On the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, against Apollinaris (two books)

Contents

Greek column only. Several sections end where the last lines of a column are lost in the scan OCR; the staged flags say where.

Reading pages: 1.1–1.13 · 1.14–2.6 · 2.7–2.18

1. 1.1The author explains that he writes, at his correspondent’s request, to refute teachers who claim exact knowledge of Christ but ignore the prophets, apostles, and Fathers.
2. 1.2The author contrasts the Fathers’ confession of the consubstantial and unchangeable Son with his opponents’ claims that Christ’s flesh is heavenly and that a divine mind replaced the human mind in him.
3. 1.3Against the claim that Christ’s flesh is uncreated, the author argues that only the Trinity is uncreated and that an uncreated yet passible flesh leads either to blasphemy against the Godhead or to a Manichaean illusion.
4. 1.4The author argues that Christ’s flesh, united to the Word from the womb and growing like ours, cannot be uncreated without cutting humanity off from Christ.
5. 1.5The author insists that only the Godhead is uncreated and that the Word made a real human nature his own in order to undo sin, the curse, corruption, and death in every place.
6. 1.6The author argues that an uncreated body could neither die nor be touched, and that Christ’s body, made from the Virgin, is worshipped because it is the body of the uncreated Word.
7. 1.7The author argues that a body from heaven would bring no benefit, since Christ took Adam’s fallen flesh to raise it sinless, conquer death, and receive the name above every name.
8. 1.8The author argues from the titles “second Adam” and “son of man” and from the Gospel genealogies that Christ’s body came from Adam, not from heaven.
9. 1.9The author argues that calling Christ’s flesh consubstantial with the Godhead either denies the flesh descended from David or adds a fourth member to the Trinity.
10. 1.10The author argues from John 1:14 that the Word became flesh, not the flesh Word, and from Scripture’s twofold language that the one Christ is both God and man.
11. 1.11The author argues that denying Christ’s flesh would make the Godhead of Father and Spirit subject to death, and confesses that the one Christ suffered in the flesh while remaining impassible as God.
12. 1.12The author teaches that the one impassible Word himself took flesh as his own, not coeternal or consubstantial with his Godhead, and likens the opponents’ view to the Arians, Marcion, and Mani.
13. 1.13The author argues that the one Christ is both God and man, that the “inner man” is the human soul, and that Christ’s soul went to Hades while his body lay in the tomb.
14. 1.14The author argues that God’s twofold sentence on Adam sent body to the tomb and soul to Hades, and that Christ freed the whole man by entering both with a complete human nature.
15. 1.15The author argues that sin is not natural but entered through disobedience, and that Christ’s grief and trouble prove he took a rational human soul, against both Arians and Apollinarians.
16. 1.16The author argues that Christ’s troubled soul was really his own, so that the one Christ is perfect God and perfect man without change, division, or moral progress.
17. 1.17The author argues that the sinless Word took a full human nature, giving body for body and soul for soul, so that his body lay in the tomb and his soul entered Hades to free the whole man.
18. 1.18The author argues from the blood and water and from Christ’s giving up his spirit at the cross that a human soul withdrew from his body at death, so that he died our death.
19. 1.19The author argues that Christ’s death and ransom required a human soul, since it was the sinning soul that death ruled, and that God condemned the creature’s act, not his own work.
20. 1.20The author likens his opponents’ confession of “God from Mary” to Marcion and Paul of Samosata, and sets out the Church’s faith in the eternal Word born as man of the Virgin.
21. 1.21The author rejects the idea that the Word merely indwelt a prophet, and compares his opponents’ shifting attacks on Christ’s soul and flesh, and their charge of “two Sons,” to Arius, Sabellius, and Mani.
22. 1.22The author closes the first book, saying that the gospel tradition is sufficient and that the faithful should confess what Scripture records and worship Christ.
23. 2.1Opening the second book, the author argues from Phil 2 and John 1:14 that the Word took a complete human nature, body and intellectual soul, without being changed.
24. 2.2The author argues that the name “Christ” belongs to the Word as incarnate, so that the one Christ is truly both passible as man and impassible as God.
25. 2.3The author argues that the Word became Christ by anointing his own flesh, and surveys the errors of Paul of Samosata, Marcion and Mani, Valentinus, Arius, and Sabellius, asking which of them his opponents follow.
26. 2.4The author charges his opponents with hiding the view that Christ only appeared as a man, and lists Scripture’s titles of Christ to show that no mere deified man could bear them.
27. 2.5The author contrasts his opponents’ “God born from the Virgin” with the Gospel rule of one who is both God and man, born of Mary and united indissolubly to human nature for our salvation.
28. 2.6Answering the objection that human thoughts are necessarily sinful, the author argues that sin entered human nature by the devil’s sowing, not by creation, and that Christ took that nature to free it from sin.
29. 2.7Against the objection that a man, as part of the world, cannot save it, the author argues that grace abounded in the very nature that sinned, since the Word became man to have something to offer for us.
30. 2.8The author answers the claim that inherited human nature cannot be sinless by likening it to Mani’s teaching, rejecting a “fleshly soul,” and arguing from God’s oath to David and Heb 2:14 that Christ shared our nature.
31. 2.9The author answers the objections that the Word was joined to a man and that a sinless nature would be forced, arguing that sinlessness is natural and that the Word won the victory through the very nature the devil had defeated.
32. 2.10The author explains that the Word came as the second Adam, with soul and body but without sinful wills, so that the devil found nothing of his own in him and sin was destroyed.
33. 2.11The author argues that captive human nature could be freed only by Christ’s real sharing in it as firstborn and firstfruits, and rejects the formula “God who suffered through flesh” as Arian in tendency.
34. 2.12The author argues that those who confess the consubstantial Word yet attribute suffering to his Godhead fall either into Valentinian and Arian error or into Marcion’s docetism, against all Scripture’s witness to his humanity.
35. 2.13The author argues that Scripture always names Christ as man before attributing suffering to him, and that the formula “God who suffered through flesh” would make Father and Spirit passible too.
36. 2.14The author argues from Moses, Isaiah, Paul, and the Gospels that Scripture attributes suffering to Christ’s humanity and power to his Godhead, so that the Godhead remained with both body and soul in death.
37. 2.15The author argues that at Christ’s death the soul, not the Godhead, left the body, and that the session at God’s right hand and Christ’s glory belong to the one Word who exalted the form of the servant.
38. 2.16The author argues that at the crucifixion the Jews destroyed the temple of Christ’s body, his soul departing, and that if the Word himself had left the body, death and resurrection would not be ours and the Godhead would have suffered.
39. 2.17The author argues that the Word remained unchanged in death, while his human spirit or soul departed to Hades and his body lay in the tomb, so that he destroyed death and corruption in our nature.
40. 2.18The author exposes the trick questions “God or man?” used by heretics and answers that Scripture proclaims the one Christ as both, God in his eternity and works, man in his birth, weakness, suffering, and death.