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

The way of piety that costs no toil, beloved, is to reverence the whole in silence and to praise God our benefactor with thankful cries, according to the saying of Scripture: “He will sit alone, and keep silent, and be quiet, and do his own things.” “Alone” and “his own things” mean placing one’s own conduct under judgment and keeping God’s commandment in one’s care. But you, knowing the very heavy weariness caused by those who seem to say the same things as we do, have asked about our faith and what the charge is against those who suppose that they think rightly: men who, uttering lawless things without any measure, are not afraid; and those who are unsteady in the faith, led away by them, wander and do not understand. For if they had been established in the faith, they would not have been persuaded by such words. But because their mind was idle, they became receptive of such traditions, from which spring the conceit of excess and a multitude of wickedness. Blinded by hatred, they pass by the messages of the prophets, the teachings of the apostles, the precepts of the Fathers, and the very words of the Master, which need no proof. It is necessary to bring the refutation against them as far as we are able, so that either some of them may come to their senses and see clearly, or they may be unable to deceive others by promising a most distinct comprehension concerning Christ, “understanding neither what they say nor the things about which they make confident assertions.”

For the Fathers said that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, true God from true God, and perfect from perfect; then that he came down for … [and became] man, and so suffered and rose. And so that no one, hearing of suffering and resurrection, should think that God the Word had been altered, they defined with judgment the unchangeableness and unalterableness of the Son. But these people either imagine an alteration of the Word or take the dispensation of the passion to be a mere appearance, saying at one time that Christ’s flesh is uncreated and heavenly, at another that it is consubstantial with the Godhead. Then, they say, in Christ a heavenly mind takes the place of the inner man that is in us. For he used the form that enclosed it as an instrument, since it was not possible for him to become a perfect man. “For where there is a perfect man, there is also sin”; and “two perfect things cannot become one”; otherwise the battle against sin that is in us will be in Christ too, and he will need the cleansing that we need, if, on becoming man, he displayed in himself the part that thinks and leads the flesh in us. “But,” they say, “he took what is without mind, so that he himself might be the mind in it, and be entirely untouched by sin, in respect of the divine element and the mindless element of the flesh. For the flesh would not sin of itself: it is the leader that decides on the act of sin and works through the body to accomplish the sin. Hence Christ displayed newness of flesh by likeness, while each person displays in himself the newness of the part that thinks in us through imitation, likeness, and abstaining from sin. And thus Christ is understood to be without sin …”

These are their sophistries and the notions of their deviation; and their account is not one, for the deviations of unbelief are many. [We] therefore [set] against them the will of God’s good pleasure, the completion of the most true dispensation, and the grace of the most perfect benefaction, questioning their notions in turn: whether they follow the apostolic teachings, whether they keep in line with the precepts of the Fathers, whether they do not set aside the words of the Master that need no proof; so that from the prophetic messages, the apostolic teachings, and the things fulfilled by the Lord may come the confession of the truth and the refutation of error. Tell us, then, you inventors of the new gospel of your own, “which is not another”: from where was it proclaimed to you to call the flesh uncreated, so as either to imagine the Godhead of the Word changing into flesh, or to regard the dispensation of the passion, the death, and the resurrection as an appearance? For only the holy Trinity of the Godhead has been shown to be uncreated, eternal, unchangeable, and unalterable. But since Christ according to the flesh is raised up from among men, “from our brothers,” as it is written, and is passible and firstborn from … [the dead], how do you call the uncreated passible, or how do you name the passible uncreated? For in calling the uncreated essence of the Word passible you blaspheme against the Godhead; and in calling uncreated the passible flesh, fitted together with bones and blood and soul and the whole of a body like ours, made touchable and visible, you fall into two falls: either you take the display and endurance of the passion to be an illusion, after the impiety of the Manichaeans, or you suppose the essence of the uncreated Godhead to be of such a kind. And why do you still blame those who imagine God in human form according to the flesh …

But you say that it became uncreated by its union with the uncreated. From this your error will be shown to refute itself. For the union of the flesh with the Godhead of the Word took place from the womb; from there the Word, coming from heaven, raised it up. It did not exist before the coming of the Word, nor before Mary the Theotokos, who alone descends from Adam and is traced in genealogy from Abraham and from David, together with Joseph, who was betrothed to her, both being “into one flesh,” as it is written, not by union with each other but by existing from one origin; for it is attested that they remained untouched. So Christ is born in Bethlehem of Judea, calling Joseph father, who was of David just as Mary was … laid in swaddling clothes, carried by Simeon in the temple, brought for the circumcision of the flesh according to the law, and growing in stature. If, then, he became uncreated by the union, how was it that he was not seen complete in himself, but the growth of the body took place as the Word willed? Yet it is impious to attribute growth to the uncreated. For what is uncreated is called uncreated by nature, admitting neither growth nor diminution. But what has shared in the uncreated or been united to it is called the uncreated’s own, not itself uncreated; otherwise the benefit of the union would be forgotten, the debt owed for the benefit cancelled, the nature that is in weakness would fall into hopelessness, thinking it has no kinship with God, and grace would be darkened. For who, hearing that the Lord’s body is uncreated, and knowing that he himself was made and created, will not think that the holy Scriptures are false and that he himself has no communion with Christ? If the uncreated took up an uncreated body, then the first formation has been annulled and the archetypal Adam has perished, whose descendants we are to this day by the succession of the flesh. How then did Christ make us sharers in himself? And how does the Apostle say, “For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one”?

Let no one dare to think concerning the Godhead of the Son that, as it is from God, so are we, as the most impious Arians dare to say; or rather, [we are like him] only in respect of the display of the flesh and the form of the servant, that is, of the first-formed Adam, which God, existing in the form of God, took. Generally, among things made, “uncreated” is said of what has not yet come to exist, because it has not come to be. Do you, then, supposing that no flesh at all came to be in the Word, intend at once a denial dressed in a fair-sounding word, so that you may confess nothing [created] in the uncreated? For the existence of the Godhead alone is understood as uncreated; so it is impious both to call the uncreated passible and to name the passible uncreated. For [to say] that the made nature of humanity is not the Word’s own by union but coeternal with him, and … to the nature of God … For the Lord gave proof of flesh and blood and bones, and of a soul grieving, troubled, and distressed. No one would say these are the nature of the Godhead; but they became God’s own by nature, since the Word was pleased to endure human birth and to restore in himself, in the image of newness, his own creation that had been dissolved in sin, corruption, and death. Therefore he made the condemnation of sin on earth, the removal of the curse on the tree, the redemption from corruption in the tomb, and the destruction of death in Hades, setting foot in every place in order to accomplish the salvation of the whole man, displaying in himself the form of our image. Otherwise what need had God to endure birth from a woman, and growth in stature and the counting of years, he the maker of the ages; or again a cross, a tomb, Hades, to which we have become subject, if he were not seeking us, giving us life through a form like ours, and calling us to the likeness and imitation of a perfect image? And how could imitation lead to perfection, unless the perfection that lacks nothing existed first? As the Apostle says: “Having put off the old man and put on the new, created according to God in holiness and righteousness of the truth.”

From where, then, were you taught to say “uncreated”? If a nature becomes uncreated by transformation, then it is also invisible, and immortal not as risen from death but as incapable of receiving death. How then did the Lord die, if the uncreated came to dwell on earth in an uncreated way? Or how did he become visible and touchable? As it is written: “What we have seen, and our hands have touched.” How then do you say what is not written and what it is not lawful even to think? For you will hand [license] to all heretics, after the most impious notion of the Rhetorius who was once spoken of, whose impiety it is frightful even to tell. Either, then, deny the divine Scriptures, or, if you confess them, do not devise to speak, beyond what is written, words of incurable deceit. But again you say: “We do not worship a creature.” Senseless people, why do you not reckon that the Lord’s body, though made, does not receive the worship given to a creature? For it became the body of the uncreated Word; and you bring the worship to him whose body it became. So it is worshipped as is due, and worshipped as divine; for the Word, whose own the body is, is God. For when the women came to the Lord, he said, forbidding them, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father,” signifying that the ascent was needed and that there will be one … his feet, and worshipped. They took hold of feet; they worshipped God. Feet of bones and flesh, that could be touched, yet God’s feet, they took hold of; God they worshipped. And elsewhere the Lord said, “Touch me and know that a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have,” though he himself is spirit, for “God is spirit.” And while saying that he has them and giving proof of it, why did he say, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me”—not “being,” he says, but “having”—unless to teach this: that the nature of spirit is ineffable, whereas what is touched here belongs to a body like ours, which he acquired for himself from the Virgin, not by way of an operation but by natural birth, so that the body might be natural and again inseparable by nature from the Godhead of the Word. For so too the death took place: the body receiving it according to nature, and the Word enduring it by will and with authority giving up his own body to death, so that he might both suffer naturally for us and rise divinely for us. And the whole work of the birth and of the death is seen to be directed to seeking and recovering us.

Since these things are so, and are confessed in God’s catholic Church, how do you say again that the body is from heaven? And why did Christ do this? Tell us: was it so that from heaven … he might make … and the one beyond insult capable of receiving insult, and the impassible and immortal mortal and passible? And what benefit was there in this, you vain people, if you say that the things which happened in the first-formed Adam happened in Christ? Unless Christ raised up the fall of Adam to an incomparable rising, appearing “in the likeness of sinful flesh” and “condemning sin in the flesh,” so as both to live his life on earth in the flesh and to show the flesh incapable of sin—the flesh which Adam had sinless from the first formation but through transgression made capable of sin, and so fell into corruption and death. This flesh he raises up sinless by nature, to show that the Creator is not responsible for sin, … he established, so that he himself might be the demonstration of sinlessness. In vain, then, do those who wander imagine things, saying that the Lord’s body is from heaven. Yet Adam brought it down from heaven to the earth, while Christ brought it up from the earth to the heavens; and what Adam brought down to corruption and the condemnation of death, Christ showed to be incorruptible and a release from death, so as to have “authority on earth to forgive sins,” to show incorruption from the tomb, to undo death by setting foot in Hades, and to proclaim the resurrection to all. For “God created man for incorruption and made him an image of his own eternity; but through the envy of the devil death entered the world.” Man, then, ruled by death to corruption, he did not overlook, himself becoming man—not changed into the form of a man, nor disregarding man’s existence and making a shadowy show; but he who is God by nature is born man, so that the one might be both, perfect in all respects, [having] a natural and most true birth … “the name that is above every name,” to reign over the heavens, and to have “authority to execute judgment.”

For the Word, the Creator of all things, appeared as son of man, not becoming someone else but a second Adam, so that from the name too we may know the truth. And the Apostle shows that the first-formed came earlier, showing first what is natural, then what is spiritual. In saying “natural” and “spiritual” he shows not one body and another, but the same body: the first in the power and nature of soul, hence “natural”; the second in the power and nature of Spirit, hence “spiritual”—for God the Word is Spirit. So too one can understand what is said of us, when he says, “The spiritual man judges all things; but the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit.” Yet although the body is one in each case, he shows that the one who shares in the Spirit is to be considered spiritual, and the one who has remained in the power of the soul alone is shown to be natural. And why, if it is as you say, is Christ not called simply “a man,” as someone new who came from heaven, but became “son of man”? If he became son of man on earth, though not born from a man’s seed but from the Holy Spirit, since the first-formed Adam is one, [whose] son … existing in heaven apart from the Adam from the earth, so that he might both have his body from heaven and be son of man apart from Adam. That is why Matthew records him according to the flesh as son of Abraham and of David, while Luke traces his genealogy as son of Adam and of God. If then you are disciples of the Gospels, “do not speak unrighteousness against God,” but keep in line with what is written and what took place. But if you wish to speak other things beyond what is written, why do you fight with us, who are persuaded neither to hear nor to speak beyond what is written? For the Lord says, “If you abide in my word, you will truly be free.”

How then could you still be thought faithful or Christians, … neither persuaded by what took place but daring to define things beyond nature? “Is it a small thing for you to give men trouble? And how do you give the Lord trouble?” For if those who disbelieved the prophets were condemned, how much more those who do not obey the Master himself? What he himself willed and was pleased to do for the abolition of sin and death, how do you dare to say or think other things in place of it? “If we confess, he too will confess us; if we deny, he too will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” What, then, is this great madness of your excess, to speak what is not written and to think what is foreign to piety? For you even attempt to call the flesh consubstantial with the Godhead, not seeing that the outcome of your impiety is double. For you have devised these words so that either you deny the flesh or you blaspheme the Godhead, saying—so it is reported—“We say that the one from Mary is consubstantial with the Father.” But this supposed reverence of yours will be shown to be either meddlesome or senseless. For which of the faithful would not confess that the God Word who came to dwell among us, and who came forth as man from the holy Virgin Mary, being consubstantial with the Father, became man from the seed of Abraham, whose son he is recorded to be, and that the Word consubstantial with God became son of David according to the flesh? That is why prophets and apostles [proclaim his] flesh from the seed of David. How then are you not ashamed to say these things, declaring the flesh, whose genealogy is traced from the seed of David, consubstantial with the Word? Or again, persuaded, as we said, neither by what is written nor by what took place, you say these things senselessly, not understanding that “consubstantial” holds identity of nature, while each displays its own perfection in itself. For as the Son is consubstantial with the Father, so also is the Holy Spirit; for the Trinity is consubstantial. You will then also give the consubstantial flesh its own perfection in addition to the perfection of the Word; and by your account a tetrad will be proclaimed instead of a Trinity. And what is this great invention of impiety?

But you say: “The flesh became consubstantial with the Word.” How did it become consubstantial? Tell us. Did it become Word, and also become Spirit? If a Godhead comes to be at all by transformation, one that is not Godhead by nature, why then do you blame the Arians, who put forward this notion about the Word? Yet when Scripture says, “The Word became flesh”—not “The flesh became Word,” but “The Word became flesh”—it is said that the flesh became the Word’s, and not some man’s; that is, God became man. And it says “became flesh” so that you may not pass over the name of the flesh. If, then, you are not content with the unconfused natural union of the Word with the flesh that became his own, and that God became man, now you neither hear nor are willing to believe, not content to hear of the body of God, which is beyond every conception of reverence, as the one says: “Who will transform the body of our humiliation, so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory”—which signifies the age to come, and still it is called the body of his glory. And the Lord says, “When the Son of Man comes”: he calls the Son of God, who became son of man, judge of the living and the dead, King and Master, and true God. But you want to abolish the name of the body, or that Christ should still be called man. How can you still read the divine Scriptures? Matthew writes, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham”; and John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” … If you wish to see … by your account they would be called two; but if you believe, taught by the divine Scriptures, that the Word, being God, became son of man, you will know that Christ is one, the same both God and man, so that the twofold proclamation of his coming may have a well-demonstrated persuasion of both suffering and impassibility. As when the Apostle says, “The man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for us,” “who is over all …”; and writing to Timothy he said, “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, of the seed of David”; and again the same, “We proclaim his death until he comes.”

If, then, by confessing the “consubstantial” you abolish the name of the flesh and Christ’s being called man, either you no longer proclaim his death until he comes, abolishing the Scriptures; or, proclaiming the death, by your account, of the one consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and not confessing that Christ suffered in the flesh, you will say that the very Godhead of the Father and of the Holy Spirit is capable of receiving death; and you have become more impious than all the heretics. For the death of the flesh became the death of the consubstantial Word. Neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit wore flesh, as the impious followers of Valentinus imagine; but the Word became flesh. That is why we, confessing Christ as God and man, do not say this for the sake of division—far from it!—but again according to the Scriptures, so that, since suffering and death took place and are proclaimed until he comes, we may confess the suffering and the death in respect of the flesh of the Word, but believe the Word himself to be unchangeable and unalterable. So he is the one who suffered and did not suffer: impassible, unchangeable, and unalterable in the divine nature, but having suffered in the flesh, as Peter said, and having willed to taste death, because he became mediator of God and men, the man Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for us. … [as Pe]ter [said]: “Christ therefore having suffered for us in the flesh”; and that he became mediator of God and men. And again: “that he became mediator of God and men.” “But a mediator is not of one; but God is one.”

That is why those also err who say that the Son who suffered is one and the Son who did not suffer is another. For it is not someone else than the Word who received death and suffering; but the impassible and incorporeal Word himself, enduring the birth of human flesh, fulfilled all things, so that he might have something to offer for us. And when he is said to have become “better than the angels,” it is not the Word himself, the maker of the angels, who became better, as though he had once been less; but the form of the servant, which the Word himself made his own by natural birth, rose up better than the origin of the first-formed, and makes us his own, who have become, as it is said, “fellow citizens of the saints and members of God’s household.” And it became God’s own by nature: the flesh is his own, not consubstantial with the Godhead of the Word as though coeternal with it, but become his own by nature and inseparable by union, from the seed of David, of Abraham, and of Adam, from whom we too have been born. But if the flesh is consubstantial with the Word and coeternal, you will say from this that all created things too are coeternal with God who created all things. And how are they still Christians who are entangled in such twisted knots? For what is consubstantial, impassible, and incapable of death does not admit union with what is consubstantial with it by hypostasis, but by nature; by hypostasis it displays its own perfection. So by your supposedly reverent invention you either deny the flesh from the Virgin Theotokos or you blaspheme the Godhead. But if you confess the Son consubstantial with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, in the same way as the flesh that suffered … and why do you still blame us as saying a tetrad instead of a Trinity, when you yourselves, even against your will, confess a tetrad instead of a Trinity in saying that the flesh is consubstantial with the Trinity? Then your faith is vain; for you think the same as the impious Arians, wrongly taking “The Word became flesh.” The Word became flesh not so that the Word should no longer be Word, but so that the Word might be in flesh; he became flesh so that the Word might always be Word and the Word might have flesh, in which he received suffering and death in human form, setting foot as far as the tomb and Hades, and in which he also accomplished the resurrection from the dead, giving proof of flesh and blood and soul … flesh, as it is written, “from the seed of David.” For what else than you did Marcion say? Was it not that the body appeared from heaven, in human likeness and not in truth? And what else did the Manichaean say? Was it not that the body was godlike, in likeness only to ours, but foreign to human flesh, whose nature, not its action, he impiously calls sin? Such is the impiety of these men.

Therefore the pious man must not use such inventions, but [must confess] that Christ is said to be the one who is consubstantial before the ages, and Christ is called God, and … from the Virgin he raised up the formation of Adam as a new making, making it his own by union; and thus Christ, God before the ages, appeared as man. And we are members of Christ, as it is written, “of his flesh and of his bones.” What, then, is this great contentiousness of your inventions, that by human wisdom you define things beyond human understanding, saying, “In Christ a heavenly mind takes the place of the inner man that is in us”? What a lawless opinion, what weak and unseemly words, from men who do not understand this first: that Christ is not spoken of in one way only, but in the very name, which is one, the meaning of both realities is shown, of Godhead and of humanity. That is why Christ is God and man, and Christ is one. Vain, then, is your sophism, when you attempt to see in him something other than Christ. Those who are called “christs” loosely might perhaps be seen your way; but the only true Christ by nature will not be sketched by human reasoning, as you dare to do, and have become self-willed. For neither prophet nor apostle nor any of the evangelists uttered the things you attempt to say, having become shameless in soul. For if Christ is other than the heavenly mind that came to be in him, and the mind too is perfect, then by your account there are two. And what … but the prophets too had a heavenly mind, … Why do you devise saying these things at all, as though the inner man of ours were not confessed in Christ? What then will you say about the soul? That both the body and the soul are the outer man …, as one might say, the blood and the flesh? But as the body and the blood, being visible, do not escape touching and wounding, show us that the soul too does not escape these and is visible. Or if you cannot show it, the account is plain: the soul is neither seen nor killed by man, as the body is, as the Lord said. Be persuaded, then, that the inner man of ours is the soul. The first formation shows this and the second, the dissolution, makes it plain: this is shown not only in us but was shown also in the very death of Christ: the one, the body, reached as far as the tomb; the other, the soul, passed over as far as Hades. The places being separated by a great distance, and the tomb admitting a bodily entrance, the body was present there; but Hades [admitted] an incorporeal [entrance].

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.

But again you say: “If Christ is man, he will be a part of the world; and a part of the world cannot save the world.” What a device of deceit, what madness of blasphemy! Let them say of which Scripture this is the rule, or whether it is a sophism of the devil; although the prophet [says, “… a man was born] in her, and the Most High himself founded her.” How then does Christ not save the world by becoming man? For it is plain that in the very nature in which sin was committed, the abundance of grace came about. And what is the abundance of grace? That the Word, having become man, is believed to be God; that Christ, while being man, is God, because being God he became man and saves those who believe in the form of a man. For “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” But God does not admit of deadening, nor does he need resurrection; rather he raises from the dead. Hence it became necessary for God to have something to offer for us, whether in death or in life; so that the Word saves all the more because he became man.

But again you say: “And how can the nature that has become accustomed to sin and has received sin by inheritance be without sin? That is impossible; and Christ too will be, as …” Mani also introduced this opinion, placing the flesh of man and birth itself under the ruler of wickedness and calling him the “Authority”; since “whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.” You renew their opinion in another way, handing over besides the intellectual nature of man, which is understood to be the soul, and defining it as unable to escape sin; although you have even written of a “fleshly soul,” and from where you learned it I do not know. For this is not to be found in the holy Scriptures nor in the common reasoning of men, since the Lord says, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” And how, if the soul is fleshly by your account, does it not die with the body and perish with it? And how did Peter … say, “He went to preach the resurrection to the spirits shut up in prison”? But you say and name everything against nature, so that you may never, by recounting the dispensation according to nature, confirm the truth of the Word, that the Word truly became man. For you have said that it is the voice of God which says, “The mind of man is intently set on evil from his youth,” not understanding that by saying “from his youth” he showed what comes from sowing and is perishable. That is why the Lord swore truth to David, to raise up the Christ according to the flesh from the fruit of his body—not a man to be seen by a transformation of the Godhead (for then what need was there for the Lord to swear to David?), but one who took the form of the servant in enduring birth from a woman and growth in stature like ours, as the Apostle says, “Since therefore the children share in blood and flesh, he himself likewise partook of the same things”: “likewise,” because not from seed but from the Spirit; “the same things,” because not from elsewhere but from the seed of David and of Abraham and of Adam, as it is written.

How then, passing over the holy Scriptures and the manifestation of the truth, do you say: “If he did not appear as a man from himself but became man by taking a human existence, then he was joined to a man; and the crucified Lord of glory will be a man”? If, then, you hear Peter saying, “God made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified,” to what do you refer the “making”? If to the Godhead of the Word, why do you still blame the Arians, when you think the same as they? But if to the form of the servant in the Word, why do you still fight against yourselves? But you have not believed so; for again you say: “If the nature that sinned came to be in God without committing sin, then it is held by necessity; and what is held by necessity is forced.” Tell us, then: if not sinning happens by necessity, sinning will be by nature; you will grant, then, that the creator of nature is the worker of sin. But if such a thing is blasphemy, and sinning has come about by necessity, it is plain that not sinning is by nature. That is why, in … [the nature], subject not to necessity but by nature and power, displays sinlessness, having dissolved the bound of necessity, the law of sin, and the … as the prophet says, “You ascended on high, you led captivity captive.” For the Word, putting forward the form of the servant against the enemy, won the victory through the one who had once been defeated. That is why Jesus completed every temptation, because he took all that had experienced temptation, through which he won the victory on behalf of men, saying, “Take courage, I have conquered the world.” For the devil did not raise war against the Godhead, of which he was ignorant, [but against man, whom] he was able to deceive, and from him extended the working of his wickedness to all men. But since the soul of Adam was held under the condemnation of death and cried out continually to its Master, and those who had pleased God and been justified under the natural law were held with Adam, mourning and crying out with him, God, having mercy on the man whom he had made, [willed] to accomplish salvation for the race of men, to bring down the enemy who had deceived out of envy, and to show forth an incomparable exaltation of man by union with the Most High, and …

That is why the Word came, being God, … for the giving of life to man and the overthrow of the unjust enemy; and he was born of a woman, raising up in himself the form of man from the first formation, in the display of flesh without fleshly wills and human thoughts, in the image of newness. For the will is of the Godhead alone, since the whole nature is the Word’s, in the display of the human form and the visible flesh of the second Adam—not in a division of persons, but in an existence of Godhead and humanity. For this is why the devil approached Jesus as a man; but finding in him no advance for his present attempt …, he was defeated. [Who is] this one coming from Edom—that is, from the earth of men—passing over by force with strength? That is why the Lord said, “The ruler of this world is coming, and finds nothing in me.” And yet we have learned that the second Adam has soul and body and the whole of the first. For if the “nothing” were about the existence of a man, how did he find the body that was seen, when he had said “nothing”? But he did not find in him the things which he himself had worked in the first Adam; and so sin was destroyed in Christ. That is why Scripture also testifies, “Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth.”

How then do you say that it is impossible for man, once taken captive, to become free of captivity? So that you attribute impossibility to God and possibility to the devil, saying that his sin in the nature of men cannot be undone, as the other heretics also do; and that this is why the Godhead, which cannot be taken captive, came in the likeness of flesh and soul, so that it might itself remain uncaptured and so be seen as pure righteousness. When, then, was the righteousness of the Godhead not pure? And what benefit to men is there in this, unless the Lord appeared in identity of existence and newness of nature, as the Apostle says, “the way which he opened for us,” and “the life and the truth”? But you say that those who believe are saved by likeness and imitation, and not by renewal and the firstfruits. And how then did Christ become “firstborn among many brothers,” and “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep,” he who is “the head of the body, the Church”? For faith that rests on what is plainly visible would not be called faith; but faith is that which believes the impossible in power, the weak in strength, the passible in impassibility, the corruptible in incorruption, and the mortal in immortality. “This mystery is great,” as the Apostle says, “but I speak with reference to Christ and the Church.” For the Godhead did not come to justify itself, for it had not sinned; but “he became poor for our sake, though he was rich, so that we by his poverty might become rich.” How did God become poor? In that he took up into himself the nature that had become poor, suffering among men, being for men, made manifest from men, and become wholly God’s. For if he had not become firstborn among many brothers, how would he have appeared as firstborn from the dead? How then do you say, “God who suffered and rose through flesh”? Alas for the absurdity and the blasphemy! Such daring belongs to the Arians. For they put forward such blasphemy fearlessly, having learned to name the Son of God “God” in pretence; and yet Scripture teaches that it is through God that the suffering took place in his flesh, and not that God suffered through flesh.

You, then, who profess beforehand to confess consubstantiality—how do you drag the indivisible name down into suffering? Dragging into suffering the undivided nature, the inexpressible Godhead, the unchangeable and unalterable consubstantiality, and confessing it [raised] by resurrection? For if the Word, transforming flesh out of himself, went as far as suffering, taking to himself nothing capable of suffering or resurrection, he himself would be the one who suffered and rose from the dead; and the suffering will be common to the Trinity, as Valentinus holds, since the Word is undivided from the Father in the divine nature. But if you wish to understand these things so, what is the promise through the prophets, or the genealogy of the evangelists, or the testimony of the apostles, or the presence of his mother Mary, or the growth in stature, or the proof given by eating, or the showing of fellow-feeling in all things, or the application of the name, or that the Son of God became son of man, or that “the man Jesus Christ gave himself as a ransom for us,” or that “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be killed, and on the third day rise from the dead”? But if you do not believe that Christ is passible because he is man and impassible because he is God, but in your perplexity reckon that if you confess Christ as God and man you no longer speak of one but of two, then you must either call the dispensation of the suffering, death, and resurrection an appearance, like Marcion and the other heretics, or call the Godhead of the Word passible, like Arius and his followers …

For if, in reading the divine Scriptures, you had observed how in the law and the prophets, the Gospels and the apostles, they everywhere first call the Lord man and then attach the suffering, so as never to let fall a blasphemous word against the Godhead—that is why they have not spoken of a birth of the Godhead of the Word [in time], but confess the Father and proclaim the Son; while from Mary they trace the genealogy of Christ according to the flesh as son of David and of Joseph, by the taking of the form of the servant, so that his humanity may be believed to be from men, and he may be confessed as God the Word from God the Father, bearing the sufferings on behalf of men in the passible form taken from men, displaying impassibility in the suffering body, immortality in the dying one, incorruption in the buried one, victory in the tempted one, and newness in the one grown old; for “our old man was crucified with him”; this is the grace. Nowhere does the Godhead admit suffering apart from a suffering body; nor does it show trouble and grief apart from a soul that grieves and is troubled; nor is it distressed and does it pray apart from an understanding that is distressed and prays. For even if what is said did not come about through a defeat of nature, what took place was done as a display of real existence. How then have you written, “God who suffered and rose through flesh”? For if it is God who suffered and rose through flesh, you will call the Father too passible, and the Paraclete, since the name is one and the divine nature is one.

From this saying one can see what your mind is, as of men who do not fear God and do not obey the divine Scriptures. For Moses writes of God, “Our God is a consuming fire”; but of his coming in the flesh he says that the Lord will raise up a prophet “from your brothers,” and that “the life” will be “hanging on a tree,” referring to the body of the Lord, which became life for us. And Isaiah cries out, saying of God, “God the great, the eternal, who made the ends of the earth, will not hunger nor grow weary”; [but of the man]: “being in affliction and knowing how to bear sickness.” What does “knowing how to bear sickness” mean? That the capacity for suffering was shown from the one who suffered. That is why it says, “Write with a man’s pen in the new volume,” and not “of formless flesh.” And the Apostle says, “The man Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us”; that is why he attaches the resurrection to the one from the seed of David, speaking according to the flesh; but of his Godhead: “For the Word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword.” And the Lord places the suffering upon the Son of Man, showing what is according to the flesh; but of his Godhead: “I and the Father are one,” and, “No one knows the Son …” … [Nowhere] have the Scriptures handed down [a suffering of the Godhead] apart from flesh, or God suffering and rising through flesh. Such daring belongs to the Arians, since they do not confess the Son of God to be true God. But the holy Scriptures, God having become man in flesh and the flesh being God’s, proclaim the blood, the suffering, and the resurrection of the body of God, a resurrection from the dead. You say the opposite, as though wiser than the apostles, more versed in mysteries than the prophets, more authoritative than the evangelists, or even more authoritative than the Lord …, uttering things against the truth and against the Godhead, though the dispensation was plainly shown even on the cross: the flesh confirmed by the outpouring of blood, and the cry uttered, signifying the soul, showing not a separation of the Godhead but signifying the deadening of the body; the Godhead neither leaving the body in the tomb nor being separated from the soul in Hades. For this is what was spoken through the prophets: “You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your holy one see corruption.” That is why the Lord said, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself,” that is, “being present, I display it.”

That is why in the soul of God the hold of death was loosed and the resurrection from Hades took place, and the resurrection from the dead was proclaimed to the souls; while in the body of Christ corruption was abolished and incorruption was shown from the tomb. So the man was not separated from God, nor did God describe an abandonment of the man, nor were the deadening and the departure of the spirit a removal of God from the body, but a separation of the soul from the body; for there our death was portrayed. But if God was separated from the body, and so the deadening was shown, how did the body, separated from the incorruptible God, display incorruption? How did the Word make his entry into Hades? Or how did he display the resurrection from Hades? Did he himself rise in place of our soul, so as to fit the image of our resurrection? And how can one think such things of God? Your rule, then, is out of harmony with the holy Scriptures, and your opinion does not fit the dispensation that has been fulfilled. And “Sit at my right hand” is not the rank of a man but of God. But since the rank of God became the rank of a man, so that the rank of the man might be believed to be the rank of God, it is said, “Sit at my right hand,” and, “Glorify me, Father, with the eternal glory.” He does not say this as one separated from the glory, but as one who had come to be in an inglorious body, to show that the form of the servant is not separated from the divine glory but displays it. That is why he says, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again,” showing one glory before the body and in the body, as the Apostle says: “Having become as much better than the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. For to which of the angels did he ever say, ‘Sit at my right hand’?” It is not at all that the Word, the maker of the angels, became better, as though he were less; but he displayed the form of the servant that rose up in him as better than the angels and indeed than all creation; since, being “the image of the invisible God,” he also became “the firstborn of all creation,” as it is written also in the Gospels, “until she bore her firstborn son.” Therefore “in him all things were created,” and in him the suffering took place, and he is the deliverer from suffering and death, and “through him all things came to be,” and he is “the head of the body, the Church,” who is “the firstborn from the dead,” so that, it says, “he himself might be pre-eminent in all things.”

How then do you say that the Word, the creator of rational natures, by blending flesh with himself became a rational man? And how did he become man unchangeable and unalterable, and not by forming for himself a rational form of the servant, so that the Word might be unchangeable, remaining what he was, and the rational man be seen on earth, being God? For the Lord is a heavenly man, not by displaying flesh from heaven, but by making the flesh from the earth heavenly. Therefore “as is the heavenly one, so also are those who are heavenly,” by their share in his holiness. Therefore he has made his own [the things of the body] … they crucified the Lord of glory; but they did not crucify the Word, as you would have it—far from it!—but they rejected the Word by nailing the body of the Word to the cross. For it was God who was rejected; but the suffering, the death, and the resurrection belonged to God’s flesh and soul. That is why the Lord said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” … [it was] his soul [that underwent] death, and not the Word himself. And John says, “He laid down his soul for us.” How then were the Jews able to destroy a temple of God and to separate the indissoluble blending of the flesh with the Word, if the deadening of the body happened in the way you say? For the body would not have been deadened unless it had been separated from something. For if there was no dissolution, there was no death; and if there was no death, there was no resurrection. Grant, then, that the dissolution and the separation from the body took place, as it is written in the Gospels, “He breathed his last,” and, “Bowing his head, he handed over the spirit,” so that we may see what spirit you suppose to have departed from the body, and the deadening to have taken place. For you have said, “The Word, blending with himself flesh that lacked subsistence, displayed the truly rational and perfect man.” If, then, the Word departed from the body and so the deadening took place, the Jews prevailed against God by dissolving the indissoluble blending. Then it was not our death that took place there, if the deadening of the body took place by the separation of God. And how did the body, separated from the incorruptible God, remain in incorruption? The wound will be the body’s, but the suffering the Word’s. That is why you speak of God having suffered, speaking consistently with yourselves, or rather in agreement with the Arians, for this is what they teach. And by your account the Word too will be raised by resurrection. For it is necessary that someone took the beginning of the resurrection from Hades, so that the resurrection might be complete, and the loosing of death, and the release of the spirits there.

But if the Word suffered these things, where is the Word’s unchangeableness and unalterableness? And how was the Word, seen unveiled in Hades, reckoned in death as a man? And how did the Lord say to the Jews, “I will raise it up,” and not, “I rise from Hades”? For if the Word, having come to be in death, needed someone to raise him from death, the victory will not be his but that of the one who raises him. And how was it foretold through the prophets about his soul? How did the Lord, being present, say, fulfilling the promise, “I lay down my soul for my sheep”? The holy Scriptures teach clearly that this soul is spirit; and the Lord said that the body is killed by men, “but they cannot kill the soul,” since it is spirit. In this spirit Jesus was troubled; this spirit departed from the body on the cross. And so the body was deadened, and its dissolution took place, while God the Word held unchangeably to the body, to the soul, and to himself, being in the bosom of the Father, in a display of unchangeableness. But in the form like ours that came to be in him, he portrayed our death there, so that in it he might also fit together the resurrection on our behalf, displaying the soul from Hades and the body from the tomb; so that in death he might destroy death by the display of the soul, and in the tomb abolish corruption by the burial of the body, displaying immortality and incorruption from Hades and from the tomb, having travelled our road in a form like ours and loosed the hold that was upon us. And so, confessing flesh only, you can show neither the condemnation of sin, nor the destruction of death, nor the completion of the resurrection, nor the unchangeableness of the Word; since you have gone outside the holy Scriptures, saying … [as] the Arians play the sophist, although the account of the soul is plain in the holy Scriptures, and the dispensation has been fulfilled in a display of all fulfilment and completion …

But some of the heretics, confessing the one who was seen, disbelieve his Godhead; others, confessing God, deny the birth of his flesh; others, confessing the flesh besides, deny the display of his soul; and they have become like the frenzied children of the Arians, who weave together tangled and crooked propositions so that, raising difficulties with them, they may catch the simple, though they themselves are at a loss for the faith. In the same way these too have learned to say: “What is the one born of Mary? God or man?” Then, if someone says “Man,” he will disbelieve his Godhead and agree with the heretics who disbelieved it; but if he says “God,” he will deny the birth of his flesh and be counted with the heretics who deny it. Then again: “Who suffered? Who was crucified? God or man?” So that, if he says “God,” he lets fall a blasphemous word like the impious Arians; but if he says “Man,” he again speaks with a Jewish supposition. That is why the holy Scriptures proclaim the Word as God, ineffably from the Father, and the same born as man in the last times from the Virgin; so that neither God be disbelieved nor the birth of the flesh denied. And where the name of flesh is used, there is the harmony of the whole constitution, without sin. And they place the suffering upon the name of man and do not go beyond it, as it is written in the holy Scriptures; but concerning the Godhead of the Word they confess his unchangeableness and ineffability. That is why the Word is spoken of as God and his genealogy traced as man, so that in respect of both he may be the same, naturally and truly: God in respect of the eternity of the Godhead and the creation of the world; man in respect of birth from a woman and growth in stature. God in respect of life-giving benefits and mighty in works of wonder; man in respect of fellow-feeling of the same kind as ours and weaknesses like ours. God the Word in the display of immortality, incorruption, and unchangeableness; man in the nailing to the cross, the flowing of blood, the burial of the body, the descent into Hades, and the resurrection from the dead. Thus Christ has been raised from the dead, and, being God, he raises the dead.