On the Incarnation of the Lord, against Nestorius 3.1–3.11

Writing to the Romans, that divine teacher of the churches, when he was rebuking, or rather lamenting, the unbelief of the Jews, that is, of his brothers, used these words: “I could wish,” he says, “that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belong the adoption of sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever.” O the affection of a most faithful apostle and a most dutiful kinsman, who with inestimable love wishes to die both for his kinsmen as their neighbor and for his disciples as their teacher! And what, after all, was his reason for wishing to die? One only: that they might live. And in what did their life consist? In this, of course, as he himself says: that they should recognize as God the Christ born according to the flesh of their own flesh. And therefore the apostle grieved the more, because they did not understand the one born of Israel, whom they ought to love the more as sprung from their own. “Of whom,” he says, “is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever”: he says, that is, that the Christ born of them according to the flesh is God over all, blessed forever. You do not deny that Christ was born of them according to the flesh; but the same one who was born of them is God. Why do you go around? Why do you evade? The apostle says that Christ, born of Israel according to the flesh, is God: show when he was not. “Of whom,” he says, “is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all.” You see that, since the apostle has joined this in unity, God cannot be separated from Christ at all. For as the apostle proclaims that Christ is of them, so he affirms that God is in Christ. You must either deny both or confess both. Christ is said to have been born of them according to the flesh, but the same is proclaimed by the apostle God in Christ. Hence also elsewhere: “For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” This can in no way be divided one from the other. Either deny that Christ was born of them, or confess that God in Christ was born of the virgin, who, he says, “is God over all, blessed forever.”

The name of God alone could abundantly have sufficed for the faithful to indicate the majesty of the Godhead; but by adding “God over all, blessed,” he shut out the blasphemy of a faithless assertion, so that none of the impious might take the name of God, which is sometimes granted even to men temporarily by a gift of the divine dispensation, to the injury of the supreme Godhead and fit it to comparisons insulting to God; as, for example, what God says to Moses: “I have made you a god to Pharaoh,” or that word: “I said, You are gods,” since these plainly carry the meaning of a name granted. For where he says “I said,” it is not so much a name of power as the speech of the one speaking. And where he says “I have made you a god to Pharaoh,” it set forth not the Godhead of the receiver but the power of the giver. For since he said “I have made,” what is signified is surely the power of God who gave, not the nature of Godhead in him who received. But when it is said of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, “who is God over all, blessed forever,” the thing is at once proved in the word and the thing meant by the word is shown in the name, because the name of God in the Son of God is not the meaning of an adoption granted but the truth and property of nature.

“Therefore,” the same apostle says, “from now on we know no one according to the flesh; even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.” All the writings of the holy word agree well with one another, and in every part, even where they do not sound alike in the form of the words, they still agree in the force of the things; as in this saying: “Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.” For the witness of the present saying confirms the earlier one, where he said: “Of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever.” There he put “of whom is Christ according to the flesh,” here “even if we have known Christ according to the flesh”; there “who is God over all,” here “we no longer know Christ according to the flesh.” The form of the words is different, but the force of the thing is one. For the same one whom there he proclaims, born according to the flesh, to be God over all, here he affirms that he no longer knows according to the flesh: because the same one whom he had known born in the flesh he confesses to be God forever, and therefore he does not know him according to the flesh, because he is God over all, blessed forever. And so there “who is God over all” means “we no longer know Christ according to the flesh,” and here “we no longer know Christ according to the flesh” means “who is God, blessed forever.” So the apostolic preaching climbs, as it were, to a higher step of teaching; and though it agrees with itself in sense in both places, it confirms the sacrament of perfect faith with a more express statement, saying: “Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer”; that is, because before we knew him as both man and God, and now only as God. For since the weakness of the flesh has ceased, we now know nothing in him but the power of the Godhead, because all in him is the power of the divine majesty, where the weakness of human frailty has ceased to be. By this testimony, then, he set out the whole mystery both of the flesh assumed and of the perfect Godhead. For in saying “even if we have known Christ according to the flesh” he spoke of the sacrament of God born in the flesh; and in adding “now we know him so no longer” he explained the force of the weakness laid aside. And so that knowing of the flesh belongs to the meaning of the man, and the not knowing to the honor of the Godhead. For this is to say: we knew Christ according to the flesh as long as there was something to be known according to the flesh; now we know him so no longer, since it has ceased to be. For the nature of the flesh has been transferred into a spiritual substance, and what had once been man’s has become wholly God’s. And therefore we do not know Christ according to the flesh, because, the bodily weakness having been swallowed up by the divine majesty, nothing has remained in the holy body from which weakness of flesh could be recognized in him. And thus whatever had before been of twofold substance has become of one power, since there is surely no doubt that Christ, who was crucified out of our weakness, lives wholly by the divine majesty.

Proclaiming this in the whole body of his writings, the apostle rightly says also, writing to the Galatians: “Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.” You see how well the earlier and present passages agree. There he says: “Now we no longer know Christ according to the flesh”; here he says: “Not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ.” It is plain how here too he teaches the same as above. For by saying that he was sent not through man, he says this: we do not know Christ according to the flesh. And therefore: I was sent not through man but through Christ, because being sent through Christ I was sent not through man but through God. For the name of man no longer falls on him in whom the Godhead has claimed the whole. And therefore, having said that he was sent not from men nor through man but through Jesus Christ, he rightly added “and God the Father,” that is, indicating that he was sent by God the Father and by God the Son. In them, though because of the mystery of the holy and ineffable generation there are two persons, of the one begetting and of the one begotten, there is yet one power of God who sends. And therefore, saying that he was sent by God the Father and God the Son, he showed a number of two in the persons, but taught one power in the sending.

“But through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” That excellent and admirable teacher, knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ must be proclaimed true man as well as true God, always proclaims the majesty of the Godhead in him in such a way as never to give up the confession of the incarnation: shutting out both the phantom of Marcion by a true incarnation and the poverty of Ebion by a perfect Godhead, so that through neither perversity of blasphemy should the Lord Jesus Christ be believed either a man entirely without God or God without man. Rightly, then, the apostle, proclaiming that he was sent by God the Son as well as by God the Father, at once added the confession of the Lord’s incarnation, saying: “who raised him from the dead,” teaching that the true body of the incarnate God was raised from the dead, according to that word: “even if we have known Christ according to the flesh,” rightly adding: “yet now we know him so no longer.” For he says that he knows him according to the flesh in this, that he was raised from the dead; but that he no longer knows him according to the flesh in this, that, the frailty of the flesh having ceased, he knows him to be only in the power of God: a faithful and well-qualified witness for proclaiming the Lord’s Godhead, who, chastened from heaven at the beginning of his calling, not only believed by the faith of his mind in the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ risen from the dead but also proved it with his bodily eyes.

Hence also, speaking before King Agrippa and the other judges of the world, he says: “As I was going to Damascus with the authority and permission of the chief priest, at midday, O king, I saw on the road a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining around me and all who were with me; and when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goad. And I said: Who are you, Lord? And the Lord said to me: I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.” You see that the apostle rightly said he no longer knew according to the flesh the one whom he had seen in such brightness of majesty. For when, in his very prostration, he had seen that radiance of divine light which he could not bear, this voice followed: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And when he asked who it was, the Lord answered with this plain indication of his person: “I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.” You, you, I say, heretic, I now question, you I address: do you believe the apostle about himself or not? Or, if you think that too little, do you believe the Lord about himself or not? If you believe, the question is finished; for you must believe what we believe. For with the apostle we say, “even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer”: we do not insult Christ, we do not separate the flesh from God, and we believe that the whole of what Christ is, is in God. If, then, you believe the same as we believe, you must confess the same sacraments of faith. But if you dissent from us, if you believe neither the churches nor the apostle nor finally God himself about himself, show us, in what the apostle saw, what is flesh and what is God. For I can distinguish nothing here. I see an ineffable illumination, I see an inexpressible brightness, I see a splendor unbearable to human frailty, the majesty of God shining with an inestimable light beyond what mortal eyes can bear. What division is there here, what separation? In the voice we hear Jesus, in the majesty we see God: what does this mean but that we should believe God and Jesus to be in one and the same substance? Yet I want to say something more to you about this same thing. Tell me, I ask, if what then appeared to the apostle in his ignorance should now appear to you as you persecute the catholic faith: if that brightness surrounded you, unexpecting and secure, and the splendor of immense light struck you down, shaken and terrified, and you lay in the darkness of your eyes and of your errors, darkness that an immense and unspeakable dread of mind increased; tell me, I beg, when the fear of imminent death was pressing on you and the terror of the majesty threatening from above was bearing down, if you too heard in such confusion of mind that name, worthy of your faithlessness: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” and when you asked who it was, the answer came from heaven: “I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting”: what would you say? “I don’t know; I don’t yet fully believe; I want to deliberate further with myself whom I should think you to be who speak from heaven, who overwhelm me with the brightness of your Godhead, whose voice I hear and whose majesty I cannot bear. I must examine this matter, whether you are to be believed or not, whether you are Christ or God, whether God alone or in Christ, whether Christ alone or in God. I want this distinction subtly observed and carefully considered, what you are to be believed, what you are to be judged. For I do not want to lose anything of my duty, so that, while I despise you as a man, I should pay you any divine honor.” If, then, you lay prostrate on the ground as Paul, then apostle, lay, and, overshadowed by the brightness of the divine light, were breathing your last, perhaps you would say these things, perhaps you would yap these things with the chatter of idle talkativeness. But what are we to make of the fact that the apostle then thought otherwise? When he had fallen trembling and half dead, he did not think he should pretend any longer, did not think he should deliberate further, and it was enough for him that, admonished by unspeakable experience, he knew to be God the one whom in his ignorance he had believed to be a man. He did not pretend, did not delay, did not keep his wrongly conceived error suspended by faithless deliberation; but having heard from heaven the name of Jesus his Lord, he answered with the voice of one submissive as a servant, trembling as one scourged, devoted as one converted: “What shall I do, Lord?” And so by his most ready and devoted faith he at once earned this, that he would never lack the one whom he faithfully believed, and that he to whom he had passed over in heart should himself pass over into his heart, as the apostle himself says of himself: “Do you seek a proof of the Christ who speaks in me?”

Here, heretic, I want you to explain to me whether this one whom the apostle says spoke within him is man or God. If man, how could the body of another speak in his heart? If God, then Christ is no longer man but God; for since Christ spoke in the apostle, and none but God could speak in him, then it was Christ as God who spoke in him. So you see that nothing can now be said here, and no disjunction or division can be made between Christ and God, because God is wholly in Christ and Christ wholly in God. No separation can be admitted here, no rending; there is only one simple confession, only one pious, only one sound: to adore, to love, to worship Christ as God. But do you want to know still more fully and abundantly that there is no distance between God and Christ, and that the same one is to be understood to be God who is Christ? Hear the apostle speaking to the Corinthians: “For we must all,” he says, “be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive what belongs to the body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil.” And in another place, writing to the Roman church, he says: “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written: As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” You see, then, that the judgment seat of God will be one and the same as that of Christ. Understand, then, without doubt that Christ is God, and where you see that the substance of Christ and of God is inseparable, recognize also that the person is inseparable; unless perhaps, because the apostle said in one letter that we must be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ and in another before the judgment seat of God, you will make two judgment seats and think that some are to be judged by Christ and others by God. But these are trifling and mad notions, madder than madmen’s. Recognize, then, the Lord of all; recognize the God of the universe; recognize in the judgment seat of God the judgment seat of Christ; recognize in the judgment seat of Christ the judgment seat of God; love life, love your salvation, love him by whom you were created, fear him by whom you will be judged. For like it or not, you must be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; and, setting aside the blasphemy of impiety and the singsong of faithless words, if you think the judgment seat of God is other than that of Christ, you will come before the judgment seat of Christ and you will find by an unanswerable proof that the very judgment seat of God is that of Christ, and that in Christ the Son of God is the whole majesty of the Son of God and the power of God the Father. “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father.” For whoever denies the Father denies the Son also; “everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father; whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.” Learn, then, that the honor of the Father and the Son is inseparable, their dignity inseparable, and that the Son cannot be honored without the Father, nor the Father without the Son. But no one can honor God and the Son of God except in Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, because he cannot have the very spirit of honoring God except in the Spirit of Christ, as the apostle says: “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.” And again: “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is it that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who rose again.” You see, then, even if you do not wish it, that there is no difference at all either between the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ or between the judgment of God and the judgment of Christ. Choose which you prefer, for one or the other must happen: either you will understand by faith that Christ is God, or you will come to know God in Christ by condemnation.

But let us look at the rest that follows. Writing to the church of the Corinthians, the same Paul, teacher of all the churches, of whom we spoke above, said this: “The Jews,” he says, “ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, but to those who are being saved, Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” O most valiant teacher of the faith! As he taught the churches, even in this place it seemed too little to him to say that Christ is God unless he had added “crucified,” so that, for the most open and strong teaching of the faith, he might proclaim the same one whom he called crucified to be the wisdom of God. So he used no subtlety or circumlocution of words, nor in preaching the Lord’s gospel was he ashamed of the name of the cross of Christ. And though it was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles to hear of God born, to hear of God embodied, to hear of God suffering, to hear of God crucified, he did not, because of the impiety of the Jews’ stumbling, weaken the force of his own piety, nor, because of the unbelief of others’ foolishness, lessen the strength of his faith; but openly, steadfastly, bravely he proclaimed the one whom a mother had borne, whom men had killed, whom a lance had pierced, whom a cross had stretched out, to be the power and wisdom of God, “a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.” Yet what was a stumbling block and foolishness to some was to others the power and wisdom of God. For with the difference of persons went a difference of understanding; and what a foolish distrust, without sound understanding and incapable of the true good, had denied, a wise faith felt within the very recesses of the soul to be holy and saving.

Tell me, then, heretic, enemy indeed of all, but chiefly of yourself, to whom the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ is both a stumbling block with the Jews and foolishness with the Gentiles, who reject the sacraments of true salvation both by the stumbling of the one and by the stupidity of the other: why was the preaching of the apostle Paul either foolishness to the pagans or a stumbling block to the Jews? Could it have offended men if he too had taught, as you assert, that Christ was a mere man? To whom could his birth, his passion, his cross, his death have been incredible or hard? Or what new or unheard-of thing would Paul’s preaching have contained if he had said that Christ was a man who suffered what the human condition endures everywhere every day among men? But this of course was what Gentile foolishness would not receive and what Jewish unbelief rejected: that the apostle said that Christ, whom they, like you, thought a mere man, was God. This of course was what the mind of the impious refused, what the ears of the faithless could not bear: that in the man Jesus Christ the birth of God was proclaimed, the passion of God asserted, the cross of God announced. This of course was hard, this incredible, because it was incredible to human hearing that something unheard of had happened to the divine nature. So you are safe with such an assertion and teaching, since your preaching will never be foolishness to the Gentiles or a stumbling block to the Jews: you will never be crucified with Peter by Jews and Gentiles, or stoned with James, or beheaded with Paul, for your preaching does not carry their offense. You assert that a mere man was born, a mere man suffered. You need not fear that they will harm you by persecution, since you confirm them by your preaching.

But let us see something more about this very thing. Christ, then, according to the apostle, is the power of God and the wisdom of God. What have you to answer? Where can you turn? You can neither get out from here nor go further. Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God. He, I say, whom the Jews hunted down, whom the Gentiles mocked, whom you yourself persecute with them; he, I say, who is foolishness to the pagans and a stumbling block to the Jews and both to you; he, I say, is the power of God and the wisdom of God. What can you do? Perhaps you will stop your ears so as not to hear: the Jews too did this when the apostle preached. Do what you will, Christ is in heaven and in God, and with him and in him in the regions above, in whom he was also in the regions below. You cannot now persecute him with the Jews; but still you do the one thing you can: you persecute him in the faith, you persecute him in the church, you persecute him with the dart of an impious opinion, you persecute him with the sword of a depraved doctrine. Perhaps you do something more than some of the old Jews: you persecute Christ now, after even those who had persecuted him came to believe. But perhaps you think it a lesser crime because you can no longer lay hands on him. No less, I say, no less grievous to him is that persecution in which the impious persecute him in his own people. But the name of the Lord’s cross offends you: this has always offended the Jews too. You shudder to hear that God suffered: this too the error of the Gentiles mocked. I ask now, then, in what part you differ from them, since you agree with them in this perversity. But I, so far from lessening this preaching of the holy cross, this preaching of the Lord’s passion, increase it as far as my wish and my means allow. For I will proclaim the one who was crucified to be not only the power and wisdom of God, than which nothing is greater, but also the Lord of the whole Godhead and majesty; all the more because in this my speech is the teaching of God, as the apostle says: “We speak wisdom among the perfect: yet a wisdom not of this world nor of the rulers of this world, who are being destroyed; but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, which is hidden, which God predestined before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this world knew; for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty; but as it is written: What eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.” You see how briefly the apostolic word has said great things. He says that he speaks wisdom, but a wisdom which only the perfect know and the wise of the world do not know. For he says that this is the wisdom of God, covered by a divine mystery and predestined before all ages for the glory of the saints, and therefore known only to those who savor God but wholly unknown to the rulers of this world. And he added the reason by which to prove both things he had said: “For if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty. But as it is written: What eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.” You see, then, that the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery and predestined before the ages was unknown to those who crucified the Lord of majesty, but known to those who received him. He rightly says that the wisdom of God was hidden in a mystery, because no man’s eye could ever see, or ear hear, or heart think that the Lord of majesty would be born of a virgin, or come in the flesh, or be subjected to the suffering of every punishment and insult. But as no one could ever grasp these gifts of God by himself while they were hidden in a mystery, so blessed is he who has known them revealed; hence whoever have not recognized it must be counted among the rulers of the world, and whoever have recognized it among the wise of God. He, then, who denies God born in the flesh does not recognize him; therefore you too who deny do not recognize him. But do what you will, deny as impiously as you please, we believe the apostle more. And why do I say the apostle? We believe God more; for we believe him through the apostle, being sure that he spoke in the apostle. The divine word says that the Lord of majesty was crucified by the rulers of this world; you deny it. Those too who were crucifying him denied that they were crucifying God. So those who confess have their share with the apostle who confesses; you must have your portion with the persecutors. What more, then, can be said here? The apostle says that the Lord of majesty was crucified. Change this if you can; separate Jesus from God now, if you are able. You certainly cannot deny that Christ was crucified by the Jews; but it is the Lord of majesty who was crucified. Therefore you must either deny that Christ was fastened to the cross, or confess that God was fastened to it.

But perhaps it offends you that I speak so long with the testimonies of one apostle, chiefly Paul. He whom God chose is fit enough for me. For I am not ashamed to have as witness of my faith the one whom God willed to be teacher of the whole world. Yet to fall in with your wish in this, since you perhaps think I have no others whose testimonies I can use, hear Martha in the Gospel proclaiming the perfect sacrament of human salvation and everlasting blessedness. For what does she say? “Yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, who have come into this world.” Learn true faith from a woman, learn the confession of eternal hope. Yet you have great comfort: do not be ashamed to learn the sacrament of salvation from one from whom God did not refuse to receive testimony.