On the Incarnation of the Lord, against Nestorius 5.1–5.9

We said in the first book that that heresy, the disciple and imitator of the Pelagian heresy, tried and fought in every way to have the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, born of the virgin, believed to be only a mere man, who, having afterwards taken the way of virtue, obtained by living piously and devoutly that through this holiness of life he became worthy to have the divine majesty join itself to him; and so, the dignity of his holy origin wholly shut out from him, only the choice of merits was left to him. They strove and labored for this, that, with him sent as it were among the common people of all and gathered as it were into the crowd of the human race, they might say that all men can earn by a life of good deeds whatever he earned by living well: a pestilent and deadly assertion, which, taking from God what is true and promising men what is false, is guilty in both respects of a wicked and damnable lie, since it both does God the injury of sacrilege and leads men into the hope of a false presumption, by a most perverse and impious assertion giving mortality what it did not have and taking from God what he had. From this deadly and ruinous depravity, then, this recent heresy which has now arisen, stirring up the ashes, as it were, to new life, has kindled a new fire from the old embers: for it asserts that the Lord Jesus Christ was born a mere man. And therefore what need is there for us to ask whether in its consequences there is the perversity that is in the very head of this one crime? It is surely superfluous to wait to see in its later parts what it is, when at its very beginning it has left no reason for waiting at all. For what reason is there to inquire whether, like the earlier heresy, it promises the same things to man, when, which is a most monstrous crime, it takes the same things from God, so that it is almost impious, when we see what has gone before, to ask what follows? As if any reason could be brought forward in the consequences by which one who has denied God could prove himself not impious. The new heresy, then, as we have often said, says that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of the virgin only a mere man, and that therefore Mary should be called Christotokos, not Theotokos, because she is the mother of Christ, not of God. Moreover, to its sacrilegious assertion it adds arguments as perverse as they are trifling, saying: “No one gives birth to one older than herself.” As if the birth of the only-begotten of God, foretold by the prophets, announced beforehand from the ages, were to be handled or judged by human reasonings! Or as if the virgin Mary herself, heretic, whoever you are, whom you slander about her childbearing, had done and accomplished what was done by her own powers, so that human weakness could be objected against her in so great a matter and so great a work! If, then, anything in this matter was done by the work of man, look for human reasons; but if all that was done is the power of God, why do you look at human impossibility where you see divine effecting? But of this more fully later. Now let us follow out what we began to set out a little before, so that all may know that you are looking for fire in Pelagian ashes and stirring up old embers with new blasts of sacrilege.

You say, then, that Christ was born a mere man. This surely is what that heresy of Pelagian impiety, which we plainly showed in the first book, also proclaimed: that Christ was born a mere man. You add, moreover, that the Lord of all himself, Jesus Christ, should be called a theodochos image, that is, not God but the receiver of God; that is, so that you think he should be honored not for his own sake, because he is God, but because he receives God into himself. This too that heresy I mentioned before asserted: that Christ is to be worshiped not for his own sake, as being God, but because by good and pious acts he earned to have God in himself. So you see that you are vomiting Pelagian poison and hissing with a Pelagian spirit. Hence it is fitting that you should seem not so much to be judged as already judged, because, since you hold the same error, you must also be believed to deserve the same condemnation: not to mention for now that, by comparing God to an imperial statue, you have burst out into such impiety of sacrilege and blasphemy that you seem quite rightly to have outdone in this madness even Pelagius himself, who outdid almost everyone in impiety.

You say, then, that Christ should be called a theodochos image, that is, honored not for his own sake, because he is God, but because he has received God into himself. In this way, then, you assert that there is no difference between him and all the holy men who have been, since all holy men surely had God in them; for we are not ignorant that God was in the patriarchs and spoke in the prophets. Finally we believe that not only the apostles and martyrs, I say, but also all the saints and servants of God have the Spirit of God in them, according to that word: “For you are the temple of the living God, as God said: For I will dwell in them”; and again: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” And so all these are theodochoi, and in this way you say that all are entirely like Christ and equal to God. But far be this impiety of an abominable error, that the maker should be compared with what he made, the Lord with his servants, the God of things on earth and in heaven with earthly frailty, and that this injury should be done him out of his own benefits, that, because he deigns to dwell in man, he should therefore be said to be the same as a man.

Rather, the difference between him and all the saints is that between a dwelling and the one who dwells in it; for that it is dwelt in belongs not to the dwelling but to the dweller, in whose choice are both the building of the dwelling and its use, that is, both to make the dwelling itself when he wishes, and, when he has made it, to deign to dwell in it. “Do you seek a proof,” says the apostle, “of the Christ who speaks in me?” And elsewhere: “Do you not know that Christ Jesus is in you, unless perhaps you are reprobate?” And again: “that Christ may dwell in the inner man through faith in your hearts.” You see what difference there is between the apostolic teaching and your blasphemy. You say that God dwells in Christ as in a man; he testifies that Christ himself dwells in men, which surely, as you say, flesh and blood cannot do; so that he is proved God by the very thing by which you deny him to be God. For since you do not deny that the one who dwells in a man is God, we must most plainly believe to be God the one whom you know to dwell in men. All, then, whether patriarchs or prophets or apostles or martyrs or finally all the saints, did have God in themselves, and all were made sons of God, and all were theodochoi, but surely in a very different and unlike way. For all who believe in God are sons of God by adoption, but the Only-begotten alone is Son by nature. He was not begotten by the Father from any matter, because everything and all the matter of things is through the only-begotten Son of God; not from nothing, because from the Father; not as an offspring, because there is nothing empty and changeable in God; but ineffably and inconceivably God the Father begot his Only-begotten from what was unbegotten in himself; and so from the unbegotten, supreme and everlasting Father there is the only-begotten, supreme and everlasting Son, to be held the same in the flesh as he is held in the spirit, to be believed the same in the body as he is believed in majesty. For when he was to be born in the flesh he made no division or splitting of himself, so that some part of himself was born while some part was not, or that something of the Godhead came upon him afterwards that was not born in him. For according to the apostle all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily; not that it dwelt at one time and did not dwell at another, nor that it came to be afterwards and was not before; otherwise we fall back into that impiety of the Pelagian heresy, so as to say that God, dwelling in Christ from a certain time, came upon him when he had earned by his life and conduct that the power of the Godhead should dwell in him. These things belong to men, then, to men, not to God: that, as far as human weakness can, they should humble themselves before God, submit themselves to God, make themselves a dwelling of God, and earn by faith and piety to have God as guest and dweller; because as anyone is fit for God’s gift, so divine grace rewards him, and as anyone is thought worthy of God, so he enjoys God’s coming, according to that promise of the Lord: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father and I will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” But very different is the case and reckoning with Christ, in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and who so has the fullness of the Godhead in himself that he bestows on all from his fullness; who, with the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in him, himself dwells in each of the saints as he judges them worthy of his dwelling, and so gives to all from his fullness that he himself continues always in his fullness; who, even when he was on earth in his body, was nevertheless present in the souls of all the saints, and filled heaven, earth, sea, and finally the whole universe with the infinity of his power and majesty, and was so wholly in himself that the whole world could not contain him; because, however great and ineffable are the things that were made, none is so capacious and immense that it can contain its maker.

This, then, is the one of whom the prophet says: “For God is in you, and there is no God besides you. For you are our God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, the Savior”; who was afterwards surely seen on earth and lived among men; of whom also the prophet David says in his person: “From my mother’s womb you are my God,” showing surely that that man of the Lord was never without union with God, since in him, at once in the very womb of the virgin, the fullness of the Godhead dwelt. So too the same prophet says elsewhere: “Truth has sprung from the earth, and righteousness has looked down from heaven,” so that we might understand that, when the Son of God looked down from heaven, that is, when righteousness came and descended, there was born from the flesh of the virgin not the phantom of a body but the truth. For he is the truth, according to that testimony of the Truth himself: “I am the truth and the life.” Since, then, in the earlier books we proved this truth, that is, that the Lord Jesus Christ, born of the virgin, is God, now, as we began in the book just before, let us show that the one who was to be born of the virgin was always foretold as God. The prophet Isaiah, then, says: “Cease from the man whose breath is in his nostrils; for in what is he reckoned?” or, as it is more truly and plainly in the Hebrew: “for he is reckoned the Most High.” Beautifully, by saying “cease,” he expressed in a word of forbidding the restlessness of persecution. “Cease,” he says, “from the man whose breath is in his nostrils, for he is reckoned the Most High.” Did he not in one and the same sentence speak both of the taking of a human body and of the truth of God? “Cease,” he says, “from the man, for he is reckoned the Most High.” Does he not seem to you, I ask, to be openly addressing the Lord’s persecutors, saying: Cease from the man whom you persecute, because this man is God, and though he appears in the lowliness of human flesh, he still remains in the height of divine magnificence? Rightly the prophet, saying “Cease from the man whose breath is in his nostrils,” pointed out a man by a most certain mark of a human body, fearlessly indeed and confidently, as one who asserted the truth of the man as steadfastly as that of God; because this is the true and catholic faith, to believe that the Lord Jesus had the substance of a true body as he had the truth of perfect Godhead. Unless perhaps you think there is something doubtful in his having put “the Most High” for God; whereas it is surely the custom of holy Scripture to say “the Most High” for God, as that of the prophet: “The Most High uttered his voice, and the earth was moved”; and: “You alone are the Most High over all the earth.” Isaiah too: “For thus says the high and lofty One, who inhabits eternity.” In these it is plainly to be understood that, since there he put “the Most High” without adding “God,” here too he named God by the name “Most High.” Since, then, the divine word through the prophet plainly foretold the Lord Jesus Christ as both man and God, let us see whether the new testimonies too agree and harmonize with the old.

“That which was from the beginning,” says the apostle John, “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life; and the life was made manifest, and we have seen and testify and announce to you the eternal life which was with the Father and appeared to us.” You see how the old are strengthened by the recent, and the confirmation of new preaching follows the ancient foretelling. Isaiah said: “Cease from the man whose breath is in his nostrils, for he is reckoned the Most High”; and John: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled.” The one said that a man would be persecuted by the Jews; the other proclaimed a man handled by human hands. The one foretold that the same one whom he had announced as man was God Most High; the other related that the one whom he taught to have been handled by men was always God in the beginning. It is most evident, then, that both made the Lord Jesus Christ known as both man and God, because afterwards the same was man who was always God, and therefore man and God, because the man himself is God. “That which was,” then, he says, “from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life; and the life was made manifest, and we have seen and testify and announce to you the eternal life which was with the Father and appeared to us.” You see by how many signs, in how many ways, how various, how manifold, that most beloved apostle, most devoted to God, conveys the sacrament of the divine incarnation. First, he testifies that the one who was always in the beginning was seen in the flesh. Then, lest what he had said was heard and seen should seem too little to the unbelieving, he confirmed that he was also handled, that is, touched and felt by his own hands and others’, rightly excluding by the manifesting of the flesh assumed the opinion of the Marcionite and Manichaean error, so that no one should believe that a phantom was seen by men when the apostle had proclaimed the reality of a body handled by himself. Then he added the Word of life and the life made manifest, that he had seen this, announced this, testified to this: at once fulfilling the duty of faith and striking terror into unbelief, so that, since he testified that he was preaching, one who refused to hear would have himself to blame for his own danger. “We announce to you,” he says, “the eternal life which was with the Father and appeared to us.” He taught that what was always with the Father appeared to men, that what was always in the beginning was seen by men, that what was the Word of life without beginning was handled by human hands. You see in how many ways, how various, how manifold, how indivisible, how open, he set out the sacrament of the flesh united with God, so that no one can say either one at all who does not mention both. This the apostle himself also says most plainly elsewhere: “For Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever.” This surely is what he said in the earlier testimony: “That which was from the beginning, this our hands have handled”: not that the Spirit could be handled of itself, but because the Word, made flesh, was handled in a way in the man to whom it had been united. And therefore Jesus is the same yesterday and today, that is, the same before the beginning of the world as in the flesh, the same in the past as in the present, the same also forever, because the same through all things who was before all things; and all this is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And how is the same one before the rising of the world who lately arose? Because, of course, the same one who lately arose in man was God before the rising of all things; and therefore Christ is called all that God is, because the unity of Christ and God is so great that no one at all can now either, saying Christ, not say God in the name of Christ, or, saying God, not name Christ in the name of God. And so, the sacrament of each substance having been wholly united by the majesty of the holy birth, whatever there was, that is, man and God, became wholly God. Hence the apostle Paul, seeing with the opened eyes of faith the whole secret of the inexplicable majesty in Christ, spoke thus, inviting the peoples who recognize the benefits of God to give thanks to God: “Giving thanks,” he says, “to the Father, who has made us worthy of a share in the lot of the saints in light, who has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the remission of sins; who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or powers: all things were created through him and in him, and he is before all, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may hold the first place; for in him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, whether things in heaven or things on earth.” Does this too need any added interpretation, when it is expressed so copiously and plainly that it has in itself not only the faith of the things but also the clearness of explanation? For he bids us give thanks to the Father, adding a great reason for giving thanks: that he has made us worthy of the portion of the saints, and, rescued from the power of darkness, transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the remission of sins; who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, because in him and through him all things were created, of which, as he is the maker, so he is also the governor. And what after this? “He is,” he says, “the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.” Scripture calls resurrection a kind of generation, because, as generation creates life, so resurrection begets to life. Hence too resurrection itself is called regeneration, according to that testimony of the Lord: “Amen I say to you, that you who have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of his majesty, you also will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” He calls firstborn from the dead, then, the one whom above he proclaimed Son and image of the invisible God. And who is the image of the invisible God but the Only-begotten, the Word of God? And how is the one who is called the image and Word of the invisible God said to have risen from the dead? And what is added further? “That in all things,” he says, “he may hold the first place, for in him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, whether things in heaven or things on earth.” Does the creator of all need primacy over all, or does he who made them need primacy over the things made by himself? Or can it be said of the Word that it pleased all the fullness to dwell in one who is the firstborn from the dead, when surely he, the only-begotten Son of God, the Word of God before the beginnings of all things, having the invisible Father in himself, so had all fullness in himself before that he himself was the fullness of all? And what finally? “Making peace,” he says, “through the blood of his cross, whether things in heaven or things on earth.” He showed most plainly of whom he was speaking, whom he had named firstborn from the dead. For were all things reconciled and pacified through the blood of the Word or the Spirit? Surely not. For nothing of suffering could befall the impassible nature, nor could blood be shed except a man’s, nor could anyone die but a man. And yet the same one who in what follows is said to have died is above proclaimed the image of the invisible God. How, then, is this? Because, of course, the apostles took every care that no division should seem to be in Christ, and that the Son of God united in the son of man should not begin through wandering interpretations to have two persons, and that he who was one in himself should not become double in us through depraved and impious opinions. And therefore beautifully and wonderfully the apostolic preaching came down from the only-begotten Son of God himself to the son of man united to the Son of God, so that the speech of the teaching should run its course as the very order of things did, continuing everything by an inseparable connection and as it were by a bridge, so that without any division or gap at all you would find at the end of time the one you read of at the beginning of the world, and, admitting no distraction of impious splitting, would believe one Son of God in the flesh and in the spirit; since the apostolic teaching so united God and man through the sacrament of the bodily birth that it showed you the same one reconciling all things on the cross whom it had proclaimed, before the beginning of the world, the image of the invisible God.

Although this was said by the apostle, it is the Lord’s teaching. For the same one said this in the apostle to Christians who said something very like it in the gospel in his own person to the Jews: “But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. For I did not come of myself, but he sent me.” He shows himself both God and man: man in that he proclaims himself a man, God in that he affirms that he was sent. For he must have been with the one from whom he had come, and he had come from the one by whom he said he was sent. Hence too, when the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” he answered with a word most fitting to his eternity and majesty, saying: “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am.” I ask, then, whose saying do you want this to be? Christ’s, surely, without doubt. And how did one who had been born at a recent time say that he was before Abraham? Through that Word of God to which he was wholly united, so that all might understand how great is the unity of Christ and God, since whatever God said in Christ the Godhead of the one united claimed wholly as its own. And rightly, conscious of his eternity, he answered the Jews then in the body with that word with which he had once spoken to Moses in the spirit. For here he says, “Before Abraham came to be, I am,” and to Moses: “I am who I am.” By the admirable magnificence of his word he proclaimed the eternity of the divine nature, because nothing can be said of God so fitting as that he is said always to be; for “to be” has neither a beginning in the past nor an end in the future. And therefore what best fits eternity is said most plainly of the nature of the eternal God. This the Lord Jesus Christ himself showed by the difference of his wording when he spoke of Abraham, saying: “Before Abraham came to be, I am.” Of Abraham he said “came to be,” but of himself “I am”; because coming to be belongs to time, being to eternity. And therefore he assigned “came to be” to human brevity, but “I am” to his own nature. And all this Christ said, who through the sacrament of man and God united was saying that he had already existed in him who always was.

The apostle too, wishing to make this clear and plain to all, spoke thus: “For Jesus, saving the people from the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed those who did not believe.” And elsewhere: “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted him and perished by serpents.” And Peter, the chief of the apostles: “And now why do you tempt God, to put a yoke on the necks of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we are saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as they are.” We know without doubt that the people of God freed from Egypt, led on dry feet by great paths through the waters, and preserved through the vast wastes of the desert, were preserved by God alone, according to that word: “The Lord alone led them, and there was no foreign god with them.” And how does the apostle, with so many and such plain testimonies, proclaim both that the people of the Jews was freed from Egypt by Jesus and that Christ was then tempted by the Jews in the desert, saying: “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted him and perished by serpents”? The blessed apostle Peter also proclaims that all the saints who lived under the law of the Old Testament were saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Get out and escape from here, if you can, you, whoever you are, who, raging with a rabid and blasphemous spirit, think there is no difference at all between Adam and Christ, and who deny him to be God even after the virgin’s childbearing: show fully how you can prove that he was not God before his bodily birth either. For see, the apostle cries out that the people was saved from the land of Egypt by Jesus, that Christ was tempted in the desert by the unbelieving, and that our fathers too, that is, the patriarchs and prophets, were saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Deny these things if you can. Nor shall I wonder if you do so, so as to deny what we all read, you who have denied what we all believe. Understand, then, at last that even then Christ in God led the people out of Egypt, and Christ in God was tempted by the tempting people, and Christ in God saved all the righteous by the bounty of his grace; because through the unity of the sacrament God so passed into Christ and Christ into God that whatever God did Christ is said to have accomplished, and what Christ afterwards endured God is said to have endured. And therefore the prophet, saying, “There shall be no new god in you, nor shall you worship a foreign god,” was preaching with the same sense and spirit with which the apostle said that Christ led the people of Israel out of Egypt; so as to hold that the man born of the virgin was always in God through the unity of the sacrament. Otherwise, unless this is believed, either Christ is believed, with the heretics, not to be God at all, or certainly, against the prophet, to be a new god. But far be it from the catholic people of God to seem either to dissent from prophecy or to agree with heretics, and that the people of blessing should perhaps fall into that curse of being said to have put its hope in man. For whoever asserts that the Lord Jesus Christ was born a mere man must be liable to the curse twice, whether he believes in him or not. For if he believes, “cursed is he who puts his hope in man”; and if he does not believe, he is no less cursed, because, though he has not believed in a man, he has entirely denied God.