On the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, against Apollinaris (two books) 1.14–2.6

How, when the Lord was present there incorporeally, was he reckoned by death as a man? So that to the souls held in bonds he might [show] the form of his own soul, which could not receive the bonds, as though capable of the bonds of death, [and loose] the bonds of the souls held in Hades, fixing the boundary of the resurrection; so that the one who formed and made man, and subjected him to condemnation, being present himself, might free man wholly through himself in his own form. For death did not prevail and lead the human soul of the Word into bonds; nor again did corruption, seizing the body like a tyrant, work it into corruption, as though things were without providence. To think such a thing is impious. But he who made inquiry into the disobedience and brought judgment gave a twofold sentence of punishment, saying to the earthly part, “Earth you are, and to earth you will depart”; and so corruption receives … “you will die”; and so man is divided in two and is condemned to go to two places. For this reason there was need of the one who pronounced the sentence, that he himself through himself might loose his own sentence, appearing in the form of [man]; so that both the reconciliation of God with man might take place, and the freedom of the whole man might come about through a man, in the newness of Jesus himself … our [Lord]. If you could show another place of condemnation, you might reasonably say that man is divided in three, that the recall took place from two places, and that what was bound remains in bonds in the third. But if you cannot show another place than the tomb and Hades, from which man has been completely freed, Christ having freed us in his own form, like ours, perfect and most true, how can you still say these things, as if God had not yet been reconciled to humanity? How then did the Saviour come among us? As unable to loose the whole man? Or as loathing the mind that had once sinned? Or as fearing that he too might become a sharer in sin if he became a perfect man, being God? Those who think these things in this way are full of impiety. For why, when you define things about sin, do you say these things, calling sin natural, after the most impious Manichaean?

Do you think these things so, becoming accusers of the creator of nature? When God formed Adam at the beginning, did he give him sin as part of his nature? What need, then, was there any longer of the commandment? How did he condemn him when he sinned? And how did Adam not know good and evil before the disobedience? The one whom God formed for incorruption and as an image of his own eternity, he made sinless in nature and self-determining in will. “But through the envy of the devil death entered the world,” and from disobedience to God’s commandment man became receptive of the enemy’s sowing. And thereafter sin worked in the nature of man toward every desire—not that the devil made a nature in him, far from it! For the devil could not be the creator of a nature, as the Manichaeans impiously hold; but he worked a perversion of nature through transgression; and so death reigned over all men. “For this reason,” it says, “the Son of God came, to undo the works of the devil.” What works of the devil did the Son of God undo? The nature that God made sinless the devil turned aside to the transgression of God’s commandment and the invention of sin [and] death; this God raised up for himself, [free from death] and from the invention of sin. And for this reason the Lord said, “The ruler of this world is coming, and finds nothing in me.” If the ruler of this world found none of his own things in Christ, much more did Christ leave nothing of his own making behind for the ruler of this world. Or rather, he found nothing in him for this reason: Christ had displayed the newness perfectly, so as to accomplish the perfect salvation of the whole man, rational soul and body, so that the resurrection too might be perfect. In vain, then, do the Arians play the sophist, supposing that the Saviour took up flesh only, and impiously referring the perception of suffering to the impassible Godhead. In vain too do you, thinking the same as they by another notion, say that he made use of the enclosing form, that is, the instrument, and that in Christ a heavenly mind takes the place of the inner man that is in us. And how was he grieving, distressed, and praying? And it is written, “Jesus was troubled in spirit.” These things could belong neither to flesh without mind nor to the unchangeable Godhead, but to a soul that has understanding, grieving, troubled, distressed, and perceiving with the mind …

If, then, you are unwilling to understand these things so, which would you choose, blasphemy or truth? For if one supposes that what is said was said in appearance, what took place would also be thought an illusion. But if it was said in truth, while the soul of the Lord had become wholly foreign to its own understanding, having God the Word as its mind, then [it follows that] the unchangeable was changed into grief, distress, and trouble—which is impious to think—even though the Gospels say, “Jesus was troubled in spirit.” Rather, the Lord displays the understanding as his own, in fellow-feeling with our soul, so that in this way we may understand the suffering to be his and yet confess him impassible. For as by the blood of his flesh he redeemed us, so by the understanding of his soul he displays the victory on our behalf, saying, “I have won the victory.” But as the blood would not be thought common by the pious, as it is by unbelievers, but saving, so too the understanding spoken of is not clothed in human weakness but displays the nature of God. And so Christ would be called perfect God and perfect man: not as though the divine perfection had been transformed into human perfection, which is impious; nor as though two perfections were confessed in division, which is foreign to piety; nor by progress in virtue and the addition of righteousness, far from it! but by an existence lacking nothing, so that the one is both, perfect in all respects, the same God and man. For this is why the Lord said, “Now my soul is troubled and in anguish.” The “now” shows that he was not naming as present what was not, as though what took place were spoken in appearance; for all things took place by nature and in truth.

Since, then, the Lord became man by nature and not by adoption, neither by nature nor by action … [so that this corruptible] may put on incorruption, and … sin in the Creator. For in our nature the battle against the invention [of sin] still goes on, and the yielding to the enemy’s sowing, because of our weakness; but the incarnation of the Word, which took place according to the nature of God, became incapable of receiving the things that still hold sway in us from the old state; and that is why we are taught to put off the old man and put on the new. And in this lies the wonder: that the Lord both became man and was without sin, because it was wholly a newness, so that he might display his power. And whatever he himself, by his will, ordained for nature, he took upon himself as he willed: birth from a woman, growth in stature, the counting of years, toil, hunger, thirst, sleep, grief, death, and resurrection. That is why, where the body of man had been corrupted, there Jesus gives up his own body; and where the human soul had been held fast in death, there Christ displays the human soul as his own, so that he who cannot be held fast might be present in death as man, and loose the hold of death as God; so that where corruption was sown, there incorruption might spring up; and where death reigned in the form of a human soul, the immortal one, being present, might display immortality; and so he might make us sharers in his own incorruption and immortality in the hope of the resurrection from the dead, so that “this mortal may put on immortality,” as it is written; so that, as “through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin,” so also through one man, Jesus Christ, “grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life,” as it is written. How then do you say, “In Christ a heavenly mind takes the place of the inner man that is in us”? Did he not, dividing the outer and the inner, display himself both in the tomb and in Hades? It was not possible to give one thing in exchange for another as a ransom; but he gave body for body, soul for soul, and a complete existence for the whole man. This is Christ’s exchange, which the Jews, enemies of the life, reproached at the cross as they passed by and shook their heads. For Hades could not bear the entry of an unveiled Godhead: this both prophets and apostles testify.

One can also see what is said in the dispensation of the cross: how the Lord by the outpouring of blood displayed the reality of the flesh, and by the addition of water showed its spotless purity and that the body was God’s; and having cried out and bowed his head and handed over the spirit, he signified the inner part of his own body, that is, the soul, of which he also said, “I lay [it] down for my sheep.” So no one could say that the breathing out was a departure of the Godhead, but rather the withdrawal of the soul. For if the death and the deadening of the body took place by a departure of the Godhead, then he died a death of his own and not ours. And how did he go down to Hades with the Godhead unveiled? Where then is the soul which the Lord promised to lay down for the sheep, of which the prophets too foretell? But if a withdrawal of the soul took place, it is for this reason said that he accepted our death, that is, enduring the dissolution that is ours, just as also the birth …

Your sophism, then, is vain. For how would the death have taken place, unless the Word had joined to himself both the inner and the outer man, that is, body and soul? How did he give a ransom in exchange for all? Or how did the hold of death receive its complete release, if he did not join to himself the thinking part? Then death still reigns over the inner man; for over what else did it ever reign, if not over the soul that sinned in its thinking? As it is said, “The soul that sins, it shall die”; for which Christ laid down his own soul, giving a ransom in exchange. Why then, by your account, does death [still] reign? And whom did God condemn from the beginning: the formation of the one who formed, or the action of what was formed? If God condemned the formation of the one who formed, [he condemned] himself, [and it is impious] to think this about God; [but if] he condemned the action of what was formed, then he removes the action and renews the formation: “for we are his workmanship, created for good works.”

But again you say, “We call the one from Mary God.” How then do you say this: like Marcion, of a God who came to dwell, a God who came near without being touched, having a nature incapable of receiving human flesh? Or how do you call him God: like Paul of Samosata? For this was the pretext of that man’s impiety: to confess as God the one from Mary, foreordained before the ages but having had the beginning of his existence from Mary. And he confesses an active Word from heaven and Wisdom in him, granting more than you do, according to his own impiety, just as you speak of a heavenly mind in an ensouled body. But neither is an ensouled body already a perfect man, nor is a heavenly mind already God. For a body is called ensouled when the name of soul is borne in it as having real existence. And a man’s body is called body and not soul, and a man’s soul is called soul and not body, the one being other than the other, that is, spirit in relation to body. “Who,” it says, “has known the mind of the Lord?” The mind of the Lord is not yet the Lord, but the Lord’s will, or counsel, or activity toward something. How then do you devise to speak these things, peddling the Word of God with fabricated words? But the Church of God neither received nor handed down thus; but, as it is written, [it confesses] God the Word, who was with God before the ages, coming at the consummation of the ages and born of the holy Virgin and of the Holy Spirit, Son of Man, as it is written, “until she bore her firstborn son,” so that he might become “firstborn among many brothers,” being himself true God; so that he might both suffer for us as man and redeem us from suffering and death as God. In vain, then, you imagine—confessing in Christ a newness of flesh only—that you can work in yourselves, by imitation, the newness of the part that thinks and leads the flesh. For if it were possible for men to work in themselves, without Christ, the newness of the part that thinks and leads the flesh—and what is led follows the leader—what need was there of Christ’s coming?

Vain too are those who say that the Word came to dwell upon one of the prophets. For which of the prophets, being God, became man? And why did the law perfect nothing? And why did death reign even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the first-formed? And why did the Lord say, “If the Son sets you free, you will be truly free”? Is it not by the newness that is in him, and the perfection through which we who believe are renewed, by imitation of and participation in the perfect newness of Christ? But you have devised everything in order to build up one opinion of denial. The soul you thrust out by changing its name, calling it at one time a deranged mind, at another sin with real existence, at another the worker of sin; and the flesh you call at one time uncreated, at another heavenly, at another consubstantial with the Word, so as to make your denial complete for yourselves. As Arius, slipping from the faith in the ineffable and most true begetting of the Son from the Father, first invented passion, cutting, and flowing, so that by his impious words he might throw the unsteady into the pit of lawlessness—“for the mouth of the lawless is a deep pit”; and so again Sabellius, thinking the Son without hypostasis and the Holy Spirit without existence, [charged] a division of the Godhead and an opinion of [several] principles and gods; and so Mani, disbelieving the incarnation and becoming man of the Lord, became impious in everything, saying that man is subject to two Creators, an evil one and a good one; in the same way you too, slandering us, say that we speak of two Sons, and you call us man-worshippers, or you bring up sin against us, not in order to be pious, but in order [to spread] your error … the unsteady from the faith by your impious words. “Yet the firm foundation of God” … you say, or you call the worship human, and …

I have written these things, beloved, although there was no need at all to write more, for the gospel tradition is sufficient; but because you asked about our faith, and on account of those who wish to trifle with their inventions and do not reckon that “whoever speaks from his own speaks the lie.” For it is not possible for the human mind to tell the beauty or the glory of Christ’s body; but we must confess what took place, as it is written, and worship the one who is God, to the glory and praise of his love for mankind and the hope of our salvation, in Christ …

Those who do not confess our Lord Jesus Christ as one from God and man—as it is written in the Gospel, “son of Adam, son of God”—let them say how they have understood the God who existed in the form of God and took the form of the servant, or how they have understood “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” For the one who said “The Word became flesh” has also said that he gave his own soul for us. Was it then as though the Word underwent a change, being transformed into flesh, or into the likeness of a soul? Or as though he made an illusory display of the human form, as the other heretics in their error say? But the Apostle does not allow it, having said plainly who he was and what he took. For as the form of God is understood as the fullness of the Godhead of the Word, so also the form of the servant is confessed as the intellectual nature of the human constitution together with its instrumental state; so that by “was” the Word is understood, and by “became” the flesh is confessed together with the soul; and this is called the form of the servant, understood as an intellectual constitution. That is why a man, when he has died, is said to be formless and is wholly dissolved, the soul, whose nature cannot be dissolved, having withdrawn from the body. Hence Paul bears witness to the intellectual nature, and John to the instrumental display of the body, so that each of them … the whole … that God the Word, who existed before, was not a man before his coming in the flesh, but was God with God, being invisible and impassible …

Nor, then, is the name “Christ” applied apart from the flesh, since suffering and death follow upon the name; for Paul writes, “that the Christ was to suffer, that he was the first from the resurrection of the dead”; and elsewhere he says, “Christ our Passover was sacrificed”; and, “the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for us.” Not that Christ is not God, but that he is also man. Therefore [“Remember Jesus Christ, raised] from the dead, from the seed of David according to the flesh.” And for this reason Scripture applies both names in showing his existence: God understood invisibly and truly being, man touched visibly and truly existing; not in a division of persons or names, but by natural birth and indissoluble union; so that, the suffering being truly confessed in him, the same may also be truly confessed to be both passible and impassible. How then did the Word, being God, become Christ before he became man? For if the name “Christ” belongs to the Godhead apart from the flesh, then it must be applied to the Father too, and to the Holy Spirit; and the suffering too will be common, as some in their error say. Or will you also say that [the Godhead] before the incarnation and becoming man is capable of suffering and death? And how could the Son, consubstantial with the Father and undivided in the divine nature, be called passible, being unchangeable and unalterable, unless, taking from the womb of the Virgin the whole form of the human constitution, he became man in himself, so that he might be man in the suffering and remain unchangeable, being God …

For this is why the anointing took place: not as though God needed anointing, nor again as though the anointing took place apart from God, but God applying the anointing, and the body capable of anointing receiving it. It is plain, then, that the Word did not become Christ apart from human flesh, dividing himself into a display of flesh or a likeness of soul; but, remaining what he was, he took the form of the servant, which did not lack the existence made manifest in display through suffering, resurrection, and the whole dispensation, as it is written and has been made plain. Tell us, then, how have you supposed that God was born in Nazareth? For all heretics are accustomed to say this. So Paul of Samosata confesses God from the Virgin, God seen from Nazareth, who had the beginning of his existence from there and received a beginning of kingship; and he confesses an active Word from heaven and Wisdom in him: [Christ] existing by predestination before the ages but shown forth in existence from Nazareth, so that, he says, the God over all, the Father, may be one. Such is his impiety. Marcion and Mani [say] that God came to dwell in the Virgin and … untouched … to human nature, which had fallen under sin and is subject to the ruler of wickedness. For, they say, if he had taken this to himself, he would be subject to the ruler of wickedness, and Christ would not be without sin; but [they say] he displayed his own flesh from himself in likeness, as he willed, seen coming from heaven, departing into the heavens, and being wholly Godhead. Valentinus again says that the suffering is common to the Trinity, imagining the flesh to be a part of the Godhead. Arius [confesses] that flesh alone came to be for the concealment of the Godhead, and dares to attribute the perception of suffering and the resurrection from Hades to the Godhead. Sabellius has displayed the opinion of Paul of Samosata and his followers; for, fearing the division that comes from Arius, he fell into the destructive error. And you—to whom do you attach yourselves, or whom do you wish to help? Or, as the saying goes, have you become men of every tribe? For with all those who … the union, and contradicting the fulfilment, … As those who divide are mad, so too those who …

Why, then, do you play the sophist with pretexts? Why do you hide under pretence and not say openly that he did not become man by taking the form of a servant, but that he appeared as a man? Your account raises this question, since you say, as a pretext, “the same and the same.” That is why, [in place] of the true [confession], they call Christ a man deified. And where then is “In the beginning was the Word,” and that “taking the form of a servant he became man”? Does [Scripture] speak of a man who was with God, or a man entwined with God, or a man who died for the world while being part of the world, or a man not separated from sin, or a man ruling over angels, or a man worshipped by creation, or a man who is Lord, when the Apostle says, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ”; or a man crucified who is the Lord of glory, or a man who hears, “Sit at my right hand,” or a man coming to execute judgment? This is your muddy overthrow, with which you give men drink and make them drunk. Ask the Jews, then, so that, hearing from them these words spoken against Christ and those who have believed in him, you may blush; and learn also from the other heretics, who speak and think the same things. Let there be set out, then, the doctrines of the heretics and the opinion of your thinking, and the account of our faith, the rule of the Gospel, the preaching of the apostles, the testimony of the prophets, and the understanding of the dispensation that has been fulfilled.

Tell us, then, how do you say that God was born from Nazareth—announcing, like Paul of Samosata, a beginning of generation for the Godhead, or, like Marcion and the other heretics, denying the birth of the flesh—not keeping in line with the rule of the Gospel but wishing to speak from your own? This is why you say that God was born from the Virgin, and not God and man, according to the rule of the Gospel: so that you may never, by confessing a birth of flesh, call it natural and so tell the truth; but [you say that] God was born and displayed his own flesh as in appearance. For God does not display a beginning of birth from Nazareth; but the Word, who is God before the ages, appeared as man from Nazareth, born of Mary the Virgin and of the Holy Spirit in Bethlehem of Judea, of the seed of David and Abraham and Adam, as it is written; taking all that belongs to man, which he himself formed and made, without sin, as the Apostle also says: “in likeness in all respects, without sin”—not displaying a transformation of the Godhead, but working a renewal of humanity according to his will, so that the Gentiles might be “of the same body and sharers” in Christ, as the Apostle also writes; so that the man might be truly God and God truly man, so that he might be both truly man and truly God; not a man being with God, as you say in slander, tearing apart the mystery of the Christians; but the only-begotten God being pleased [to unite] to the fullness of his Godhead the formation of the archetypal man, and a new making, from the womb, in indissoluble union, so that he might carry out the saving work for men, accomplishing the salvation of men in suffering, death, and resurrection.

But you say: “If he took everything, then surely he also had human thoughts; and it is impossible that there be no sin in human thoughts; how then will Christ be without sin?” Tell us, then: if God is the creator of sinful thoughts, his own creation must be attributed to God; for he came to take to himself his own making. But then the judgment will again be unjust in condemning; [for if] God created [sinful] thoughts, how does he condemn the one who sinned? And how could such a judgment come from God? And if Adam too was subject to such thoughts before he disobeyed God’s commandment, how did he not know good and evil? Being rational in nature and free in thought, he had no experience of evil, knew only the good, and was, as it were, of a single disposition; but having disobeyed God’s commandment he fell under sinful thoughts—not that God created the thoughts that take captive, but that the devil by deceit sowed them in the rational nature of man, which had come into transgression and been driven away from God; so that the devil established a law of sin in the nature of man, and death reigning through the work of sin. “For this reason, then, the Son of God came, to undo the works of the [devil].” … “But this is not the undoing of sin.” For it was not in him that the devil from the beginning worked sin, so that by his coming into the world and not sinning the sin should be undone; but it was in the rational and intellectual nature of man that the devil, by sowing, worked sin. That is why it became impossible for the nature, being rational, having sinned willingly, and having come under the condemnation of death, to call itself back into freedom, as the Apostle says, “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh.” That is why the Son of God came through himself to establish this nature in his own, from a new beginning and a wonderful birth—not dividing the original constitution, but setting aside the setting aside that had been sown in it, as the prophet testifies, saying, “Before the child knows good or evil, he refuses wickedness, to choose the good.” But if sinlessness was not seen in the nature that had sinned, how was sin condemned in the flesh, when the flesh has no power of action of its own and the Godhead does not know sin? And how does the Apostle say, “Where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more”—not marking out a place, but positing a nature? “So that,” he says, “as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, so also through one man, Jesus Christ, grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life”; so that through the very nature through which sin advanced, the display of righteousness might also come about, and so the works of the devil might be undone, the nature of men being freed from sin, and God be glorified.