Eranistes (The Beggar), or Polymorphus 3.21–3.30

Orthodoxos: When someone asks what the living being is that is at once rational and mortal, and someone answers and says “Man,” whom would you call the interpreter of the statement: the one who asked, or the one who answered? … Orthodoxos: Rightly, then, did I say that these words were yours; for you, surely, were the one answering, and … Eranistes: Then I will not answer at all any more, but only ask; and you answer. What do you say to that apostolic saying, “For if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory”? For here he mentioned neither body nor soul. Orthodoxos: Then neither must “in the flesh” be added here — that is yours, the device you have invented against the Godhead of the Word — but the passion must be attached to the bare Godhead of the Word. Eranistes: Not at all; for he suffered in the flesh, and the incorporeal nature by itself could not suffer. Orthodoxos: But it is not right to add anything to the apostolic words. Eranistes: It is nothing absurd for one who knows the apostolic aim to add what is lacking. Orthodoxos: To add something to the divine words is mad and bold; but to unfold what is written, and to reveal the hidden sense, is holy and pious. … Orthodoxos: Then we too would be doing nothing unreasonable or unholy in searching out the sense of what is written. … Orthodoxos: Let us, then, seek together what seems to be hidden. … Orthodoxos: The great Paul called the divine James brother of the Lord. … Orthodoxos: How, then, shall we understand him to be a brother: by kinship of Godhead, or of humanity? … [Orthodoxos:] And yet you have often divided in what we examined earlier; and you will do the same now. Tell me: do you call God the Word only-begotten? … Orthodoxos: And “only-begotten” indicates the only son? … Orthodoxos: And the only-begotten by no means has a brother? Eranistes: He by no means has; for if he had a brother he would not be called only-begotten. … [Then James is not the] brother of the Lord. For the Lord is only-begotten, and the only-begotten by no means has a brother. Eranistes: But the Lord is not incorporeal, so that only what belongs to the Godhead … [the heralds] of the truth say … Orthodoxos: How, then, would you show that the Apostle’s word is true? Eranistes: By saying that he was [brother] of the Lord according to the flesh … Orthodoxos: Look, you have again brought in your [division] … Eranistes: There was no other way to show the kinship. Orthodoxos: Then do not accuse those who cannot resolve such things in any other way. Eranistes: You are leading the argument off to other matters, to avoid … Orthodoxos: Not at all, my good friend; for that point too will be resolved by what has been examined. Consider it in this way. When you heard James called the Lord’s brother, did you not say that the kinship belongs not to the Godhead but to the flesh? … Orthodoxos: Here too, then, when you hear of the passion of the cross, fit it to the flesh. [Eranistes: But the] apostle Paul called the crucified one Lord of glory. Orthodoxos: And the same apostle called the Lord the brother of James. The same Lord is meant here and there. If, then, you are right, and fitted the kinship to the flesh, surely the passion too must be fitted to it. For it is most absurd to understand the kinship by division, but to attach the passion without division.

Eranistes: I believe the Apostle, who calls the crucified one Lord of glory. Orthodoxos: I too believe, and I trust that he is Lord of glory; for the body nailed to the wood was not that of some common man, but of the Lord of glory. But one must know that the union makes the names common. Consider it in this way. Do you say that the Lord’s flesh came down from heaven? … Orthodoxos: But that it was formed in the womb of the Virgin? … Orthodoxos: How, then, does the Lord say, “Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” and again, “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven”? Eranistes: He is speaking not about the flesh but about the Godhead. Orthodoxos: But the Godhead is from God the Father. How, then, does he call himself Son of Man? Eranistes: The properties of the natures have become common to the person. For the same one, because of the union, is both Son of Man and Son of God, both eternal and recent, both Son of David and Lord of David, and likewise the other such things. Orthodoxos: Quite right. Yet one must also know that the commonness of the names did not produce confusion of the natures. It is for this very reason that we seek to discern how he is Son of God, and how again the same one is Son of Man, and how the same one is yesterday, today, and for ever; and by the pious distinction of reason we find the opposites in harmony. … Orthodoxos: Just as, then, you said that the divine nature came down from heaven, but said that it was called Son of Man because of the union, so it is right to say that the flesh was nailed to the wood, but to confess that the divine nature was inseparable from it, both on the cross and in the tomb, though it received no passion from that, since it is not its nature to suffer or to die, but it has an immortal and impassible substance. For this reason [the Apostle] also named the crucified one Lord of glory, assigning the name of the impassible nature to the passible one, since it was called its body. Let us examine this too. The divine Apostle said, “For if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” They crucified, then, the nature they knew, not the one of which they were wholly ignorant. If they had known the one of which they were ignorant, they would not have crucified the one they knew. But since they were ignorant of the divine nature, they crucified the human. Or have you not heard them saying, “It is not for a good work that we are stoning you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God”? By these words they show that they recognized the nature they saw, but were wholly ignorant of the invisible one. If they had recognized that one too, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Eranistes: These things are reasonable in a way. But the teaching of the faith of the Fathers who assembled at Nicaea says that the Only-begotten himself, the true God, consubstantial with the Father, suffered and was crucified. Orthodoxos: Because after the union the divine Scripture attaches both the lofty and the lowly things to one person. And perhaps you were unaware of this too: that, having first said [that he became flesh and became man], they then added “suffered, crucified”; and having first shown the nature capable of receiving the passion, they thus added the passion to their words. Eranistes: The Fathers said that the Son of God, light from light, from the substance of the Father, suffered and was crucified. Orthodoxos: I have often said that the one person receives both the divine and the human things. For this reason the thrice-blessed Fathers too, having taught how one must believe in the Father, and passing on to the person of the Son, did not say at once, “And in the Son of God” — although it would have been very natural, after speaking about God the Father, to put the title of the Son at once — but they wished to hand down to us the account of theology and that of the dispensation together, so that the person of the Godhead and that of the humanity might not be thought to be different. For this reason they added to what was said about the Father that one must believe also in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And God the Word was called Christ after he became man. This name, then, receives all things, both those proper to the Godhead and those proper to the humanity. Yet we recognize which belong to this nature and which to that; and this is easy to learn from the creed of the faith itself. To what, tell me, do you fit “from the substance of the Father”: to the Godhead, or to the nature formed from the seed of David? Eranistes: Clearly to the Godhead. Orthodoxos: And “true God from true God”: whose property do you say this is, the Godhead’s or the humanity’s? … Orthodoxos: Then also what is consubstantial with the Father is not the flesh, nor the soul (for these are created), but the Godhead, which fashioned all things? … Orthodoxos: So, then, when we hear of passion and cross, we must recognize the nature that received the passion, and not attach it to the impassible nature, but to the one that was assumed for this very purpose. For that the admirable Fathers confessed the divine nature to be impassible and fitted the passion to the flesh, the end of the creed bears witness; it runs thus: “But those who say, ‘There was when he was not,’ and ‘Before he was begotten he was not,’ and that he came into being from things that are not, or who assert that the Son of God is of another hypostasis or substance, or is mutable or alterable — these the holy catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.” See, then, what punishment they threatened against those who attach the passion to the divine nature.

Eranistes: Their statement here concerns change and alteration. Orthodoxos: And what else is passion than change and alteration? For if, being impassible before the incarnation, he suffered after the incarnation, he surely suffered by undergoing change; and if, being immortal before he became man, he tasted death after he became man, as your argument has it, he was altogether altered, becoming mortal from immortal. But such words, and indeed their fathers too, [the assemblies] of the holy ones cut off as rotten limbs from the healthy body. For this reason we urge you to fear the punishment and to hate the blasphemy. And I will show you that the holy Fathers held, in their own writings too, what we have gone through: some of them took part in that wonderful assembly, some were eminent in the churches after them, and some enlightened the world long, long before. But neither the difference of times nor the diversity of languages harmed their harmony; they are like a lyre that has many different strings but gives out one all-harmonious sound. … a hearing; for such teaching is beyond dispute and very profitable. Orthodoxos: Open your ears, then, and …

Of Saint Ignatius, bishop of Antioch and [martyr]. From the Letter to the Smyrnaeans. “They do not accept eucharists and offerings, because they do not confess that the eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father in his goodness raised.” … From the third book Against the Heresies. “It is clear, then, that Paul knows no other Christ but this one, who suffered, and was buried, and rose, and was born, whom he also calls man. For having said, ‘But if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead,’ he adds, giving the reason for his incarnation, ‘For since through a man came death, through a man also came the resurrection of the dead.’ And everywhere, in speaking of the passion of our Lord, and of his humanity, and of his being put to death, he uses the name of Christ, as in ‘Do not by your food destroy that one for whom Christ died’; and again, ‘But now in Christ you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ’; and again, ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’” Of the same, from the same book. “For as he was man so that he might be tempted, so he was also Word so that he might be glorified: the Word remaining quiet while he was tempted, and crucified, and died, but being present with the man when he conquered, and endured, and showed kindness, and rose, and was taken up.” Of the same, from the fifth book of the same work. “Since, then, the Lord redeemed us by his own blood, and gave his soul for our souls, and his own flesh for our flesh …” Of Saint Hippolytus, bishop and martyr. From the letter to a certain queen. “He calls him, then, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, as the firstborn of the dead. He, having risen, and wishing to show that this which was raised was the same that also died, when the disciples doubted, called Thomas and said, ‘Come, touch and see; for a spirit does not have bone and flesh as you see that I have.’” Of the same, from the same letter. “By calling him firstfruits he bore witness to what we have said: that the Saviour, having taken flesh from the same lump, raised it, making it the firstfruits of the flesh of the righteous, so that all of us who have believed may have the resurrection to look for, in hope of him who has been raised.” Of the same, from the discourse On the Two Thieves. “The Lord’s body provided both to the world:

the sacred blood and the holy water.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “And although the body was dead in human fashion, it has great power of life in it. For what does not flow from dead bodies flowed from it, blood and water, so that we might know how great is the power for life of the power that dwelt in the body, so that it did not appear dead like the others, but could pour out for us the causes of life.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “And a bone of the holy lamb is not broken, the type showing that the passion does not reach the power; for the bones are the strength of the body.” Of Saint Eustathius, bishop of Antioch and [confessor]. From the discourse On the Soul. “It is possible to refute their impious slander in a few words. Above all, if it was not for the salvation of human beings that he willingly gave up his own body to the slaughter of death, first they attach great weakness to him, as if he had not been able to check the onslaught of his enemies.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “Why do they make so much of showing that Christ assumed a body without a soul, these earthbound men who define things so? So that, by attaching the alterations of the passions to the divine Spirit, they may easily persuade [people] that what is mutable was not begotten of the immutable nature.” Of the same, from the discourse on “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways.” “For the man who died rises on the third day, and to Mary, who [wished] to touch [him], he cries out: ‘Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.’ Now ‘I have not yet ascended to my Father’ was not said by the Word and God who came from heaven and dwells in the bosom of the Father, nor by the Wisdom that encompasses all created things; but the man himself, fitted together from members of every kind, uttered this, he who was raised from the dead and had not yet gone up to the Father after death, but was keeping for himself the firstfruits of the journey.” Of the same, from the same. “He clearly names the very man who was crucified Lord of glory, writing [so], since [God] also showed him to be Lord and Christ, as the apostles, speaking with one mind to the Israel according to the senses, say: ‘Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.’ So it was the Jesus who suffered that he made Lord — not the Wisdom, nor the Word, who had the power of lordship from the beginning, but the one who was lifted up and stretched out his hands on the cross.

” Of the same, from the same discourse. “For if he is incorporeal, he neither falls under the touch of hands, nor is grasped by the eyes of sense, … nor shares in death, nor is hidden in the earth, nor shut up in a tomb, nor rises from graves.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “‘No one takes my soul from me; I have authority to lay down my soul, and I have authority to take it again.’ If, then, he had authority over both as God, he allowed them [to destroy the temple], and by raising it he renewed it. It has been shown by incontestable verdicts that he himself, by himself, raised his own house, renewing it. But the mighty works of the Son must also be referred to the most divine Father; for the Son does not create without the Father, according to the unbreakable declarations of the holy Scriptures. For this reason the most divine Begetter is written at one time to have raised Christ from the dead, while at another the Son promises to raise his own temple. If, then, from what has been examined before, the divine spirit of Christ has been shown to be impassible, the accursed men lay hold of the apostolic definitions to no purpose. For if Paul said that the Lord of glory was crucified, clearly looking to the man, it will not on that account be necessary to attach passion to the divine. Why, then, do they join this to it, weaving together their saying that Christ was crucified out of weakness?” Of the same, from the same discourse. “But even if it were fitting to attach some form of weakness to him, one would say that it is consistent to ascribe these things to the man, not, surely, to the fullness of the Godhead, or to the dignity of the supreme Wisdom, or to the God who is, as Paul writes, over all.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “This, then, is the manner of the weakness through which, according to Paul, he is written to have come to death. For he lives by the power of God — the man, that is, dwelling together with the divine Spirit; since the one believed to be in him has been shown, by the definitions already given, to be the power of the Most High.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “If, having entered the virgin womb, he did not diminish his authority, neither is the spirit defiled when the body was fixed to the wood of the cross. For the body was crucified aloft, but the divine Spirit of Wisdom both dwelt within the body and walked the heavens, and encompassed the whole earth, and ruled the abysses, and, searching out the souls of each, discerned them, and did all things together, as God is wont. For the supreme Wisdom is not contained shut up within bodily masses, as materials liquid and dry are shut up inside vessels and are contained by their receptacles rather than containing them. Rather, being a divine and ineffable power, it embraces and strengthens the innermost and outermost parts of the temple, and, reaching from there beyond, holds all the masses together, encompassing them.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “If the sun, which is a visible body and perceptible to sense, undergoes so many and such great outrages everywhere on earth and does not change its order, nor feel any blow, small or great, do we suppose that the incorporeal Wisdom is defiled and changes its nature, if its temple is nailed to a cross, or undergoes dissolution, or suffers a wound, or receives corruption? But the temple suffers, while the stainless substance [remains] altogether

unstained in its dignity.” Of the same, from the discourse on the titles of the Songs of Ascents. “The Father does not receive acquired glory, being perfect, infinite, beyond conception, needing no beauty and beyond every insult. Nor does his Word, who is God, begotten of him, through whom came into being angels and heavens and the boundless expanses of the earth and, in a word, all the materials and structures of created things; but the man Christ, raised from the dead, is exalted and glorified, while his adversaries plainly incur shame.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “But those who out of envy took up hatred against him … [the Word] and God having raised his own temple in a manner worthy of him.” Of the same, from the interpretation of the twenty-second psalm. “So the prophet Isaiah, going through the very traces of his sufferings, adds this too among the rest with a louder cry: ‘And we saw him, and he had neither form nor beauty; but his form was without honor and failing beyond the sons of men.’ Then, declaring expressly that the forms of unseemliness and the sufferings are attached to the man and not to the divine, he adds straightway: ‘A man under a blow, and knowing how to bear weakness.’” Of the same, from the same interpretation. “He, then, is the one who after the outrages was seen unsightly and shapeless, and then again by a change put on comeliness. For the God who dwelt in him was not led like a lamb to death, nor slaughtered like a sheep, since he is by nature invisible.” … From the Letter to Epictetus. “Who has been so impious as to say and also to think that the Godhead itself, consubstantial with the Father, was circumcised and became imperfect from perfect, and that what was nailed to the wood was not the body but the very creative substance of Wisdom?” Of the same, from the same work. “For what the human [nature] of the Word suffered, the Word, being united with it, referred to himself, so that we might be able to share in the Godhead of the Word. And it was a paradox that he was the one who suffered and did not suffer: suffered, because his own body suffered, and he was in it as it suffered; did not suffer, because the Word, being God by nature, is impassible. And he, the incorporeal, was in the passible body, and the body had in itself the impassible Word, who was doing away with the weaknesses

of the body itself.” Of the same, from the same letter. “For being God and Lord of glory, he was in the body that was ingloriously nailed; and the body suffered, pierced on the wood, and from its side flowed blood and water; but being the temple of the Word, it was filled with the Godhead. For this reason the sun, seeing its Creator enduring in the body that was outraged, drew in its rays and darkened the earth; and the body itself, having a mortal nature, rose beyond its own nature because of the Word in it, and ceased from the corruption that is natural to it, and having put on the Word who is above man, became incorruptible.” … “Was what was raised from the dead man, or God? Peter the apostle explains, who knew better than we do, and says, ‘Taking him down from the tree, they laid him in a tomb; but God raised him from the dead.’ The dead body of Jesus, then, which was taken down from the tree, and laid in the tomb, and buried by Joseph of Arimathea, this the Word raised, who said, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ He who gives life to all the dead also gave life to the man from Mary, Christ Jesus, whom he assumed. For if, while he was on the cross, he raised the dead bodies of the saints that had already been dissolved, much more can the ever-living God the Word raise the body that he wore, as Paul says, ‘For the word of God is living and active.’ … does not die, but gives life to the dead. For as light is not harmed in a dark place, so neither can life suffer when it has visited the mortal nature. For the Godhead of the Word is immutable and unalterable, as the Lord says of himself in prophecy: ‘See me, that I am, and I have not changed.’” Of the same, from the same discourse. “Being living, he cannot die, but rather gives life to the dead. He is, then, also the fountain of life in the Godhead that is from the Father; but the man is the one who died, or rather was raised from the dead, who also intercedes for us, the one from the Virgin Mary, whom the Godhead of the Word assumed for our sake.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “It came about that Lazarus fell sick and died; but the Lord’s man did not die from sickness, nor unwillingly, but came of himself to the dispensation of death, strengthened by God the Word who dwelt in him, who said, ‘No one takes my soul from me; I lay it down of myself; I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again.’ It is the Godhead of the Son, therefore, that lays down and takes up the soul of the man whom he wore. For he assumed the complete man, so that he might give life to him complete, and with him

the dead.” Of the same, from the discourse against the Arians. “When, then, the blessed Paul says, ‘The Father raised his Son from the dead,’ John tells us that Jesus said, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’; ‘but he spoke,’ he says, ‘about his own body.’ It is clear, then, to those who pay attention, that because the body was raised, the Son is said by Paul to have been raised from the dead. For what belongs to his body is said of his person. So too, when he says, ‘The Father has given life to the Son,’ the life must be understood as given to the flesh. For if he himself is the life, how does the life receive life?” Of the same, from the discourse On the Incarnation. “For the Word, perceiving that the corruption of human beings could not be undone otherwise than by dying, and that it was impossible for the Word to die, since he is immortal and the Son of the Father, for this reason takes to himself a body capable of dying, so that this body, sharing in the Word who is above all, might be sufficient for death on behalf of all, and because of the Word who dwelt in it might remain incorruptible, and thenceforth corruption might cease from all by the grace of the resurrection. Hence, offering to death the body that he himself had taken for himself, as an offering and sacrifice free from every spot, he at once abolished death from all his like by the offering of a fitting equivalent. For being above all, the Word of God fittingly, by offering his own temple and bodily instrument as a ransom for all, paid the debt owed to death; and so, being united with all through what is like them, the incorruptible Son of God fittingly clothed all with incorruption by the promise of the resurrection. And the very corruption in death no longer has any hold against human beings, because of the Word who has come to dwell in them through the one body.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “For this reason, after the most divine demonstrations of himself through his works, he now also offered the sacrifice on behalf of all, handing over his own temple to death in place of all, so as to make all free of guilt and free from the ancient transgression, and to show himself stronger than death, displaying his own body incorruptible as the firstfruits of the resurrection of all. For the body, since it too had the common substance — for it was a human body, even if it was formed by a newer miracle from a virgin alone — was nevertheless mortal and died in accordance with its like; but by the Word’s coming upon it, it was no longer corrupted according to its own nature, but because of the indwelling Word of God it came to be beyond corruption.”