the title of created flesh.

If the Word has been named flesh because of the union, it follows that the flesh too is named Word because of the union; and as it is Word, so it is also uncreated, not because it was not created, but because it was shown to be Word as a result of the union.

As human beings are of one substance with the irrational animals according to the irrational body, but of a different substance inasmuch as they are rational, so also the Lord, being of one substance with human beings according to the flesh, is of a different substance inasmuch as he is Word and God.

Much more, in the blending of the bodiless with a body, does the nature of the things united remain; for the body is body and the bodiless is bodiless; and by the most complete union he is called God embodied and body deified; and inasmuch as he is God embodied, the whole is man, and inasmuch as he is body deified, the whole again is God.

Already the body ceases to be something formed …

We say that the Lord is God by nature and man by nature, but in one blended nature, fleshly and divine.

Those who teach two minds in Christ, a divine one, I mean, and a human one, are carving rock with a finger. For if every mind is its own master, moved by its own will according to nature, it is impossible for two that will contrary things to coexist in one and the same subject, each carrying out what it has willed by a self-moved impulse.

Nor could they see this, though it is plain to all, that the divine mind is self-moved …

For those who say that Christ is one and predicate of him two intelligent, self-complete natures do not know that he is the Word made flesh, remaining within his natural oneness; they carry him off into unlike natures and activities, cut apart.

Sinless, then, is the Lord Jesus Christ, as God, and, together with the flesh, of one substance with the only God, eternal Creator. And the flesh, as God's flesh, is God, being the flesh of one who is of one substance with God: a part united to him, of one substance with God, not separated. For it is not moved separately or on its own, as a man is, a living being acting by itself. For God, by fellowship …

Not that the whole compound is from heaven; but, being united to the heavenly one and having become one person with him, it is heavenly by the union, and as heavenly it is worshiped with the worship of the heavenly God, and as heavenly it saves by the power of the heavenly one.

Christ, living, is a God-breathed body and a divine spirit in flesh, a heavenly mind, in which we pray to share, according to “we have the mind of Christ”; holy flesh grown together with Godhead and establishing Godhead in those who partake of it; foundation of eternal life, author of incorruption for human beings, creator of an eternal creation, father of the age to come.

Wretched indeed, and truly small of soul, are those who think so venerable, great, and more-than-worldly a fashioning small.

And how is the body God and Creator and Master? He answered, saying that it is the body of God, Creator and Master, having the unity which we have not found to belong to a man with God.

not in two substances but in one.

I received the letter of your love, master …

For the flesh is divine by its union with the Word, not by its nature; so that it also has its continuing existence in the union, as he himself says that “the Spirit is what gives life” to the flesh. For it is not possible for a body to become bodiless, as others foolishly say.

You yourself, then, say well, “we and Christ are not equal.” But to say that “the flesh is not of one substance with us, since it is God's flesh” needs a little articulation. For it is better to say that by nature he took flesh of one substance with us, but by union made it divine. You yourself also say this, that “in this respect it is not of one substance with us, since it is God's flesh”; but it would rather be said, more articulately, that the flesh is of one substance with us by nature, but divine by union, and has its difference through the union.

And John blames the one who dissolves Jesus; but these men dissolve him outright, while confessing his conjunction with the body. For a thing is not joined to itself, nor what is of one substance to what is of one substance, as these men did not hesitate to say. For this is neither composition nor conjunction, since nothing is joined to itself, but what is joined is one thing to another. And if the Word is of one substance with the body, and the body of one substance with the Word, both are surely invisible, according to “no one has seen God, nor can see him.” Then on this view he was not made manifest, nor was he touched, being intangible; nor is John true when he says, “we beheld, and our hands touched.”

If anyone says either that the Son is two persons, or that the flesh is of one substance with God and not with our flesh, or that it came down from heaven and was not taken up by the one from heaven, saying that the Godhead can suffer, let him be anathema.

For me piety is the ground of friendship, and there is no pretext for enmity toward those who keep piety. Let no one seek anything new from me now, nor demand silence about the truth, as though making peace by it. That no one can bring against us the things said against certain people is clear from what we have always written: we say neither that the Saviour's flesh is from heaven, nor that the flesh is of one substance with God inasmuch as it is flesh and not God; but it is God insofar as it has been united to the Godhead into one person.

It is perhaps not untimely for your Reverence to hear that a booklet of Apollinaris has come into my hands, whose arguments outdo every heretical wickedness. For he maintains that the flesh taken by the only-begotten Son by dispensation for the refashioning of our nature was not acquired, but that that fleshly nature was in the Son from the beginning. And, taking a saying of the gospel wrongly, he puts it forward as testimony for such an absurdity, quoting “no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man,” as though he were Son of Man even before he came down, and came down bringing with him that flesh of his own which he had in heaven, existing before the ages and joined in substance. For again he cites an apostolic saying, cutting it off from the whole body of its context, “the second man is from heaven.” Then he argues that that man who came from above does not have a mind, but that the Godhead of the Only-begotten, filling the place of the nature of the mind, became part of the human compound, as its third part, soul and body being present in him in the human way, but no mind, God the Word filling its place. And this is not yet the dreadful part. Worst of all is that he argues that the only-begotten God himself, the judge of all, the author of life, the destroyer of death, is mortal, that he received suffering in his own Godhead, that in the three days' deadness of the body the Godhead too died with the body, and that so he was raised again from death by the Father. It would take long to go through the other things that he adds to such absurdities.