On the Incarnation of the Lord, against Nestorius 7.19–7.31

You say also that the Spirit made him to be feared by demons. Although the very abomination of the saying is quite enough for rejecting and refuting this, we still bring examples. Tell me, I ask, you who say that the demons’ fear of him was not his own but another’s, and want it to belong not to power but to gift: how did even his name have a power which he himself, as you say, lacked? How were demons cast out, the weak healed, the dead raised in his name? For the apostle Peter said to that lame man who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple: “In the name of Jesus Christ, rise and walk.” And again, in the city of Joppa, to the one who had lain paralyzed in bed for eight years: “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” Paul too said to the spirit of Python: “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her”; and the demon came out of her. But understand from this how far such weakness was from our Lord: I say that not even those whom he made powerful through his name were weak, since we know that no demon or any sickness ever withstood any of the apostles after the Lord’s resurrection. How, then, did the Spirit make one to be feared who made others to be feared, or how was he weak in himself whose faith reigned over all things even through others? Finally, those who received power from God never used that power as their own, but referred it to him from whom they had received it, because the power itself could never have any force except through the name of the one who gave it. And therefore the apostles and all the ministers of God did nothing ever in their own name, but in the name and invocation of Christ, because the power itself received its strength from the place where it had its beginning, and could in no way be given through ministers unless it had come from its author. You, then, who want the Lord to have been the same as one of his servants (because, as the apostles had nothing except what they had received from their Lord, so you want the Lord himself to have had nothing except what he received from the Spirit, and so to have had what he had not as Lord but received it as a servant), tell me, then, how did he use that power as his own and not as received? For what do we read of him? “Rise,” he says to the paralytic, “take up your bed and go to your house.” And again, to the father praying for his son: “Go,” he says, “your son lives.” And that, where the only son of his mother was being carried to the tomb: “Young man, I say to you, rise.” Did he, then, as was the custom of those who received power from God, ask that power be given him to act by invoking the divine name? Why did he not work in the name of the Spirit, as the apostles worked in his name? Finally, what does the gospel declare of him? “He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes and Pharisees.” Or perhaps you want him to have been proud and arrogant, attributing to his own power the power which, as you say, he had received from God? But what are we to make of the fact that power never obeyed servants except through the name of its author, and could not have effect if the doer claimed anything of it for himself?

But why do we argue so long against raging blasphemy with arguments that are plain, but still lesser? Let us hear God himself speaking to the disciples: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.” And again: “In my name,” he says, “you will cast out demons.” Did he need another’s name to exercise power who made his own name to be power? But what is added further? “Behold,” he says, “I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy.” He certainly says that he is meek, as he truly was, and humble of heart. And how did he command others to work in his name as the highest power, if he himself worked in another’s name; or give to others as his own what, as you would have it, he did not have unless he had received it from another? Tell me: which of the saints who received power from God worked in this way? Would not Peter have been believed insane, or John mad, or Paul out of his mind, if they had said to any of the sick, “Rise in our name,” or to the lame, “Walk in our name,” or to the dead, “Live in our name,” or to anyone, “We give you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy”? Understand, then, your madness from this very thing: that, as these words are mad if they come from human presumption, so you are most mad who do not understand that they belong to divine power. For you must confess one of two things: either that a man can both have and give divine power, or, if no man at all can do this, that it was God who could. For no one can bestow divine power by gift unless he has it by nature.

There follows in your blasphemy that his flesh was made a temple by the Spirit, because John said: “For I saw the Spirit descending from heaven and remaining on him.” Since you try to confirm your raging assertion even by divine testimonies, let us see for what reason the holy testimony said what you cite: “For I saw,” it says, “the Spirit descending like a dove and remaining on him.” Distinguish here, if you can, who is greater, who more honored: the one who was descending, or the one upon whom he descended? The one who conferred honor, or the one on whom honor was conferred? Where in the testimony does it sound that the Spirit made his flesh a temple, or in what does it lessen the honor of God if God himself came down to show God to the human race, since surely the one whose dignity was pointed out should not be understood to be less than the one who pointed out the dignity? But far be it to believe or to make any difference in the Godhead, because the same one Godhead and equal power excludes entirely the opinion of impious inequality. And therefore in this matter, though there is the person of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and the Son of God is the one upon whom he descends, the Spirit the one who descends, the Father the one who bears witness, none had more honor, none received any injury, but all overflows equally into the fullness of the Godhead, because any person in the Trinity contains in himself the honor of the whole Trinity. And therefore nothing more need be said here, except only to show the cause and origin of your impiety; because thorns and thistles, springing from their roots, betray their stock by their quality and show from what they are where they are born from. So you too, thorny offspring of the Pelagian heresy, show in the shoot what your father is reported to have had in the root. For he, as his disciple Leporius said, asserted that our Lord became Christ through baptism; you say that in baptism he was made a temple of God by the Spirit. The words are not wholly the same, but the perversity is wholly one.

You add to your aforesaid impieties this too, that the Spirit granted the Lord his lifting up into heaven: showing by your sacrilegious mind that you believe the Lord Jesus Christ was so weak and so needy that, unless the Spirit had lifted him into heaven, you would perhaps think he would still be on earth today. And to prove the saying you also bring a holy testimony: “For it says,” you say, “giving commands to the apostles whom he chose, he was lifted up through the Holy Spirit.” What shall I call you, what shall I think of you, who by corrupting the divine letters bring it about that the holy testimonies lose the force of testimonies? A new kind of boldness, which tries by the arguments of its wickedness to make truth seem to confirm falsehood! For it is not said in the Acts of the Apostles as you say. For what does Scripture say? “The things which Jesus began to do and to teach until the day on which, commanding the apostles through the Holy Spirit whom he had chosen, he was taken up.” This is of course a hyperbaton and is to be understood thus: “The things which Jesus began to do and to teach until the day on which he was taken up, commanding the apostles whom he had chosen through the Holy Spirit”; so that perhaps nothing more need be answered you on this point than the testimony itself, since the integrity of the testimony ought to suffice fully for the truth, if its corruption could be enough for falsehood. But still, you who think that the Lord Jesus Christ could not have ascended into heaven unless he were lifted up by the Spirit, tell me how he himself says: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven”? Recognize, then, how ridiculously and foolishly you think that he could not ascend into heaven who, though he had come down to earth, is said never to have been absent from heaven; and whether it was possible for him, leaving the underworld, to ascend into heaven, for whom it was easy, even when placed on earth, always to remain in the heavens. And what of what he himself says: “I ascend to my Father”? Did he indicate that another’s help would come between in this ascension, he who showed the force of his own power in the very fact that he said he would ascend? David too says of the Lord’s ascension itself: “God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of the trumpet,” plainly setting out the majesty of the one ascending through the power of the ascension.

But let us see with what addition you finally close your preceding blasphemies: “who,” you say, “granted such great glory to Christ.” You name glory so as to insult. For in asserting that the Lord was granted glory, while you say he received it, you blaspheme that he lacked it. For your impious mind aims at this, that the bounty of the giver should show the need of the receiver. And — O your unhappy impiety! — where is that which the Godhead itself once foretold of the Lord Jesus Christ ascending into heaven, saying: “Lift up your gates, you princes, and the King of glory will come in”? And when, as divine speech usually does, it had answered itself as in the name of one asking, “Who is this King of glory?” it at once added: “The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle,” showing under the name of a battle fought the victory of the triumphant Lord. Then, when to complete the exposition of the matter it had repeated the text of the aforesaid words, it showed the majesty of the Lord entering heaven with this conclusion, saying: “The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory”: so that the taking of a body should not lessen the honor of the supreme Godhead, it taught that the same one was here Lord of hosts and King of heavenly glory whom above it showed as victor in the battle of the underworld. Go now and say that glory was granted to the Lord, when both the prophet said that he is the King of glory and he himself testified thus of himself: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory.” Fight against this if you can, and contradict it, so that, when he testifies that he has his own glory, you may say he received another’s; although we say that he has his own glory in such a way as not to deny that this very property of glory is common to him with the Spirit and the Father, because whatever God possesses belongs to the Godhead, and the kingdom of glory is so proper to the Son of God that it is not divided from the property of the whole Godhead.

But it is time at last to put an end to the book, or rather to the whole work, if I first add a few sayings of holy men and illustrious bishops, so that what we have already proved by the authority of the holy testimonies we may strengthen also by the faith of the present time. Hilary, a man of all virtues and ornaments, and distinguished in eloquence as in life, who grew as teacher and bishop of the churches not only through his own merits but also through the advance of others, and who stood so unmoved amid the storms of persecutions that by the strength of his unconquered faith he won even the dignity of a confessor, testifies in the first book On the Faith that the Lord Jesus Christ is true God of true God and was both born before the ages and afterwards begotten man. Likewise in the second book: “The one only-begotten God, set in the womb of the holy virgin, grows into the form of a little human body. He who contains all things and within whom all things are is brought forth by the law of human childbirth.” Likewise in the same book: “The angel is witness: the one who is born is God with us.” Likewise in the tenth book: “We have also taught the sacrament of God born into man from the childbearing of the virgin.” Likewise in the same: “For since God was born in man, he was not born so as not to remain God.” Likewise in the preface of his exposition of the Gospel according to Matthew: “For it was first necessary for us to recognize that the only-begotten God was born man for our sake.” Likewise in what follows: “that, in addition to what he was, God, he should be begotten man, what he then was not.” Likewise in the same: “Third, this too was fitting: that since God was begotten man in the world,” and the rest. These are few out of a good many; but you see even from what we have said that he openly and plainly proclaims God born of Mary. And where is that saying of yours, “A creature could not give birth to the Creator,” and “What is born of the flesh is flesh”? It would be long to say what fits each person; the sayings are to be listed rather than worked out, because they suffice of themselves for their own working out.

Ambrose, the outstanding bishop of God, who, never leaving the hand of the Lord, always shone like a gem on the finger of God, says in the book addressed to virgins: “My kinsman is white and ruddy: white because he is the splendor of the Father, ruddy because he is the offspring of a virgin. Remember, however, that in him the marks of the Godhead are older than the sacraments of the body. For he did not begin from the virgin, but he who was came into the virgin.” Likewise his own words on the Lord’s birthday: “See the miracle of the Lord’s mother: a virgin conceived, a virgin gave birth; a virgin when she was in labor, a virgin when pregnant, a virgin after childbirth; as it is said in Ezekiel: And the gate was shut and was not opened, because the Lord passed through it. Glorious virginity and splendid fruitfulness! The Lord of the world is born, and there is no groaning of one giving birth: the womb is emptied, the infant is received, and yet virginity is not violated. It was right that, when God was born, the merit of chastity should increase, and that what was whole should not be violated by the going out of him who had come to heal what was corrupt.” Likewise in the exposition of the Gospel according to Luke: “that she was chosen above all to give birth to God who was betrothed to a husband.” He certainly proclaims God born of the virgin; he names Mary the Mother of God. And where is that portentous and abominable word of yours, in which you say: “How can she be the mother of one foreign to her nature? But if she is called mother by them, what was born is humanity, not God”? See, an outstanding teacher of the faith both says that she who gave birth is a human being and teaches that the one born is God, and yet that this is not a cause of unbelief but a miracle of faith.

Jerome, teacher of catholics, whose writings shine through the whole world like divine lamps, says in the book to Eustochium: “The Son of God became son of man for our salvation. He waits ten months in the womb to be born, and he in whose fist the world is enclosed is contained in the narrowness of a manger.” Likewise his own words in the commentary on Isaiah: “For the Lord of hosts, who is the King of glory, himself came down into the virginal womb and went in and out by the eastern gate, which is always shut, of which Gabriel says to the virgin: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore what will be born of you, holy, will be called the Son of God; and in Proverbs: Wisdom has built herself a house.” Compare this, if you please, with your teaching, or rather blasphemy, in which you say: “For God is the creator of the months and not the offspring of months.” See, Jerome, a man of the greatest knowledge and of the most approved and purest teaching, in almost the same words in which you deny that the Son of God was the offspring of months, testifies that he was the offspring of months. For “he waits,” he says, “ten months in the womb to be born.” But perhaps the authority of this man seems small to you: think that all say the same and in the same words; because whoever does not deny that the Son of God was the offspring of a virgin confesses that he was the offspring of months.

Rufinus too, a man of Christian philosophy, no contemptible part of the church’s teachers, testifies thus in his exposition of the creed about the Lord’s birth: “For the Son of God is born of a virgin, not joined principally to flesh alone, but begotten with a soul mediating between the flesh and God.” Did he testify obscurely that God was born of man? Augustine, bishop of the town of Hippo Regius, says: “But that men might be born of God, God was first born of them: for Christ is God. And Christ, born of men, sought only a mother on earth, because he already had a Father in heaven; born of God, through whom we are made, and born of a woman, through whom we might be remade.” Likewise there: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Why, then, do you wonder that men are born of God? Look at God himself born of men.” Likewise in his letter to Volusian: “But both Moses himself and the other prophets most truly prophesied the Lord Jesus and gave him great glory. They announced that he would come not as their equal, nor as superior in the same power of miracles, but plainly as the Lord God of all, made man for men’s sake. He therefore also willed to do such things himself, lest it be absurd if he did not do himself what he had done through them. But still he had to do something of his own: to be born of a virgin, to rise from the dead, to ascend into heaven. Whoever thinks this too little for God, I do not know what more he expects.”

But perhaps, because these men we have listed lived in different parts of the world, they seem to you less approved in authority: a ridiculous thing indeed, because faith is not lessened by place, and what a man is, not where he is, must be considered; especially since religion unites all, and those who are in one faith are known to be also in one body. But still we will bring forward for you some from among the Easterners too whom you may not despise. Gregory, a most brilliant light of knowledge and teaching, who, though he died long ago, still lives in authority and faith, and though he is long absent in body from the churches, does not depart from them in voice and teaching, says: “When, then, God had come forth from the virgin in the human nature he had taken, existing as one out of two things contrary to each other, flesh and spirit, the one is taken up into God, the other bestows the grace of Godhead. O new and unheard-of mixture! O wonderful and unsearchable joining! He who was, becomes; and the creator is created; and he who is immeasurable is contained, the soul mediating between God and flesh; and he who makes all rich is made poor.” Likewise again, on the Epiphany: “But what is happening? What is being done concerning you, or for us? A certain new and unheard-of exchange of natures is accomplished, and God becomes man.” Likewise there: “And the Son of God began to be also son of man, not changed from what he was, for he is unchangeable, but taking what he was not, for he is merciful, so that he who could not be contained might be contained.” You see how splendidly and magnificently he so proclaims the majesty of the Godhead as to make known the condescension of the incarnation, knowing, as an admirable teacher of the faith, that in all these things which God bestowed on us in coming into the world there is a heap of benefits, not a lessening of honor; because whatever God has granted to man ought to increase our love for him, not lessen his dignity.

Athanasius, bishop of the city of Alexandria, an outstanding example of constancy and virtue, whom the storm of heretical persecution did not terrify but proved, and who, having a life always like a shining mirror, almost won the merit of martyrdom before he gained the dignity of a confessor: let us see what he thought of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Lord’s mother. “This, then,” he says, “is the purpose and character of holy Scripture, as we have often said: that there is a twofold meaning in it concerning the Savior: that he always was God and is the Son, the Word and Light and Wisdom of the Father; and that afterwards for our sake he took flesh of the virgin Mary, the Theotokos, and became man.” Likewise after other things: “There were many saints, then, and clean from sin: Jeremiah was sanctified from the womb, and John, while in the womb, leaped with joy at the voice of Mary, the Theotokos.” He says that God, the Son of God, who, to speak the faith of all in his words, is the Word and Light and Wisdom of the Father, took flesh for our sake; and therefore he calls the virgin Mary Theotokos, because she is the Mother of God.

John, glory of the bishops of Constantinople, whose holiness reached the merits of martyrdom without any storm of pagan persecution, listen to what he thought and preached of the incarnation of the Son of God. “And him,” he says, “whom, if he had come in naked Godhead, neither heaven nor earth nor seas nor any creature could have borne, the unharmed womb of the virgin carried.” His faith and teaching, then, even if you did not know those of others, you ought to have followed and held, since it was out of love and longing for him that the devout people chose you as their bishop; because, when they took you as their bishop from the church of Antioch, from which they had earlier chosen him, they believed they would receive in you whatever they had ceased to have in him. Did not all these, I ask, say everything as if long ago by a prophetic spirit to refute your blasphemies? For you cry out that our Lord and Savior is Christ, not God; but they, that Christ the Lord is true God. You blaspheme that Mary is Christotokos, not Theotokos; they do not deny she is Christotokos in such a way as to recognize that she is Theotokos. Not only things but also the words of things are set against your blasphemies, so that we may plainly understand that long ago an impregnable defense was prepared by God against your blasphemies, to break with a wall of truth already built the force of heretical attack that would one day come. And do you, most impious and most shameless defiler of a splendid city, grievous and deadly contagion of a catholic and holy people, dare to stand and speak in the church of God, and with your blasphemies and raging words defame bishops of ever unharmed faith and catholic confession, saying that the people of the city of Constantinople err through the fault of their former teachers? Are you, then, the corrector of former bishops, the condemner of the ancient priests, more excellent than Gregory, more approved than Nectarius, more outstanding than John and all the other bishops of the Eastern cities, who, though not of the same name as those I have named, were still of the same faith? This suffices for this case; for when it is a question of faith, all are in this the same as the best, in that they share with the best.

Hence I too, humble and obscure in name as in merit, though I cannot claim a teacher’s place among the outstanding bishops of the city of Constantinople, still presume to the zeal and affection of a disciple. For I was adopted into the holy ministry by John, bishop of most blessed memory, and offered to God; and though I am absent in body, I am there in affection; and though I am not now mingled in presence with that most dear and most venerable people of God, I am joined in mind. And this is why, grieving and suffering with it, I have now burst out as with the voice of a common sorrow and grief, and, the one thing I could do, I have cried out through the tearful complaint of my little works as for the weakness of my own members and limbs. For if, according to the apostle, when a lesser part of the body suffers the greater suffers with it, how much more, when the greater suffers, ought the lesser to suffer with it! For it is most inhuman that in one and the same body the lesser members should not feel the weakness of the greater, when the greater feel that of the lesser. Hence I beseech and entreat all of you who live within the circuit of the city of Constantinople, my fellow citizens by love of country and brothers by unity of faith, to separate yourselves from that ravening wolf, as it is written, who devours the people of God as food of bread. “Do not touch nor taste” anything of his, because all these things are for destruction. “Come out from his midst and be separate, and do not touch what is unclean.” Remember your ancient teachers and bishops: Gregory, renowned throughout the world; Nectarius, distinguished for holiness; John, wonderful in faith and purity; John, I say, that John who truly, in the likeness of John the evangelist, both disciple and apostle of Jesus, always reclined, as it were, upon the Lord’s breast and affection. Remember him, I say, follow him, think on his purity, his faith, his teaching and holiness. Remember always him, your teacher and nurturer, in whose bosom and embrace, as it were, you grew up, who was the common teacher of me and you, whose disciples and training we are. Read his writings, hold his instruction, embrace his faith and merit. Though to attain this is great and difficult, still to follow it is beautiful and lofty, since not only the attainment of the highest things but even the imitation of them is praiseworthy; for hardly anyone wholly lacks a share of that to which he strives to climb and reach. Let him, then, always be in our mind and as it were before our eyes; let him dwell in our soul and thought; let him himself, finally, commend to you also these things written by me, because what I have written he taught me. And therefore believe these things to be not so much mine as his, because the stream comes from the spring, and whatever is thought to be the disciple’s should all be referred to the honor of the teacher. But you, above all and over all, God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I beseech with equally suppliant voice and mind, that what we have written by the bounty of your gift you would make known by the gift of your love. And since, as the Lord our God, your Only-begotten, himself taught us, you so loved this world as to send your Only-begotten for the salvation of the world, grant this to your people whom you have redeemed: that concerning the incarnation of your only-begotten Son they may savor both your gift and his love; and that all may so understand and love that your Only-begotten, our Lord God, was born and suffered and rose again for us, that the condescension of the holy majesty may be the growth of our love, and that in the minds of all his lowliness may bring no lessening of honor but always beget an increase of love; and that we may all so piously and wisely understand the benefits of the holy mercy as to know that we owe our God the more, the more humble God made himself for us.