Eranistes (The Beggar), or Polymorphus 1.17–1.26

Eranistes: That has been demonstrated; but tell me this: the divine Apostle says that he came to be in the likeness of a human being. Orthodoxos: What was taken is not a likeness of a human being but [the nature of a] servant, just as the form of God is understood as the nature of God. But he who took it came to be in the likeness of a human being and was found in fashion as a human being. For, being God, he seemed to be a human being because of the nature he had assumed. The evangelist, however, called the coming to be in the likeness of a human being “becoming flesh.” And so that you may know that those who deny the flesh of our Savior are disciples of the opposing spirit, hear the great John saying in the Catholic [Letter], “Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus to have come in the flesh is not from God; and this is the [spirit] of the Antichrist.” [Eranistes:] … I wanted [to know] how the ancient teachers of the Church understood “The Word became flesh.” Orthodoxos: You ought to have been persuaded by the apostolic and prophetic proofs. But since you are also seeking the interpretations of the holy Fathers, I will offer you this remedy too, God willing. [Eranistes:] … ambiguous; for of such [men] I will not accept the … Orthodoxos: Does Athanasius seem to you trustworthy, that celebrated man, the most brilliant [light] of the church of the Alexandrians? Eranistes: Certainly; for he ratified his teaching by what he suffered for the truth. Orthodoxos: Hear, then, what he wrote to Epictetus. He speaks thus: “For what is said in John, ‘The Word became flesh,’ has this meaning, as can be found also from something similar to it. For it is written in Paul: ‘Christ became a curse for us.’ Just as he is said to have become a curse, not because he himself became a curse, but because he received the curse on our behalf, so he is said to have become flesh, not because he was changed into flesh, but because he took up flesh on our behalf.” So much the most divine Athanasius. And Gregory, whose fame is great among all, who formerly governed the imperial city that lies at the mouth of the Bosporus and later lived at Nazianzus, wrote thus to Cledonius against the trickery of Apollinarius:

Eranistes: The man is illustrious, and a champion of true religion … Orthodoxos: Hear, then, what he says: “This, then, ‘The Word became flesh,’ seems to me to be equivalent to its being said that he became sin and a curse: not that the Lord was transformed into these (for how could he be?), but that by accepting them he took up our lawless deeds and bore our diseases.” Eranistes: The interpretation of both agrees. Orthodoxos: Since we have shown you that those who shepherded the south and the north agree, come, let me [show] you also the [western] teachers, who wrote their interpretation in another tongue but not with another mind. … [that he fought] against every heresy, and wrote very well and in agreement with the teaching of the apostles. Orthodoxos: I will offer you his interpretation. He says this in his discourse On the Faith: “But it is written, he says, ‘The Word became flesh.’ What is written I do not deny. But consider what is said … dwelt in human flesh. Do you wonder, then, that it is written, ‘The Word became flesh,’ the flesh having been assumed by God the Word, when of sin too, which he did not have, it is said that he became sin? That is, he did not become the nature and working of sin, but [became it] so that he might crucify our sin in the flesh. Let them cease, then, saying that the nature of the Word … and the thing assumed is another.” After these it is fitting to hear the teachers of the East; for this is the only part of the world left to us. And these ought to have testified to the truth first, for they were the first to share in the apostolic preaching. But since you have whetted your tongues against the firstborn children of true religion, sharpening them on the whetstone of falsehood, we have assigned them the last place, so that, having first heard the others and then compared these men's words with theirs, you may admire the agreement and cease … of Flavian, who for a very long time [steered] the church of the Antiochenes … and showed the churches he steered stronger than the storm, interpreting the Gospel saying: “‘The Word,’ he says, ‘became flesh and dwelt among us.’ He was not changed into flesh, nor did he cease to be God; but that he was eternally, and this he became by the dispensation, himself building his own temple and dwelling in the passible offspring.” And if you long to hear the ancient Palestinians too, lend your ears to the admirable Gelasius, who carefully cultivated [the church] of the Caesareans. He says this too for the festival of the Lord's Epiphany: “Learn the truth from John the fisherman, who says, ‘And the Word became flesh’: not that he himself was changed, but that he dwelt among us. The tent is one thing and the Word another; the temple is one thing and the God dwelling in it another.” Eranistes: I greatly admire the agreement. Orthodoxos: And John, the great lamp of the world, who first generously watered the church of the Antiochenes and then wisely cultivated the imperial city, do you not consider him the apostolic teacher of the faith? …

Orthodoxos: This man, excellent in every way, interpreted this Gospel passage, and speaks thus: “So that when … you fall down. For the substance did not fall into … but, remaining what it is, so it took the form of the servant. For just as when he says, ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law,’ [he does not mean] that his substance left its own glory and was made into the substance of a curse (for not even demons would have thought this, nor the utterly foolish and those deprived of their natural wits; so much madness does it have together with its impiety); he does not mean this, then, but that, having received the curse that was against us, he no longer lets us be accursed; so here too he says that he became flesh … it is [impious] even to think. Why, then, has he used the word ‘became’? To stop the mouths of the heretics. For since there are those who say that all the things of the dispensation were a kind of fantasy, and pretense, and supposition, he removed their blasphemy in advance, [putting] ‘became’ … it, while that remained untouched.” But if [you wish to hear the successor of this] shepherd, I will offer you his interpretation too; only lend your ear. “For ‘The Word became flesh’ does not signify a falling of the nature, but the assumption of our nature. For if you think that ‘became’ means change, when you hear Paul saying, ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us,’ do you take the expression as a nature of curse and a transformation into it? Just as, then, ‘having become a curse’ signifies nothing other than that he took to himself the curse that was against us, so too ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ presents nothing other than the assumption of the flesh.” Eranistes: I admire the men for their agreement. For all of them gave the same interpretation of the Gospel sayings, as though they had met in one place and written down a common decision. Orthodoxos: Mountains and seas set them very far apart from one another, but the distance did no harm to their agreement; for all of them were made to resound by one spiritual grace. I would have offered you also the interpretations of the victorious champions of true religion, Diodore and Theodore, if I did not know that you are hostile toward these men and have become heirs of Apollinarius' hatred of them. You would have seen that they too wrote in harmony, drew the streams from the divine spring, and themselves became channels of the Spirit. But I will pass over them, for you have taken up a truceless war against them. But I will show you the all-praised teacher of the Church and his mind about the divine incarnation (… he has set down, wishing to present not a change of substance, far from it, but the assumption of true flesh), so that you may know what he believed about the nature that was assumed. And you have certainly heard of that Ignatius who received the grace of the high priesthood through the right hand of the great Peter, governed the church of Antioch, and bound on the crown of martyrdom; and Irenaeus, who enjoyed the teaching of Polycarp and became the light of the western Gauls; and Hippolytus, and Methodius, … I will join their names to their teachings. Eranistes: You will bring me these testimonies too, as I long for them. Orthodoxos: Listen, then, to the men as they set forth the apostolic teaching.

… and martyr. “… fully convinced truly about our Lord, who is of the race of David according to the flesh, Son of God according to Godhead and power, truly born of a Virgin, baptized by John so that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him, truly nailed for us in the flesh under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch.” Of the same, from the same letter: “For what does it profit me if someone praises me but blasphemes my Lord, not confessing him to be flesh-bearing? And he who does not say this …” Of the same, from the same letter: “For if these things were done by our Lord in appearance, I too … am bound in appearance. And why have I given myself up to death, to fire, to sword, to wild beasts? But he who is near the sword is near God. Only in the name of Jesus Christ, so as to suffer with him, I endure all things, since he strengthens me, the perfect human being, whom some deny in ignorance.” Of the same, from the letter to the Ephesians: “For our God Jesus Christ was conceived by Mary according to the dispensation of God, of the seed [of David] and of the Holy Spirit; who was born and was baptized, so that our mortal [nature] might be cleansed.” Of the same, from the same letter: “If … you all, man by man, in common, come together in grace by name, in one faith and in one Jesus Christ, of the race of David according to the flesh, the Son of Man and Son of God.” Of the same, from the same letter: “There is one physician, fleshly and spiritual, begotten and unbegotten, God in a human being, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Of the same, from the … “… apart from Jesus Christ, who is of the race of David, who is of Mary, who was truly born, ate and drank truly, was persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was crucified and died, while those in heaven and on earth and under the earth looked on.” Of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, from the third book of the [work] Against the Heresies: “And to what end did they add ‘in the city of David,’ except to proclaim as fulfilled the promise made by God to David, that from the fruit of his womb there would be an eternal king, the promise which the Maker of this universe had made?”

Of the same, from the same book: “And in saying, ‘Hear now, house of David,’ he was signifying that the eternal king whom God promised David to raise up from the fruit of his womb is the one born of the virgin who was of David['s line].” Of the same, from the same book: “If, then, the first Adam had a human father and was born of seed, it would be reasonable to say that the second Adam too was born of Joseph. But if that one was taken from the earth and God was his fashioner, then the one who recapitulates in himself the human being fashioned by God had to have the same … [Why, then,] did God not take dust again, but caused the fashioning to happen from Mary? So that no other fashioning should come about, nor another thing be saved, but that very one be recapitulated, the likeness being preserved. Those, then, also fall very far who say that he took nothing from the Virgin, so that they may cast out the inheritance of the flesh and reject the likeness.” Of the same, from the same book: “Otherwise his descent into Mary would also be superfluous. For why did he come down into her if he was going to take nothing from her? And if he had taken nothing from Mary, he would not have taken foods taken from the earth, by which the body taken from the earth is nourished; nor, after fasting forty days like Moses and Elijah, would he have been hungry, the body seeking its own food; nor would John his disciple, writing about him, have said, ‘And Jesus, weary from the journey, sat down’; nor would David have proclaimed about him, ‘And they added to the pain of my wounds’; nor would he have wept over Lazarus, nor sweated drops of blood; nor would he have said, ‘My soul is very sorrowful’; nor, when his side was pierced, would blood and water have come out. For all these are tokens of the flesh taken from the earth, which he recapitulated in himself, saving his own handiwork.” Of the same, from the same book: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man, who was first fashioned from untilled earth, the many were made sinners and lost life, so it was necessary also that through the obedience of one man, who was first born of a virgin, many should be justified

and receive salvation.” Of the same, from the same book: “‘I said, You are all sons of the Most High and gods; but you die like human beings.’ He says this to those who have not received the gift of adoption, but dishonor the incarnation of the pure birth of the Word of God, and deprive the human being of the ascent to God, and are ungrateful to the Word of God who became flesh for them. For to this end the Word [became] human, so that the human being, having made room for the Word and received the adoption, might become a son of God.” Of the same, from the same book: “When, then, the Spirit had come down because of the foreordained dispensation, and the only-begotten Son of God, who is also the Word of the Father, had come in the fullness of time, become flesh in a human being, and [fulfilled] the whole dispensation … of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is one and the same, as the Lord himself testifies, and the apostles confess, and the prophets proclaim, all the teachings of those who [introduce] Ogdoads and Tetrads and appearances have been shown false.” Of holy Hippolytus, bishop and martyr, from the discourse on “The Lord shepherds me”: “And he himself was the ark made of wood that does not rot. For by this was announced his tabernacle, incorruptible and without decay, which produced no rot of sin. For the one who sinned also confesses and says, ‘My wounds have grown foul and festered because of my folly.’ But the Lord was without sin, made of wood that does not rot as to his humanity, that is, from the Virgin and the Holy Spirit, covered within and without with the Word of God as with purest gold.” Of the same, from the discourse on Elkanah and Hannah: “Come, then, Samuel, [bring] the heifer to Bethlehem, to show the king born of David, and him anointed by the Father as king and priest.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “Tell me, blessed Mary, what was it that was conceived by you in the womb, and what was it that was carried by you in the virginal womb? For it was the firstborn Word of God coming down from heaven upon you, and a firstborn human being fashioned in the womb, so that the firstborn Word of God might be shown joined to a firstborn human being.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “The second, that through the prophets, as through Samuel, calling back and turning the people from slavery to foreigners. The third, in which he was present in the flesh, having assumed the human being from the Virgin; who also, seeing the

city, wept over it.” Of the same, from the discourse on the beginning of Isaiah: “He likened the world to Egypt, idolatry to things made by hands, and its removal and dissolution to an earthquake; the Lord to the Word, and the light cloud to the most pure tabernacle, enthroned in which our Lord Jesus Christ entered into life to shake error.” Of holy Methodius, bishop and martyr, from the discourse On the Martyrs: “For martyrdom is so wonderful and so much to be desired that the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the Son of God, honoring it, bore witness as a martyr, not considering being equal to God a thing to be grasped, so that he might [honor] with this gift too the human being into whom he came down …” Of holy Eustathius, bishop of the Antiochenes and [confessor], from the interpretation of the fifteenth psalm: “But the [soul] of Jesus experienced both. For it was in the place of human souls, and having come to be outside the flesh it lives and subsists. It is therefore rational, and of the same substance as the souls of human beings, just as the flesh too is of the same substance as the flesh of human beings, having come forth from Mary.” Of the same, from the discourse On the Soul: “What would they say, looking at the nurture of the infant, or the advance in age, or the extension of the years, or the growth of the body? To pass over speaking of the … raisings of the dead … the tokens of the passion, the marks of the scourges, the weals of the blows, the wounded side, the prints of the nails, the shedding of the blood, the signs of death, and, to say it all, the very resurrection of his own body.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “And indeed, if one looks at the birth of the body, one would clearly find that he was born in Bethlehem and wrapped in swaddling clothes, was raised for some time in Egypt because of the plot of the accursed Herod, and grew to manhood in Nazareth.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “For the tabernacle is not the same thing as the Word and God; it was through it that blessed Stephen beheld the divine glory.” Of the same, from the discourse on “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways”: “If, then, the Word took a beginning of birth from the time when, passing through the mother's womb, he put on the bodily frame, it is established that he came to be from a woman. But if he was Word and God from the beginning with the Father, and we say that all things came to be through him, then he who is, and who is the cause of all things that have come to be, did not come to be from a woman; but he is by nature God, self-sufficient, infinite, inconceivable; while from a woman came to be the human being who was formed in the virginal womb by the Holy Spirit.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “For the temple in the proper sense, pure and undefiled, is the tabernacle around the Word according to the human being, where, having pitched his tent, God plainly dwelt. And we do not say these things from conjecture …; for the Son of God by nature, foretelling the destruction and raising of the temple, teaches us without ambiguity, saying to the bloodthirsty Jews, ‘Destroy this temple, and in

three days I will raise it.’” Of the same, from the same discourse: “When, then, the Word had built the human being as a temple and put him on, in the body he showed [cures] to human beings …, and sent out the apostles as heralds of the eternal kingdom.” Of the same, from the interpretation of the forty-fourth psalm: “It is quite clear, then, that if the one who anoints proves to be God, whose throne he called eternal, then the one who anointed is evidently God by nature, begotten of God; while the one who was anointed received an acquired virtue, adorned with a choice temple-building from the Godhead dwelling in him.” Of holy Athanasius, bishop [of Alexandria], from the apology written on behalf of Dionysius: “[‘I am the] vine, you are the branches; my Father is the vinedresser.’ For we are kin to the Lord according to the body; and for this reason he himself said, ‘I will proclaim your name to my brothers.’ And just as the branches are of the same substance as the vine and from it, so we too, having bodies of the same kind as the Lord's body, receive of his fullness, and have that body as a root for the resurrection and for salvation. And the Father is called the vinedresser; for he himself cultivated through the Word the vine, which is the Lord's body.” Of the same, from the same treatise: “The Lord was called a vine because of his bodily kinship with the branches, which we are.” Of the same, from the greater [discourse]: “For that it is written, ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ clearly shows the Godhead; but ‘The Word became flesh’ shows the [humanity] of the Lord.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “And ‘He will wash his robe in wine,’ that is, in his own blood the body, the garment of the Godhead.” Of the same, from …: “… is referred to his …; but ‘became flesh’ to the body. The Word became flesh not by being dissolved into flesh, but by putting on flesh; as one might say, so-and-so became an old man, though he was not born so from the beginning; or, the soldier became a veteran, not having been before what he became. John says, ‘I came to be on the island of Patmos on the Lord's day,’ not that he came into existence there or was born there; but he said, ‘I came to be in Patmos,’ instead of ‘I arrived.’ So the Word came to be in flesh, as it has been said, ‘I became like a lost vessel,’ and ‘I became like

a man without help, free among the dead.’” Of the same, from the letter to Epictetus: “For who ever heard such things? Who taught them? Who learned them? ‘For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’ But where did these things come from? What Hades belched forth the saying that the body from Mary is of the same substance as the Godhead of the Word? Or that the Word has been changed into flesh and bones and hair and the whole body? And who has heard in the church, or at all among Christians, that God has worn a body by convention and not by nature? And who, hearing that the Word made for himself a passible body not from Mary but from his own substance, would call the one who says this a Christian? And who devised this unlawful impiety, so as even to come to think and say that whoever says the body is from Mary no longer holds a Trinity but a Tetrad in the Godhead? As if for this reason those so disposed say that the flesh which the Savior put on from Mary is of the substance of the Trinity! And again, from where did some belch forth an impiety equal to the aforesaid, so as to say that the body is not younger than the Godhead of the Word, but has always been coeternal with it, since it was constituted from the substance of Wisdom?” Of the same, from the same letter: “The body from Mary, then, was human by nature, according to the divine Scriptures, and it was real, since it was the same as ours; for Mary is our sister, since we all are from Adam. And no one would doubt this who remembers what Luke wrote.”

Of holy Basil, bishop of Caesarea, from the interpretation of the fifty-ninth psalm: “All foreigners were subjected, bowing under the yoke of Christ; for this reason he also casts his shoe upon Idumaea. And the shoe of the Godhead is the God-bearing flesh, through which he came to human beings.” Of the same, from the [books] to Amphilochius the bishop, On the Holy Spirit: “And conversely, he uses the expression ‘from whom’ instead of ‘through whom,’ as when Paul says, ‘born from a woman.’ For he clearly distinguished these for us elsewhere, saying that it belongs to woman to have come into being from man, and to man through woman, where he says, ‘For as woman is from man, so man is through woman.’ But at the same time showing the difference of usage, and at the same time correcting in passing the error of some who think that the Lord's body is spiritual, he preferred the more emphatic expression, in order to show that the God-bearing flesh was compacted from the human lump. For ‘through a woman’ would suggest a notion of the birth as a passing through; but ‘from the woman’ indicates sufficiently the communion of nature between the one born and her who bore him.” Of holy Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, from the first exposition to Cledonius: “If anyone says that the flesh came down from heaven, and is not from here and from us, let him be anathema. For ‘The second man is from heaven,’ and ‘As is the heavenly, so too are the heavenly ones,’ and ‘No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man,’ and anything else of this kind, must be considered to be said because of the union with the human being, just as also that all things came to be through Christ, and that Christ dwells in our hearts, not according to what is visible of God but according to what is intelligible, the names being mingled just as the natures are.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “And what is their reason for the incarnation, or becoming flesh? Let us see as they themselves state it. If it was so that God, otherwise uncontainable, might be contained, and might converse with human beings through the flesh as under a veil, their mask and the drama of the pretense is clever, not to mention that it was possible for him to converse with us otherwise, as in the bush of fire and in human form before. But if it was to undo the condemnation of sin, sanctifying like by like, then just as flesh was needed because of the condemned flesh, and soul because of the soul, so also mind because of the mind, which not only fell in Adam but was the first to suffer, as the doctors say of illnesses. For what received the command, that also did not keep the command; and what did not keep the command, that also dared; and what transgressed, that most needed salvation; and what needed salvation, that was also assumed. Therefore the mind was assumed. This has now been demonstrated, even if they do not wish it, by … proofs. But you do something like this: as if, when a man's eye was diseased and his foot had stumbled, you healed the foot but left the eye untreated; or when a painter had painted something badly, you altered what was painted but passed over the painter as if he had done well. But if, shut out by these reasonings, they take refuge in its being possible for God to save the human being even without mind, it was surely possible also without flesh, by willing alone, just as he works and has worked all other things without a body. Take away, then, the flesh along with the mind, so that your folly may be complete.”