Tome to the Armenians

To the most God-beloved and most God-fearing bishops, presbyters, and archimandrites of the orthodox holy church who are throughout all Armenia: Proclus, greeting in the Lord.

Not moderately, brothers, has the report of the new frenzies of deceit confounded our soul and wounded our mind with tyrannous grief, frenzies which the common enemy of nature has lately and craftily sown in your country. For the hearing of things one prays never to hear is wont to strike unbearably a soul not yet trained in such an exercise, and it shoots all the more grievously, driving its darts deep within, inasmuch as it sets the danger not about the grossness of the body but lays siege to what is immaterial, spreading the rumour that the precious garment of the faith has either been pitifully torn or utterly stolen.

For every virtue is earnestly sought by those whose reason has not been darkened by matter, and every vice is, not unreasonably, judged abhorrent by those of sound mind, since by its very opposition it wars against nature with what is against nature. For as what is advantageous is necessarily fought for by those who choose it, so what is not such but opposed to it, if present, is worth casting off, or if expected, is not outside our concern that it may not come to pass.

Now there are many forms of virtue, and it has been defined differently both by the Greeks, who are strangled by error and have the precision of their discernment darkened by ignorance of the divine, and by the Christians, who have had the eyes of the mind enlightened through faith and are able to gaze clearly at the Sun of righteousness through their confession. For the former, stumbling in their own reasonings as in darkness and having a mind left without a guide because of preconceptions, travel unsafely in their reasonings, groping, in the doctrines they lay down, only at the flowing and unstable nature of visible things, while the eye of true contemplation

they have either dulled through time or maimed through error. And they say that there are four forms of virtue, I mean justice and prudence, temperance and courage. These, even if they seem to be fine, creep along the ground, swim about the earth, and lie below the vault of heaven. For by calling courage the wrestling against matter, temperance the mastery over the passions, prudence the rule of the best in commonwealths, and justice the best share of what is equal, they legislated order for life, as they supposed, bridling with a limit the immoderation of excess in either direction. But anything lofty and higher than our present lot they could neither conceive nor set forth; rather, constrained by the senselessness of their hardened heart, they enclosed virtue, so far as it lay with them, within visible things alone,

granting that it has nothing lofty, nothing rivalling the good order of the heavens. But those enlightened through faith in the eyes of the heart, whose guide and teacher is the blessed Paul, defined virtue as that which lifts us up on wings toward God and steers in good order the things on earth.

Accordingly, this very man, celebrated in all things, enumerated many forms of virtue, but proclaimed these three as preeminent: faith, hope, and love. Of these, faith grants to human beings things beyond nature, already mingling with the intelligible beings one who still wears the much-suffering garment of matter. For the things of which the nature of the angels and of the other bodiless powers was ignorant because of their greatness, the knowledge of these faith grants to human beings who walk below and roll about upon the earth; it brings them to the royal and formless throne, sends into them the exact radiance of the unoriginate and uncreated nature, drives away by its own lightning the mist of the senses, and, wiping from the mind whatever is thick and cloudy among things here, makes it see clearly those things which are seen by not being reached and are grasped by being unapproachable.

Hope does not think fit to dream, as one might say, but prepares one nobly to hold fast, amid present things, the things to come, since its unwavering full assurance hands over to the reason what is not yet present in time as though already here, and almost brings the things awaited before the eyes. For hope, overleaping the obstacles in the way, joins what longs to what is loved, conquering the flowing-by of time by its relation to what is to come.

And love is the head of the mystery concerning us; for it was love that prevailed on God the Word, who is ever present on earth, to come through flesh. Each, then, agrees with the other: faith is the mirror of love, and love is the confirmation of faith. We believe that God the Word became flesh impassibly, and we believe piously, for this is the foundation of our salvation; but we also love him who for our sake took the form of the servant, neither undergoing a change of nature nor making an addition to the Trinity.

Every Christian, then, who is not rich in faith, hope, and love is not what he is called. Even if he often seems to bring the body into subjection and to be free of the passions of the soul, having achieved moral virtue alone, he is not counted worthy of the crowns of victory, since by theology he has not reached that umpire who gives the crowns to those who have contended nobly for virtue. Faith, then, as I said before, being the head of all good things, must be guarded unadulterated, bringing in nothing counterfeit from human reasonings nor muddied by profane empty talk, but remaining within the bounds of the Gospels and the apostles, no one daring to tamper with the faith by which we were saved and

which we signed with our tongue in baptism. For the height of the faith repels every assault of boldness and daring, not only human but even that headed by a bodiless nature, as the blessed Paul cries: 'Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be anathema.' For an angel was appointed to minister, not to lay down doctrine, and it is perilous for anyone not to remain in what he was appointed to but to attempt things beyond his nature. So even if the one who dares should bring forward the credibility of his nature,

let the innovation in preaching be inadmissible. Let us then guard unsleepingly what we received, ever keeping the eye of the soul open, undistracted, upon the treasure of the faith. And what did we receive from the Scriptures if not altogether this: that God created the world by a word and brought forth the creation that did not exist before; that he honoured the rational living being with a natural law; that he gave a commandment to the free will, pointing out what is advantageous, so that by the best choice it might flee what harms; that the voluntary impulse of man toward the worse made the disobedient one an exile from paradise; that through fathers and patriarchs, law and judges and prophets, the Fashioner trained our nature to despise

sinning and to take care to do right; that at last, as sin prevailed with our own consent, and the devil demanded as penalty for the offence the utter destruction of our nature, since the natural law had been darkened, the written law slighted, and the prophets, being men, had reminded us of what was to be done but had not snatched us out of the worse, God himself, the formless, unoriginate, uncircumscribed, and almighty Word, came and was made flesh (for the power was present to him as he willed), and taking the form of the servant, he became flesh and was born of a virgin, wishing to show in every way that he truly became man. For beginnings and shapes and passions necessarily attend nature. For the evangelist does not say that he entered into a perfect man, but that he 'became flesh', having reached the very foundation of nature and run back to

the beginning of generation. For as a man born according to nature does not come forth at once perfect in his activities, but the very foundation of the nature first becomes flesh, and then in time it takes on, little by little, the powers that contribute to the completion of the senses and the activities, so God the Word, having run back to the very beginning and root of human generation, first became flesh, not changed into flesh, God forbid! For the Godhead remains above alteration, since changeability is a property of a flowing

nature, while immutability belongs to the eternal nature that is always the same. We say, then, using both scriptural expressions, that he both 'became flesh' and 'took the form of the servant', and both, piously understood, are seeds of salvation for us. By 'became' the evangelist hints at the indivisibility of the highest union. For as a unit could not be cut into two units (what is divided into these would not be a unit but a pair), so what is one by the highest union could not be divided into two. And 'took' proclaims the immutability of the nature. For since everything that comes into being either comes from what is not, as heaven, which did not exist before, or is altered from what exists, as the stream of the Nile was changed from water into blood, and both are unfitting in the case of the divine nature (for neither was the ever-unoriginate brought forth from non-being, nor was the unalterable Word changed from what exists), therefore the divine Scripture, indicating through both the immutability of the Godhead and the indivisibility of the mystery, said 'became' and proclaimed 'took', so that through the former it might present the singleness of the person, and through the other

cry out the unalterability of the nature. God the Word, then, became perfect man, the wonder beyond thought not mutilating the immutable nature; but this we have learned by faith, not grasped by investigation. And having become man, by sharing our passions he saves the race akin to him according to the flesh: as man he paid the debt of sin by dying for all, and as God who hates evil he abolished him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; he showed what was impossible for the law to be possible by fulfilling all righteousness; and he gave back to our nature its former nobility by

honouring, by becoming man, the nature fashioned by him from the earth. There is, then, one Son. For worshipping a Trinity of the same essence, we do not bring in a fourth in number; but there is one Son, begotten without beginning from the Father, through whom we believe the ages were made: the branch co-eternal with the root, who shone forth from the Father without flux, the Word who proceeds from the mind inseparably and yet remains. For even if he was seen on earth, he was not separated from the one who begot him. He willed to save the one he had fashioned, and save him he did, dwelling in a womb, the common gate of nature; and having blessed it by his dwelling and sealed it by his birth, he showed by a birth beyond nature that he became man beyond reason.

Christ, then, is not one and God the Word another (God forbid!). For the divine nature does not know two sons: the only one begot an only-begotten. For where there is no pairing of those who beget, there no pair of those begotten is found. 'At the name of Jesus Christ every knee bends, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth.' But if Christ is other than God the Word, Christ is necessarily a mere man (even if he is a temple of God), according to the reasoning of the deranged. And if Christ is a mere man, how do the heavenly beings honour him above the one who is God by nature, and bend the knee to the name of the lesser? How shall we receive the prophetic voices that cry: 'Our God was seen on earth and lived among men'? For it calls his manifestation in the flesh a sight, and names as living among men his temporary sojourn with them, in which the bountiful one, displaying his almighty power, showed that as Almighty he both remained what he was through himself and became what he willed for our sake.

But if the swaddling clothes, the lying in a manger, the growth over time according to the flesh, the sleeping in a boat, the weariness from journeying, the hunger at its time, and all that befalls one who has truly become man, become an occasion of stumbling to some, let them know that in mocking the passions they deny the nature, in denying the nature they do not believe the economy, and in not believing the economy they forfeit salvation. For if, since the creation of the world, a man has slipped into life by travelling another road of nature than this, let the contentious show it, and then let them weave their own nonsense. But if this is the beginning of the common nature, and God the Word truly became man, why do they confess the nature and jeer at the passions? Let them then choose one of the two: either, being ashamed of the passions, let them deny the nature and, holding the views of the Manichees, be ranked with the impious; or, if they accept the gain that comes from the incarnation, let them confess the nature and not be ashamed of the passions that befall the nature.

I am amazed, too, at the madness of those who cut new roads of deceit. For I, knowing and piously taught one Son, confess one hypostasis of God the Word made flesh. And since it is one and the same who endured the passions and who performed the miracles, why do they keep silent about the more divine things and mock the lesser? For to give assurance that, being God and being the Word and remaining what he was, he became flesh and an infant and a man, with no change doing outrage to the mystery, the same one both works wonders and suffers: through the signs hinting that he is what he was, and through the passions giving assurance that he became what he had fashioned. Let us then confess the same one as Son both eternally and as made flesh in the last times, bringing nothing spurious into the nature, for there is nothing superfluous on the throne.

But surely they will bring up against me that much-repeated argument, weaving syllogisms weaker than a spider's web: 'If the Trinity,' they say, 'is of the same essence, the Trinity is impassible; God the Word is seen in the Trinity; therefore the Word too is impassible. And if God the Word is impassible, the one crucified will be found to be another besides God the Word, the impassible.' Truly those who say this weave a spider's web, and those who rehearse these empty problems write on water. For claiming to be wise they became fools, and their senseless heart was darkened. For a bleary eye does not receive the sun's rays cleanly, and a sick

mind does not admit the height of faith. What then do we say? That according to the principle of the Godhead the Trinity is of the same essence and impassible. For in saying that he suffered we do not say that he suffered in the principle of his Godhead, for the divine nature does not admit any passion; but confessing that God the Word, the one of the Trinity, became flesh, we give to those who ask with faith the reason, so that they may understand why he became flesh. For since God the Word wished to abolish the passions, whose end was death, and yet the indestructible nature could not admit passions (for if every passion is a strife and battle of composite things, and in what is immaterial and simple there is no composition, then passion could not reach where there is no composition), he therefore, wishing to abolish the passions that tyrannize the rational flesh, of which, as we said, death was the citadel, takes flesh from a virgin, as he knows how; God the Word is formed as a man, for this was his good pleasure, and he empties himself in the form of a servant, undergoing no circumscription of the Godhead. And thus he saves the whole human race, abolishing the passions in his flesh and keeping his

Godhead impassible. That is why Gabriel too, announcing the good news of the authority and power of the one to be born, cried to Mary: 'For he,' he says, 'will save his people from their lawless deeds.' But the people would not be a man's but God's; nor could one who leapt into life with corruption and did not have a blameless beginning of his generation free the world from sins. But necessarily the same one, being both God and man, not divided into two but remaining one, showing through his birth from a woman that he is man, and testifying, by keeping the one who bore him a virgin without union, that he is God, Jesus the Christ saved the world, having come upon earth and

lived among men. But if Christ is a mere man and not God the Word himself, how did he create all things in the beginning, when he did not then exist? For if man is later than the creation, it is plain that Christ did not grant coming-into-being to the things before him, since he was brought forth later as a mere man. How then did Paul cry: 'One Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things'? For if all things are through Christ, it is plain that Christ is God the Word, since the evangelist cries: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him.' If, then, the evangelist cries that all things came into being through the Word, and Paul, interpreting this, says, 'One Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,' it is plain that Christ is God the Word.

And if they bring forward the expressions in the divine Scriptures in which he is called a man, Peter saying, 'Jesus of Nazareth, a man,' and Paul saying, 'by a man whom he appointed, having given assurance,' and the Master himself saying of himself, 'Why do you seek to kill me, a man?', let them know that they have fallen short of the scriptural sense either through dullness or through wickedness, twisting what is well written to their own depravity. For Christ is truly man as well, but he became this, not having been before anything but God alone. For as he is God not created, so the same one is also man not imaginary; and as he is of the same essence with the Father according to the Godhead, so the same one is of one race with the virgin according to the flesh, the truth of the mystery shining forth everywhere and all deceit having nothing to do. But if the virgin did not bear God, then the incorrupt one is not worthy of much wonder; for many other women too have borne in life

righteous children. But if the tongues of the prophets, trumpeting the ineffable mystery, cry, 'Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,' which Gabriel interprets, saying, 'God with us,' why

do they, because of the condescension of the one born, cut away the glory of the one who bore him? But they surely object this: 'Everything that is born,' they say, 'is of the same race as the one who bears it; if, then, she who bore was human, the one born is necessarily human.' You speak well, sirs; but she who travails bears what is of her own race when the birth proceeds according to nature, and corruption is the prelude of natural birth, since union precedes the corruption. But here there was not even a thought of that outrage; the wonder was brought about beyond reason. Where the birth is beyond nature,

there the one born is God. We confess, then, that the same one brought forth the world, gave the law, breathed in the prophets, was made flesh in the last times, and fished the apostles for the salvation of nations and peoples. Let us flee the muddy and filthy streams of deceit, I mean the God-fighting heresies: the madness of Arius, dividing the undivided Trinity; the audacity of Eunomius, enclosing within knowledge the incomprehensible nature; the rage of Macedonius, separating from the Godhead the Spirit who proceeds inseparably; and this newly forged and novel blasphemy that far outdoes Judaism in blasphemy. For the one party rejects the Son who is, depriving the root of its branch; the others bring in besides the one who is another also, branding as having many offspring the

undefiled nature. Let us then say with Paul: 'Christ is our peace, who made both one.' For through baptism he created Jew and Greek into one new man, uniting by his power those separated in their way of life. Let the innovators in impiety shudder at their condemnation, if indeed things separated were united into concord, while the one who united them is, so far as it lies with them, divided into a pair.

But now, leaving aside the length of my words, I shall come to a brief statement of the right doctrine. If anyone wishes to know truly that he is the one and only Son, who existed before Abraham came to be and in the last times advanced in wisdom and stature according to the flesh (for his Godhead always has its perfection), let him ask Paul, and he will thunder piety, showing that, even though he came forth from the Jews according to the flesh, he is God before the ages. For speaking of the Jews and dignifying the ungrateful and God-fighting nation because of the root, Abraham, and the seed, the Master Christ, he speaks thus: 'Theirs,' he says, 'is the adoption' (for God cried in the prophets, 'Israel is my firstborn son'), 'and the glory' (for immeasurable glory accompanied those who were nourished on successive miracles), 'and the covenants' (those with Abraham, pledging multitude and blessing), 'and the giving of the law' (written on the mountain by the finger of God), 'and the promises' (both of the land of Palestine and that in the seed of Abraham all the nations would be blessed), 'theirs are the fathers' (who rose in the night of error as luminaries of faith), 'and from them is the Christ.' And Paul did not stop at these words, for the existence of the unoriginate Word did not begin at the birth from Mary, but at once he added 'according to the flesh', to signify the manifestation according to

the flesh, not the generation according to the Godhead. Who, then, is this Christ who was born of the virgin, who was contained in a cave as he knows how, who was laid in a manger, who grew in time according to the flesh, who went down to the lowest parts of the earth, who endured all the things of the flesh to give assurance that he truly became man, who is not another besides the one who came down but is himself both the one who came down and the one who went up (for he did not first go up, but came down, since he is not God by advancement, God forbid! but man through compassion, for this is what we needed)? Do not learn it from me or from anyone else, but from Paul, who learned the Son from the Father by revelation and says: 'But when God, who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me through

his grace, to reveal his Son in me.' For he will teach you truly who Jesus the Christ is, crying: 'from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever.' What slanderous infiltration do the words of Paul not wall out for the lovers of abuse? He called him Christ, to show that he truly became man; he said he was from the Jews according to the flesh, to show that he does not exist only from the time he was made flesh; he called him 'the one who is', to thunder that he is without beginning; he said 'over all', to proclaim him Master of creation; he called him God, so that we may not, enticed by the passions and the outward form, deny his indestructible nature; he called him blessed, so that we may worship him as Almighty and not slander him as a fellow servant; he said 'forever', to show that the one who created the ages by a word

is eternally confessed as God in them. Having, then, Christ as both the one who is and God and blessed, let us worship him, saying to those of other opinions: 'If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.' But we have the mind of Christ; and therefore we await the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who will give to those who are pious the prizes of glory, and to those who reject him the wages of their audacity.

We have written this to your love, prompted by your petitions, which you sent to us, saying that certain corrupting men, tellers of marvels, had slipped into your country, wishing through wicked writings and 'the contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge' to pervert the simple and unadulterated beauty of the orthodox faith. But I say to you once more the words of the blessed Paul: 'See that no one makes a prey of you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of thoughtless men, and not according to Christ.' For 'no one can lay another foundation' of the pious faith 'than the one that is laid, which is Christ Jesus.' 'Stand firm, then, in one spirit, striving together with one soul for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by the opponents,' but keeping the traditions which you received from the holy and blessed fathers who set forth the orthodox faith at Nicaea, and from the holy and blessed Basil and Gregory and the rest of like mind with them, 'whose names are in the book of life.'

I and those with me greet all the brotherhood with you in Christ.