Eranistes (The Beggar), or Polymorphus

… [it would have been right] for us to agree, and to keep the apostolic teaching undefiled. But since, for some reason I do not know, you have broken the concord and now put forward new doctrines to us, let us, if you agree, seek the truth together without any strife. Eranistes: We have no need of inquiry, for we hold the truth exactly. Orthodoxos: Every one of the heretics has assumed this too; and indeed Jews and Greeks think they are champions of the doctrines of truth, and not only those who revere the teachings of Plato and Pythagoras, but also those of Epicurus's band, and those who are utterly godless and hold no belief at all. One ought not to be a slave to prejudice, but to seek the true knowledge. Eranistes: I am persuaded by the exhortation, and I accept the … Orthodoxos: Since, then, you readily accepted the first appeal, I ask you again not to entrust the search for the truth to human reasonings, but to seek out the footprints of the apostles and prophets and of the saints after them. For this is what travellers like to do when they have strayed from the highway: they examine the paths to see whether they bear footprints of any who have gone or come, of men, or horses, or asses, or mules; and when they find them, they track them like dogs, and do not let go until they recover the straight road. … beginning the discussion. Orthodoxos: Then let us first clarify the divine names (I mean substance, and hypostases, and persons, and properties), and know and define what difference they have from one another; and so then let us take up what follows. Eranistes: You have given the discussion a most excellent and most necessary preface. For when these are made clear, … Orthodoxos: Since, then, we have agreed that this must be done, answer, my friend. Do we say that God the Father, and the only-begotten Son, and the all-holy Spirit have one substance, as we were taught by the divine Scripture, both Old and New, and by the Fathers who assembled at Nicaea, or do we follow the blasphemies of Arius? Eranistes: We confess one substance of the holy Trinity. Orthodoxos: And do we think that hypostasis signifies something other than substance, or have we taken it to be another name for substance? Eranistes: Does substance have some difference from hypostasis? Orthodoxos: According to the wisdom from outside it has none; for substance signifies what is, and hypostasis what subsists. But according to the teaching of the Fathers, … the difference that the common has over against the particular, or the genus over against the species or the individual, is the difference that substance has with respect to hypostasis. Eranistes: Speak more clearly about genus and species and individual. Orthodoxos: We call “living being” a genus, for it signifies many things at once. It denotes both the rational and the irrational; and again there are many species of irrational beings: some winged, some amphibious, some that walk, some that swim. And each of these is divided into many: of those that walk, one is a lion, another a leopard, another a bull, and countless others. So too of the winged and of the others there are many species; yet of all these the genus is “living being,” and the species are those already named. So the name “human being” is a name common to this nature. For it signifies the Roman, the Athenian, the Persian, the Sarmatian, and the Egyptian, and in short all who share in this nature. But the name “Paul” or “Peter” no longer signifies what is common to the nature, but a particular human being. For no one who hears “Paul” runs in thought to Adam and Abraham and Jacob, but he thinks of this one alone whose name he heard. But one who hears simply “human being” does not fix his mind on the individual, but reckons with the Indian, the Scythian, the Massagete, and in a word every race of human beings. And not only nature teaches us this, but also the divine Scripture. For God said, it says, “I will wipe out the human being whom I formed from the face of the earth.” He said this of very many myriads; for more than two thousand two hundred years had passed after Adam when he brought the total destruction of the flood upon human beings. So too blessed David says, “A human being, being in honor, did not understand,” accusing not this one or that one but … the nature common to all human beings. And countless such things can be found, but one need not draw it out.

Eranistes: The difference between the common and the particular has been clearly shown; but let us return to the discussion of substance and hypostasis. Orthodoxos: Just as, then, the name “human being” is a name common to this nature, so we have understood the divine substance to signify the holy Trinity, and hypostasis to indicate a person, for example that of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit. For we say that hypostasis, person, and property signify the same thing, following the definitions of the holy Fathers. … Orthodoxos: Whatever, then, is said of the divine nature is common to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, for example “God,” “Lord,” “Creator,” “Almighty,” and whatever is like these. Eranistes: They are indisputably common to the Trinity. Orthodoxos: But whatever indicates the hypostases is no longer common to the holy Trinity, but belongs to that hypostasis whose property it is. For example, the name “Father” and “Unbegotten” are proper to the Father; and again, the name “Son,” and “Only-begotten,” and “God the Word” do not denote the Father, nor the Holy Spirit, but the Son. And “the Holy Spirit” and “the Paraclete” indicate the hypostasis of the Spirit. Eranistes: Does not the divine Scripture, then, call both the Father and the Son “Spirit”? Orthodoxos: It has called both the Father and the Son “Spirit,” signifying by this the incorporeal and uncircumscribed character of the divine nature; but it gives the name “Holy Spirit” to the hypostasis of the Spirit alone. Eranistes: This too is beyond dispute. Orthodoxos: Since, then, we have said that some things are common to the holy Trinity and others proper to each hypostasis, do we say that the name “immutable” is common to the substance, or proper to some hypostasis? Eranistes: Immutability is common to the Trinity. For it is not possible for part of the substance to be mutable and part immutable. Orthodoxos: You have spoken excellently. For just as mortality is common to human beings, so immutability and unalterability are common to the holy Trinity. Therefore the only-begotten Son too [is immutable], just as the Father who begot him, and the Holy Spirit. … Orthodoxos: How, then, do you bring forward that saying of the Gospel, “The Word became flesh,” and attach change to the immutable nature? Eranistes: We do not say that he became flesh by change, but as he himself knows. Orthodoxos: If he is not said to have become flesh by taking flesh, one of two things must be said: either that he underwent change into flesh, or that he appeared so in seeming, while in true reality he was God without flesh. … and this is the opinion of the Manichees. But we were taught, as is agreed, that God the Word was made flesh. Orthodoxos: What do you understand by “was made flesh”? Taking flesh, or being changed into flesh? Eranistes: What we have heard the evangelist saying: “The Word became flesh.” Orthodoxos: And how do you understand “became”? Eranistes: He became flesh not by undergoing change into flesh, but, as I have already said, as he knows. And we know that all things are possible to him. For he changed the water of the Nile into blood, and day into night, and showed the sea as dry land, and the waterless desert … the prophet saying: “All that the Lord willed, he did, in heaven and on earth.” Orthodoxos: The Maker remodels creation as he wills; for it is mutable and follows the nod of the one who created it. But he himself has a nature immutable and unalterable. For this reason the prophet says of the creation, “He who makes all things and changes them,” but of God the Word the great David says, “But you are the same, and your years will not fail.” And again God himself says of himself: “I am, and I have not changed.”

Eranistes: One must not search into hidden things. Orthodoxos: Nor be wholly ignorant of what has been revealed. Eranistes: The manner of the incarnation escapes me; but I have heard that the Word became flesh. Orthodoxos: If he became flesh by being changed, he has not remained what he was before; and this is easy to learn from many images. For sand of a certain kind, when it meets fire, first becomes fluid, then sets into glass, and together with the change it takes on its name … Orthodoxos: And the fruit of the vine, which we call a grape cluster, once we have pressed it, we call no longer a grape cluster but wine. … Orthodoxos: And the wine itself, when it has turned, we are accustomed to call no longer wine but vinegar. … Orthodoxos: So too, when we burn and dissolve stone, we call it … And countless such things can be found which together with the change … Orthodoxos: If, then, you say that God the Word underwent change into flesh, why do you not call him flesh rather than God? For a change of name fits the alteration of nature. For if, where the things that are changed have some kinship with what they were before (for vinegar is somehow close to wine, and wine to the fruit of the vine, and glass to sand), these take other names after the alteration, then where the difference is infinite, as great as that of a gnat compared with the whole creation, visible and invisible (for so great, or rather much greater, is the gap between the nature of flesh and the Godhead), how is it possible for the former name to remain after the change? Eranistes: I have often said that he became flesh not by change, but, remaining what he was, he became what he was not. Orthodoxos: But this “became,” unless it is made clear, hints at change and alteration. For if he did not become flesh by taking flesh, he became flesh by being changed. [Eranistes:] “The Word became flesh,” it says. Orthodoxos: You seem either to be ignorant of the divine Scripture or, knowing it, to be acting in bad faith. But I will either teach you if you are ignorant, or refute you if you are acting in bad faith. Answer, then: do you confess that the teaching of the divine Paul is spiritual? … Orthodoxos: And do you say that the same Spirit worked both through the evangelists and through the apostles? Eranistes: So I say; for so I was taught by the apostolic Scripture: “For there are varieties of gifts,” it says, “but the same Spirit.” And again: “All these are worked by one and the same Spirit, who distributes to each individually as he wills.” And again: “Having the same Spirit of faith.”

Orthodoxos: You have brought forward the apostolic testimonies at the right moment. If, then, we say that the teachings both of the evangelists and of the apostles are of the same Spirit, hear the Apostle … spoke thus: “For surely it is not angels that he takes hold of, but he takes hold of the seed of Abraham.” Answer, then: what do you understand by the seed of Abraham? Did not the seed of Abraham have what Abraham had by nature? Eranistes: Not everything. For Christ did no sin. Orthodoxos: Sin is not of nature but of evil choice. For this reason I did not say without qualification “what Abraham had,” but “what he had by nature,” that is, a body and a rational soul. Say, then, clearly whether you agree that the seed of Abraham is both body and rational soul. If you do not, here too you agree with the nonsense of Apollinarius. But I will compel you to agree to this from another direction as well. Tell me, then: do the Jews have a body and a rational soul? Eranistes: Clearly they have. Orthodoxos: When, then, we hear the prophet saying, “But you, Israel my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen …,” we understand the Jews; do we not understand human beings composed of bodies and souls? … Orthodoxos: So too the seed of Abraham is not soulless, nor mindless, but has everything that … nature … Orthodoxos: But he who says that God the Word was changed into flesh does not even speak of one Son. For flesh by itself is not the Son. But we confess one Son, who took hold of the seed of Abraham, according to the divine Apostle, and accomplished the salvation of human beings. But if you are not content with the apostolic … Eranistes: Then we are saying that the apostles spoke contrary to one another. For “The Word became flesh” seems somehow contrary to “He takes hold of the seed of Abraham” … things that agree seem contrary. For to those who use sound reasoning they do not appear so. For the divine Apostle teaches that God the Word became flesh not by being changed, but by taking hold of the seed of Abraham. And at the same time he recalls the promise made to Abraham. Or do you not remember the promises given to the patriarch by the God of the universe? … Orthodoxos: When he led him out of his father's house and commanded him to come into Palestine, did he not say to him, “I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse, and …” … Orthodoxos: … for you who do not understand, or who contend in vain … “In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed”? Eranistes: I remember these promises. Orthodoxos: Then remember also the covenants that God made with Isaac and Jacob. For he gave these too the same promises, confirming to the second and third what was given first. Eranistes: I remember these too. [Orthodoxos: … the divine] Apostle says thus in the letter to the Galatians: “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. It does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, who is Christ,” showing most clearly the humanity of Christ, which sprang from the seed of Abraham, and the … promise to …

Eranistes: These things were said by the Apostle. Orthodoxos: These too are enough to settle the whole dispute raised about this. Yet I will remind you of another prophecy as well. Jacob the patriarch gave this blessing, which had been given to himself and to his father and grandfather, to his son Judah alone. He spoke thus: “A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up, and he is the expectation of the nations.” Or do you not accept this prophecy as spoken of Christ the Savior? Eranistes: The Jews misinterpret such prophecies; but I am a Christian, believing the divine words, and [I accept] the [prophecies] about our Savior … Orthodoxos: Since, then, you confess that you believe the prophecies, and say that what was foretold about our Savior was divinely declared, learn from this the aim of the apostolic sayings. For, showing that the promises made to the patriarchs had reached their fulfilment, he uttered that wonderful saying, “For surely it is not angels that he takes hold of,” as if to say: The promise is without falsehood; the Master has brought the promises to their end; the spring of the blessing has been opened to the nations; God has taken hold of the seed of Abraham; through this he accomplishes the salvation promised from of old; through this he makes firm the expectation of the nations. Eranistes: Excellently [have you joined] the prophetic to the apostolic … Orthodoxos: So again the divine Apostle, reminding us of the benefit granted to Judah and showing that this too had received its fulfilment, cries out: “For it is evident that the Lord has sprung from Judah.” The prophet Micah and the evangelist Matthew did the same: the one spoke the prophecy, the other joined the testimony to the history. And the remarkable thing is that he says that the most obvious enemies of the truth plainly told Herod that the Christ is born in Bethlehem. “For it is written,” he says, “And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come forth for me a leader who will shepherd my people Israel.” But let us add what the Jews maliciously left out when they offered the testimony incomplete. For the prophet, having said, “From you shall come forth for me a leader,” added: “And his goings forth are from the beginning, from the days of eternity.” Eranistes: You have done excellently in setting down the whole testimony of the prophet. For it shows that the one [born] in Bethlehem is God. Orthodoxos: Not God only, but also human: human, as having sprung from Judah according to the flesh and been born in Bethlehem; God, as existing before the ages. For “From you shall come forth for me a leader” indicates the birth according to the flesh that took place in the last of the days; but “His goings forth are from the beginning, from the days of eternity” clearly proclaims the existence before the ages. So too the divine Apostle in the letter to the Romans, lamenting the change for the worse in the ancient good fortune of the Jews, and … of the divine promise and … “Whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed to the ages of ages. Amen.” And at the same time he showed him to be the Creator and Master and Ruler of all, as God, and sprung from the Jews, as human.

Eranistes: See, you have interpreted these things; what would you say to the prophecy of Jeremiah? For it proclaims him God only. Orthodoxos: Which prophecy do you mean? Eranistes: “This is our God; no other shall be reckoned beside him. He found out the whole way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel who is loved by him. After this he appeared on earth and lived among human beings.” In these words the prophet foretold nothing about flesh, nor about humanity, nor about a human being, but about God alone. Orthodoxos: Where, then, is the need of syllogisms? Do we say that the divine nature is invisible, or do we not believe the Apostle who says, “To the incorruptible, invisible, only [God]”? Eranistes: The divine nature is indisputably invisible. Orthodoxos: How, then, was it possible for the invisible nature to be seen without a body? Or do you not remember those apostolic sayings that teach clearly that the divine nature cannot be beheld? He says thus: “whom no human being has seen or can see.” If, then, the vision of the divine nature is impossible for human beings (and I say, for angels too), tell me how the one who cannot be beheld and is invisible was seen on earth. Eranistes: The prophet said that he was seen on earth. Orthodoxos: And the Apostle said, “To the incorruptible, invisible, only God,” and “whom no human being has seen or can see.” Eranistes: What, then? Does the prophet lie? Orthodoxos: Far from it! For both these words and those are of the divine Spirit. Eranistes: Let us, then, seek how the invisible one was seen. Orthodoxos: Do not bring me human reasonings and syllogisms. For I am persuaded by the divine Scripture alone. Eranistes: Accept no argument that is not confirmed by the testimony of Scripture. If you bring me the solution of the ambiguity from the divine Scripture, I will accept it and not contradict. [Orthodoxos:] … we made the saying clear through the apostolic testimony, and the divine Apostle showed us how the Word became flesh, saying expressly, “For surely it is not angels that he takes hold of, but he takes hold of the seed of Abraham.” The same teacher, then, will now also teach us how God the Word was seen on earth and lived among human beings. Eranistes: I am persuaded both by the apostolic and by the prophetic words. Show, then, as you promised, the interpretation of the prophecy. Orthodoxos: Writing to Timothy, the divine Apostle set down this too: “Confessedly great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.” It is clear, then, that the divine nature is invisible but the flesh visible, and that through the visible the invisible was seen, working the miracles through it and revealing its own power. For with his hand he fashioned the faculty of sight … and healed the man blind from birth. And again, he restored the power of hearing to the deaf man and loosed the bound tongue, using his fingers in place of an instrument and applying his spittle like a healing remedy. So again, by walking on the sea, he disclosed the omnipotence of the Godhead. Fittingly, then, the divine Apostle said, “God was manifested in the flesh.” For through it the nature that cannot be beheld appeared; through it the throngs of angels too saw it: “For he was seen,” he says, “by angels.” So, then, the nature of the bodiless beings too enjoyed this gift along with us.

Eranistes: Then even before the appearing of the Savior the angels did not see God? Orthodoxos: The Apostle said that, manifested in the flesh, he was seen by angels. Eranistes: But the Lord said, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, the least; for truly I tell you that their angels every day see the face of our Father who is in heaven.” Orthodoxos: But the Lord again said, “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.” For this reason the Evangelist too cries out plainly, “No one has ever seen God,” and confirms the Lord's word: “For the only-begotten Son,” he says, “who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” And the great Moses, longing to see the invisible nature, heard the Master God himself say, “No one shall see my face and live.” Eranistes: How, then, shall we understand “Their angels every day see the face of your Father”? Orthodoxos: As we are accustomed to understand what is said of the human beings who were thought to have seen God. Eranistes: Speak more clearly; for I have not understood. … Is God, then, visible to human beings? Eranistes: Yet we hear the divine Scripture saying, “God appeared to Abraham by the oak of Mamre,” and Isaiah saying, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up.” And Micaiah says this same thing, and Daniel, and Ezekiel. And of Moses the lawgiver the history says that the Lord spoke to him as one would speak to his own friend. And the God of the universe himself said, “Mouth to mouth I will speak to him, in clear sight, and not in riddles.” What, then, shall we say? That they beheld the divine nature? Orthodoxos: By no means. For God himself said, “No one shall see my face and live.” Eranistes: Then those who said that they had seen God lied? Orthodoxos: Far from it! For they saw what it was possible for them to see. Eranistes: So the loving Master measures his revelations by the capacity of those who see? Orthodoxos: Certainly. And he made this clear through the prophet: “For I,” he said, “multiplied visions, and by the hands of prophets I was likened.” He did not say, “I was seen,” but “I was likened.” And a likeness does not show the very nature of what is seen. For not even the king's image shows the king's own nature, even if it preserves the king's features clearly …

Eranistes: That at least is obscure and unclear. Then neither did those who [received] the revelations see God's substance? Orthodoxos: Who is so mad as to dare to say this? Eranistes: Yet it is said that they saw. Orthodoxos: It is said. But we, using godly reasoning and believing the divine statements that cry out expressly, “No one has ever seen God,” … say that they saw not the divine nature but certain visions proportioned to their own capacity. … Orthodoxos: So, then, let us understand the angels too, when we hear that “every day they see the face of your Father.” For they do not see the divine substance, which is uncircumscribed, incomprehensible, inconceivable, and encompasses all things, but a certain glory [proportioned] to their … Eranistes: It is agreed that this is so. Orthodoxos: After the incarnation, however, he was seen by the angels too, according to the divine Apostle, using not a likeness of glory but a true and living [one], the covering of the flesh, as a kind of veil. “For God,” he says, “was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels.” Eranistes: This I have accepted as scriptural; but I do not accept innovations in names. … Eranistes: That of the veil. For what Scripture has called the Lord's flesh a veil? Orthodoxos: You seem not to read the divine Scripture very diligently; otherwise you would not have found fault with what we said by way of an image. For in the first place, the divine Apostle's saying that the invisible nature was manifested through flesh allows us to understand the flesh as a veil of the Godhead. Then, the divine Apostle clearly used this very name in the letter to the Hebrews. He says thus: “Having, then, brothers, confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, his flesh, and [having] a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith,” and what follows. … [Eranistes:] … [If you show] us another prophetic testimony too, calling the Lord's flesh plainly a robe and a garment, we will not contradict, and we will acknowledge our thanks. Orthodoxos: I will make you yourself bear witness to the truth of the promise. Do you know that, blessing Judah, [Jacob foretold] to his offspring the rule of Judah? “For a ruler shall not fail from Judah,” he said, “nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up, and he is the expectation of the nations.” And in what went before you agreed that this prophecy was divinely spoken about the Savior. … Orthodoxos: Remember, therefore, what follows. For he says in the same passage: “Whose coming the nations await; he will wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape.”

Eranistes: The patriarch spoke of clothes, not of a body. Orthodoxos: Show, then, when or where [he washed his clothes] in the blood of the grape … Eranistes: You show that the body was reddened with these. Orthodoxos: I ask you to answer in a more mystical way; for perhaps some who are uninitiated are standing by. Eranistes: So I will listen, and so I will answer. Orthodoxos: Do you know that the Lord called himself a vine? Eranistes: I know that he said, “I am the true vine.” Orthodoxos: And the fruit of the vine, when pressed, what … Orthodoxos: And when the soldiers wounded the Savior's side with the lance, what do those who wrote the Gospels say poured out of it? Eranistes: Blood and water. Orthodoxos: Then he called the Savior's blood the blood of the grape. For if the Master has been named a vine, and the fruit of the vine is called wine, and streams of blood and water poured out from the Master's side and passed down through the rest of the body, then fittingly and aptly did the patriarch foretell, “He will wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape.” For just as we name the mystical fruit of the vine, after the consecration, the Master's blood, so he named the blood of the true vine the blood of the grape. Eranistes: The present argument has been demonstrated at once mystically and clearly. Orthodoxos: Even if what has been said is sufficient for your faith, still I will add another proof to confirm the truth. Eranistes: You will do me a favor by doing so; for the benefit … Orthodoxos: Do you know that God called his own [body] bread? … Orthodoxos: And elsewhere he named his flesh wheat? Eranistes: I know this too. For I heard him saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” and “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Orthodoxos: And in the handing on of the mysteries he called the bread body, and the mixed cup blood. … Orthodoxos: But by nature, too, the body would properly be called body, and the blood blood. … Orthodoxos: But our Savior exchanged the names: to the body he gave the name of the symbol, and to the symbol the name of the body. So, having named himself a vine, he called the symbol blood. … Eranistes: This you have spoken truly. But I wanted to learn the reason for the exchange of names. Orthodoxos: The aim is clear to those initiated into divine things. For he wished those who partake of the divine mysteries not to attend to the nature of the things that are seen, but, through the exchange of names, to believe the change that has come about by grace. For he who called his body, which is body by nature, wheat and bread, and again named himself a vine, honored the visible symbols with the name of the body and blood, not changing their nature, but … grace …

Eranistes: Both the mystical things have been spoken mystically, and what is not known to all has been clearly shown. Orthodoxos: Since, then, it is agreed that the Master's body was named robe and garment by the patriarch, and we have entered on the discussion of the divine mysteries, tell me, by the truth: of what do you consider the all-holy food to be a symbol and type? Of the Godhead of the Master Christ, or of the body and blood? Eranistes: Clearly of those whose names they have received. Orthodoxos: You mean of the body and the blood? … Orthodoxos: You have spoken as a lover of truth. For the Lord, taking the symbol, did not say, “This is my Godhead,” but “This is my body,” and again, “This is my blood”; and elsewhere, “And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Eranistes: These things are true, for they are divine oracles. [Orthodoxos: If they are] true, then the Lord surely had a body. Eranistes: Do I, then, say that he is bodiless? … Eranistes: I say that the Word became flesh; for so I was taught. … we are drawing water into a [leaking] jar; for after all those proofs and the solutions of the objections, you bring forward the same things. Orthodoxos: Did I not offer you the interpretation of the Gospel sayings from the prophetic and apostolic [writings]? Eranistes: Those do not suffice to resolve the question. Orthodoxos: And yet we showed that, being invisible, he was manifested through flesh. And we have been taught by the divine men the kinship of the flesh itself: “For he takes hold of the seed of Abraham.” And the Master God said to the patriarch, “In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed”; and the Apostle: “For it is evident that the Lord has sprung from Judah.” And we brought forward many other such testimonies. But since you long to hear others too, hear the Apostle saying, “For every high priest taken from among human beings is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices”; “hence it is necessary for this one too to have something to offer.” … Orthodoxos: The divine Apostle himself teaches this clearly in that very passage. For a little later he says thus: “Therefore, coming into the world, he says: Sacrifice and offering you did not want, but a body you prepared for me.” He did not say, “You changed me into a body,” but “A body you prepared for me.” And he indicates the forming of the body by the Spirit, according to the word of the Gospel: “For do not fear,” it says, “to take Mary your wife; for what has been begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit.” Eranistes: Then the Virgin gave birth to a body only. Orthodoxos: It seems you have not grasped even the arrangement of the syllables, much less the meaning. For [the angel] was teaching Joseph the manner of the conception, not of the birth. For he did not say, “What is born of her,” that is, made or formed, “is of the Holy Spirit.” For since Joseph, not knowing the mystery, suspected adultery, he was clearly taught that the forming was the Spirit's. Indicating this through the prophet, he said, “But a body you prepared for me”; and the divine Apostle, being spiritual, interpreted the prophecy. If, then, it is proper to priests to offer gifts, and Christ was called priest according to his humanity, and offered no other sacrifice but his own body, then the Master Christ had a body.

Eranistes: I have often said that I too do not say that God the Word appeared without a body; yet I say not that he assumed a body, but that he became flesh. Orthodoxos: As the proverb has it, it seems, [we are] … As I see, … to bring forward against [the followers of] Valentinus and Marcion. Or rather, not even they ever dared to say that the immutable nature was changed into flesh. Eranistes: Reviling is foreign to Christians. [Orthodoxos:] … we [do not revile], but we are much vexed that you fight over undisputed things as though they were disputed. Yet I will try to dissolve your ignoble love of strife. Answer, then: do you remember the promises made by God to David? [Eranistes: I remember those] recorded in the eighty-eighth psalm; which of them, then, are you asking about at present? Orthodoxos: Those about the Master Christ. Eranistes: You yourself recall the words; for you yourself promised to bring forward the proofs. Orthodoxos: Hear, then, the prophet at the very beginning of the psalm hymning God. For having foreseen with prophetic eyes the lawlessness of the people that was to come and the captivity that would come because of it, he hymned his own Master for his promises that do not lie. He spoke thus: “Your mercies, Lord, I will sing forever; to generation and generation I will proclaim your truth with my mouth. For you said: Mercy will be built up forever; in the heavens your truth will be prepared.” By all these the prophet teaches both the promise made by God out of love for humankind and the truthfulness of the promise. Then he says what he promised and to whom, showing God himself speaking: “For I made a covenant,” he says, “with my chosen ones.” He called the patriarchs chosen. Then he adds: “I swore to David my servant.” And he says also what he swore about: “I will prepare your seed forever, and I will build your throne to generation and generation.” Tell me, then, whom [you take to be] the seed of David … Eranistes: The promise was made about Solomon. Orthodoxos: Then he also made his covenants with the patriarchs about Solomon. For before what was said about David he recalled the promises made to them: “For I made a covenant,” he says, “with my chosen ones.” And he promised the patriarchs to bless all the nations in their seed. Show me, then, the nations blessed through Solomon. Eranistes: This promise, then, was fulfilled not through Solomon but through our Savior …

Orthodoxos: Then the Master Christ brought the promises made to David to their fulfilment. Eranistes: I think that God made these promises either about Solomon or about Zerubbabel. Orthodoxos: A little while ago you were using the arguments of Marcion, Valentinus, and Mani; now you have gone over to the band diametrically opposed to them, and you plead the cause of the shamelessness of the Jews. This is characteristic of those who turn aside from the straight road: for this way … Eranistes: The Apostle [excludes] those who use reviling … Orthodoxos: If they revile without cause. For the divine Apostle himself sometimes uses this form at the right moment: he calls the Galatians foolish, and of others he says, “people corrupted in mind, disqualified regarding the faith,” and again of others, “whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame,” and what follows. Eranistes: What occasion for reviling, then, did I give you? Orthodoxos: That you plead for the most obvious enemies of the truth. Or does it not seem to you a most reasonable ground for indignation among the godly, [to plead for those who are hostile] to the truth? Eranistes: How, and in what way? Orthodoxos: The Jews fit such prophecies to Solomon and to Zerubbabel, so that … But the very words refute their lawlessness. “For I will prepare your throne forever,” he says. Not only did Solomon and Zerubbabel, to whom they fit such prophecies, reach the end of life after living a fixed time, but the whole race of David has also been extinguished. For who today knows [anyone] of David's [line]? Eranistes: Are not the so-called patriarchs of the Jews of David's lineage? … Eranistes: But where do they come from? Orthodoxos: From Herod the foreigner, who was an Ascalonite on his father's side and an Idumaean on his mother's. Besides, they themselves have completely disappeared, and time has passed since their rule too came to an end. But the Master God promised not only to keep the seed of David forever, but also to guard the kingdom undissolved. “For I will build your throne,” he said, “to generation and generation.” Yet we see both his race gone and the kingdom come to an end. And though we see this, we know that the God of the universe does not lie. Eranistes: Clearly God does not lie. Orthodoxos: If, then, God is true, as indeed he is, and he promised David both to keep his race forever and to preserve the kingdom without break in succession, yet we see neither the race nor the kingdom (for both have ceased), how shall we persuade those who contradict that God does not lie …

Orthodoxos: Since, then, you have agreed, come, let us examine together the middle of the psalm as well; for we shall know the sense of the prophecy more clearly. … I too. Orthodoxos: God, having promised many things about this seed (that he will rule over sea and land, will be higher than the kings on earth, will be called God's firstborn, and will call God Father with confidence), added this too: “Forever I will keep my mercy for him, and my covenant will be faithful to him; and I will establish his seed forever and ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.” Eranistes: The promise is beyond human nature. For both the life and the honor are indestructible and eternal; but human beings are temporary. For their nature is short-lived, and kingship, even in life, has many … the greatness of the promise belongs to Christ the Savior alone. [Orthodoxos:] Then [attend] to the rest as well; for your opinion about this will become altogether firmer. For again the God of the universe says: “Once I swore by my holiness, that I will not lie to David. His seed will remain forever, and his throne as the sun before me, and as the moon established forever.” And showing the truth of the promise, he added, “And the witness in heaven is faithful.” Eranistes: One must believe without hesitation what has been promised by the faithful witness. For if we are accustomed to believe human beings who promise to tell the truth, even if they do not confirm their words by an oath, who is so stupid as to disbelieve the Maker of the universe when he adds an oath to his words? For he who forbids others to swear guaranteed with an oath, as the Apostle too says, the unchangeableness of his purpose, “so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to take hold of the [hope] set before us.” Orthodoxos: If, then, the promise is indisputably true, and we do not see among the Jews either the race or the kingdom of the prophet David, let us believe without doubt that our Lord Jesus Christ is called the seed of David according to his humanity. For he has both life and kingdom eternal. Eranistes: We do not doubt, but [believe] that this is so. Orthodoxos: These things too suffice to show clearly the humanity of our God and Savior, which he assumed from the seed of David. But in order to drive out all disagreement by the testimony of more witnesses, let us hear God, through the voice of the prophet Isaiah, recalling the promises to David. “For I will make with you,” he says, “an everlasting covenant.” And pointing to the lawgiver, he added: “the holy and faithful things of David.” For since he promised these things to David, and spoke them through Isaiah, he will also fulfil the promise. And what follows in the prophecy agrees with these. For he says: “Behold, I have given him as a witness among the nations, a ruler and commander among the nations. Behold, nations that do not know you will call upon you, and peoples who do not know you will flee to you for refuge.” These fit none of David's descendants. For which of David's descendants, as Isaiah says, was shown to be a ruler of nations? And what nations [called upon] any of David's descendants …

Eranistes: One ought not to [dispute] about plain matters; for these things truly belong to the Master Christ. Orthodoxos: Then let us pass to another prophetic testimony, and listen to the same prophet saying, “A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up from the root.” Eranistes: I think this prophecy [was spoken] about Zerubbabel … Orthodoxos: If you listen to what follows as well, you will not remain in your opinion. For not even the Jews have understood this prediction so. For the prophet adds: “And the Spirit of God will rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and godliness; the spirit of the fear of God will fill him.” No one could fit these things to a mere human being; for even to the very holy the gifts of the Spirit are given by distribution. And the divine Apostle is a witness, saying, “For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit,” and what follows. But here the prophet has said that the one who sprang from the root of Jesse has all the workings … Orthodoxos: Then hear what follows as well; for you will touch … some of them even surpassing human nature. He speaks thus: “He will not judge by reputation, nor convict by what is said; but he will judge for the lowly with justice, and convict the glorious of the earth with uprightness; and he will strike the earth with the word of his mouth, and with the breath through his lips he will destroy the ungodly.” Of these predictions some are human and some divine: for justice, and truth, and uprightness and impartiality in judging show the virtue according to the humanity … Eranistes: Through these we have learned more clearly that the prophet foretold the coming of our Savior Christ. Orthodoxos: What follows will teach you the truth of the interpretation more plainly still. For he adds, “Then the wolf will graze with the lamb,” and what follows; by which he teaches both the difference of characters and the agreement of faith. And we have the experience of the facts as a witness to the prophecy. For those who abound in wealth and those who live with poverty, servants and masters, the ruled and the rulers, soldiers and private persons, and those who hold the scepters of the world, one font receives; one teaching is offered to all; one mystical table is set before all; and each of the believers enjoys an equal portion.

Eranistes: But these things show that the one prophesied is God. Orthodoxos: Not God only, but also human. For this reason, right at the beginning of this prophecy he said that a rod would spring from the root of Jesse; and, concluding the prediction, he took up the opening again. For he said: “And there shall be the root of Jesse, and the one who rises to rule nations; in him nations will hope, and his rest will be honor.” Jesse was the father of David, and the promise with oaths was made to David. He would not have called the Master Christ a rod springing from Jesse if he had known him as God only. And the prediction also foretold the change of the world. “For the whole earth,” it says, “was filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as much water to cover seas.” Eranistes: I have listened to the prophetic oracles. But I wanted to know clearly whether any of the apostles too … said that the Master Christ [sprang from David] according to the flesh. Orthodoxos: You have asked for nothing difficult, but for something quite easy and simple. Hear, then, the first of the apostles crying out: “Being a prophet, David, knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him to raise up the Christ according to the flesh from the fruit of his loins, to sit on his throne, foresaw and spoke of his resurrection, that his soul was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.” From these words you can learn that the Master Christ sprang from the seed of David according to the flesh, and that he had not flesh only but also a soul. Eranistes: Which other of the apostles proclaimed these things? Orthodoxos: The great Peter alone would have sufficed as a fellow witness to the truth; for the Master received the confession of the truth from him alone and confirmed it with the celebrated blessing. But since you long to hear others proclaiming this, hear Paul and Barnabas addressing the people in Antioch of Pisidia. For they, having mentioned David, added this: “From this man's seed God, according to the promise, raised up for Israel a Savior, Jesus,” and what follows. And the inspired Paul, writing to Timothy, [says] this too: “… from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel.” And writing to the Romans, right in the preface he mentioned the kinship with David. He said thus: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,” and what follows. Eranistes: The proofs are many and true. But tell me, why did you pass over what follows in the testimony? Orthodoxos: Because you are in doubt about the humanity, not about the Godhead. If you were disputing about the Godhead, I would have brought you proofs about it. However, saying “according to the flesh” suffices to indicate the Godhead that is passed over in silence. For in teaching the kinship of an ordinary human being I do not say, “So-and-so is the son of so-and-so according to the flesh,” but simply “son.” So too the divine evangelist wrote the genealogy: “For Abraham,” he says, “begot Isaac,” and he did not add “according to the flesh,” for Isaac was only a human being. And he mentioned the others in the same way, for they were human beings, having nothing beyond nature. But the heralds of the truth, when speaking of the Master Christ and showing those who do not know it his kinship below, add “according to the flesh,” thereby signifying the Godhead, and teaching that the Master Christ is not human only but also God before the ages.

Eranistes: You have brought forward many testimonies, both apostolic and prophetic; but I believe the Evangelist who says, “The Word became flesh.” Orthodoxos: I too believe this divine teaching, but I understand it piously: that having taken flesh and a rational soul, he is said to have become flesh. But if God the Word took nothing from our nature, then the promises made by God to the patriarchs about … are not true, … the blessing of Judah, the promise to David is false, and the Virgin too is superfluous, since she contributed nothing of our nature to God made flesh; and the predictions of the prophets have no fulfilment. Then our preaching is empty, and our faith is empty, and the hope of the resurrection is vain. For the Apostle, it seems, lies when he says, “He raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” For if the Master Christ had nothing of our nature, he is falsely called our firstfruits; and no nature of a body has been raised from the dead, nor obtained the seat at the right hand in heaven. And if it has obtained none of these, how did God raise us up and seat us with Christ, when we have no natural connection with him? But it is impious to say this. For the divine Apostle, when the common resurrection had not yet happened and the kingdom of heaven had not yet been granted to believers, cries, “He raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” teaching that since the firstfruits of our race has obtained the resurrection and the seat at the right hand, we too shall certainly obtain the resurrection, and those who share the nature and have partaken of the faith share in the glory of the firstfruits. Eranistes: You have gone through many true arguments; but I wanted to know the meaning of the Gospel saying. Orthodoxos: You need no outside interpretation; for the Evangelist interprets himself. For having said, “The Word became flesh,” he added, “and dwelt among us”; that is, having dwelt among us, and using the flesh taken from us as a kind of temple, he is said to have become flesh. And teaching that he remained unaltered, he added: “And we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” For though clothed in flesh, he showed his Father's nobility, and sent forth the rays of the Godhead, and let the radiance of his sovereign authority shine, revealing by his miracles the hidden nature. Like these words is what the divine Apostle wrote to the Philippians: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider being equal with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of human beings; and being found in fashion as a human being, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” See the kinship of the proclamations. The Evangelist said, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”; the Apostle, “taking the form of a servant.” The Evangelist again said, “We beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father”; the Apostle, “who, being in the form of God, did not consider being equal with God a thing to be grasped.” And in a word, both teach that he who was God and Son of God, clothed in the Father's glory and having the same nature and power as the one who begot him, who was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God, and created the creation, took the form of a servant. And he seemed to be only what was seen; but he was God, clothed in human nature and accomplishing the salvation of human beings. This is what “The Word became flesh” shows, and “being made in the likeness of human beings, and being found in fashion as a human being.” For the Jews saw only this; and so they said to him, “We do not stone you for a good work, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” And again, “This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath” … unbelief, and for this reason they used these words. [And if] you find the apostles too saying these things before the resurrection, do you accept the interpretation? I hear them, then, in the boat, after the very great miracle of the calm, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even the sea and the winds obey him?”

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.”

Of holy Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, from the discourse on Abraham: “… therefore not the naked Word, but the one who became flesh; not the form of God, but the form of the servant. This, then, is the one who said that he can do nothing of himself. For to be unable is a mark of weakness. For as darkness is opposed to light, and death to life, so weakness is opposed to power. But Christ is the power of God; and power is not at all powerless. For if power were weak, what would be powerful? When, then, the Word declares that he cannot do something, it is clear that he does not attribute inability to the Godhead of the Only-begotten, but bears witness to the weakness of our nature. And the flesh is weak, as it is written, ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’” Of the same, from [the discourse] On the Perfect Life: “But again the true lawgiver, of whom Moses was a type, hewed for himself the tablets of the nature from our earth. For no marriage fashioned his God-receiving flesh, but he himself becomes the stonecutter of his own flesh, which was inscribed by the divine finger. For the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin, and the power of the [Most High] overshadowed her. And when this had happened, the nature again had its unbreakableness, having become immortal by the marks of the finger.” Of the same, from the discourse Against Eunomius: “We say, then, that in the words before this, by saying that Wisdom built herself a house, he hints in the discourse at the construction of the Lord's flesh. For the true Wisdom did not dwell in a building belonging to another, but built for herself the dwelling from the virginal body.” Of the same, from the same treatise: “The Word was before the ages, but the flesh came to be in the last of times; and no one could reverse this and say either that this is before the ages, or that the Word came to be in the last times.” Of the same, from the same treatise: “The saying ‘He created me’ does not come from the divine and pure [nature], but, as has been said, from what was assumed by the dispensation from our created nature.” Of the same, from the first discourse on the Beatitudes: “‘Who, being in the form of God, did not consider being equal with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.’ What is poorer for God than the form of a servant? What is humbler for the King of beings than to come into fellowship with our poor nature? The King of those who reign and the Lord of those who rule voluntarily puts on the form of slavery.”

Of holy … From the homily on John the Baptist: “Do not, then, think of the union in bodily terms, nor understand it as marital intercourse. For your Creator fashions his bodily temple to be born of you.” Of the same, from the discourse on “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”: “Hear him who says, ‘The Spirit is upon me, because he has anointed me.’ You do not know, he says, what you read; for I, the one anointed by the Spirit, have come to you. And it is not the invisible nature that is anointed by the Spirit, but what is of one kind with us.” [Of the same, from the discourse] on “My Father is greater than I”: “Distinguish for me, then, the natures, that of God and that of the human being. For neither did he become human from God by a fall, nor God from a human being by progress. For I speak of God and human being. And when you assign the sufferings to the flesh and the miracles to God, you necessarily, even unwillingly, assign the lowly words to the human being from Mary, and the exalted and God-befitting ones to the Word who was in the beginning. For this is why I utter sometimes exalted words and sometimes lowly ones: so that by the lofty I may show the kinship of the indwelling Word, and by the lowly make known the weakness of the lowly flesh. Therefore I sometimes call myself equal to the Father, and sometimes [say] the Father is greater, not fighting against myself, but showing that I am God and human: God from the lofty things, human from the lowly. And if you wish to know how my Father is greater than I, I said it from the flesh, and not from the person of the Godhead.” Of the same, from the discourse on “The Son can do nothing of himself”: “What Adam disobeyed in heaven? What first-formed one was fashioned from a heavenly body besides the first? But the one from the earth was fashioned in the beginning, the one from the earth disobeyed, the one from the earth was assumed. Therefore the one from the earth was also saved, so that the account of the dispensation might thus appear both true and necessary.” [Of holy John, bishop of Constanti]nople: “… of the one who spoke before him. See what he does from the outset. He puts on our nature, which had become weak, [so as to] wrestle through it; and from the outset he tears up by the roots the nature of madness.” Of the same, from the discourse on the Nativity: “For is it not extreme madness that they, bringing their own gods into stones and wood, cheap images, and shutting them up as in a prison, think it no shame either to do or to say this, yet blame us for saying that God, having prepared for himself a living temple from the Holy Spirit, benefited the world through it? For if it is shameful for God to dwell in a human body, much more so in stone and wood, inasmuch as stone and wood are less honorable than a human being; unless to them our race seems more worthless even than these senseless materials. They themselves bring down the substance of God into stones and dogs, and many of the heretics into other things more dishonorable than these. But we would never bear even to hear any of this. But this we say, that pure flesh, holy and blameless and free from all sin …

… Christ …, and he set right his own vessel.” And a little later: “But this we say, that God the Word, having prepared for himself a holy temple, through it brought into our life the way of life from the heavens.” Of the same, from the discourse “That the things said and done by Christ in a lowly manner came about not through weakness of power and …”: “What, then, are the reasons why both he himself and the apostles said many lowly things about him? The first and greatest reason is that he had put on flesh, and wished to assure both those of that time and all those after them that what was seen is not some shadow nor a mere figure, but the reality of a nature. For if, when so many lowly and human things were said about him both by himself and by the apostles, the devil was nevertheless able to persuade some wretched and miserable people to deny the account of the dispensation, to dare to say that he did not take flesh, and to destroy the whole basis of his love for humankind, then if he had said none of these things, how many would not have fallen into this pit?”

[Orthodoxos:] I have brought you a few passages, out of very many, from the heralds of the truth, so as not to weary your ears with their number. Even these are enough to show the aim of the thought of these praiseworthy men. It would now be yours to say how what has been said seems to you. Eranistes: All of them have spoken in harmony, and agree with those who cultivated [the lands] toward the rising sun; but I saw a division in the words of [these] … Orthodoxos: These men became successors of the divine apostles. Some of them even enjoyed their holy voice and their admirable presence; and most … were adorned with the crowns of martyrdom. Does it seem pious to you, then, to move your blasphemous tongue against these too? Eranistes: This I fear to do; but the … Orthodoxos: But I will again [offer] you an unexpected remedy. For I will bring into the open one of the teachers of your admirable heresy, Apollinarius, and show that he understood “The Word became flesh” in the same way as the holy Fathers. Hear, then, what he [says] about this in the book arranged by chapters. From the book by chapters: “If what one assumes is not changed into it, and Christ assumed flesh, then he was not changed into flesh.” And again, immediately joining on, he says: “For he graciously gave himself to us in kinship through the body, in order to save. And what saves is far better than what is saved; therefore he is far better than us even in his embodiment. But he would not have been better if he had been changed into flesh.” And a little later he speaks thus: “The simple is one, but the composite cannot be one. He who says that he became flesh, then, speaks of a change of the one Word. But if the composite too is one, as a human being is, then he who says ‘The Word became flesh’ because of the union with flesh speaks of one by composition.” And again, a little after, he said this too: “Incarnation is emptying; and the emptying showed the one who emptied himself to be not a human being but the Son of Man, by way of clothing, not by way of change.” See, the teacher of your doctrines has even offered you the word “clothing.” And indeed in the little discourse On the Faith he speaks thus: “We believe, then, that, the Godhead remaining unaltered, its incarnation took place for the renewal of humanity. For no alteration, no movement, no enclosure took place in regard to the holy power of God.” And a little later: “We worship God, who took flesh from the holy Virgin, and is therefore human according to the flesh, but God according to the spirit.” And in another exposition he spoke thus: “We confess that the Son of God became Son of Man, not in name but in truth, having taken flesh from Mary the Virgin.” Eranistes: I did not think that Apollinarius held these views; for I had other opinions about the man. Orthodoxos: See, then, you have learned that not only the prophets and apostles, and the teachers of the world ordained after them, but also Apollinarius, who wrote the heretical nonsense, both confesses God the Word immutable and says that he was not changed into flesh but assumed flesh; and he said this many times, as you have heard. Do not, then, strive to outdo your teacher in blasphemy. “For a disciple is not above his teacher,” the Lord said. Eranistes: I too confess both that God the Word is immutable and that he assumed flesh. For to resist so many witnesses is extreme madness. Orthodoxos: Does it seem good to you, then, that the remaining questions too should be resolved? [Eranistes:] … test. Orthodoxos: Let us depart, then, breaking up our meeting, and let us remember what we have agreed.

Orthodoxos: I accepted the challenge, for I took it to be right and just. But first we must recall where we left the discussion yesterday, and what end the debate reached. Eranistes: I will recall the end. For I remember that we agreed that God the Word remained immutable and took flesh, not that he himself was changed into flesh. Orthodoxos: You seem to be content with what has been shown; [you have spoken] as a lover of truth … Eranistes: I said before too that whoever resists so many teachers of such quality is most plainly mad; and not least Apollinarius put me to shame by saying the same things as the orthodox, though in his discourses on the incarnation he plainly went the opposite way. Orthodoxos: [Do we say,] then, that God the Word assumed flesh? … And what do we understand by flesh? A body only, as Arius and Eunomius think, or body and soul? Eranistes: Body and soul. Orthodoxos: What kind of soul? The rational one, or the one some call vegetative or vital? For the fabulous trickery of Apollinarius' writings compels us to ask what we should not need to ask. Eranistes: Does Apollinarius, then, speak of a difference of souls? Orthodoxos: He says that the human being is composed of three: of body, of the vital soul, and again of the rational, which he calls mind. But the divine Scripture knows one soul, not two; and the fashioning of the first human being teaches us this clearly. “For God took dust from the earth,” it says, “and formed the human being, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and the human being became a living soul.” And indeed in the Gospels the Lord said to the holy disciples, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.” And the most divine Moses, having given the number of those who went down into Egypt and said with whom each tribal head entered, added, “All the souls who entered Egypt were seventy-five,” counting one soul for each of those who entered. And the divine Apostle in Troas, when everyone supposed that Eutychus had died, said, “Do not be troubled, for his soul is in him.” Eranistes: It has been clearly shown that each human being has one soul. Orthodoxos: But Apollinarius speaks of two, and says that God the Word assumed the irrational one, and that instead of the rational he himself came to be in the flesh. This is why I asked what kind of soul you say was assumed with the body. Eranistes: I say the rational; for Scripture … Orthodoxos: Do we say, then, that the form of the servant was assumed complete by God the Word? … Orthodoxos: And very reasonably. For since the first human being came wholly under sin and lost the features of the divine image, and the race followed its founder, the Creator of necessity assumed the whole nature, [and renewed it] much more than the former …

Eranistes: These things are true. But I ask that the meanings of the names first be made clear to us, so that the debate may go forward unhindered and none of the … Orthodoxos: Well said; ask, then, about whatever you wish. Eranistes: What ought we to call Jesus Christ? [God, or] human being? Orthodoxos: Neither without the other, but both. For God the Word, having become human, was named Jesus Christ. “For you shall call his name Jesus,” it says, “for he will save his people from their sins.” And, “Today there is born to you Christ the Lord in the city of David.” These are the words of angels. But before the incarnation he was named God, and Son of God, and Only-begotten, and Lord, and God the Word, and Maker. “For in the beginning was the Word,” it says, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”; and, “All things came to be through him”; and, “He was life”; and, “He was the true light, which enlightens every human being coming into the world”; and whatever is like these and indicates the divine nature. But after the incarnation he was named Jesus and Christ. Eranistes: Then the Lord Jesus is God only. Orthodoxos: You hear that God the Word became human, and you call him God only? Eranistes: Since he became human without being changed, but remained what he was, we must call him what he was. Orthodoxos: God the Word was, and is, and will be immutable; but having taken human nature he became human. It is fitting for us, then, to confess both natures, both the one that took and the one that was taken. Eranistes: One should name him from the better. Orthodoxos: The human being (I mean the living creature): is it simple or composite? … Orthodoxos: Composed of what? Eranistes: Of body and soul. Orthodoxos: And which of these natures is the better? Eranistes: Clearly the soul; for it is rational and immortal, and has been entrusted with the rule of the living creature. But the body is mortal and perishable, and when separated from the soul it is irrational and dead. Orthodoxos: Then the divine Scripture ought to name the living creature from the better nature. Eranistes: So it does name it. For it called those who went into Egypt souls: “With seventy-five souls,” it says, “Israel went down into Egypt.” Orthodoxos: And has the divine Scripture called no one from the body? … called them flesh. “For God said,” it says, “My Spirit shall not remain in these human beings, because they are flesh.”

Orthodoxos: And has it called no one flesh without an accusation? … Orthodoxos: Then I will remind you and teach you that it called even the very holy “flesh.” Answer, then: what would you call the apostles? Spiritual …? Eranistes: Spiritual, and [the first] of the spiritual. Orthodoxos: Hear, then, the inspired Paul saying, “But when he who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me through his grace was pleased to reveal his Son in me, that I might [preach] him …, [I did not confer] with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to the apostles before me.” He did not name them so as an accusation against the apostles … Orthodoxos: But naming them from the visible nature, and comparing the call through human beings with the call from heaven. [Hear also David] singing to God and saying, “To you all flesh will come”; and the prophet Isaiah prophesying that “all flesh will see the salvation of our God.” It has been clearly shown that even without any accusation the divine Scripture names the human nature from the flesh. … Orthodoxos: And I will show you the other point too. … Orthodoxos: That even when accusing some, the divine Scripture names them from the soul alone. Eranistes: And where will you find this in the divine Scripture? [Orthodoxos: Hear] the prophet saying, “The soul that sins, it shall die.” And indeed through Moses the great he says, “A soul, if it sins”; and again, “And every soul that will not listen to that prophet shall be utterly destroyed.” And many other such things can be found. Orthodoxos: If, then, where there is a natural union, a conjunction of things created, fellow servants, and of the same time, it is the custom of the divine Scripture to name this living creature not only from the better nature but also from the lesser as well as the greater, how can you blame us for naming the Master Christ human together with confessing him God, and that when many … [Eranistes: Why must one] name the Savior Christ [from both]? Orthodoxos: Because of the different and wholly opposed doctrines of the heretics. Eranistes: And which doctrines are opposed to which? Orthodoxos: That of Arius to that of Sabellius. The one divides the substances; the other confounds the hypostases. Arius introduces three substances; Sabellius speaks of one hypostasis instead of three. Tell me, then, how ought each disease to be healed? Should one apply the same remedy to both sufferings, or to each the one suited to it? Eranistes: To each the one suited to it. Orthodoxos: Then we will try to persuade Arius to confess the [one] substance of the holy Trinity, and we will bring the proofs of this from the divine Scripture. … Orthodoxos: But in debating with Sabellius we will do the opposite. For we will offer no argument about the substance, since he too confesses one. … Orthodoxos: But we will be eager to heal the diseased part of his opinion. … Orthodoxos: And what disease did we say that he suffers from?

Eranistes: We say that he [goes lame] in regard to the hypostases … Orthodoxos: Then, since he says that the Trinity is one hypostasis, we will show him the divine [Scripture] … Eranistes: This must be done so; but [let us return to] the matter in hand … Orthodoxos: By no means [have we left it]. For it is about this very thing that we are collecting the proofs, and you will learn this shortly. Tell me, then: do you suppose that all the heresies called after Christ confess both the Godhead of Christ and the humanity? … Orthodoxos: But some confess the Godhead only, and others the humanity only? … Orthodoxos: And others a part of the humanity? Eranistes: So I think. [Orthodoxos:] But it is fitting for us to make clear how those who hold the one view and those who hold the other are named, so that the question may become clearer. Simon, and Menander, and Marcion, and Valentinus, and Basilides, and Bardaisan, and Cerdo, and Mani openly denied the humanity of Christ. But Artemon, and Theodotus, and Sabellius, and Paul of Samosata, and Marcellus, and Photinus fell into the diametrically opposite blasphemy. For they proclaim Christ a mere human being and deny the Godhead that exists before the ages. Arius and Eunomius call the Godhead of the Only-begotten created, and say that he assumed a body only. Apollinarius confesses that the body assumed was ensouled, but in his own discourses deprives the rational soul of both honor and salvation. This, then, is the difference among the corrupt doctrines. But tell us yourself truthfully: should one hold a discussion with these, or must one [push them] over the cliffs? Eranistes: Contempt for the sick is the work of misanthropy. Orthodoxos: It is fitting, then, both to suffer with them and to [heal them]. … Orthodoxos: If, then, you knew how to heal bodies, and many stood around asking to be healed and showing different sufferings, such as discharges from the eyes, injuries of the ears, toothaches, in some a tension of the sinews and in others a slackening, in one a flood of bile and in another of phlegm, what would you do, tell me? Would you prepare one remedy for all, or for each suffering the one suited to it? Eranistes: Clearly what is appropriate to each and … Orthodoxos: Then by cooling the hot ailments and warming the cold, relaxing what is tense and strengthening what is slack with tonics, and [moistening] what is dry, you would drive out the diseases and bring back the health they had driven out? Eranistes: So the law of medicine bids one heal; for opposites, they say, [are cured] by opposites. Orthodoxos: And if you were a gardener, would you give all the plants the same care, or to the pomegranate the care proper to it, to the fig its own, and likewise to the pear, the apple, and the cultivated vines the care appropriate to them; in a word, to each plant what suits it?

Eranistes: Clearly each plant [needs] its own care … you saw the mast-step needing repair, [would you give it the care suited to some other part], or that which suits the mast-step? [Eranistes:] For each thing seeks its own care: a plant, a part of the body, utensils, and the parts of a ship. Orthodoxos: How, then, is it not wretched to apply suitable treatments to the body and to inanimate things, but in the case of souls not [to keep] the rule of healing that governs these? Eranistes: It is most unjust, and full not only of injustice but also of folly. For those who act otherwise are ignorant of the very art of healing. Orthodoxos: Then, in debating with each heresy, shall we apply the remedy suited to it? … Orthodoxos: And a suitable treatment is to add what is lacking and remove what is excessive? … Orthodoxos: When, then, we try to heal Photinus and Marcellus and their neighbors, what shall we add to fulfill the rule of healing? Eranistes: The confession of the Godhead of Christ; for this is what is lacking in them. Orthodoxos: But we will say nothing to them about the humanity, for they confess that the Master Christ is human. … debating about the incarnation, what would we persuade them to add to their own confession? Eranistes: The assumption of the soul; for they say that God the Word assumed a body only. … make exact the account of the incarnation? Eranistes: Not to separate the mind from the soul, but to confess that the rational soul [was assumed] with the body. Orthodoxos: Then shall we discuss this with him too? … and all who are neighbors to these: what did we say they confess in this respect, and what do they deny altogether? Eranistes: That they said they believe in the Godhead of Christ, but do not admit the account of the humanity. … accept the account of the humanity too, and not call the divine dispensation an appearance. Eranistes: So one should do. Orthodoxos: We will tell them, then, that one must call Christ not only God but also human. … Orthodoxos: And how is it possible, when we ourselves decline to call Christ human as well, [to urge] this on others? Eranistes: And how do we hold the same views as they, when we confess that God the Word assumed both flesh and a rational soul? Orthodoxos: If, then, we confess the realities, why do we flee the names? Eranistes: One must call Christ by the more honorable [names]. Orthodoxos: Keep the rule, then, and do not call him crucified, nor raised from the dead, nor anything like these. Eranistes: But these are the names of the saving sufferings; and the denial of the sufferings is the destruction of salvation. Orthodoxos: And the name “human being” is the name of a nature; and silence about it is the denial of the nature; and the denial of the nature is the destruction of the sufferings; and the destruction of these makes salvation vanish.

Eranistes: To know the nature that was assumed I consider useful; but to call him human [diminishes] his glory. Orthodoxos: Then do you consider yourself wiser than Peter and Paul, and than the Savior himself? For the Lord said to the Jews, “Why do you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from my Father?” And in many places he calls himself Son of Man. And the all-praised Peter, addressing the Jewish people: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God.” And blessed Paul, offering the saving proclamation to the leaders of the Areopagus, said this too, among many other things: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has set a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, having given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” He, then, who rejects what was set down and proclaimed by the Lord and the apostles has supposed himself wiser than the great teachers, and indeed than the very … Eranistes: They offered this teaching to unbelievers; but now most of the world has believed. Orthodoxos: In the first place, there are still Jews and Greeks and countless bands of heretics, and one must offer each of these a fitting teaching. But even if we were all of one mind, tell me, what harm is there in confessing Christ God and human? Or [do we not confess] perfect Godhead in him and perfect humanity likewise? Eranistes: We have often confessed these. Orthodoxos: Why, then, do we do away with what we have often confessed? Eranistes: I have supposed it superfluous to call Christ human, especially when a believer is talking with a believer. Orthodoxos: Do you consider the divine Apostle a believer? Eranistes: Rather, the teacher of all believers. Orthodoxos: And do you think Timothy worthy of this [name]? Eranistes: As his disciple, at least, and … Orthodoxos: Hear, then, the teacher of teachers writing to his most perfect disciple: “One God, one also mediator of God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all”; and stop chattering in vain and laying down laws for us about divine names. And here the very name “mediator” indicates Godhead and humanity. For if he were God only, he would not have been called mediator; for how could he have mediated between us and God, having nothing of ours? But since as God he is joined to the Father, having the same substance, and as human he is joined to us (for he took the form of the servant from us), he has fittingly been named mediator, joining in himself things that stood apart, by the union of the natures, I mean of Godhead and humanity.

Eranistes: Was not Moses, then, named mediator, though he was only human? Orthodoxos: He was a type of the truth, and the type does not have everything that the truth has. For this reason he was not God by nature, yet he was named god, in order to fulfil the type. “For see,” it says, “I have made you a god to Pharaoh”; and immediately, as to a god, he appointed him a prophet: “For Aaron your brother,” it says, “shall be your prophet.” But the truth is both God by nature and human by nature. Eranistes: And who would call a type something that does not have the clear features of the archetype? Orthodoxos: It seems, then, that you do not call the royal images images of the king? … Orthodoxos: And yet they do not have everything that the archetype has. In the first place, they are without soul and reason; then they lack the inner parts, I mean heart and belly and liver and whatever else is joined to these. Then they have the form of the senses but not their activities: they neither hear nor speak nor see; they do not write, they do not walk, they do nothing else that humans do; yet they are called royal images. So too Moses is a mediator and Christ is a mediator; but the one as an image and type, the other as the truth. And to show you this more clearly from another direction, recall what is said about Melchizedek in the letter to the Hebrews. … Orthodoxos: Those words in which the divine Apostle, comparing the Levitical priesthood with that of Christ, likened Melchizedek to the Master Christ in the other respects, but said that the Lord has the priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek. Eranistes: I think the divine Apostle speaks thus: “For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God Most High, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, to whom Abraham also apportioned a tenth of everything, being first by interpretation king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem, that is, king of peace, without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest perpetually.” I think you were speaking of these sayings. Orthodoxos: Of these I spoke; and I praise you for not cutting the passage short but setting it down whole. Tell me, then: does each of these fit Melchizedek by nature and in truth? [Eranistes:] And who is so bold as to unfit what the divine Apostle fitted? Orthodoxos: You say, then, that these things fit Melchizedek by nature? … Orthodoxos: Do you say that he was a human being, or that he had received some other nature?

Orthodoxos: Begotten or unbegotten? Eranistes: You put very absurd questions. Orthodoxos: You are the cause of them, plainly fighting against the truth. Answer, then. Eranistes: There is only one unbegotten, God the Father. Orthodoxos: Then we say that Melchizedek was begotten? … Orthodoxos: But the word about him teaches the opposite: “Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.” How, then, does “without father” fit him, and “without mother”? And how “having taken no beginning of being, nor going to receive an end”? For these things are beyond human nature. Eranistes: They really do exceed the measures of human nature. Orthodoxos: What, then? Shall we say that the Apostle spoke falsely? Eranistes: Far from it! Orthodoxos: How, then, is it possible both to bear witness to the Apostle's truthfulness and to fit to Melchizedek things beyond nature? [Eranistes:] … the passage is obscure, and much … Orthodoxos: For those who are willing to attend, understanding comes from the sense of the words. For the divine Apostle, having said, “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life,” added, “but made like the Son of God, remains a priest perpetually.” And he teaches us clearly that, of Melchizedek's attributes that are beyond human nature, the Master Christ is the archetype; and he said that Melchizedek was made like the Son of God. Let us examine it this way: do you say that the Lord had a father according to the flesh? [Eranistes: No;] for he was born of the holy Virgin alone. Orthodoxos: Then he has fittingly been named fatherless? … Orthodoxos: Do you say that according to the divine nature he had a mother? … Orthodoxos: For before the ages he was begotten of the Father alone. … having his birth from the Father, he has been called. “For his generation,” says the prophet, “who will declare?” … Orthodoxos: So too it belongs to him to have neither beginning of days nor end of life; for he is without beginning and indestructible, in short, eternal and coeternal with the Father. Eranistes: I too agree that this is so. But we must now consider how these things also fit the wonderful [Melchizedek]. Orthodoxos: As an image and type; and the image, as we said before, does not have everything that the archetype has. To the Savior, then, these things belong by nature and in truth; but to Melchizedek the history of ancient origins fitted them. For having taught us who was the father of the patriarch Abraham, and the father and mother of Isaac, and likewise of Jacob and of his sons, and having shown the genealogy of those born long before, it mentioned neither Melchizedek's father nor his mother, nor did it teach that he traced his descent from any of Noah's sons, so that he might become a type of the one who is truly motherless and fatherless. And the divine Apostle taught us to understand it so; for in this very passage he added this too: “But he who has no genealogy from them received tithes from Abraham, and blessed him who had the promises.”

Eranistes: And because the divine Scripture did not mention those who begot him, he can be called fatherless and motherless? Orthodoxos: If he were truly fatherless and motherless, he would not be an image but the truth. But since he has these things not by nature but by the arrangement of the divine Scripture, he shows the type of the truth. Eranistes: The image must have the [features] of the archetype. Orthodoxos: Is the human being called the image of God? [Eranistes: He] is [not] the image of God, but came to be according to the image of God. Orthodoxos: Hear, then, the Apostle saying, “For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God.” Eranistes: Let him be the image of God. Orthodoxos: Then according to your argument he ought to preserve the clear features of the archetype: to be neither created, nor composite, nor circumscribed. He ought likewise to create from nothing; to fashion all things by a word and without toil; and besides, not to fall ill, not to be dejected, not to be angry, not to sin, but to be immortal and incorruptible, and to have everything that the archetype [has]. Eranistes: The human being is not the image of God in all respects. Orthodoxos: True; and in whatever respects you grant that he is an image, you will certainly find him falling short of the truth by a very great measure. … Orthodoxos: Consider this too now: the divine Apostle called the Son the image of the Father; for he said, “who is the image of the invisible God.” Eranistes: What then? Does not the Son have everything that the [Father has]? Orthodoxos: [He is not] Father, nor uncaused, nor unbegotten. Eranistes: If he had these, he would not be [Son]. Orthodoxos: The statement I made, then, is true, that the image does not have everything that the archetype [has]. … Orthodoxos: So, then, the divine Apostle said that Melchizedek too was made like the Son of God. Eranistes: Let us grant that “without father, without mother, without genealogy” are as you have said; how shall we understand “having neither beginning of days nor end of life”? [Orthodoxos: The in]spired Moses taught us that Adam, at such and such an age, begot Seth, and after living so many more years reached the end of his life. So too he spoke of Seth, and Enosh, and the others. But of Melchizedek he kept silent about both the beginning of his birth and the end of his life. Then, according to the history, he has neither beginning of days nor end of life; but in truth it is the only-begotten Son of God who neither began to be nor will receive an end. Orthodoxos: In these God-befitting and truly divine attributes, then, Melchizedek is a type of the Master Christ; but in the high priesthood, which belongs to human beings rather than to God, the Master Christ became high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. For that man was high priest of the nations; and the Master Christ, on behalf of all human beings, [offered] the all-holy and saving …

Orthodoxos: It needed more, as you know; you said the passage was hard to understand. Eranistes: Let us return to the matter in hand. Orthodoxos: And what was the question before us? Eranistes: When I said that one should not call Christ human but God only, you brought forward many other testimonies, and in particular that apostolic saying which he set down when writing to Timothy: “One God, and one mediator of God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.” … [Orthodoxos:] … we turned aside. For when I said that the very name of mediator given to our Savior indicates the two natures, you said that Moses too was called mediator, though he was only human, not God and human. That is why I was compelled to go through these things, to show that the type does not have everything that the archetype has. Tell me, then: do you agree that the Savior Christ must also be named human? Eranistes: I call him God; for he is [the Son] of God. Orthodoxos: If you call him God because you were taught that he is the Son of God, call him human as well; for he often called himself Son of Man. Eranistes: The name “human” does not fit him as the name “God” does. Orthodoxos: As not being true, or for another reason? Eranistes: The name “God” is the name of the nature; but “human” is a designation of the dispensation. Orthodoxos: And do we say that the dispensation is true, or some kind of fantasy and falsehood? … Orthodoxos: If, then, the grace of the dispensation is true, and we call the incarnation of God the Word the dispensation, then the name “human” too is true. For having assumed [the nature] of a human being, he was called human. Eranistes: Before the passion he was called human, but after the passion no longer. Orthodoxos: And yet it was after the passion and the resurrection that the divine Apostle wrote the letter to Timothy in which he called the Savior Christ human. After the passion and the resurrection, writing to the Corinthians, he cries: “For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead also came through a human being.” And teaching more clearly of whom he speaks, he added: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” After the passion and the resurrection, the divine Peter, speaking to the Jews, called him a man. After the ascension into heaven, the victorious Stephen, as he was being stoned, said to the Jews, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” Let us not, then, suppose ourselves wiser than the great heralds of the truth.

Eranistes: I have not supposed myself wiser than the holy teachers; but I do not find the [need] of the name. Orthodoxos: Those, then, who deny the Lord's [humanity], [Marcion and Mani] and the others who suffer from this disease, how could you persuade them to confess the proclamation of the truth, except by bringing forward these testimonies and others like them, teaching that the Master Christ is not only God but also human? Eranistes: Perhaps one must bring these forward to them. Orthodoxos: And why do you not teach the faithful the truth of the doctrine? Or have you forgotten the apostolic law that bids us be ready to make a defense? Let us consider it this way. Does the best general fight the enemy alone, and shoot arrows, and hurl javelins, and break the phalanx, or does he also arm the soldiers, draw them up, and whet their spirits to courage? Eranistes: This is rather what he must do. Orthodoxos: For it is not the part of a general to run the risks and stand in the line himself while letting the soldiers sleep on both ears, but to rouse them too to the battle. … Orthodoxos: This the divine Paul did too. For writing to those who had believed, he said, “Take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” And again, “Stand, then, having girded your loins with truth,” and what follows. And remember what we said earlier, that the physician too adds the quality that is lacking to the nature. For if he finds the cold excessive, he adds the hot, and likewise with the others. This the Lord also did. Eranistes: And where will you show that the Lord did this? Orthodoxos: In the divine Gospels. Eranistes: Show it, then, and fulfil your promise. Orthodoxos: What did the Jews think that the Savior Christ was? … Orthodoxos: And were they entirely ignorant that he was also God? … Orthodoxos: Then ought not those who were ignorant to learn? … Orthodoxos: Hear, then, what he says to them: “Many works I have shown you from my Father; for which of them do you stone me?” And when they had said, “We do not stone you for a good work, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God,” he added: “In your law it is written, I said, You are gods. If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, You are blaspheming, because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me; … that I am in my Father, and the Father is in me.” Eranistes: In what you have just read you have shown the Lord showing himself to the Jews as God, not as human. Orthodoxos: For they did not need to learn what they knew. That he was human they knew; that he was also God they did not know. He did this same thing with the Pharisees too. For, seeing them approach him as an ordinary man, he asked them thus: “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” And when they said, “David's,” he added: “How, then, does David in the Spirit call him Lord? For he says, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.” Then he reasons: “If, then, he is his Lord, how is he his son?”

Eranistes: You have brought forward a testimony against yourself. For the Lord openly taught the Pharisees not to call him son of David but Lord of David. By this he has shown that he wished to be called God, not human. Orthodoxos: You did not attend, it seems, to the divine teaching. For he did not refuse to be called son of David, but added that he must also be believed to be Lord of David. For this is what “If, then, he is his Lord, how is he his son?” clearly teaches. For he did not say, “If he is Lord, he is not son,” but “How is he his son?”, that is, in one respect Lord, and in another son. And this plainly shows both the Godhead and the humanity. Eranistes: There is no need of syllogisms. For the Lord plainly taught that he does not wish to be called son of David. Orthodoxos: Then he ought to have taught the blind men, and the Canaanite woman, and indeed the crowds not to call him son of David. For the blind men cried, “Son of David, have mercy on us”; and the Canaanite woman, “[Son of] David, have mercy on me; my daughter is badly possessed by a demon”; and the multitude, “Hosanna to the son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” And not only was he not displeased, but he even praised their faith. For he freed the blind men from their very long night; he healed the Canaanite woman's daughter, frenzied and raving, and [drove out] the most wicked demon. And when the chief priests and Pharisees were angry with those who cried, “Hosanna to the son of David,” not only did he not stop those who cried out, but he even confirmed the acclamation. “For truly, I say to you,” he said, … Eranistes: Before the resurrection he [accepted] these titles, condescending to the weakness of those who had never truly believed; but after the resurrection these names are superfluous. [Orthodoxos:] Where, then, shall we place the blessed Paul: among the perfect, or among the imperfect? Eranistes: One should not jest in serious matters. Orthodoxos: One should not neglect the reading of the divine oracles. Eranistes: And who is so thrice-wretched as to neglect his own salvation? Orthodoxos: Answer the question, and you will learn [your] ignorance. … Orthodoxos: Where do we place the divine Apostle? Eranistes: Clearly among the most perfect, and as the teacher of the perfect. Orthodoxos: And when did he begin his preaching? Eranistes: After the ascension of the Savior, and the coming of the [Holy] Spirit, and [the death] of Stephen … Orthodoxos: This man, at the very end of his life, writing his last letter to Timothy his disciple, and handing it to him by testament as a kind of inheritance from his father, set down this too: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel.” And he pointed also to the sufferings he bore for the gospel, showing by this the truth of the gospel. “For in it,” he said, “I suffer hardship to the point of chains, as a criminal.” It would be easy for me to bring forward many other such testimonies, but …

Eranistes: You promised to show the Lord adding the missing teaching for those who needed it. You have said that he discoursed to the Pharisees and the other Jews about his own Godhead; but you have not shown that he also offered the teaching about the flesh. Orthodoxos: It was quite superfluous to discourse about the flesh that was seen, for it was plainly seen, and … However, to pass over what came before the passion, which is much and varied, after the resurrection he showed the disbelieving apostles not his Godhead but his humanity. “For see,” he says, “my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” See, we have fulfilled our promise; for we have shown that to those who did not know the Godhead the teaching about it was offered, and to those who disbelieved the resurrection of the flesh, the flesh was shown. Stop contending, then, and confess the two natures of the Savior. Eranistes: There were two before the union; but having come together they made one nature. Orthodoxos: And when do you say that the union took place? Eranistes: I say, immediately at the conception. Orthodoxos: And did not God the Word exist before the conception? Eranistes: I say that he is before the ages. Orthodoxos: And did the flesh coexist with him? Eranistes: Certainly not. Orthodoxos: But [it was formed] by the Holy Spirit after the angel's greeting? … Orthodoxos: Then there were not two natures before the union, but one only. For if the Godhead pre-exists, but the humanity does not coexist with it (for it was formed after the angelic greeting, and the union is joined to the forming), then there was one nature before the union, the one that always is and is before the ages. But let us examine this very point again. Do you think that the incarnation, or becoming human, is something other than the union? … Orthodoxos: And the union is joined to the assumption? … Orthodoxos: Then there was one nature before the incarnation. For if union and becoming human are the same, and he became human by taking human nature, and the form of God took the form of the servant, then there was one nature, the divine, before the union. Eranistes: And how are union and becoming human the same? Orthodoxos: … that these names do not differ. Eranistes: You have tricked me with your syllogisms. Orthodoxos: Let us take up the same argument again, if you like. … Orthodoxos: Does the incarnation have any difference from the union in the nature of the matter? Eranistes: A very great one. Orthodoxos: Teach me the kinds of this [difference]. Eranistes: The very sense of the names shows the difference. For incarnation indicates the assumption of the flesh, and union the joining of things that were apart. … Orthodoxos: [And do you say that] the incarnation [came before] the union?

Orthodoxos: But [you say that] the union took place in the conception? … Orthodoxos: Then if not even the briefest instant of time came between the taking of the flesh and the union, and the nature that was taken did not exist before the taking and the union, then incarnation and union signify the same thing; and so there was one nature before the union, or incarnation, but after the union it is fitting to speak of two, the one that took and the one that was taken. Eranistes: I say that Christ is from two natures, but I do not say two natures. Orthodoxos: Explain to us how you mean “from two natures”: as silver sprinkled with gold, as the … Eranistes: I say that this union resembles none of these; for it is unspeakable and inexpressible and … Orthodoxos: I too confess that the account of the union is beyond our reach. But that each nature remained intact even after the union, I was taught by the divine Scripture. Eranistes: And where did the divine Scripture teach this? Orthodoxos: All of it is full of this teaching. Eranistes: Give the proofs of what you say. Orthodoxos: Do you not confess the properties of each nature? Eranistes: After the union, by no means. Orthodoxos: Then let us learn this very point from the divine Scripture. Eranistes: I obey the divine Scripture. Orthodoxos: When, then, you hear the inspired John crying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and “All things came to be through him,” and all the others of this kind, do you say that the flesh was in the beginning with God, and is God by nature, and made all things, or God the Word, begotten of the Father before the ages? Eranistes: I say that these things belong to God the Word; but I do not separate him from the flesh united to him. Orthodoxos: We neither separate the flesh from God the Word, nor make the union a confusion. Eranistes: I know one nature after the union. Orthodoxos: When did the evangelists write the Gospels? Before the union, or a very long time after the union? Eranistes: Clearly after the union, and the birth, and the miracles, and the passion, and the resurrection, and the ascension into heaven, and the [coming of the Spirit] … Orthodoxos: Hear, then, John saying, “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 to be through him, and without him nothing came to be,” and what follows; and Matthew, “The book of the genesis of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham,” and what follows. And Luke too [traces] him … Abraham. [Fit] both these and those to one nature, then. But you could not; for being from Abraham is contrary to being in the beginning, and having a created ancestor to having made all things. Eranistes: By saying these things you [divide] the Only-[begotten] into two persons.

Orthodoxos: One Son of God I both know and worship, the Lord Jesus Christ; but I have been taught the difference between the Godhead and the humanity. But you, who say that one nature came about after the union, fit the openings of the Gospels to it. Eranistes: It seems you suppose the proposition very strong and perhaps unanswerable. Let it be easy and simple for you; only solve the question for us. Orthodoxos: Both belong to the Master Christ: being in the beginning, and springing from Abraham and David according to the flesh. Eranistes: You laid down the law that one must not speak of one nature after the union; do not transgress your own law, then, by mentioning flesh. Orthodoxos: Even without mentioning flesh it is easy to solve the proposition; for both [belong] to the Savior … Eranistes: I too say that both these and those belong to the Master Christ. Orthodoxos: But seeing two natures in him, and assigning to each what is suitable to it. But if Christ is one nature, how is it possible to fit contraries to it? For to have taken one's beginning from Abraham and David, or rather to have been born many generations after David, is contrary to being in the beginning. And again, to have sprung from things that were made is contrary to having made all things; and to have had human forefathers is contrary to being from God; and the recent is contrary to the eternal. And let us consider it this way: do we say that God the Word is the Creator of all things? Eranistes: So we have been taught to believe by the divine Scripture. Orthodoxos: And on what day after the creation of heaven and earth have we learned that Adam was formed? … Orthodoxos: And from Adam to Abraham, how many …? … Orthodoxos: And from Abraham to our Savior Christ, how many generations does the evangelist Matthew count? … Orthodoxos: If, then, the Master Christ is one nature, how is it possible for him both to be the Creator of all things visible and invisible, and after so many generations to be formed by the all-holy Spirit in a virgin womb? And how and where is he both Adam's maker and son of Adam's descendants? Eranistes: I said before too that both these and those fit him as God incarnate; for I know one incarnate nature of the Word. Orthodoxos: Nor do we, my good man, say that two natures of God the Word were made flesh; for we know one nature of God the Word. But we have been taught that the flesh by which he was made flesh is of another nature. And I think that you too agree to this. Tell me, then: do you say that the incarnation took place by some change?

Eranistes: I do not know the manner, but I believe that he … Orthodoxos: You have craftily put forward ignorance, just like the Pharisees. For they too, seeing the strength of the Lord's question and suspecting the refutation, said, “We do not know.” But I cry out expressly that the divine incarnation is free of change. For if he was made flesh by some alteration and change, then after the change the divine names and works would by no means fit him. Eranistes: We have often confessed that God the Word is immutable. Orthodoxos: The nature of God the Word that was made flesh is one thing, and that of the flesh is another, which the nature of the divine Word assumed and so was made flesh, and … Orthodoxos: Then was he changed into flesh? … Orthodoxos: If, then, he was made flesh not by being changed but by taking flesh, and both these things and those fit him as God made flesh (for you said this just now), then the natures were not confused but remained unmixed. For if we understand it so, we shall also see the agreement of the evangelists. For of the one Only-begotten, I mean the Master Christ, one proclaims the divine things and another the human. And the Master Christ himself teaches us to understand it so, calling himself now Son of God and now Son of Man; at one time honoring his mother as the one who bore him, at another rebuking her as her Master; now accepting those who name him son of David, and now teaching those who do not know that he is not only son but also lord of David. And he calls Nazareth and Capernaum his homeland; yet again he cries, “Before Abraham came to be, I am.” You will find the divine Scripture full of very many such things. And these indicate not one nature but two. Eranistes: He who sees two natures in Christ divides the one Only-begotten into two sons. Orthodoxos: Then he who says that Paul is of soul and body has made the one Paul two Pauls. … Orthodoxos: I too know it. For here the union is natural, of things of the same time, created, and fellow servants; but in the case of the Master Christ the whole is of good pleasure, love for humankind, and grace. Yet even here, where the union is natural, the properties of the natures have remained unmixed. Eranistes: If the properties of the natures remained unmixed, how does the soul desire food along with the body? Orthodoxos: The soul does not desire food; for how could it, being immortal and above food? But the body, receiving the vital power from it, perceives the lack and longs to take what is lacking. So too it longs for rest after toil, and sleep after waking, and likewise with the rest. And so after the dissolution, no longer having the vital activity, it does not desire what is lacking … to hunger, and things like these? Orthodoxos: If these belonged to the soul, it would undergo hunger and thirst and the rest likewise even after its release from the body.

Eranistes: What, then, do you say are the properties of the soul? Orthodoxos: Being rational, simple, immortal, invisible. Eranistes: And of the body? Orthodoxos: Being composite, visible, mortal. Eranistes: And do we say that the human being is composed of these? … Eranistes: Do we, then, define the human being as a rational, mortal living creature? … Eranistes: And do we name him from both these and those? … Eranistes: Just as, then, we do not divide here, but call the same one both rational and mortal, so it is fitting to do with Christ too, and to fit to him both the divine and the human things. Orthodoxos: This argument is ours, even if you have not worked it out exactly. Consider it, then, this way. When we examine the account of the human soul, do we speak only of what belongs to its activity and nature? … thirsting and … belong to the soul … And when our discussion is about the body, again, do we not go through its properties only? Orthodoxos: But when the discussion is about the whole living creature, then we bring forward both these and those freely. For the properties both of the body and of the soul fit the human being. Orthodoxos: So, then, it is fitting to speak about Christ too: when discussing the natures, to assign to each what is suitable to it, and to know which are the properties of the Godhead and which of the humanity; but when we speak about the person, we must make the properties of the natures common, and fit both these and those to Christ the Savior, and call the same one both God and human, both Son of God and son of man, both son of David and lord of David, both seed of Abraham and maker of Abraham, and all the rest likewise. Eranistes: That Christ is one person, and that both the divine and the human belong to him, you have said very rightly, and I accept this definition of the faith. But to say, again, that when discussing the natures one must assign to each its properties seems to me to dissolve the union; and for this reason I do not admit these and similar statements. Orthodoxos: And yet when we examined the matters of soul and body, the distinction in those statements seemed admirable to you; you at once gave it praise. Why, then, do you not accept the same rule in the case of the Godhead and the humanity of the Master Christ? Or do you not even rank the Godhead and the humanity of Christ with soul and body? But you grant soul and body an unconfused union, and dare to say that the Godhead and the humanity of Christ underwent blending and confusion?

Eranistes: I have supposed that the Godhead of Christ, and indeed the flesh too, is more precious than soul and body by a great, indeed an infinite, measure; yet I say one nature after the union. Orthodoxos: And how is it not impious and wretched to say that the soul joined to the body did not at all undergo confusion, but that the Godhead of the Master of the universe could neither preserve its own nature unconfused nor keep the human nature it took within its own bounds, but blended the unblended and mixed the unmixed? For “one nature” makes one suspect these things. Eranistes: To me too the name “confusion” is to be avoided; but I decline to speak of two natures, so as not to fall into a pair of sons. Orthodoxos: But I strive to escape each of the two cliffs, that of impious confusion and that of impious division. For to me it is equally unholy to divide the one Son in two and to deny the duality of the natures. But tell me, by the truth: if one of the followers of Arius or of Eunomius [tried] to show [the Son] less than and inferior to the Father, saying what they are accustomed to say and bringing forward from the divine Scripture, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” and “Now my soul is troubled,” and the other such things, how would you solve his problems? How would you show that the Son is not lessened by these, nor of another substance, but begotten from the substance of the Father? Eranistes: I would say that the divine Scripture says some things in the manner of theology and others in the manner of the dispensation, and that one ought not … Orthodoxos: But he would say that in the Old [Testament] too the divine Scripture says many things in the manner of the dispensation. Such is: “Adam heard the voice of the Lord God walking”; and: “I will go down and see whether they are doing according to their outcry that comes to me; and if not, that I may know”; and: “Now I know that you fear God”; and many other such things. Eranistes: To these I would reply again that the difference among the dispensations is great. For in the Old there is a dispensation of such words, but here also of deeds. Orthodoxos: But he would ask, “Of what deeds?” Eranistes: He will hear at once: those of the incarnation. For the Son of God, having become human, shows by words and by deeds sometimes the flesh and sometimes the Godhead; as indeed here he showed the weakness of the flesh and of the soul, for fear is a passion [of the soul]. Orthodoxos: But if he took you up and said, “And yet he did not assume a soul, but a body only, and the Godhead, united to the body in place of a soul, [performed] all the functions of the soul” …? Eranistes: [I would answer him] by bringing forward the proofs from the divine Scripture, and showing that God the Word assumed not flesh only but also a soul.

Orthodoxos: And what proofs of this kind shall we find in Scripture? Eranistes: Have you not heard the Lord saying, “I have authority to lay down my soul, and I have authority to take it again; I lay it down of myself, that I may take it again”? And again, “My soul is now troubled”; and again, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death”; and what was said by David and interpreted by Peter, “His soul was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption”? These and similar sayings show clearly that God the Word assumed not a body only, but also a soul. Orthodoxos: You have brought forward the testimonies very fittingly and … But he would object that even before the incarnation God, speaking to the Jews, said, “My soul hates your fasting, and idleness, and your feasts.” Then, reasoning, he would say that just as in the Old [Testament] he mentioned a soul though he had none, so he did here too. Eranistes: But he will hear in turn that the divine Scripture is found speaking of God with bodily members too: “Incline your ear and hear me,” and “Open your eyes and see,” and “The mouth of the Lord has spoken these things,” and “Your hands made me and fashioned me,” and countless such things. If, then, even after the incarnation the soul is not to be understood as a soul, then neither is the body to be understood as a body; and the great mystery of the dispensation will be found to be an appearance, and we shall differ in nothing from Marcion and Valentinus and Mani, for they tell fables of this kind. Orthodoxos: And if, while we are discussing, someone of Apollinarius' band should suddenly arrive and say, “[What kind of] soul do you say that he assumed?”, what would you …? [Eranistes:] First, that I know one soul of the human being. Then I would add: but if you think there are two, and suppose one rational and the other irrational, I say that the rational was assumed. For you, it seems, [say that he] has the irrational one, holding our salvation to be incomplete. Orthodoxos: And if he asked for the proofs of these words? [Eranistes:] I would remind him of the oracles, that “the child Jesus grew and became strong in spirit, and the grace of God was upon him”; and again, “[Jesus increased] in stature and wisdom and grace with God and human beings.” And I would say that none of these fits the Godhead. For the body advances in stature, and the soul in wisdom, not the irrational soul but the rational. So God the Word assumed a rational soul.

Orthodoxos: Very nobly, my excellent friend, have you broken through the three phalanxes of the opponents. But that union, and the much-talked-of blending and confusion, you have dissolved in your argument not only into two but even into three; and you have shown not only the difference between Godhead and humanity, but have also divided the humanity itself in two, teaching that the soul is one thing and the body another, so that, by our reckoning, not two but three natures of our Savior Jesus Christ are understood. Eranistes: Do you not say that the substance of the soul is something other than the nature of the body? … Eranistes: How, then, did the argument seem absurd to you? Orthodoxos: Because [the one who will not say] two is forced to make three. [Eranistes:] For how could one argue otherwise with those who deny the assumption of the flesh, or of the soul, or of the mind, except by bringing forward the proofs about these from the divine Scripture? And how could one refute those who rage to …, except by showing that the divine Scripture said some things in the manner of theology and others in the manner of the dispensation? … Orthodoxos: This argument is true; for it is ours, or rather it belongs to all who have kept the apostolic rule unswerving. You yourself have become an advocate of our views. Eranistes: And how am I an advocate of yours, when I do not say two sons? Orthodoxos: When have you heard us saying two sons? Eranistes: He who says two natures says two … Orthodoxos: Then you say three sons; for you have spoken of three natures. Eranistes: It was not possible [otherwise] to dissolve the [arguments] of the opponents. Orthodoxos: Hear this same thing from us too; for we have the same opponents. Eranistes: But I do not say two natures after the union. Orthodoxos: And yet a moment ago you used these very arguments [about the time] after the union. But teach us, nevertheless, how you say one nature after the union: as one nature having come to be from both, or as one remaining and the other destroyed? Eranistes: I say that the Godhead remained, and that the humanity was swallowed up by it. Orthodoxos: These are fables of the Greeks and nonsense of the Manichees, and I am ashamed even to bring them into the open. For the former wrote in their stories of the swallowing of gods, the latter of the daughter of light. But we turn away from such words not only as impious but also as very foolish. For how could the simple and incomposite nature, which encompasses all things, the unreachable and uncircumscribed, swallow up … For that drop disappears at once when it is mixed with the water of the sea. [Orthodoxos:] The sea and the drop differ in quantity and in one quality: the one is very great and the other very small; the one is sweet and the other salt; but in the other respects very great kinship can be found. For both have a fluid, moist and flowing nature; being created belongs to them alike, and being inanimate is likewise common to them; and indeed both the one and the other are called body. It is not unlikely, then, that related natures should undergo blending, and that one should be made to vanish by the other. But here the difference is infinite, and so great that no image of the truth can be found. Yet I will show you many things blended that are not …

Eranistes: And who has ever heard of an unmixed blending? … Eranistes: If what is to be said appears true, [I will not contradict it]. Orthodoxos: Answer, then, by nodding no or yes, as the argument seems to you. Does the rising light seem to you to fill all the air, except where something remains [in shade]? … Orthodoxos: And does the light pass wholly through the whole of the air? Eranistes: This too I agree with. Orthodoxos: And does not blending pass through the whole of the things blended? … Orthodoxos: And the air that has been lit up, do we not both see and name it light? … Orthodoxos: Yet even while the light is present we perceive the dry quality and the moist, and often the cold and the hot. … Orthodoxos: And after the light has departed, the air remains thereafter by itself. … Orthodoxos: Consider this too, then: does iron that meets fire become red-hot? … Orthodoxos: And the fire passes through the whole of its substance? … Orthodoxos: How, then, does the extreme union, and the blending that passes through the whole, not change the nature of the iron? Eranistes: Indeed it changes it entirely. For it is no longer thought to be iron but fire, and indeed it has the activity of fire. Orthodoxos: Then the smith no longer calls it iron, nor brings it to the anvil, nor brings [the hammer] down on it? … Orthodoxos: Then the companionship of the fire did not ruin the nature of the iron. If, then, an unconfused blending can be found in bodies, it is plain madness to imagine confusion in the case of the pure and unalterable nature, and the disappearance of the nature that was assumed, and that when it was assumed for the benefit of the race. Eranistes: We do not speak of the disappearance of the assumed nature, but of its change into the substance of the Godhead. Orthodoxos: Then does the human [nature] still have its former circumscription? … Orthodoxos: And when did it receive this change? Eranistes: After the extreme union. Orthodoxos: And when do you say that this took place? Eranistes: I have said many times: at the conception. Orthodoxos: And yet after the conception he was an embryo in the womb, and when born he both was and was called an infant, and was worshiped by shepherds, and likewise both became a child and was so called by the angel. Do you know these things, or do you suppose that we are making up fables? Eranistes: The history of the divine Gospels teaches these things, and it is impossible to contradict them. Orthodoxos: Let us consider, then, what follows. Do we not confess that the Lord was circumcised? … Orthodoxos: Of what, then, was the circumcision? Of the flesh, or of the Godhead? … Orthodoxos: And of what was the growing and advancing in stature and wisdom? Eranistes: Clearly none of these fits the Godhead. Orthodoxos: Then neither do hungering and thirsting? … Orthodoxos: Nor walking, and growing weary, and sleeping, and simply all the other things of this kind. … Orthodoxos: If, then, the union took place at the conception, and all these things took place after the conception and the birth, then the humanity did not lose its own nature after the union.

Eranistes: I did not define it exactly. For it was after the resurrection from the dead that the flesh received the change into the nature of the Godhead. Orthodoxos: Then after the resurrection nothing remained in it of the things that show its nature? Eranistes: If anything remained, then the divine change did not take place. Orthodoxos: How, then, did he show his hands and his feet to the disciples when they disbelieved? Eranistes: In the same way as he entered when the doors were shut. Orthodoxos: But he entered when the doors were shut in the same way as he came out of the womb while the bars of the Virgin lay in place, and as he walked on the sea; and by your argument the change of the nature had not yet taken place then. Eranistes: The Master showed the apostles hands in the same way as he wrestled with Jacob. Orthodoxos: But the Lord does not allow us to understand it so. For when the disciples supposed that they were seeing a spirit, the Lord drove out their suspicion and showed the nature of the flesh: “Why are you troubled,” he says, “and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And see the exactness of the word. For he did not say “being flesh and bones” but “having flesh and bones,” to show that what has is one thing by nature and what is had is another. For just as what took is one thing and what was taken is another, yet one Christ is contemplated from both, so what has differs very greatly from what is had, yet does not divide the one understood in them into two persons. And the Lord, while the disciples still doubted, asked for food, and took it and ate, neither consuming the food in appearance nor filling a need of the body. Eranistes: And yet one of two things must be accepted: either he partook because he needed it, or, not needing it, he seemed to eat but did not partake of food at all. [Orthodoxos:] … he did not need it, his body having become immortal. For of those who rise the Lord said, “There they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels.” But that he did partake of the food, the apostles are witnesses. For blessed Luke said in the preface of the Acts that “the Lord, eating with the apostles, charged them not to depart from Jerusalem.” And the most divine Peter said more clearly, “We who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” For since eating is proper to those in the present life, the Lord had to show the resurrection of the flesh by eating and drinking to those who did not think it real. He did this same thing also in the case of Lazarus and of the daughter of Jairus. For when he had raised her, he ordered that she be given something to eat; and he had Lazarus at table with him, showing by this that the resurrection was real.

Eranistes: If we grant that the Lord truly ate, let us grant that all human beings too will [eat] after the resurrection. Orthodoxos: What was done by the Savior for some purpose of the dispensation is not a rule and definition of nature; for he arranged some other things too that will not happen at all to those who come back to life. … Orthodoxos: Will not the bodies of those who rise become incorruptible and immortal? Eranistes: So the divine Paul taught us: “It is sown,” he said, “in corruption; it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” Orthodoxos: But the Lord, who raises the bodies of all human beings without maim or harm (for there will be no lameness or blindness among those who rise), left in his own body the piercings made by the nails and the wound of the side; and the Lord himself and the hands of Thomas are witnesses of this. Orthodoxos: If, then, after the resurrection the Master partook of food, and showed the disciples his hands and his feet and the piercings of the nails in them, and indeed his side and the wound made in it by the blow, and said to them, “Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have,” then the nature of the body remained even after the resurrection, and was not [changed] into another. Eranistes: Then it is mortal and passible after the resurrection? Orthodoxos: By no means; rather incorruptible, impassible, and immortal. Eranistes: If it is incorruptible and impassible and immortal, … Orthodoxos: Then the bodies of all human beings too will be changed into another substance; for they will all be incorruptible and immortal. Or have you not heard the Apostle saying, “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality”? … Orthodoxos: Then the nature remains, but its corruptibility is changed into incorruption and its mortality into immortality. Let us consider it this way: a sick body and a healthy body we call body alike. Eranistes: Since both share the same substance. Orthodoxos: And yet we see very great difference in them. For the one is healthy and sound and unharmed; the other has an eye cut out, or an injured leg, or some other very grievous affliction. Eranistes: But both occur in the same nature, both health and sickness. Orthodoxos: Then the body must be called a substance, and both sickness and health an accident. … For these things happen to the body …

Orthodoxos: Therefore it puts off both corruption and death … Orthodoxos: Then the bodies of human beings too, when they rise, are freed from corruption and mortality, but do not lose their own nature. … Orthodoxos: So too the Master's body rose incorruptible, impassible, and immortal, glorified with the divine glory, and is worshiped by the heavenly powers; yet it is a body, having its former circumscription. [Eranistes:] In these things you seem to say what is reasonable. But after the ascension into heaven, I do not think you will say that it was not changed into the nature of the Godhead. Orthodoxos: I would not say so, persuaded by human reasonings; for I am not so bold as to say something about which the divine Scripture is silent. [I hear], however, the divine Paul crying that “God has set a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, having given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” And I have learned from the holy angels that he will come in the same way as the disciples saw him going into heaven. And they saw a circumscribed nature, not an uncircumscribed one. And I heard the Lord saying, “You will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven.” And I know that what is seen by human beings is circumscribed; for the uncircumscribed nature cannot be seen. And indeed sitting on a throne of glory, and setting the lambs at the right and the goats at the left, … Eranistes: Then neither before the incarnation was he uncircumscribed; for the prophet saw him surrounded by the seraphim. Orthodoxos: The prophet did not see the very substance of God, but a vision suited to his own capacity. But after the resurrection all will see the very nature of the Judge that is seen. Eranistes: Having promised not to say anything without a witness, you bring us your own reasonings. Orthodoxos: I was taught these things by the divine Scripture. For I heard the prophet Zechariah saying, “They will look on him whom they pierced.” And how will the end of the prophecy follow, if those who crucified him do not recognize the nature they crucified? And I heard the victorious Stephen too crying, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” And he saw the visible nature, not the invisible. … seated at the right hand of the power. Eranistes: These things are so written. But … body after the ascension into heaven, I do not think you will show [called a body] by the Spirit-bearing men. Orthodoxos: In fact what has been said already indicates the body; for what is seen is a body. Yet I will show that even after the ascension the Master's body is called a body. Hear, then, the Apostle teaching: “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also await a Savior, the Lord Jesus, who will transform the body of our humiliation so that it becomes conformed to the body of his glory.” It has not, then, been changed into another nature, but has remained a body, filled, however, with divine glory and sending forth rays of light; to it the bodies of the saints will be conformed. But if it was changed into another nature, theirs too will be [changed] into that. But if the bodies of the saints keep the character of their nature, then the Master's too likewise keeps its own substance unchanged.

Eranistes: Then the bodies of the saints will be equal to the Master's body? Orthodoxos: They too will share in incorruption, and indeed in immortality. They will share in the glory too, as the Apostle says, “If indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him.” But in quantity much difference can be found, as great as that of the sun to the stars, or rather that of a master to slaves, and of what gives light to what is lit … Yet he has given his own names to the slaves: being called light, he called the saints light: “For you,” he says, “are the light of the world.” And being named sun of righteousness, he says of the slaves, “Then the righteous will shine like the sun.” In quality, then, not in quantity, the bodies of the saints will be conformed to the Master's body. See, we have shown you expressly what you required of us. But if you like, let us consider this in another way too. Eranistes: One must move every stone, as the proverb says, to find the truth, especially when divine doctrines are in question. Orthodoxos: Tell me, then: the mystical symbols offered to God by those who serve as priests, of what are they symbols? Eranistes: Of the Master's body and blood. Orthodoxos: Of the real body, or not of a real one? … Orthodoxos: Excellent; for the archetype of the image must exist. For painters too imitate nature and paint the images of things that are seen. If, then, the divine mysteries are antitypes of the real body, then the Master's body is a body even now, not changed into the nature of the Godhead but filled with divine glory. Eranistes: You have raised the discussion of the divine mysteries at the right moment; for from this I will show you the change of the Master's body into another nature. Answer, then, my questions. … Eranistes: What do you call the gift that is offered, before …? Orthodoxos: One ought not to say it plainly, for it is likely that some uninitiated are present. … Orthodoxos: The food made from such and such seeds. Eranistes: And the other symbol, how do we name it? [Orthodoxos:] This too is a common name, signifying a kind of drink. … Eranistes: And after the consecration, how do you name these? Orthodoxos: Body of Christ and blood of Christ. Eranistes: And you believe that you partake of the body of Christ …? … Eranistes: Just as, then, the symbols of the Master's body and blood are one thing before the priestly invocation, but after the invocation are changed and become another thing, so the Master's body after the [ascension] was changed into the divine substance. Orthodoxos: You are caught in the nets you wove yourself. For not even after the consecration do the mystical symbols depart from their own nature; for they remain in their former substance, and shape, and form, and are visible and tangible, just as they were before. But they are understood to be what they have become, and are believed and worshiped, as being those things which they are believed to be. Set the image, then, beside the archetype, and you will see the likeness; for the type must resemble the truth. For that body too has its former form, and shape, and circumscription, and in a word the substance of a body; but after the resurrection it became immortal and above corruption, and was deemed worthy of the seat at the right hand, and is worshiped by all creation, since it is called the body of the Master of nature.

Eranistes: And yet the mystical symbol changes its former name; for it is no longer named what it was called before, but is called body. So the truth too must be called [God], and not body. Orthodoxos: You seem to me to be ignorant. For it is called not only body but also bread of life; so the Lord himself named it. And the body itself we name divine body, and life-giving, and the Master's and the Lord's, teaching that it is not the body of some ordinary human being but of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God and human. “For Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Eranistes: You have gone through many arguments about this; but I follow the saints who shone in the churches long ago. Show me, then, those men dividing the natures in speech after the union. Orthodoxos: I will read you their labors; and you will wonder, I know well, at the measurelessness of the division which they set down in their own writings in their contest against the impious heresies. [Hear], then, those whose testimonies we have already brought you, saying these things plainly and expressly.

Of holy Ignatius, bishop of Antioch and martyr. From the letter to the Smyrnaeans: “For I know and believe that he is in the flesh even after the resurrection. And when he came to those around Peter, he said to them, ‘Take, touch me, and see that I am not a bodiless demon.’ And at once they touched him and believed.” Of the same, from the same letter: “And after the resurrection, … although spiritually united to the Father.” Of Irenaeus, the ancient bishop of Lyons. From the third book of the [work] Against the Heresies: “He united, then, as we said before, the human being to God. For if a human being had not conquered the adversary of the human being, the enemy would not have been justly conquered; and again, if God had not granted the salvation, we would not have it securely; and if the human being had not been united to God, he could not have shared in incorruption. For the mediator of God and human beings had, through his own kinship with each, to bring both into friendship and concord, and to present the human being to God and make God known to human beings.” Of the same, from the third book of the same treatise: “Therefore again in the letter he says, ‘Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,’ knowing one and the same Jesus Christ, to whom the gates of heaven were opened because of his ascension in the flesh, who will also come in the same flesh in which he suffered, revealing the glory of the Father.” Of the same, from the fourth book: “As Isaiah says, ‘The children of Jacob will sprout, and … will blossom … its fruit.’ Since, then, its fruit was scattered over the whole world, it was rightly abandoned, and … was taken out of the midst; those things which once bore fruit well (for from them Christ according to the flesh was borne as fruit, and the apostles), but now are no longer fit for bearing fruit.” Of the same, from the same book: “And he will examine the Ebionites too: how can they be saved, unless it was God who worked their salvation on earth? Or how will a human being pass into God, unless God has passed into a human being?” Of the same, from the same book: “Those who proclaimed the Emmanuel from the Virgin showed the union of the Word of God with his own handiwork.”

of his.” Of the same, from the same treatise: “For these things did not happen in appearance, but in the reality of truth. But if, not being human, he appeared human, he neither remained in truth what he was, the Spirit of God, since the Spirit is invisible, nor was there any truth in him; for he was not those things which he appeared to be. And we said before that Abraham and the other prophets saw him prophetically, prophesying by vision what was to be. If, then, now too he appeared such, not being what he appeared to be, there has been some prophetic vision for human beings, and one must await yet another coming of his, in which he will be such as he is now seen prophetically. And we have shown that it is the same thing to say that he appeared in seeming and that he took nothing from Mary. For he would not truly have had flesh and blood, by which he redeemed us, unless he had recapitulated in himself the ancient fashioning of Adam. Vain, then, are those of Valentinus' school who teach this, so that they may cast out the life of the flesh.” Of holy Hippolytus, bishop and martyr. From the discourse on the distribution of the talents: “One might say that these and the heterodox are neighbors, erring in a similar way. For they too either confess that Christ appeared in life as a mere human being, denying the talent of his Godhead, or, confessing God, they deny the human being in turn, teaching that he deceived the eyes of those who beheld him, as one who had not worn a human being, but rather that there was some phantasmal seeming; as Marcion and Valentinus and the Gnostics, tearing the Word away from the flesh, throw away the one talent, the incarnation.” Of the same, 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; who, having risen and wishing to show that what had been raised was what had 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 discourse on Elkanah and Hannah: “And for this reason three seasons of the year were prefigured with reference to the Savior himself, so that he might fulfil the mysteries prophesied about him: at the Passover, so that he might show himself as the one who was to be sacrificed like a sheep and shown to be the true Passover, as the Apostle says, ‘Our Passover, Christ our God, was sacrificed for us’; and at Pentecost, so that he might foreshow the kingdom of heaven, himself first ascending into heaven and offering the human being as a gift to God.” Of the same, from the discourse on the Great Song: “He who drew up from lowest Hades the first-formed human being, who had perished from the earth and was held in the bonds of death; he who came down from above and brought the one below up to the things above; he who became the evangelist of the dead, the redeemer of souls, and the resurrection of the buried: this was he who became the helper of the conquered human being, like him in his likeness, the firstborn Word visiting the first-formed Adam in the Virgin; the spiritual seeking the earthy in the womb; the ever-living [seeking] the one who died through disobedience; the heavenly calling the earthly to the things above; the noble wishing to make the slave free through his own obedience; he who turned the human being, who was dissolving into earth and had become the serpent's food, into adamant, and showed him, hung on the tree, to be Lord over the one who had conquered him; and therefore through the tree he is found victorious.

” Of the same, from the same discourse: “For those who do not now recognize the Son of God incarnate will recognize him as Judge coming in glory, the one who is now insulted in an inglorious body.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “For the apostles, coming to the tomb on the third day, did not find the body of Jesus, just as the sons of Israel went up the mountain and sought the burial place of Moses, and did not find it.” Of the same, from the interpretation of the second psalm: “He who came forth into the world was manifested as God and human. And his humanity is easy to perceive when he hungers, and grows weary, and in his toil thirsts, and in fear flees, and in prayer is grieved, and sleeps on a pillow, and asks that the cup of suffering pass from him, and in agony sweats, and is strengthened by an angel, and is betrayed by Judas, and is dishonored by Caiaphas, and is set at naught by Herod, and is scourged by Pilate, and is mocked by soldiers, and is nailed to the tree by the Jews, and crying out to the Father commits his spirit, and bowing his head breathes his last, and is pierced in the side with a lance, and is wrapped in a linen cloth and laid in a tomb, and on the third day is raised by the Father. And again his divinity can be seen plainly when he is worshiped by angels, and beheld by shepherds, and awaited by Simeon, and testified to by Anna, and sought by magi, and signified by a star, and makes water wine at a wedding, and rebukes the sea driven by the force of the winds, and walks on the sea, and makes one blind from birth see, and raises Lazarus dead four days, and performs various mighty works, and forgives sins, and gives authority to the disciples.” Of the same, from the discourse on the twenty-third psalm: “He comes to the heavenly gates; angels accompany him, and the gates of heaven are shut. For he has not yet ascended into heaven; now for the first time flesh appears to the heavenly powers ascending. It is said, then, to the powers by the angels who run before the Savior and Lord, ‘Lift up your gates, you rulers, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the King of glory shall come in.’” Of holy Eustathius, bishop of Antioch and …: “From there, then, he foretold that he would sit on a holy throne, showing that he has been shown to share the throne with the most divine Spirit, because of the God who dwells in him continually.” Of the same, from the discourse On the Soul: “Before the passion he foretold his bodily death on each occasion, saying that he would be handed over to those around the high priests, and announcing the trophy of the cross. After the passion, having risen from the dead on the third day, when the disciples doubted that he had been raised, he appeared to them in the body itself and confessed that he has all flesh, with bones; and putting before their eyes his wounded side, he also shows them the prints of the nails.”

Of the same, from the discourse on “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways”: “For Paul did not say, ‘conformed to the Son of God,’ but ‘conformed to the image of his Son,’ showing that the Son is one thing and his image another. For the Son, bearing the divine marks of the Father's excellence, is the image of the Father; since, when like are born from like, the offspring appear as true images of those who begot them. But the human being whom he wore is the image of the Son; for images can be painted even from unlike colors, and some are made by hand by convention, while others come about by nature and likeness. Besides, the very law of truth prescribes this. For it is not the bodiless spirit of Wisdom that is conformed to bodily human beings, but the human form embodied by the Spirit, which bears limbs equal in number to those of all others and is clothed in a form like that of each.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “That he says the body is conformed to human bodies, he teaches us more clearly when writing to the Philippians: ‘Our citizenship,’ he says, ‘is in heaven, from which we also await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humiliation so that it becomes conformed to the body of his glory.’ And if, transforming the lowly body of human beings, he makes it conformed to his own body, the slander of the opponents has been shown stale on every side.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “But just as the human being born of the Virgin is said to have come from a woman, so he is also written to have come under the law, by walking at times according to the ordinances of the law; especially when, as a child eight days old, his parents eagerly hastened to circumcise him, as the evangelist Luke relates: ‘And afterward they brought him up to the temple to present him to the Lord,’ performing the offerings of purification, ‘to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.’ If, then, the gifts of purification were offered for him according to the law, and he bore circumcision on the eighth day, in this respect he not unreasonably writes that he came under the law. But neither was the Word subject to the law, as the slanderers suppose, since he is himself the law; nor did God need sacrifices of purification, he who cleanses and sanctifies all things at a single stroke. But if, having taken the human instrument from the Virgin, he wore it, and came under the law, being purified according to the dues of the firstborn, he underwent these observances not because he himself needed what they supplied, but to redeem from the slavery of the law those who had been sold to the penalty of the curse.” Of holy Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria. From the second discourse against the heresies: “And just as we would not have been freed from sin and the curse unless the flesh that the Word put on had been human by nature (for we would have had nothing in common with what was foreign to us), so the human being would not have been deified unless the Word who became flesh was by nature from the Father, and true and his own. For this is why such a conjunction took place: that he might join what is human by nature to him who is by nature of the Godhead, and that its salvation and deification might be secure. Therefore let those who deny that the Son is by nature from the Father and proper to his substance deny also that he took true and human flesh from Mary

the virgin.” Of the same, from the letter to Epictetus: “If, because the Savior's body is, and is said in the Scriptures to be, from Mary and human, they think that a Tetrad is spoken of instead of a Trinity, as though an addition were made because of the body, they err greatly, putting the thing made on a level with the Maker, and supposing that the Godhead can receive an addition. And they did not know that the Word became flesh not for an addition to the Godhead, but so that the flesh might rise; nor did the Word come forth from Mary in order to be improved, but in order to redeem the human race. How, then, do they think that the body redeemed and given life through the Word makes an addition to the Godhead of the Word who gave it life?” Of the same, from the same letter: “Let them hear that if the Word were a creature, he would not have assumed the created body in order to give it life. For what help is there for creatures from a creature, which itself needs salvation? But since the Word, being Creator, himself became the maker of creatures, for this reason at the consummation of the ages he himself put on what is created, so that again, as Creator, he might renew it and be able to create it anew.” From the greater [discourse] On the Faith: “These things we have set out about ‘Sit at my right hand,’ that it is said to the Lord's body. For if ‘I fill heaven and earth, says the Lord,’ as Jeremiah says, and God contains all things and is contained by nothing, on what throne does he sit? It is, then, the body to which he says, ‘Sit at my right hand,’ the body of which the devil with the evil powers, and Jews and Greeks, became enemies. Through this body he became and was called high priest and apostle; through it he handed on the mystery to us, saying, ‘This is my body, which is for you,’ and, ‘The blood of the new covenant (not of the old), which is poured out for you.’ But the Godhead has neither body nor blood; [through] the human being whom he wore from Mary he became the cause of these; of him the apostles said, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God.’” Of the same, from the tome to the Arians: “And when he says, ‘[Therefore] God also highly exalted him and granted him the name that is above every name,’ he speaks of the temple of his body, not of the Godhead. For the Most High is not exalted, but the flesh of the Most High is exalted, and to the flesh of the Most High he granted the name above every name. And the Word of God did not receive by grace being called God, but his flesh with him …

Of the same, from the same discourse: “It is the body, then, to which he says, ‘Sit at my right hand’ … he says, which is his body … received being called from the beginning. And when he says, ‘The Holy Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified,’ he speaks of his flesh, not yet glorified. For the Lord of glory is not glorified, but the flesh of the Lord of glory itself receives glory as it ascends with him into heaven. Hence he says that the Spirit of adoption was not yet among human beings, because the firstfruits taken from human beings had not yet ascended into heaven. Whatever, then, the Scripture says the Son received and how he was glorified, it says because of his humanity, not his Godhead.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “So this one is true God, both before he became human and after he became mediator of God and human beings, Jesus Christ, united to the Father according to the spirit and to us according to the flesh; who mediated between God and human beings, being not only human but also God.” Of holy Ambrose, bishop of Milan. In an exposition of faith: “We confess our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father without beginning before all ages according to the Godhead, and in the last days the same made flesh from the holy Virgin Mary, having assumed the perfect human being, of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the humanity. For a union of two perfect natures has taken place inexpressibly. Therefore we confess one Christ, one Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, knowing that, being coeternal with his own Father according to the Godhead, according to which he is also the Creator of all things, he deigned, after the consent of the holy Virgin, when she said to the angel, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,’ ineffably to build for himself a temple from her, and to unite it to himself from the very conception; not bringing down from heaven a body coeternal with him from his own substance, but taking it from the lump of our substance, that is, from the Virgin, and uniting it to himself. God the Word was not changed into flesh, nor did he appear as a phantom; but keeping his own substance immutably and unalterably, he took the firstfruits of our nature and united it to himself. God the Word did not take a beginning from the Virgin, but, being coeternal with his own Father, he deigned in his great goodness to unite to himself the firstfruits of our nature, not being blended, but appearing one and the same in both substances, according to what is written: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ For Christ [is destroyed] according to my [nature] …, and the same raises the destroyed temple according to the divine substance, according to which he is also the Creator of all things. Never after the union, which he deigned to make with himself from the very conception, did he depart from his own temple, nor could he depart from it, because of his unspeakable love for humankind. But the same is passible and impassible: passible according to the humanity, impassible according to the Godhead. ‘See, see me, that I am, and I have not changed.’ Having raised, then, his own temple, God the Word, having worked in it the resurrection and renewal of our nature, and showing this to his disciples, said, ‘Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see me’, not being but having, so that you, perceiving both the one who has and what is had, may see not a blending, not a change, not an alteration, but a union that has taken place. For this reason he also showed the prints of the nails and the piercing of the lance, and ate before the disciples, so that by all means he might assure them that the resurrection of our nature had been renewed in him; and that, remaining in the blessed substance of the Godhead immutable, unalterable, impassible, immortal, without need, he allowed by permission all the sufferings to be brought upon his own temple, and raised it by his own power, and through his own temple accomplished the perfect renewal of our nature. Those who say that Christ is a mere human being, or that God the Word is passible, or was changed into flesh, or had a body of one substance with him, or brought it down from heaven, or that it is a phantom; or who say that God the Word, being mortal, needed resurrection from the Father; or that he assumed a soulless body or a mindless human being; or that the two natures of Christ, confused by blending, became one nature; and who do not confess that in our Lord Jesus Christ there are two unconfused natures but one person, inasmuch as there is one Christ, one Son: these the catholic …

and apostolic Church.” Of the same: “If, then, the flesh of all human beings is subject in Christ, how is it thought to be of one hypostasis with the Godhead? For if the Word and the flesh, which has its nature from the earth, are of one hypostasis, then the Word and the soul, which he assumed complete, are of one hypostasis. For the Word is of one nature with God, according to the confession both of the Father and of the Son himself, which says, ‘I and the Father are one’; then the Father too must be thought to be of the same substance with the body. And why are you still angry with the Arians, who say that the Son of God is a creature, when you yourselves say that the Father is of one substance with creatures?” Of the same, from the [discourse] on the distinction of Godhead and flesh: “The one Son of God answers to both, since both natures are in him. The same one speaks, but not always in one way, but in another. Attend to him, speaking now of glory, now of human sufferings. As God he speaks the divine things, since he is the Word; as human he speaks the lowly things, since he speaks in my hypostasis.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “Hence, when it is read that the Lord of glory was crucified, let us not think that he was crucified in his own glory. But since this one is God and human, God according to the Godhead and, according to the assumption of the flesh, the human Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory is said to have been crucified. For he partakes of each nature, that is, the human and the divine. For he underwent the suffering in the nature of the human being, so that the one who suffered may be said, without division, to be both Lord of glory and Son of Man, as it is written, ‘He who descended from heaven.’” Likewise, from the same: “Let vain inquiries about words, then, be silent. For the kingdom of God, as it is written, is not in persuasive words but in demonstration of power. Let us keep the distinction of the flesh and the Godhead. For one is the Son of God; one speaks both, since each nature is in him. But even if the same one speaks, he does not always speak in one way. For you see in him now the glory of God, now the sufferings of the human being. As God he speaks the divine things, since he is the Word; as human he speaks the human things, since he spoke in this nature.” Of the same, from the discourse on the incarnation: “But while we were refuting these, others sprang up, saying that the body of Christ and the Godhead are of one nature. What Hades belched forth such blasphemy? The Arians are now more tolerable, whose unbelief is strengthened by these men, so that with greater contentiousness they deny that the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are of one substance, since these men have tried to say that the Godhead of the Lord and the flesh are of one nature.”

Of the same: “And this man too [claims] continually [to hold] the exposition of the synod at Nicaea; but in that examination our Fathers said that not the flesh, but the Word of God, is of one substance with the Father. And they confessed that the Word came forth from the substance of the Father, but that the flesh is from the Virgin. Why, then, do they hold out to us the name of Nicaea, yet bring in novelties which our forefathers never conceived?” Of the same, against Apollinarius: “Do not you, then, wish the body to be equal by nature to the Godhead. For even if you believe that the body of Christ is real, and bring it to the altar for transformation, but do not distinguish the nature of the body and of the Godhead, we will say to you too, ‘If you have offered rightly but not divided rightly, you have sinned; be still.’ Divide, then, what is ours and what is proper to the Word. I did not have what was his, and he did not have what was mine. And he took what was mine in order to give us a share of his own; and he took this up for fulfilment, not for confusion.” Of the same, a little later: “Let those, then, cease who say that the nature of the Word was changed into the nature of flesh, lest, having been changed, the nature of the Word should seem by the same interpretation to have become subject to corruption together with the sufferings of the body. For what took is one thing and what was taken is another. Power came upon the Virgin, as the angel says to her, ‘The power of the Most High will overshadow you.’ But what was born was from the body of the Virgin; and for this reason the descent was divine, but the conception human. The spirit of the body and the nature of the Godhead, then, could not be the same.” Of holy Basil, bishop of Caesarea. From the discourse on thanksgiving: “Therefore, by weeping over his friend, he showed his fellowship with human nature, and permitted us neither to … toward the sufferings nor to be insensible to griefs. As, then, the Lord accepted hunger when the solid food in him had been used up, and admitted thirst when the moisture in the body had been spent, and grew weary when the muscles and sinews were overstrained from the journey (not the Godhead being oppressed by fatigue, but the body receiving the [effects] that follow from nature), so too he admitted tears, allowing the symptom natural to the flesh to occur.”

Of the same, against Eunomius: “For I say that ‘being in the form of God’ is equivalent to ‘being in the substance of God.’ For as ‘having taken the form of a servant’ signifies that our Lord came to be in the substance of humanity, so in saying ‘being in the form of God’ he presents the property of the divine substance.” Of holy Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus. From the discourse on New Sunday: “[He will] come again with his glorious coming, judging the living and the dead; no longer flesh, yet not bodiless, by principles known to himself, of a more godlike body, so that he may both be seen by those who pierced him and remain God beyond grossness.” Of the same, from the letter to Cledonius: “For there are two natures, God and human, since there are also soul and body; but not two sons. For not here either are there two human beings, even if Paul so calls the inner and the outer man. And, to speak briefly, the elements of which the Savior is are one thing and another, since the invisible is not the same as the visible, nor the timeless as what is under time; but not one person and another; far from it!” Of the same, from the first exposition to Cledonius: “If anyone says that the flesh has now been laid aside, and that the Godhead is bare of body, and not that he both is and will come with what he assumed, may he not see the glory of the coming. For where is the body now, if not with the one who assumed it? For it has not, as in the nonsense of the Manichees, been deposited in the sun, so as to be honored through dishonor; nor was it poured out into the air and dissolved, like the nature of a voice, the flow of a scent, and the course of lightning that does not stand still. And where then is its being touched after the resurrection, or its being seen one day by those who pierced him? For the Godhead by itself is invisible.” Of the same, from the second discourse on the Son: “For as Word he was neither obedient nor disobedient; for these belong to those under authority and to those of second rank, the one to the more well-disposed, the other to those who deserve judgment. But as the form of a servant he condescends to his fellow servants, and takes on a form not his own, bearing in himself the whole of me with what is mine, so that in himself he may consume what is worse, as fire consumes wax

or as the sun consumes the vapor of the earth.” Of the same, from the discourse on the Theophany: “Since, then, he came forth from the Virgin with what he had assumed, [one] from two things opposed to each other, flesh and spirit; of which the one was assumed into God, and the other furnished the grace of the Godhead.” Of the same, a little later: “He was sent, but as human. For his nature was twofold; hence, indeed, he grew weary, and hungered, and thirsted, and was in agony, and wept, by the law of a human body.” Of the same, in the second discourse on [the Son]: “He would be called God, not of the Word, but of the visible. For how could he be God of him who is properly God? Just as he is Father, not of the visible, but of the Word. For he was twofold. So that the one title is used properly in both cases, but the other not properly; the opposite of what holds in our case. For of us he is properly God, but not properly Father. And this is what produces the heretics' error: the yoking together of the names. A sign of this is that when the natures are distinguished in thought, the names are divided along with them. You hear Paul saying, ‘That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory’: God of Christ, but Father of glory. For even if both together are one, it is not by nature but by the coming together. What could be clearer than this?” [Of the same:] “Let it be said in the fifth place: … the nations, or authority over all flesh, or glory, or disciples, or whatever is said. And these belong to the humanity.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “‘For there is one God, and one mediator of God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus.’ For he still intercedes even now, as human, for my salvation; for he is with the body that he assumed, until he makes me God by the power of the incarnation, even if he is no longer known according to the flesh (I mean the fleshly sufferings), and, apart from sin, ours …

… Of the same, from the same discourse: “Or is it not clear to all that he knows as God, but says that he does not know as human, if one separates what is seen from what is understood? For the fact that the title of the Son is absolute and unrelated, with no ‘of whom’ added to ‘the Son,’ gives this suggestion: that we should take the ignorance in the more pious sense, reckoning it to the human, not to the divine.” Of holy Gregory, bishop of Nyssa. From the Catechetical Oration: “And who says this, that the infinity of the Godhead is contained by the circumscription of the flesh, as in some vessel?” Of the same, from the same discourse: “But if the soul of a human being, though blended with the body by the necessity of nature, goes everywhere at will, what necessity is there to say that the Godhead is enclosed within the nature of the flesh?” Of the same, from the same discourse: “What prevents us, recognizing a certain union and drawing near of the divine nature to the human, from preserving the God-befitting understanding even in the drawing near, believing that the divine is outside all circumscription even when it is in human beings?” Of the same, from the discourse against Eunomius: “But if the one from Mary converses with brothers, while the Only-begotten has no brothers (for how would ‘only-begotten’ be preserved among brothers?); and he who said ‘God is spirit’ says to the disciples, ‘Touch me,’ to show that only the human nature can be touched, while the divine is intangible; and he who says ‘I go’ indicates a change of place, while he who contains all things, in whom, as the Apostle says, all things were created and in whom all things hold together, has nothing among the things that exist outside himself, to which he might come by some movement or departure …” Of the same, from the same discourse: “‘Exalted, then, by the right hand of God.’ Who, then, was exalted? The lowly one, or the Most High? And what is the lowly, if not the human? And what else is the Most High but the divine? But God does not need to be exalted, being Most High; [so] the human [was exalted], through becoming Lord and Christ. Therefore the Apostle does not present by the word ‘he made’ the Lord's existence before the ages, but the transformation of the lowly into the lofty, which took place at the right hand of God. For through this word the mystery of godliness is made clear. For he who said, ‘Exalted by the right hand of God,’ plainly reveals the ineffable dispensation of the mystery: that the right hand of God, which made all things that exist, which is the Lord, through whom all things came to be and without whom nothing that has come to be subsisted, itself raised the human being united to it to its own height through the union.” From the discourse on “My Father is greater than I”: “Distinguish, then, the natures, that of God and that of the human being. For neither did he become human from God by a fall, nor God from

a human being.” Of the same, from the discourse on “The Son can do nothing of himself”: “For after the resurrection the Lord shows both: that the body is not such [as before], and that it is this body that rose. Remember the history. The disciples were gathered together after the passion and the resurrection, and while the doors were shut the Lord stood in their midst. He never did this before the passion. Could not Christ have done this long before? For all things are possible to God. But he did not do it before the passion, so that you might not think the dispensation a fantasy or a seeming, nor suppose Christ's flesh to be spiritual, or to have come down from heaven, or to be of another substance than our flesh. For some, imagining all these things and thinking to honor the Lord by them, have unawares blasphemed through their very thanksgiving, and charged the truth with falsehood, so that the falsehood is altogether absurd. For if he assumed another body, what has it to do with mine, which needs salvation? If he brought flesh down from heaven, what has it to do with my flesh, taken from the earth?” Of the same, from the same discourse: “For these reasons, then, not before the passion but after the passion, the Lord stood in the midst of the disciples while the doors were shut, so that you might know that your natural body too, once sown, is raised a spiritual body. And so that you might not think, again, that what rises is something else, when Thomas disbelieved the resurrection, he shows him the prints of the nails, he shows him the traces of the wounds. Could he not heal himself, and that after the resurrection, he who healed all even before the resurrection? But by showing the prints of the nails he teaches that it is this body; and by entering when the doors were shut he shows that it is not such [as before]. The one, so that he might fulfil the manner of the dispensation by raising what had died; ‘not such,’ so that it might not again fall under corruption nor again undergo death.” From the [writings] against Origen: “Neither is our likeness, which he has shared, changed into the nature of the Godhead, nor is his Godhead turned into our likeness. For he remains God, what he was from the beginning; and he remains, preparing our existence in himself.” Of the same, from the same treatise: “But you do not keep quiet; you blaspheme again, slandering the Son of God and saying in these very words: ‘Just as the Son and the Father are one, so the soul that the Son took and he himself are one’; not knowing that the Son and the Father are one because of the one substance and the same Godhead, while the soul and the Son are of different substance and nature from each other. For if, just as the Father and the Son are one, so too the soul of the Son and the Son are one, then the Father and the soul will also be one, and the soul of the Son will at some time say, ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father.’ But this is not so; far from it! For the Son and the Father are one, since they are not different in quality; but the soul and [the Son] are other both in nature and in substance, since the soul too came to be through him, being consubstantial with us. For if in the way that the Father and the Son are one, in this way the soul and the Son too are one, as Origen holds, then the soul too, like the Son, will be the radiance of the glory of God and the stamp of his hypostasis. But this is impossible; it is impossible, then, for the Son and his soul to be one, as he and the Father are one. And what will he do, falling foul of himself again? For he writes thus: ‘Surely the soul that was troubled and very sorrowful was not the Only-begotten and firstborn of all creation. For God the Word, being superior to the soul, the Son himself, says: I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it.’ If, then, the Son is superior to his own soul, as he is indeed confessed to be, how is his soul equal to God and in his form? For [he writes]: ‘We say that it is the soul that emptied itself and took the form of a servant …’ of the other heretics happened, as we indicated. For if the Word exists in the form of God and is equal to God, and he thinks that the Savior's soul exists in the form of God and equal to God, having dared to write so, how is the equal superior? For things inferior in nature testify that what is above them is superior.”

Of holy John Chrysostom, bishop [of Constantinople]. From a discourse in the Great Church: “… And your Master took the human being up into heaven, while you do not even let him share the marketplace. And why do I say into heaven? He seated him on a royal throne, while you drive him even out of the city.” Of the same, on the beginning of the forty-first psalm: “Paul does not cease, to this day, saying, ‘We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were appealing through us; we beseech you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.’ And he did not stop even there, but, taking firstfruits from your nature, he seated it above every rule and authority and power and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. What could equal this honor? The firstfruits of our race, which had offended so much and is now honored, sits at such a height, and enjoys such honor.” Of the same, on the division of tongues: “Consider what it is to see our nature riding on the cherubim, and all the angelic power poured around it. And see Paul's wisdom too, how many words he seeks out to present Christ's love for humankind. For he did not say simply ‘grace,’ nor simply ‘riches,’ but ‘the surpassing riches of grace in kindness.’” Of the same, from the dogmatic discourse “That the things said and done by Christ in a lowly manner were done and said not through weakness of power, but for various purposes of the dispensation”: “And after the resurrection, seeing the disciple disbelieving, he did not refuse to show him the wounds and the print of the nails, and the scars to the touch of his hand, and he said, ‘Search and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones.’ For this reason he did not assume the human being at full age from the beginning, but endured being conceived, and born, and nursed with milk, and spending so long a time on earth, so that by the length of the time and by all the rest he might confirm this very thing.” Of the same, to those who say that demons govern human affairs: “Nothing was cheaper than the human being, and nothing has become more honored than the human being. He was the last part of the rational creation. But the feet have become the head, and have been brought up to the royal throne through the firstfruits. For just as a generous and munificent man, seeing someone who has escaped from shipwreck and could save from the waves only his naked body, receives him with open arms, clothes him in a splendid robe, and leads him to the highest honor, so God too has done in the case of our nature. The human being had thrown away all that he had: his freedom of speech, his converse with God, his life in paradise, his life free of hardship; and like a man naked from shipwreck, so he went out from there. But God received him and clothed him at once, and, leading him by the hand little by little, brought him up into

heaven.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “But God made the gain greater than the loss, and brought our nature up to the royal throne. And Paul cries out, saying, ‘He raised us up with him and seated us at his right hand in the heavenly places.’” Of the same, to those who fast at the first Passover: “He opened the heavens, made friends of those who were hated, brought [them] back up to heaven, seated our nature at the right hand of the throne, and provided us with countless other good things.” Of the same, from the discourse on the Ascension: “To this distance and height, then, he brought up our nature. See where it lay below, and where it went up above. It was not possible to go down lower than where the human being went down, nor … higher than where he brought him up again.” Of the same, from the interpretation of the letter to the Ephesians: “‘According to his good pleasure,’ he says, ‘which he purposed in him’; that is, what he desired; he was in travail, as one might say, to tell us the mystery. And what is this? That he wishes to seat a human being on high; which indeed has happened.” Of the same, from the same interpretation: “Concerning this one he says ‘the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ not concerning God the Word.” Of the same, from the same interpretation: “‘And when we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.’ Again Christ is in the middle, and the matter is credible. For if the beginning lives, so do we; he made him alive, and us. Do you see that everything is said of what is according to the flesh?” Of the same, from [the interpretation of] the Gospel according to John: “Why does he add, ‘And he dwelt among us’? As if to say: Suspect nothing absurd from ‘became.’ For I did not speak of a change of that immutable nature, but of a tenting and a dwelling. And what tents cannot be the same as the tent, but one thing tents in another; otherwise there would be no tenting, for nothing dwells in itself. And I said ‘another’ according to substance. For by the union and the conjunction God the Word and the flesh are one, no confusion having taken place, nor any disappearance of the substances, but a union ineffable and inexpressible.” Of the same, from [the interpretation of] the Gospel according to Matthew: “And just as someone standing between two parties set apart from each other, stretching out both hands and taking hold of each side, would join them, so he too did, joining the old to the new, the divine nature to the human, his own things to ours.”

Of the same, on the Ascension of Christ: “For just as, when two have parted in a skirmish, … the battle and the discord, so too Christ did. He was angry with us as God, and we despised his anger, turning away from the loving Master; and Christ, putting himself in the middle, brought each nature into friendship, and himself bore the punishment laid upon us by the Father.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “He offered, then, the firstfruits of our nature to the Father, and the Father himself admired the gift, because of the great worth of the one who offered it and the blamelessness of what was offered. For he received it with his own hands, and made it share his own throne; and, what is more, he set it at his own right hand. Let us recognize, then, who it is that heard, ‘Sit at my right hand’: what that nature was to which he said, ‘You are earth, and to earth you shall return.’” Of the same, a little later: “What word I shall use, what expressions I shall utter, I do not know. The frail nature, the cheap nature, which had been shown to be the least of all, has conquered all, has surpassed all. Today it has been deemed worthy to become higher than all; today it has received what angels long desired; today archangels have been able to become spectators of what they long yearned for, and [to see] our nature on the royal throne, [shining] with the glory of immortality.” Of the same, from [the interpretation of] the Gospel according to Luke: “In all things the Lord sketches for us, in our nature, the ways of salvation; and he provides us with many clear proofs both of his bodily visitation and of the Godhead working through the body. For he wished to confirm both his natures.” Of the same, on the Theophany: “‘Who will truly speak of the mighty acts of the Lord, make all his praises heard?’ Who could present in words the greatness of his benefaction to us? Human nature is joined to the Godhead, each nature remaining by itself.” Of [Cyril], bishop of Jerusalem. From the fourth catechetical discourse, on the ten doctrines. On the birth from the Virgin: “Believe that this only-begotten Son of God, because of our sins, came down from heaven to the earth, having taken this humanity of like passions with us, and was born of the holy Virgin and the Holy Spirit, the incarnation having taken place not in seeming and appearance but in truth; not passing through the Virgin as through a pipe, but truly made flesh from her, truly eating as we do, and truly nursed with milk from her. For if the incarnation was an appearance, salvation too is a phantom. Christ was twofold: human, what was seen; God, what was not seen; eating as human, truly, as we do, for he had the same passions of the flesh as we do; but feeding the five thousand from five loaves as God; dying as human, truly; but raising one four days dead as God; sleeping in the boat as human, and walking on the waters as God. Do not confuse the natures, and you will not be stupefied about the dispensation.” … in the ninth discourse On the Faith: “He does not truly know his own life who does not know Jesus Christ as true God and so also as true human. For the matter is of the same danger, if we deny Christ Jesus either as Spirit-God or as flesh of our body. ‘Therefore whoever confesses me before human beings, I too will confess him before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before human beings, I too will deny him before my Father in heaven.’ These things the Word made flesh said, and the man Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, taught, being himself the mediator for the salvation of the Church in the very mystery through which he mediated between God and human beings; being one, both together, from the natures united into this very [one], and being the same through each nature; yet so that in each he lacks neither, lest he cease to be God by being born human, or again not be human by remaining God. This, then, is the blessedness of the true faith among human beings: to proclaim God and human, to confess flesh and Word, and to know God, that he is also human, and not to be ignorant of the flesh, that

and is Word.” Of the same, in the same [book]: “Born, then, of the Virgin as human, the only-begotten God, who at the fulfilment of the time was himself to work in himself the advance of the human being into God, kept this order in all the Gospel sayings: that he might teach that he is to be believed Son of God, and remind us that he is proclaimed Son of Man; as human, obtaining and doing all that belongs to a human being; yet so that in this very manner of speaking, according to the other kind, he never speaks except so as to signify both God and human. From this, then, the heretics get a pretext for ensnaring the simpler and the ignorant: they falsely say that what he spoke according to the humanity was said in weakness of the divine nature, and, since it is one and the same who speaks all that he spoke, they contend that he said everything about himself. Nor do we deny that all his words are of his own nature. But if Christ is one, human and God, and neither was the human then first God, nor, when he was human, was he not then also God, nor after the human [nature], in the Lord, is the Word not human and the Word God, then it is necessary that the mystery of his words be one and the same, just as that of his birth is. And when at a given time you divide the human in him from God, then separate the words of God and of the human. And when you confess God and human, at that time distinguish the words of God and of the human. And when [he is] from God and human, and again wholly human and wholly God, consider the time. If anything of this kind was spoken to indicate what pertains to that time, fit what was said to the time. And since it is one thing [for him to be] God before the human, another again human and God, and another, after the human and God, wholly human and wholly God, do not confuse the mystery of the dispensation by what is said and what has been done. For necessarily, according to the quality of the kinds and of the natures, his manner of speaking was one when not yet [in] the mystery of the human being born, another when he was still approaching death, and another when he was already eternal. Having shown all things, then, in this way, Christ Jesus, born a human being of our body, spoke according to the custom of our nature, while being God. For even if in the birth, and in the passion, and in the death he carried out the actions of our nature, nevertheless he did all these things by the power of his own nature.

Of the same, in the same book: “Do you see, then, that God and human are so confessed that death is reckoned to the human, and the resurrection of the flesh to God? Understand the nature of God in the power of the resurrection, and recognize the human dispensation in the death. And since each came about by its own nature, remember for me that one Christ Jesus, who is both. These things I have shown briefly for this reason: that we may remember to understand each nature in our Lord Jesus Christ; for he who was in the form of God took the form of a servant.” Of the most holy bishop Augustine: “But now he appeared as mediator between God and human beings, so as to join each nature in the unity of the person, and to raise the customary by the unaccustomed, and to blend the unaccustomed with the customary.” Of the same, in the exposition of the Gospel according to John: “What, then, heretic? Since Christ is also human, he speaks as human, and do you slander God? He exalts the human nature in himself, and you dare to debase his divine [nature].” Of the same, in the discourse on the exposition of the faith: “For it is ours to believe, his to know; and so God the Word himself, receiving everything that belongs to a human being, is human, and the human being who was assumed, receiving all that is God, is nothing other than God. His substance must not be thought diminished. God knows how to mingle himself without corruption of his own, and he mingles in truth. He knows how to receive into himself so that nothing is added to him by increase; as he knows how, he poured himself out wholly, so that no diminution befell him. Let us not, then, conjecturing by the measure of our weakness and the lessons of sense experience, [suppose] God and human [to be like things mixed in] equal proportions, as though by such a confusion of Word and flesh some one body had come to be. Far be it from us to believe so, lest we think that, in the manner of things that are confused, two natures were brought into one hypostasis. For such a mixture is the destruction of each part. But Christ, containing but not contained, searching but not searched, filling but not filled, being everywhere at once whole and passing through all, by pouring forth his own power, as merciful, was mingled with the human nature; but the human nature was not mingled with the divine. O mystery truly heavenly and earthly, seen and not appearing! Such, too, was Christ who was born: heavenly and earthly, held and not held, seen and invisible; heavenly according to the nature of the Godhead, earthly according to the nature of the humanity; seen according to the flesh, invisible according to the spirit; held according to the body, not to be held according to the Word.” [Of …], from the letter to Eupsychius: “What, then, did the all-wise have to accomplish? By the mediation of the flesh that was assumed, and the union of God the Word with the human being from Mary, both things come about: that Christ, united from both, being disposed by the Godhead, remained in the dignity of his impassible nature, and, meeting with death in the flesh, at once showed, by the nature of the flesh akin to ours, contempt of death through death, and at once the rights of the new covenant were confirmed by his death. And that the natures brought together into true unity are different, but one God and Son from both, not as though the difference of the natures had been

abolished by the union.” Of the same, from the letter to the Easterners: “For a union of two natures has taken place; therefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this sense of the unconfused union, we confess the holy Virgin to be Theotokos, because God the Word was made flesh and became human, and from the very conception united to himself the temple taken from her.” Of the same: “For the Lord Jesus Christ is one, even if the difference of the natures, from which we say the ineffable union was effected, is not ignored.” Of the same: “Praising, then, as I said, the manner of the incarnation, we see that two natures came together with one another in an indissoluble union, without confusion and without division. For the flesh is flesh, and not Godhead, even if it has become God's flesh. Likewise the Word too is God, and not flesh, even if he made the flesh his own by the dispensation.” Of the same, in the interpretation of the letter to the Hebrews: “For even if the natures of the things that ran together into unity, I mean of flesh and of God, are understood as different and unequal to each other, yet the Son from both is one.” Of the same, in the interpretation of the same letter: “Even if perhaps the only-begotten Word of God should be said to have been united to flesh according to hypostasis, we do not say that a commingling of the natures with each other was effected, but rather that each remains what it is.” Of the same, from the Scholia: “The Word of the Father, though being God by nature, is named human, [born] of the Virgin, as having shared in blood and flesh as we do. For so he was seen by those on earth; not having let go what he was, but having come to be in the assumption of our humanity, which is complete according to its own principle.” Of the same, on the incarnation: “He is one, then, both before the incarnation true God, and in the humanity having remained what he was, and is, and will be. The one Lord Jesus Christ, then, must not be divided into a human being separately and God separately; but we say that Christ Jesus is one and the same, knowing the difference of the natures and [keeping] them [unconfused].” Of the same, after other things: “For what dwells is certainly understood as one thing in another, that is, the divine nature in humanity, without having undergone mixture or commingling or change into what it was not. For what is said to dwell in another has not itself become that in which it dwells, but rather is understood as one thing in another. But in the nature of the Word and of the humanity, the difference signifies to us only the difference of the natures; for one Christ is understood from both. Keeping, then, the unconfusedness very well, he says that the [Only-begotten], having become flesh and human, dwelt among us

[Orthodoxos:] You have heard, my good man, the great luminaries of the world, and seen the rays of their teaching; and you have learned exactly that not only after the birth, but also after the saving passion, and the resurrection, and the ascension, they showed the union of the Godhead and the humanity to be unconfused. Eranistes: I did not think that they divided the natures after the union; but I have found a great excess of division. Orthodoxos: It is mad and rash to move one's tongue against those noble men, the champions of the faith. But so that you may know that Apollinarius too says that the union took place without confusion, I will bring you his words as well. Hear him, then, saying: Of Apollinarius, from the book by chapters: “The things of God and of the body are united, then: Creator, worshiped, being eternal Wisdom and Power: these are from the Godhead; son of Mary, born in the last time, worshiping God, advancing in wisdom, strengthened in power: these are from the body. The suffering for sin and the curse … came forth, nor will it pass away, nor be changed into the bodiless … [we are] of one substance with the irrational animals according to the irrational body, but of another substance inasmuch as we are rational. So too God, being of one substance with human beings according to the flesh, is of another substance … Word. For he knows one only-begotten Son, who became flesh … inasmuch as he is Word and human.” And elsewhere he speaks thus: “The qualities of things blended together are blended, not destroyed, so that some are even separated from the things blended, as wine from water. Nor is it a blending with a body, nor such as that of bodies with bodies; but it also has what is unmixed, so that the activity of the Godhead, as is needful each time, either acts by itself or is mingled in, as happened in the Lord's fast. When the Godhead was mingled in according to its freedom from need, hunger was prevented; but when it did not set its freedom from need against the want, hunger came about, for the overthrow of the devil. And if the mixture of bodies was not changed, how much more that of the Godhead?” And in another place he says this: “If the blending with iron, which makes the iron itself fire so that it does the works of fire, did not change its nature, neither is the union of God with the body a change of the body, although the body furnishes divine activities to those able to touch it.” To these he immediately joins: “If a human being has both soul and body, and these remain, being in unity, much more does Christ, having Godhead with a body, have both, remaining and not confused.” And a little later: “For the human [nature] shares in the divine activity as far as it reaches; but it is other, as the least from the greatest. And the human being is a servant of God, but God is not a servant of the human being, nor of himself. And the one is God's handiwork, but the other is neither the handiwork of a human being nor of himself.” And a little later: “If one takes ‘what he sees the Father doing, he himself does’ of Christ according to the Godhead, and not according to the flesh, by which the one made flesh is distinct from the Father who was not made flesh, he divides two divine activities; but they are not divided; therefore he does not speak of the Godhead.” Then again he has set down this too: “Just as the human being is not irrational because the rational is added to the irrational, so neither is the Savior a creature because the creature is added to the uncreated God.” To these he joins this too: “The invisible, though compounded with a visible body and beheld through it, remains invisible; and it remains uncompounded, inasmuch as it is not circumscribed together with the body. And the body, remaining in its own measure, receives the union with God in being given life; nor does what is given life give life.” And a little later he spoke thus: “If not even the blending of soul with body, though it is from the beginning by natural growth together, makes the soul visible through the body, nor changes it into the other properties of the body so that it is cut and diminished, how much more is God, who has not grown together with a body, united to a body without [change]? And if the body of a human being remains in its own nature, and that while ensouled, neither in Christ did the blending change the body so that it is not a body.” And after very much more he has set down this again: “He who confesses soul and body as presented by Scripture as one contradicts himself when he says that such a union of the Word with the body is a change, though this is not seen even in the case of the soul.” Hear him again, crying out expressly: “If those who do not say that the Lord's flesh remains are impious, much more those who do not confess that he was made flesh at all.” And in the little discourse On the Incarnation he again wrote this: “‘Sit at my right hand,’ then, he says as to a human being; for it is not said to the one who always sits on the throne of glory, as God the Word, after the ascent from the earth, but to the one now exalted into the heavenly glory as human, as the apostles say: ‘For David did not ascend into the heavens; but he himself says, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.’ Human is the command, giving a beginning to the sitting; divine is the dignity of sitting with God, whom thousands of thousands serve, and before whom ten thousand times ten thousand stand.” And a little later: “For he subjects the enemies to him not as to God, but as to a human being, so that the same one is both God, being seen, and human. That ‘until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet’ is said to him as to a human being, Paul teaches, calling the achievement his own, that is, according to the divine: ‘according to the working by which he is able even to subject all things to himself.’ See the Godhead and the humanity inseparable in the one person.” And after a short while: “‘Glorify me, you, with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was.’ For ‘glorify’ he says as human; but having the glory before the age he reveals as God.”

And again, a little later: “But let us not be humbled by thinking the worship of the Son of God lowly, even with the human likeness; but let us glorify him with royal glory, as a king who has appeared even in a cheap robe, especially as we see the very garment glorified, as befitted the body of God and the Savior of the world, the seed of eternal life, the instrument of divine activities, the destroyer of all evil, the overthrower of death, and the author of resurrection. For even if it had its nature from human beings, it had its life from God, its power from heaven, and its virtue divine.” And a little later: “… Hence we worship the body as the Word, and partake of the body as of the spirit.” [Orthodoxos:] See, the very first to introduce the blending of the natures has been shown plainly using division. This man called the body a robe, and a creature, and an instrument. And indeed he named it a servant, which none of us has ever dared to say. He said that this was deemed worthy of the seat at the right hand …

… Orthodoxos: Death, then, is the punishment of those who have sinned. … Orthodoxos: Why, then, when soul and body together have sinned, does the body alone undergo the punishment of death? Eranistes: Because it was the body that looked wrongly at the tree, and stretched out its hands, and plucked the forbidden fruit. Again, this same mouth ground it fine with its teeth and milled it with its molars. Then the gullet in turn received it and passed it on to the stomach; and the stomach, having altered it, passed it on to the liver. The liver changed what it received into the nature of blood and handed it to the hollow vein; that vein handed it to the veins joined to it, and these through the others to the body; and so the theft of the forbidden food passed through the whole body. Rightly, then, the body alone underwent the punishment for the sin. Orthodoxos: You have gone through the matter of nourishment for us like a natural philosopher: through how many parts it travels and how many alterations it undergoes before it is finally changed into the nature of the body. But you were unwilling to see this: that without the soul the body does none of the things you have mentioned. For when it is left by the soul yoked to it, it lies breathless, voiceless, and motionless; the eye sees neither wrongly nor rightly, the ears do not receive the sound of voices, the hands do not move, the feet do not walk; it is like an instrument deprived of its musician. How, then, did you say that the body alone had sinned, when without the soul it cannot even breathe at all? … of the soul, but it procures for the soul the harmful acquisition of sin. Orthodoxos: How, and in what way? Eranistes: Through the eyes it prepares the soul to see wrongly; through the hearing, to hear what is not profitable; through the tongue, to utter what is ruinous; and through the other parts, to do what is unlawful. Orthodoxos: Then, it seems, we must call the deaf blessed, and those deprived of sight, and those who lack the other parts; for their souls do not share in the wickedness of the body. But why, most wise friend, did you mention only the blameworthy things of the body …? For it can also look in a friendly and kindly way, and wipe away a tear of compunction, and hear the divine oracles, and incline the ear to one in need, and praise the Maker with the tongue, and teach one’s neighbor what he should, and move the hands to mercy, and, in a word, use the parts of the body for the acquisition of every virtue. … Orthodoxos: Then both keeping and transgressing the laws are common to soul and body. … Orthodoxos: It seems to me that the soul even leads in each of them, using reasoning before the body. Eranistes: How do you mean this? Orthodoxos: Because the mind first sketches the virtue or the vice, and then gives it its full form, using the parts of the body as instruments, and, as colors and materials, those that suit either. … Orthodoxos: If, then, the soul sins together with the body, or rather leads in the sin (for it was entrusted with driving and steering the living creature), why does it share in the sin and not share in the punishment?

Eranistes: And how was it possible for the immortal [soul] … death … Orthodoxos: Yet it was just that, having shared in the transgression, it should share in the chastisement. … Orthodoxos: But in the life to come it will be handed over to Gehenna together with the body? Eranistes: So he has said: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but fear rather him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” Orthodoxos: Then in this life it escaped death, as immortal; but in that life it will pay the penalty, not by undergoing death but by being punished while alive. Eranistes: The divine Scripture teaches this too. Orthodoxos: It is impossible, then, for the immortal [soul] to undergo death. … Orthodoxos: How, then, do you say that God the Word tasted death? For if, where the immortal is something created, it has been seen to be impossible for it to become mortal, how is it possible for him who is uncreatedly and eternally immortal, the Maker of mortal and immortal natures, to partake of death? Eranistes: We too know that his nature is immortal, but we say that he partook of death in the flesh. Orthodoxos: But we have shown expressly that what is immortal by nature can in no way partake of death. For not even the soul, though it had a share in working the sin, shared death with the body, solely because of the immortality of its nature. Let us examine this same point another way too. Eranistes: Nothing prevents us from trying every path to find the truth. Orthodoxos: Let us inquire, then, in this way. Do we say that, of virtue and of vice, some are teachers and others are pupils of these? … Orthodoxos: And do we say that the teacher of virtue is worthy of greater rewards? … Orthodoxos: And likewise that the teacher of vice is worthy of double and triple punishment? … Orthodoxos: In which portion must the devil be placed? Do we say he is a teacher or a pupil? Eranistes: A teacher of teachers, rather. For he is both father and teacher of all wickedness. Orthodoxos: And who among human beings first became his [pupils]? Eranistes: Adam and Eve. Orthodoxos: And who received the sentence of death? Eranistes: Adam and all his race. Orthodoxos: So the pupils paid the penalty for what they were wrongly taught; and did the teacher, whom we just said is worthy of double and triple chastisement, escape the punishment? … Orthodoxos: But nevertheless, even though these things happened so, we both know and call the judge just. … Orthodoxos: Why, then, being just, did he not exact from that one the penalty for his evil teaching? Eranistes: He has prepared for him the unquenchable flame of Gehenna. For he says, “Go, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” But here he did not share death with his pupils for this reason, that he has an immortal nature.

Orthodoxos: So not even those who have committed the greatest offences think they partake of death, if they have an immortal nature. … Orthodoxos: If, then, not even the very inventor and teacher of wickedness partook of death, because of the immortality of his nature, how do you not shudder when you say that the fountain of immortality and righteousness partook of death? Eranistes: If we said that he endured the passion unwillingly, the accusation you bring against us would have had a just pretext. But if we [confess] the passion as freely chosen and the death as voluntary, you ought not to accuse us but to praise the surpassing greatness of his love for humankind. For he suffered willingly, and he partook of death because he willed it … Orthodoxos: It seems you are altogether ignorant of the divine nature. For the Lord God wills nothing that is not in his nature, but all that he wills he can do. And he wills what is suited and fitting to his own nature. Eranistes: We have learned that all things are possible for God. … in the word also whatever belongs to the devil’s portion. For he who said “all things” without qualification has included in the same breath both the good things and their opposites. Eranistes: Did not the noble Job, then, say without qualification, “I know that you can do all things, and nothing is impossible for you”? Orthodoxos: If you read what the righteous man said before this, you will find from it the aim of these words too. For he spoke thus: “Remember that you formed me as clay, and you turn me back into earth. Did you not milk me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews; you set life and mercy with me, and your oversight guarded my spirit.” To these words he adds: “Having these things in myself, I know that you can do all things, and nothing is impossible for you.” Did he not, then, say that whatever accords with these things is also fitting to the undefiled nature, the God of the universe? Eranistes: Nothing is impossible for the almighty God. Orthodoxos: Then sinning too is possible for the almighty God, according to your definition at least. Eranistes: [No,] since he does not will it. Orthodoxos: And why does he not will it? Eranistes: Because sinning is foreign to that nature. Orthodoxos: Then there are many things he cannot do; for there are many kinds of offences. Eranistes: None of such things is either willed by God or possible for him. Orthodoxos: Nor indeed those things that are contrary to the divine nature. … Orthodoxos: For example, we have been taught that God is light, spiritual and true. … Orthodoxos: But we would not say that he either willed or was able to become darkness. … Orthodoxos: Again, the divine Scripture calls his nature invisible. … Orthodoxos: But we would not say that it could ever become visible. … Orthodoxos: For it is incomprehensible and altogether beyond reach. … Orthodoxos: Then neither would he who is become one who is not. … Orthodoxos: Nor would the Father [become] the Son. … Orthodoxos: Nor, then, would the unbegotten … Eranistes: How could it?

Orthodoxos: Nor would the Father ever become the Son. Orthodoxos: Nor would the Holy Spirit become Son or Father. Eranistes: All these are impossible. Orthodoxos: And we find many other such things likewise impossible. For neither will the eternal come under time, nor the uncreated become created and made, nor the infinite be limited, nor anything else akin to these. Eranistes: None of these is possible. Orthodoxos: We have found, then, that many things are impossible for [God]. … Orthodoxos: But not being able to do any of these is evidence of infinite power, not of weakness; whereas being able to would surely be evidence of powerlessness, not of power. Eranistes: How do you mean this? Orthodoxos: Because each of these proclaims the immutability and unalterability of God. For that the good cannot become evil signifies the surpassing greatness of his goodness; and that the just would never become unjust, nor the truthful a liar, shows his steadiness and firmness in truth and righteousness. So the true light would not become darkness, nor he who is become one who is not; for he has enduring being, and the light is unalterable. If you examine all the other cases in the same way, you will find that “not being able” expresses supreme power. So too the divine Apostle understood and set down such “not being able” in the case of God. For writing to the Hebrews he says, “so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement,” showing that the impossible is not weak but exceedingly powerful. For he is so truthful, he means, that it is impossible for falsehood ever to arise in him. So the power of the truth is signified by the impossible. And writing to the blessed Timothy he also added this: “The saying is trustworthy: for if we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; [if we deny him, he also will deny] us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” Again, then, “he cannot” indicates infinite power. For even if all human beings deny him, he means, he is God and does not depart from his own nature; for he has indestructible being. This is what “he cannot deny himself” shows. Therefore the impossibility of change for the worse displays an abundance of power. Eranistes: This is true, and in accord with the divine words. Orthodoxos: If, then, many things are impossible for God, as many as are contrary to the divine nature, why, leaving all the other attributes as they are by nature — the good, the just, the true, the invisible, the unattainable, the uncircumscribed, the eternal, and all the others we say belong to God — do you say that immortality and impassibility alone are changeable, and grant in their case the possibility of alteration, and ascribe to God a power …

Eranistes: We were taught this by the divine Scripture. For the divine John cries out, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” And the inspired Paul: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” Orthodoxos: These things are indeed true, for they are divine oracles. But remember what we have often agreed. … Orthodoxos: That we agreed that the Son of God, God the Word, did not appear without a body, but having assumed a complete human nature. … these things. Orthodoxos: If, then, he took a human body and soul, for this reason he was also called Son of Man. … Orthodoxos: Then the Lord Jesus Christ is truly [man] and also our God; for of these natures he always had the one, and the other he truly took. … these things. Orthodoxos: Therefore as man he endured the passion; as God he remained above passion. Eranistes: How, then, does the divine Scripture say that the Son of God suffered? Orthodoxos: Because the body that suffered was his body. Let us consider it this way. When we hear the divine Scripture say, “It came to pass, after Isaac had grown old, that his eyes were dimmed so that he could not see,” where is our mind carried, and on what does it rest: on Isaac’s soul, or on his body? Eranistes: Clearly on the body. … [the soul] shared in the affliction of blindness? Orthodoxos: But we say that only the body was deprived of the sense of sight. … Orthodoxos: And again, when we hear Amaziah saying to the prophet Amos, “Seer, go away into the land of Judah,” and also Saul asking, “Where is the house of the seer?” we suspect nothing bodily. … Yet the names belonging to the faculty of sight … indicative of a part … of health. Orthodoxos: But we know nevertheless that the working of the Spirit, granted to purer souls, instils the prophetic grace; and this grace makes them see even hidden things, and seeing these things caused them to be called “seers” and “beholders.” … Orthodoxos: Then let us consider this too. … Orthodoxos: When we hear the history in the divine Gospels relating that they brought to God a paralytic lying on a bed, do we say that the loosening of the limbs belonged to the soul or to the body? Eranistes: Clearly to the body. Orthodoxos: But when, reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, we come upon the passage where the Apostle says, “Therefore lift up the drooping hands and the paralyzed knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be turned aside but rather be healed,” shall we say that the divine [Apostle] said this about the parts of the body? … Orthodoxos: Shall we say that he is rooting out the slackness and cowardice of the soul, and whetting the disciples to courage?

Orthodoxos: But we do not find these things distinguished in the divine Scripture. For when it told of Isaac’s blindness it did not mention the body, but simply said that Isaac was blind; nor, when it called the prophets “beholders” and “seers,” did it say that their souls saw and beheld hidden things, but it named the persons themselves. Eranistes: That is so. Orthodoxos: Nor did it show that the paralytic’s body was loosened, but it called the man a paralytic. … Orthodoxos: Nor did the divine Apostle mention souls by name when he wished to strengthen and rouse them. … Orthodoxos: But we, searching out the sense of the words, recognize which things are proper to the soul and which to the body. Eranistes: And rightly so; for God made us rational. Orthodoxos: Let us, then, use this reason also in the case of him who made and saved us, and recognize which things belong to his Godhead and which to his humanity. Eranistes: But in doing this very thing, [we would destroy] that supreme [union] … Orthodoxos: And yet when we did this in the case of Isaac, and of the prophets, and of the paralytic, and of the others, we did not dissolve the natural union of soul and body, nor did we separate the souls from their own bodies; we only discerned in thought what is proper to the soul and what to the body. How, then, is it not shocking that we, who do this in the case of souls and bodies, should refuse to do it in the case of our Saviour, and should instead confuse the natures because of their difference — natures that differ from each other not as much as soul differs from body, but as much as the recent stands apart from the eternal, and the made from the Maker? Eranistes: The divine Scripture says that the Son of God endured the passion. Orthodoxos: Nor do we say that anyone else suffered. Yet we know, having been taught by the divine Scripture, that the nature of the Godhead is impassible. So when we hear of impassibility and of passion, and of the union of humanity and Godhead, we say that the passion belongs to the passible body, and we confess that the impassible nature remained free from the passion. Eranistes: So a body procured our salvation for us. Orthodoxos: Not the body of a mere man, but of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God. If you think this small and paltry, how do you regard its type as venerable and saving? And if the type is to be worshipped and revered, how can the archetype itself be contemptible and small? Eranistes: I do not regard the body as paltry, but I cannot bear to divide it from the Godhead. Orthodoxos: Nor do we, my good friend, divide the union; we consider the properties of the natures. And you too, surely, will agree with this presently. … Orthodoxos: Not as a prophet, but because I know the power of the truth. But answer me this too, as I ask you first: when you hear the Lord say, “I and the Father are one,” and, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” do you say that these are properties of the flesh or of the Godhead?

Eranistes: And how is it possible for the flesh and the Father to be one in substance? Orthodoxos: These words, then, indicate the Godhead. … Orthodoxos: And “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God,” and the sayings like these? … Orthodoxos: But again, when the divine Scripture says, “Jesus, wearied from the journey, was sitting thus by the spring,” to whom must we take the weariness to belong: to the Godhead, or to the body? Eranistes: I cannot bear to divide what has been united. Orthodoxos: Then it seems you attach the weariness to the divine nature? Eranistes: So it seems to me. Orthodoxos: But you flatly contradict the prophet, who cries, “He will not hunger, nor grow weary, nor is there any searching out of his understanding; he gives strength to the hungry, and grief to those who are not in pain.” And a little after: “But those who wait for me will renew their strength; they will grow wings like an eagle; they will run, and …” How, then, did he who grants to others freedom from need and from weariness himself endure the affliction of weariness, and of thirst, and of hunger? Eranistes: I have said many times that as God he is impassible and without need, but after the incarnation he submitted to the passions. Orthodoxos: Receiving the passions in the Godhead, or [in the flesh, allowing] the [flesh] to suffer, and proclaiming by its suffering that what was seen was no phantom, but was truly taken from human nature? Let us consider it this way. Do we say that the divine nature is uncircumscribed? … Orthodoxos: And the uncircumscribed nature is circumscribed by nothing. Eranistes: Indeed not … Orthodoxos: And what has no need of moving from place to place does not [walk] … Orthodoxos: And what does not walk does not grow weary. … Orthodoxos: Then the divine nature did not grow weary, since it is uncircumscribed and has no need of walking. Eranistes: But the divine Scripture records that Jesus grew weary; and Jesus is God, “for there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” Orthodoxos: Since, then, the divine Scripture says both that he grew weary and that he does not grow weary, we must consider how this and how that can be [ascribed] to the one person. Eranistes: You show this; for you [bring in] the [terms] of division … since the union of unlike natures has been confessed, the person of Christ receives both these things and those because of the union, but to each nature what suits it is fitted: to the uncircumscribed, freedom from weariness; to the nature that moves from place to place and walks, the weariness. For walking is proper to feet, and being strained by excessive labor is proper to sinews. Eranistes: It is agreed that these are bodily sufferings. Orthodoxos: True, then, was that prediction which I made and you mocked. For look, you have shown us what belongs to the humanity and what to the Godhead. Eranistes: But I did not divide the one into two sons. Orthodoxos: Nor do we do this, my friend; but looking at the difference of the natures, we consider what is fitting to the Godhead and what suits the body.

Eranistes: The divine Scripture did not teach us to divide in this way, but said that the Son of God died. For so the Apostle said: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son.” And he said that the Lord was raised from the dead: “For God,” he says, “both raised the Lord …” Orthodoxos: When, then, the [divine] Scripture says, “[Devout men buried Stephen] and made great lamentation over him,” would anyone say that the soul too was buried together with the body? … Orthodoxos: And when you hear the patriarch Jacob say, “Bury me with my fathers,” do you think these words were said about the body or about the soul? … Orthodoxos: Read what follows as well. Eranistes: “There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; and there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there they buried Leah.” Orthodoxos: Not even in these words that you have just read did the divine Scripture mention the body; by the names it indicated soul and body together. Yet we rightly distinguish, and say that the souls are immortal, and that only the bodies of the patriarchs were laid in the double cave. … Orthodoxos: And when we hear the history of the Acts relating that Herod killed James the brother of John with the sword, [we by no means think] that the [soul] too … Eranistes: How could we, who remember the Lord’s [saying] — “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul”? Orthodoxos: Does it not seem to you impious and shocking that we, when we hear human names, do not always understand soul and body together, nor, when the Scripture tells of death and burial, bury the soul in thought with the body, but think that these belong to the body alone, and know the immortality of the soul, believing the Lord’s teaching; but that when we hear of the passion of the Son of God we do not do this as well, but make no mention at all of the body, to which the passion belongs, and declare in word that the divine nature — the impassible, immutable, and immortal — is mortal and passible; and this though we know that, if the nature of God the Word were capable of suffering, the assumption of the body would be superfluous …? Eranistes: We have learned from the divine Scripture that the Son of God endured the passion.

Orthodoxos: And yet the divine Apostle explains the passion and points out the nature that suffered. Eranistes: Show it, then, as quickly as possible, and settle the dispute. Orthodoxos: Do you not know that passage of the Epistle written to the Hebrews, where the inspired Paul says, “Therefore he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will proclaim your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise’”; and again, “Behold, I and the children whom God has given me”? Eranistes: I know these words, but there is nothing in them of what [you promised]. Orthodoxos: Yet these words too hint at what I promised to show. For the name of brotherhood indicates kinship, and the assumed nature brought about the kinship; and the assumption plainly proclaims the impassibility of the Godhead. But so that I may teach you this more clearly, read what follows. Eranistes: “Since, then, the children have shared in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, and deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” Orthodoxos: I think these words need no explanation; for they plainly teach the mystery of the dispensation. Eranistes: I have seen in them nothing of what you promised to show. Orthodoxos: And yet the divine Apostle taught expressly that the Maker, pitying the nature of human beings, which was not only bitterly seized by death but was also enslaved to it all its life long, procured resurrection for bodies through a body, and through a mortal nature destroyed the dominion of death. For since he himself had an immortal nature, he wished to end the power of death justly, taking a firstfruits from those subject to death; and having kept this firstfruits unblemished and uninitiated into sin, he allows death to seize this too and to fill up its insatiable greed; but because of its injustice against this firstfruits, he ended its unjust tyranny over the others as well. For by raising the firstfruits that had been unjustly swallowed up, he will cause the race to follow it. Set this interpretation beside the apostolic words, and you will see the impassibility of the Godhead. Eranistes: Nothing about the divine impassibility is shown in the words that have been read. Orthodoxos: Does not the divine Apostle’s saying, that he shared in flesh and blood with the children for this reason, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, clearly show the impassibility of the Godhead and the passibility of the flesh — that, since the divine nature could not suffer, he took the nature that could suffer, and through it broke the power of the devil? Eranistes: How did he break both the power of the devil and the dominion of death through the flesh? … [Orthodoxos: … By what means did the devil] … enslave human nature? Eranistes: Through sin he took captive the citizen established in paradise. Orthodoxos: And what penalty did God fix for the transgression of the commandment? … Orthodoxos: Then sin is the mother of death, and the devil is its father.

Orthodoxos: By sin, then, the nature of human beings was warred upon. For sin, enslaving those who obeyed it, both brought them to their all-wicked father and handed them over [to death] … Orthodoxos: Fittingly, then, the Maker, wishing to destroy both tyrannies, assumed the nature that was warred upon by them, and showed it free from all sin, and through it destroyed the power of the devil. For since death was the punishment of sinners, and death had unjustly snatched away, against the divine law, the Lord’s body, which had no stain of sin, he first raised what had been lawlessly held fast, and then promised release also to those justly imprisoned. Eranistes: And how does it seem just to you that bodies justly handed over to death should share in the resurrection of the one lawlessly held fast? Orthodoxos: And how does it seem just to you that, when Adam had transgressed the commandment, [the race] should follow the [forefather] …? Eranistes: Even if the race did not share in that transgression, it committed other sins, and for that reason partook of death. Orthodoxos: And yet not only sinners, but also the righteous, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and those who shone in different kinds of virtue, have fallen into the nets of death. Eranistes: How could those sprung from mortal fathers remain immortal? For Adam, after the transgression and the divine sentence, having come under the dominion of death, knew his wife and became a father. Having become mortal, then, he became the father of mortals. Fittingly, then, all who received a mortal nature follow their forefather. Orthodoxos: You have shown us excellently the cause of our sharing in death. This same thing, then, must be granted in the case of the resurrection too. For the remedy must suit the affliction. Just as, when the founder of the race was condemned, the whole race was condemned with him, so, when the Saviour lifted the curse, the nature enjoyed freedom. And just as those who shared his nature followed Adam when he went down to Hades, so the whole nature of human beings will share in the return to life with Christ the Lord, who rose. … to speak the doctrines of the Church. Show, then, the divine Scripture teaching these things. Orthodoxos: Hear the Apostle writing to the Romans, and through them teaching all human beings: “For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more has the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abounded for the many. And the gift is not as through the one who sinned; for the judgment came from one trespass to condemnation, but the free gift from many trespasses to justification. For if by the trespass of the one death reigned through the one, much more will those who [receive] the abundance of grace also reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.” And again: “So then, as through one trespass [it came] to all human beings to condemnation, so also through one act of righteousness to all human beings to justification of life. For as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one the many will be made righteous.” And writing to the Corinthians his discourse on the resurrection, he reveals to them the mystery of the dispensation in summary, and says: “But now Christ has been raised from the dead; he became the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since through a man came death, through a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” See, I have brought you the proofs from the divine oracles too. Look, then, at the things of Christ set beside those of Adam: the cure beside the disease, the remedy beside the wound, the wealth of righteousness beside the sin, the blessing beside the curse, the forgiveness beside the condemnation, the keeping of the commandment beside the transgression, life beside death, the kingdom beside Hades, Christ beside Adam, man beside man. And yet Christ the Lord is not only man, but also God before the ages; but the divine Apostle named him from the nature that was assumed, since to this nature belonged the struggle, to this the victory, to this the sufferings, to this the death, to this the resurrection; in this nature we share; with this nature those who have practised beforehand the way of life of the kingdom will reign with him. I said “with this” not separating the Godhead, but stating the properties of the humanity.

Eranistes: You have gone through many arguments about this … [if,] then, the passion truly belongs to the flesh, how does the divine Apostle cry out in praise of God’s love for humankind, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all”? What son did he say was given up? Orthodoxos: Hush, man! For there is one Son of God; and for this reason he has been called Only-begotten. Eranistes: If, then, there is one Son of God, the divine Apostle called him his own Son. … Eranistes: So he said that he himself was given up. Orthodoxos: He himself, but not without a body, as we have often agreed. Eranistes: It has often been agreed that he took a body and a soul. Orthodoxos: Then the Apostle spoke about what happened to the body. Eranistes: The Apostle [says] very plainly, “He who did not spare his own Son.” Orthodoxos: When, then, you hear God saying to Abraham, “Because you did not spare your beloved son for my sake,” do you say that Isaac was slaughtered? … Orthodoxos: And yet God said, “You did not spare”; and the God of the universe is truthful. Eranistes: [He said] “you did not spare” of Abraham’s eagerness … [he was ready to sacrifice the] boy, but God prevented it. Orthodoxos: Just as, then, in the story of Abraham you did not put up with the bare letter, but unfolded it and made the sense clear, so also search out the aim of the apostolic saying. For you will see that it was by no means the divine nature that was not spared, but the flesh that was nailed to the wood. And it is easy to see the truth even in the type. Does the sacrifice of Abraham seem to you to be a type of the offering made for the world …? Eranistes: Not at all. For I do not make a rule of doctrine out of what is said in festal oratory in the churches. Orthodoxos: You ought above all to follow the teachers of the Church. But since you resist them, and do not do well in it, hear at least the Saviour himself saying to the Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; and he saw it and was glad”; and consider how the Lord calls the passion his “day.” Eranistes: I have accepted the Lord’s testimony, and I believe the type. Orthodoxos: Set the type, then, beside the truth, and you will see even in the type the impassibility of the Godhead. For there is a father here and there, and likewise a beloved son here and there, and each carrying the material of the sacrifice: the one carried the wood, the other the cross on his shoulders. They say, too, that the summit of the mountain was honored with both sacrifices; the number of the days and nights also agrees, and the resurrection after them. For Isaac, slain by his father’s eagerness from the very day on which the generous Giver commanded it to be done, on the third day came back to life in figure by the voice of the Lover of humankind; and a ram was seen caught in a bush, showing the image of the cross, and it endured the slaughter in place of the boy. If these things are a type of the truth, and in the type the only son did not undergo slaughter, but a ram was brought in instead and offered on the altar and completed the mystery of the sacrifice, why do you not here too assign the passion to the flesh and proclaim the impassibility of the Godhead?

Eranistes: And you yourself, in telling of this type, said that Isaac came back to life by the divine voice. So we do nothing unreasonable in fitting the truth to the type, and [saying] that God the Word suffered … Orthodoxos: I have often said that the image cannot have everything that the archetype has. And this is easy to learn from this case too. For Isaac and the ram agree with the image as regards the difference of the natures, but no longer as regards the division, in which the hypostases are separated. For we proclaim such a union of Godhead and humanity that we conceive one undivided person, and know the same one as God and man, seen and unseen, circumscribed and uncircumscribed; and all the other things that indicate the Godhead and the humanity we attach to the one person. Since, then, it was not possible for the return to life to be prefigured in the ram, which was irrational and deprived of the divine image, they divide between them the type of the mystery of the dispensation, and one shows the image of the death, the other of the resurrection. And we find this same thing in the Mosaic sacrifices too; for in them too one can see the type of the saving passion sketched out beforehand. … truth? Orthodoxos: The whole Old [Testament], so to speak, is a type of the New. For this reason the divine Apostle says expressly, “For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come,” and again, “Now all these things happened to them as types.” And the lamb sacrificed in Egypt, and the red heifer burned far outside the camp, show the image of the archetype most clearly. The Apostle mentioned this heifer in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and added, “Therefore Jesus also, to sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the city.” But of these I will say nothing for the present; I will mention that sacrifice which has two goats brought forward, one of them sacrificed and the other set free. For these sketch beforehand the image of the two natures of the Saviour: the one set free, that of the impassible Godhead; the one slaughtered, [that of the passible humanity] … Eranistes: Then does it not seem blasphemous to you to liken the Lord to goats? Orthodoxos: Which do you think more to be shunned and loathsome, a snake or a goat? Eranistes: Clearly the snake is … [it bites] those who come near, and often harms even those who have done it no wrong; whereas the [goat] is among the clean animals fit to eat according to the law. Orthodoxos: Then hear the Lord likening the saving passion to the bronze snake: “As Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness,” he says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” If a bronze snake fulfilled the type of the body that was nailed, what have we done that is unreasonable in setting the sacrifice of the goats beside the saving passion?

Eranistes: Because John called the Lord a lamb, and Isaiah likewise a lamb and a sheep … Orthodoxos: But the blessed Paul calls him sin and curse. Therefore as curse he fulfils the type of the accursed snake, and as sin he shows the image of the sacrifice of the goats. For according to the law, for sin it was not a lamb but a kid of the goats that was offered. For this reason the Lord too in the Gospels likened the righteous to lambs and sinners to kids. Since, then, he was to undergo the passion not for the righteous only but also for sinners, fittingly he sketches beforehand his own sacrifice through lambs and goats. Eranistes: But the type of the two goats leads us to think of two persons. [Orthodoxos:] It was not possible for both to be prefigured at the same time in one goat, the passibility of the humanity and the impassibility of the Godhead. For if it had been killed it would not have shown the living nature. For this reason two were taken to show the two natures. The same may also be seen in another sacrifice … Orthodoxos: Where the lawgiver orders two clean birds to be offered, and one to be sacrificed, and the other to be dipped in the blood of the one sacrificed and [set free]. For here too we see the type of Godhead and humanity, the one sacrificed, the other … Eranistes: You have brought us many types. But I do not accept enigmatic language. Orthodoxos: And yet the divine Apostle says that the histories too are types: he called Hagar a type of the old covenant, and likened Sarah to the heavenly Jerusalem, and said that Ishmael was a type of Israel, and Isaac of the new people. Accuse, then, the great trumpet of the Spirit too, for [setting] enigmatic [words] before us all. Eranistes: Even if you bring me countless other arguments, you will not persuade me to divide the passion. For I have heard the angel saying to the women with Mary, “Come, see where the Lord lay.” Orthodoxos: We too are accustomed to do this; for we call the part by the common names as well. When we enter the shrines of the holy apostles, or prophets, or martyrs, we ask, “Who lies in the coffin?” And those who know the truth answer by naming perhaps Thomas the apostle, or John the Baptist, or Stephen, the first champion of the martyrs, or some other of the saints, although sometimes only very small relics lie there. But no one who hears these common names, which signify soul and body together, will suppose that the souls too are shut up in the caskets; he knows that only the bodies, or small parts of the bodies, lie in the caskets. And this is just what that holy angel did, calling the body by the name of the person.

Eranistes: And from where will you show that the angel spoke to the women about the Lord’s body? Orthodoxos: First, the tomb itself is enough to settle the question. For not even a soul is handed over to a tomb, much less the Godhead, the uncircumscribed nature; tombs are made for bodies. Then the divine Scripture too teaches this clearly. For the inspired Matthew relates it in this way: “When evening had come, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered the body to be given up. And Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away.” See how many times he mentioned the body, to stop the mouths of those who blaspheme the Godhead. The thrice-blessed Mark did the same; I will quote what he related as well. “When evening had come,” he says, “since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was himself also waiting for the kingdom of God, came and went in boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate wondered whether he was already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead long. And when he learned it from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. And he bought a linen cloth, and taking him down, he wrapped him in the linen cloth and laid him in a tomb,” and what follows. Marvel, then, as you see the agreement, and the word “body” used consistently and continually. And the all-praised Luke too related in the same way that Joseph asked for the body, and having taken it, honored it with the customary rites. And the most divine John related further details as well: “Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate gave him leave. So he came and took away the body of Jesus. Nicodemus also came, who had first come to Jesus by night, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.” See, then, how many times he mentioned the body, and showed that this was nailed to the cross, and this Joseph asked of Pilate, and this he took down from the wood, and this they bound in the linen cloths with the myrrh and the aloes; and then he set down the name of the person, and said that Jesus was laid in the tomb. For this reason the angel too said, “Come, see where the Lord lay,” calling the body by the common name. For so we too are accustomed to speak: “In this place so-and-so was buried”; and we do not say “the body of so-and-so,” but “so-and-so.” But everyone of sound mind knows that we are speaking of the body. And it is customary for the divine Scripture to speak in this way: “Aaron died,” it says, “and they buried him on Mount Hor”; and, “Samuel died, and they buried him in Armathaim”; and countless such things. The divine Apostle kept this custom when he mentioned the Lord’s death: “For I delivered to you,” he says, “as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” and what follows.

Eranistes: In what you have just read the Apostle did not mention a body, but Christ, the Saviour of us all. So you have brought the testimony against yourself, and struck yourself with your own arrows. Orthodoxos: It seems you have very quickly forgotten those long arguments I went through, showing that people often call the body by the names of persons. The divine Apostle has done the same thing here too, and it is easy to recognize this from the passage itself. Let us consider it this way. Why did this inspired man write these things to the Corinthians? Eranistes: Some had deceived them into thinking that there is no resurrection of bodies. Having learned this, the teacher of the world brought them the arguments about the resurrection of bodies. Orthodoxos: And why, wishing to show the resurrection of bodies, did he bring forward the Lord’s resurrection? Eranistes: As sufficient to show the resurrection of us all. Orthodoxos: What likeness does it have to the death of the others, that he should prove the resurrection of all by its resurrection? Eranistes: For this reason the only-begotten Son of God became man, and suffered, and experienced death: to destroy death. Having risen, then, he proclaims through his own resurrection the resurrection of all human beings. Orthodoxos: And who would believe, on hearing of the resurrection of God, that the resurrection of all human beings will be like it? The unlikeness of the natures does not allow belief in the argument for the resurrection. For he is God, and they are human beings; and the distance between God and human beings is immense. They are mortal and perishable, and likened to grass and flower; but he … Eranistes: But God the Word, having become man, had a body, and through this [had kinship] with human beings … Orthodoxos: To the body, then, belong altogether the passion, and the death, and the resurrection. And the divine Apostle, showing this from another side, promises return to life to all; and to those who believe in the Saviour’s resurrection but suppose the common resurrection of all to be a myth, he cries out: “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” And from what has happened he confirms what will be; and from what is disbelieved he refutes what is believed. For if that, he means, seems impossible to you, this too is surely false; but if this seems true and credible, let that likewise seem credible. For here too the resurrection of a body is proclaimed, and this is called the firstfruits of those. For after his many earlier arguments he said this as a declaration: “But now Christ has been raised from the dead; he became the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since through a man came death, through a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” And he not only confirmed the argument about the resurrection, but also revealed the mystery of the dispensation. For this reason he also called Christ man, to show that the cure suits the disease.

Eranistes: Is Christ, then, only a man? Orthodoxos: Far from it! We have often said the opposite: that he is not only man but also God before the ages. But he suffered as man, not as God. And the divine Apostle taught us this clearly when he said, “For since through a man came death, through a man also came the resurrection of the dead.” And writing to the Thessalonians, he confirms the argument about the common resurrection from the resurrection of our Saviour: “For if we believe,” he says, “that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” Eranistes: The Apostle did show the common resurrection through the Lord’s resurrection. And it is clear that here too it was a body that died and rose; for he would not have tried to show the resurrection of all through it, if it did not have kinship in substance with them. Yet I will not tolerate attaching the passion to the human nature alone; rather, it seems to me consistent to say that God the Word died in the flesh. Orthodoxos: We have often shown that what is immortal by nature can in no way die. If, then, he died, he is not immortal. How great are the dangers in the blasphemy of these words! Eranistes: By nature he is immortal, but having become man he suffered. Orthodoxos: Then he underwent change. For how else, being immortal, did he receive death? And yet we agreed … [So he by no means] partook of death, since he has a nature superior to change. Eranistes: The divine Peter has said, “… having suffered for us in the flesh.” Orthodoxos: Our argument too agrees with this; for we have learned the rule of doctrines from the divine Scripture. Eranistes: Why, then, do you not say that God the Word suffered [in the flesh]? Orthodoxos: Because we have not found this expression in the divine Scripture. … Orthodoxos: You seem not to know the difference of the names. Eranistes: What names? Does it not seem to you that Christ the Lord is God the Word? Orthodoxos: The name “Christ,” applied to our Lord and Saviour, indicates the Word made man; “Emmanuel,” that is, “God with us,” indicates God and man; but “God the Word,” said in this way, signifies the simple nature, before the world, above time, incorporeal. For this reason the all-holy Spirit, who spoke through the holy apostles, nowhere [joined] passion or death to this title.

Eranistes: If [Scripture] attaches the passion to Christ, and God the Word, having become man, was named Christ, he does nothing absurd, I think, who says that God the Word suffered … Orthodoxos: The attempt is utterly reckless and exceedingly bold. But let us examine the argument in this way. [Does not] the divine Scripture say that God the Word is from God the Father? … Orthodoxos: And it likewise teaches that the Holy Spirit is from God. … Orthodoxos: But it names God the Word only-begotten Son. … Orthodoxos: But nowhere has it called the Holy Spirit [Son] … although this too has its existence from God the Father. Orthodoxos: Since, then, we agree that both the Son and the Spirit are from God the Father, would you ever dare to name the all-holy Spirit Son? Eranistes: [No,] since I do not find this name in the divine Scripture. Orthodoxos: For what reason? Eranistes: Neither was I taught this by the divine Scripture. Orthodoxos: And what is neither begotten nor created, what title would it fittingly receive? Eranistes: We call it uncreated and unbegotten. Orthodoxos: And we say that the all-holy Spirit is neither created nor begotten. … Orthodoxos: Would you dare, then, to call the all-holy Spirit unbegotten? … Orthodoxos: And why do you not call unbegotten what is by nature uncreated and in no way begotten? Eranistes: Because I have not learned this from the divine Scripture, and I am very much afraid to say what [is not said] by it. Orthodoxos: Keep, then, my good friend, this same reverence for us in the case of the saving passion too; and whatever divine names the Scripture has left free of the passion, you too leave them so, and do not attach the passion to them. Eranistes: And which are these? Orthodoxos: Nowhere has [it] joined the passion to the title “God” … Eranistes: Nor do I say that God the Word suffered without a body; I say that he suffered in the flesh. Orthodoxos: Then you speak of a manner of suffering, not of impassibility. But one would not say this even about a human soul. For who, unless utterly deranged, would say that Paul’s soul died in the flesh? It would never be said even about some utterly wicked man; for even the souls of the wicked are immortal. We say that such-and-such a murderer was put to death, but no one would say that his soul was slaughtered in the flesh. And if we say that the souls of murderers and grave-robbers are free from death, it is surely much more just to know that the soul of our Saviour is immortal, since it never tasted sin at all. For if the souls that committed the greatest offences escaped the experience of death because of their nature, how would that soul, which has an immortal nature and received not even a small stain of sin, have received the hook of death? Eranistes: You have brought us these long arguments in vain; for we confess that the Saviour’s soul is immortal.

Orthodoxos: And what punishment would you not deserve, calling the soul, which has a created nature, immortal, while in your argument making the divine substance mortal? And not saying that the Saviour’s soul tasted death in the flesh, while daring to say that God the Word himself, the Creator of all things, suffered the passion? Eranistes: We say that he suffered impassibly. Orthodoxos: And what person of sound mind would put up with these ridiculous riddles? No one has ever heard of an impassible passion, or an immortal death. For what is impassible has not suffered, and what has suffered could not remain impassible. But we hear the divine Paul crying out, “Who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light.” Eranistes: Do we not, then, say that the invisible powers, and the souls of human beings, and even the demons themselves, are immortal? Orthodoxos: We do; but God is immortal in the proper sense, for he is immortal by substance, not by participation; he does not have immortality as something received from another. It is he who has given immortality to the angels and to the others you just mentioned. If, then, the inspired Paul names him immortal, and says that he alone has immortality, how do you fit the passion of death to him? Eranistes: We say that he tasted death after the incarnation. Orthodoxos: But we have often agreed that he is immutable. And if, being immortal before, he afterwards underwent death through flesh, he underwent death with change going before it, and his life too failed for three days and as many nights. And what excess of impiety does saying this leave out? I think that not even for those who contend against impiety is it without danger to bring these words onto the tongue. Eranistes: [No;] for we do not say that the divine nature suffered, but the human; and that the divine suffered together with the body. Orthodoxos: How do you mean “suffered together”? That, as the nails were driven into the body, the divine nature received the sensation of the pain? … Orthodoxos: Both now and in what we examined earlier, we have shown that not even the soul shares in all that the body undergoes; but that the body, receiving the life-giving power, has the sensation of its sufferings through the soul. And even if we were to grant that the soul feels pain together with the body, we shall find the divine nature no less impassible. For it was not joined to the body in place of a soul. Or do you not agree that he assumed a soul? … Orthodoxos: And a rational soul? … Orthodoxos: If, then, he assumed the soul together with the body, and we granted that the soul suffers together with the body, then it was the soul that suffered with the body, not the Godhead, receiving, as is likely, the pains through the body. But one might perhaps say that the soul suffers with the body, but in no way that it dies with it; for it received an immortal nature. For this reason the Lord too said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” If, then, we say that not even the Saviour’s soul shared death with the body, how could anyone accept the blasphemy you venture, which dares to say that the divine nature partook of death — and this when the Lord points out now the body being offered, now the soul being troubled …

Eranistes: And where did the Lord point out the body being offered? Or will you again bring us your much-repeated testimony, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” and present the evangelist to us with a swagger, saying, “But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When, therefore, he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that Jesus had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that the Lord had spoken”? Orthodoxos: If you are so very hostile to the divine words that proclaim the great mystery of the dispensation, why do you not, like Marcion and Valentinus and Mani, erase such words? For they did this very thing. But if this seems bold and unholy, do not mock the Lord’s words, but follow the apostles, who believed after the resurrection that the Godhead raised the temple that the Jews had destroyed. Eranistes: If you have strong testimony, stop reviling and fulfil your promise. Orthodoxos: You surely remember those sayings in the Gospel in which the Lord compared the manna with the true food. … Orthodoxos: In that passage, after he had gone through many words about the bread of life, he added this as well: “And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” And one can see in these words both the generosity of the Godhead and the gift of the flesh. Eranistes: One testimony is not enough to settle the dispute … Orthodoxos: The Ethiopian eunuch did not read many Scriptures; he found one prophetic testimony and was guided by it to salvation. But all the apostles and prophets, and those who became heralds of the truth after them, are not able to persuade you. Nevertheless I will bring you other testimonies too about the Lord’s body. You surely know that passage of the Gospel history where, having eaten the Passover with the disciples, he showed the end of the lamb that was a type, and taught what the body of that shadow is. Eranistes: I know this history. Orthodoxos: Then remember what the Lord took and broke, and what he called that which he had taken. Eranistes: Because of the uninitiated, I shall speak rather in the manner of the mysteries. Having taken and broken it, and distributed it to the disciples, he said, “This is my body, which is given for you,” or “broken,” according to the Apostle; and again, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many.” Orthodoxos: Then in showing the type of the passion he did not mention Godhead? … Orthodoxos: But body and blood? … Orthodoxos: So it was a body that was nailed to the cross? … Orthodoxos: Come, let us add this too. When after the resurrection the Lord came in to the holy disciples while the doors were shut, and saw them afraid, in what way did he dispel the fear and put faith in place of fear?

Eranistes: He said to them, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Orthodoxos: So he showed them the body when they disbelieved? … Orthodoxos: So it was the body that was raised? … Orthodoxos: And what rose had surely also died? … Orthodoxos: And what had died was what was nailed to the cross? … Orthodoxos: So it was the body that suffered, by your own argument at least. Eranistes: The chain of the arguments forces one to say this. Orthodoxos: Let us consider it this way too. I will ask again, and you answer as a lover of the truth. … Orthodoxos: When the all-holy Spirit came upon the apostles, and the extraordinary sight and sound gathered many tens of thousands of people at that house, what did the first of the apostles, addressing the people then, say about the Lord’s resurrection? Eranistes: He brought forward the inspired David, and said that he had received promises from the God of the universe that Christ the Lord would spring from the fruit of his loins; and that, having believed them, he foresaw prophetically his resurrection and said expressly that his soul was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. Orthodoxos: The resurrection, then, belongs to these. Eranistes: And how could anyone of sound mind speak of the resurrection of a soul that has not died? Orthodoxos: You who say that both the passion and the death and the resurrection belong to the immutable and uncircumscribed Godhead, how have you suddenly appeared so sound of mind as to refuse to attach the name of resurrection even to the soul? Eranistes: Because the name of resurrection fits what has fallen. Orthodoxos: But the body does not obtain resurrection without the soul; it is renewed by the divine will and joined to its yoke-fellow, and so recovers life. Or did the Lord not raise Lazarus in this way? Eranistes: Clearly it is not the body alone that rises. Orthodoxos: The divine Ezekiel teaches this more clearly. For he shows how God commanded the bones to come together, and how each of them recovered its own fitting, and sinews grew, and veins, and arteries, and the flesh laid underneath between them, and the skin as a covering for them all, and then the souls returned to their own [bodies] … Orthodoxos: The Lord’s body, however, did not undergo this corruption, but remained undefiled and received back its own soul on the third day. … Orthodoxos: Therefore the passion belongs to those to which the death also belongs? … Orthodoxos: And when the great Peter, and indeed the divine David, mentioned the resurrection, did they say that the soul was not abandoned to Hades, and that the body did not undergo corruption? … Orthodoxos: So it was not the Godhead that underwent death, but the body, by the separation of the soul. Eranistes: I for one will not tolerate these absurd words. Orthodoxos: Then you are fighting your own words; for of these words, which you called absurd, not one is mine; they are yours.

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.”

Of the same, from the same discourse. “Hence, as I said before, the Word, since it was not possible for him to die, for he was immortal, took to himself a body that could die, so that he might offer it as his own in place of all, and that, as himself suffering on behalf of all because of his coming into the body, he might destroy the one who has the power of death.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “For the body, suffering, died according to the nature of bodies; but it had the assurance of incorruption from the Word who dwelt in it. For when the body died, the Word was not put to death too; but he himself was impassible and incorruptible and immortal, as being the Word of God, and, being united with the body, he rather kept away from it the corruption that is natural to bodies, as the Spirit also says to him, ‘You will not let your holy one see corruption.’” Of Saint Damasus, bishop of Rome. From the exposition. “If anyone says that in the passion of the cross it was the Son of God and God who endured the pain, and not the flesh with the soul, which the form of a servant put on, which he took to himself, as the Scripture has said, let him be anathema.” … From the work On the Catholic Faith. “But there are some who have gone so far in impiety as to think that the Godhead of the Lord was circumcised, and became imperfect from perfect; and that on the wood it was not the flesh, but that divine substance, the Creator of all things.” Of the same, from the same. “The flesh suffered; the Godhead is free from death. He allowed the body to suffer by the law of human nature. For how can God die, when the soul cannot die? ‘Do not fear,’ he says, ‘those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.’ If, then, the soul cannot be killed, how [could] the Godhead fall under death?” Of Saint Basil … to [one who has considered] the intent of the apostolic saying, that it does not hand down to us a mode of theology, but indicates the accounts of the dispensation. “For God made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified”: with the demonstrative word [it points] to what is human in him and visible to all … Of Saint Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus. From the letter to the blessed Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople. “The most grievous of all our church misfortunes is the boldness of the Apollinarists, whom your holiness, I do not know how, overlooked when they procured for themselves the authority to hold assemblies on an equal footing with us.”

And a little after. “And this is not yet the terrible thing; but the most grievous of all is that he makes the only-begotten God himself, the judge of all that is, the author of life, the destroyer of death, mortal, and holds that he received the passion in his own Godhead, and that in that three-day deadness of the body the Godhead too was put to death together with the body, and so was raised again from death by the Father.” Of the same, from the first exposition to Cledonius. “If the man is without a soul, that is what the Arians say too, so that they may carry the passion over to the Godhead, as the one that moves the body being also the one that suffers.” Of the same, from the discourse on the Son. “It remained [to speak] of his being commanded, and having kept the commandments, and having done always what pleases him; and further of his being made perfect, and exalted, and learning obedience from what he suffered, and of his high priesthood and offering, and betrayal, and prayer to him who was able to save from death, and the agony, and the drops of blood, and the prayer, and anything else of this kind — if it were not plain to all that such terms concern what suffers, and do not hint at the immutable nature that is too high to suffer.” Of the same, from the discourse on Pascha. “‘Who is this who comes from Edom,’ and from the things of earth? Or how are the garments red of him who is bloodless and incorporeal, as of one who has trodden the winepress, and a full winepress? Put forward the beauty of the robe of the body, made splendid by the passion and by the Godhead, than which nothing is lovelier …” Of Saint Gregory, bishop of Nyssa. From the Catechetical Discourse. “And this is the mystery of God’s dispensation concerning death, and of the resurrection from the dead: not to prevent the soul from being separated from the body by death, according to the necessary sequence of nature, but to bring them back to each other again through the resurrection.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “For since the flesh that received God, which through the resurrection was raised up together with the Godhead, was from no other source but from our lump: just as, in the case of our body, the activity of one of the sense organs brings the whole that is united to that part into a common sensation, so, as though the whole nature were one living being, the resurrection of the part passes through to the whole, according to the continuity and unity of the nature, being imparted from the part to the whole. What, then, do we learn in the mystery that is beyond what is reasonable, if the one who stands stoops down to the fallen, to raise up

the one who lies there?” Of the same, from the same discourse. “… it would be consistent in this part too not to look at the one and overlook the other, but in the death to see the human, and in the man to search out what is more divine.” Of the same, from the treatise against Eunomius. “The human nature does not give life to Lazarus, nor does the impassible power weep for the one lying dead; but the tear is proper to the man, and the life to the true Life. Human poverty does not feed the thousands; the almighty power does not run to the fig tree. Who is it that is weary from the journey, and who is it that without toil established the whole world by a word? What is the radiance of glory? What is pierced through with the nails? What form is struck in the passion, and what form is glorified from eternity? These things are plain, even if no one interprets them in words.” Of the same, from the same treatise. “He finds fault with those who ascribe the passion to the human nature. He surely wishes to subject the Godhead itself to the passion. For since the supposition is twofold and ambiguous — whether it was the divine or the human that was in the passion — the accusation of the one is surely the establishment of the other. If, then, they blame those who see the passion in the man, they will surely praise those who say that the Godhead of the Son is passible. And what is established by this becomes an advocate of the absurdity of their doctrine. For if, according to their argument, the Godhead of the Son suffers, while that of the Father is kept in complete impassibility in its substance, then the impassible nature is [foreign] to the one that admits the passion …” Of Saint Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium. From the discourse on “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” “Whose, then, are the sufferings? The flesh’s. Then if you give the sufferings to the flesh, give it the lowly words too; and to him to whom you ascribe the miracles, assign the exalted words. For God, who works wonders, fittingly speaks lofty things, worthy of his works; while the man who suffers rightly utters lowly things, suited to his sufferings.” Of the same, from the discourse on “My Father is greater than I.” “When you give the sufferings to the flesh and the miracles to God, you necessarily give, even against your will, the lowly words to the man from Mary, and the exalted and God-befitting words to the Word who was in the beginning. For this is why I utter now exalted, now lowly words: so that through the lofty words I may show the nobility of the indwelling Word, and through the lowly ones make known the weakness of the lowly flesh. Hence I sometimes call myself equal to the Father, and sometimes call the Father greater: not fighting against myself, but showing that I am God and man — God from the lofty words, man from the lowly. And if you wish to know how ‘my Father is greater than I,’ I said it from the flesh, and not from the person

of the Godhead.” Of the same, from the [discourse] on “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” “Do not, then, hurl the sufferings of the flesh at the impassible Word. For I am God and man, heretic: God, as the miracles guarantee; man, as the sufferings bear witness. Since, then, I am God and man, tell me, who is it that suffered? If God suffered, you have spoken blasphemy; but if the flesh suffered, why do you not attach the passion to that to which you ascribe the fear? For when one suffers, another does not fear; and when a man is crucified, God is not troubled.” Of the same, from the discourse against the Arians. “And so as not to draw out the discourse at length, I ask you briefly, heretic: did the one begotten of God before the ages suffer, or Jesus, born of David in later times? If the Godhead suffered, you have spoken blasphemy; but if the man, as the truth is, why then do you not attach the passion to the man?” Of the same, from the [discourse] on the Son. “For Peter, having said, ‘God has made him both Lord and Christ,’ added, ‘this Jesus whom you crucified, him God raised from the dead.’ It was not the Godhead that was put to death, but the man; and the one who raised him is the Word, the power of God, who said in the Gospel, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ So if it is said, ‘God has made him, who was put to death and rose from the dead, both Lord and Christ,’ he means the flesh, and not the Godhead of the Son.” Of the same, from the discourse on “The Son can do nothing of himself.” “For the Life did not have a nature to be held fast by corruption; therefore the Godhead was not dragged down into suffering — how could it be? — but the humanity was renewed into incorruption. ‘For this mortal,’ he says, ‘must put on immortality, and the perishable …’ ‘This mortal’ he pointed out with a demonstrative word, so that not of another …” … On the Lord’s day of Pascha. “For this reason the cross too is proclaimed by us with boldness, and the Lord’s death is confessed by us, though the Godhead suffered nothing (for the divine is impassible), but the body fulfilled the dispensation.” Of the same, on Judas the betrayer. “So when you hear that the Lord was betrayed, do not bring the divine dignity down to cheapness, nor attach the bodily sufferings to the divine power. For the divine is impassible and unalterable. For even if he took the form of a servant out of love for humankind, he was not changed in nature; but remaining what he was, he allowed the divine body to experience death.” From a Festal volume. “For the souls of irrational creatures are not taken up and laid down again, but perish together with their bodies and are dissolved into dust. But the Saviour, having taken his soul from his own body at the time of the cross, put it back into it, raising it from the dead. Assuring us of this, he foretold it, crying out through the Psalmist: ‘You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your holy one see corruption.’” Of the blessed Gelasius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine. From the discourse on the Epiphany. “He was bound, wounded, crucified, handled; he bore bruises, he received the wound of a spear. All these things the body born of Mary endured. But the one begotten of the Father before the ages no one could harm. For the Word did not have [such] a nature. For how does anyone take hold of Godhead? How does he wound it? How does he draw blood from the incorporeal nature? How does he wrap it in the bands of burial? Grant, then, that you cannot harm it, and honor the Godhead, constrained by the argument of necessity.” From the discourse on “My Father is working until now” … “[What sign do] you show us, that you do these things?” What, then, does he himself say? “‘Destroy this temple,’ he says, ‘and I will raise it up in three days,’ speaking of his own body; but they did not understand it.” And a little after. “How did the evangelist not pass it by, but added the correction, saying, ‘But he was speaking about the temple of his body’? For he did not say, ‘Destroy this body,’ but ‘the temple,’ to show God dwelling in it. ‘Destroy this temple,’ far better than the Jewish one. For that one had the law, this one the Lawgiver; that one the letter that kills,

this one the Spirit that gives life.” Of the same, from the discourse “That the things said and done in a lowly way were not from weakness of power, but for various purposes of the dispensation.” “How, then, does he say here, ‘If it is possible’? He shows us the weakness of human nature, which does not choose simply to be torn away from the present life, but shrinks back and hesitates, because of the love for the present life put into it by God from the beginning. For if, when he had said so many and such great things, some dared to say that he did not take flesh, what would they not have said if none of these things had been said?” Of the same, from the same discourse. “See how they also foretold his earlier age. Ask, then, the heretic: does God fear, and shrink back, and hesitate, and grieve? And if he says that … then stand back, and set him below with … [the divinity] gives up its own activity … its nature. But now it hides it, because [he was] not a mere … of the devil, or rather lower even than he; for not even he will dare to say this. And if he says that none of these things is worthy of God, say: then neither does God pray. For apart from these things there will be another absurdity too, if the words are God’s. For the words show not only agony, but also two wills, one of the Son and one of the Father, contrary to each other. For to say, ‘Not as I will, but as you,’ is the language of one showing this.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “For if this was said of the Godhead, a contradiction arises, and many absurdities are born of it. But if of the flesh, the words have reason, and no charge could arise. For it is no condemnation of the flesh that it does not wish to die; for this belongs to nature. And he displays all the things of nature apart from sin, and that in great abundance, so as to stop the mouths of the heretics. So when he says, ‘If it is possible, let this cup pass from me,’ and, ‘Not as I, but as you will,’ he shows nothing else than that he truly clothed himself with flesh that fears death. For to fear death, and to shrink back, and to be in agony belong to it. Now, then, having shown it forsaken and bare … its weakness, so that he might confirm its nature too, that he was a man …” From the discourse on the seals. “The Jews fight against what appears, not knowing what does not appear; and they crucify the flesh, but they do not destroy the Godhead. For if, together with the letter, which is the clothing of a word, my word is not destroyed, would God the Word, the fountain of life, have died together with the flesh? The suffering concerns the body; the impassibility, the dignity.” Look, we have shown you those who cultivated the eastern and the western, and indeed the southern and northern parts of the world, accusing your empty heresy and openly proclaiming the impassibility of the divine nature; and each tongue, I mean the Greek and the Latin, proclaiming a harmonious confession about divine things. Eranistes: I too admire the harmony of the men; yet I observed much division in their words … the Son offers to the Father and the Father to the Son, and into the dispensation of the Saviour. … the struggle against opponents is the cause of the excess. And this is what gardeners like to do too. When they see a plant bent over, they not only raise it to the straight line, but bend it beyond the straight to the other side, so that by the greater [bending it may come] to stand [straight]. But so that you may know that those who strive to strengthen this many-shaped heresy are eager to outdo even the ancient heresiarchs by the excess of their blasphemies, hear again the writings of Apollinarius, which proclaim the impassibility of the divine nature, and that [the passion] belongs to the body. Of Apollinarius. From the book in chapters. “John said that the temple that was destroyed was the body of the one who raises it up. And the body is wholly one with him, and not someone else beside him. And if the body of the Lord has become one with the Lord, the properties of the body have become his properties because of the body.” And: “For this is the truth, that the conjunction with the body is not by a circumscribing of the Word, so that he would have nothing more than the embodiment. Therefore even in death immortality remains about him. For if he is above this composition, he is also above the dissolution; and death is dissolution. For neither was he encompassed by the composition — for then the

world would have been emptied — nor in the dissolution did he have the want that comes from dissolution, as the soul does.” And again: “Just as the Saviour says that the dead come forth from the tombs, although the souls do not come forth from there, so he says that he himself will rise from the dead, although it is the body that rises.” And in another, similar writing he has written this: “To rise from the dead belongs to man; to raise up belongs to God. Christ is both; therefore he was God and man. If Christ were man only, he would not give life to the dead; and if God only, he would not give life to some of the dead apart from the Father. But Christ is both; therefore the same one is God and man. If Christ were man only, he would not save the world; and if God only, he would not save it through suffering. But Christ is both; therefore he is both God and man. If Christ were man only, [or] if God only, he would not be mediator between human beings and God.” And a little after: “Flesh, then, is an instrument of life fitted to the sufferings for the divine purposes; and neither the words nor the deeds are the flesh’s own; and though it is subjected to the sufferings as befits flesh, it prevails over the sufferings, because it is the flesh of God.” And a little after again: “The Son came to dwell in the world, having taken flesh from the Virgin, which he filled with the Holy Spirit for the sanctification of us all. Having handed death over to death, he destroyed death through the resurrection, for the resurrection of us all.” And in the work On Faith he says this: “And while the sufferings took place about the flesh, the power had its own impassibility. Impious is he who refers the passion to the power.” And in the [work] on … , showing that the same one was raised from the dead as man, but reigns as God over the impassible …

[Orthodoxos:] You have seen, meanwhile, one of the teachers of the empty heresy plainly proclaiming the impassibility of the Godhead, and calling the body a temple, and insisting very strongly that God the Word raised it. Eranistes: I have heard it and marvelled, and I am very much ashamed that [we followed] the innovation of this man too … Orthodoxos: And I will furnish you with a witness from another herd of heretics too, who expressly proclaims the impassibility of the Godhead of the Only-begotten. Eranistes: Whom do you mean? Orthodoxos: You have perhaps heard of Eusebius the Phoenician, who became bishop of Emesa, the city near Lebanon. Eranistes: I have come across some of his writings, and found him agreeing with the doctrines of Arius. Orthodoxos: He belonged to that band; but nevertheless, while trying to show that the Father is greater than the Only-begotten, he proclaims the Godhead of the one he makes lesser to be impassible, and he took up long and quite admirable contests on its behalf. Eranistes: I long very much for you to bring me these words too. [Orthodoxos: I will bring you his] testimony, to satisfy your longing. Hear the man crying out, and regard him as speaking to us: “Why does he fear death? Lest he suffer something from death? For what was death to him? Was it not the power withdrawing from the flesh? For the power did not receive a nail, that it should fear. For our soul, though it is with the body, does not suffer what the body suffers: the eye is blinded, and the mind is strong; the foot is cut off, and the reasoning is not lame. Nature bears witness to this, and the Lord puts his seal on it, saying, ‘Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.’ If they cannot kill the soul — not because those who do it do not wish to, but because they cannot, even if they wish — [and the soul cannot] suffer what belongs to the body yoked to it, does he who created the soul and fashioned the body suffer what belongs to the body, even if he does indeed take up into himself the sufferings of the body? But Christ suffered for us, and we do not lie: ‘The bread that I will give is my flesh,’ which he gave for us. What was seized was seized; what was crucified was crucified. But he who has authority both to dwell and to withdraw says this: ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ — not into the hands of those forcing his departure. I am not contentious; I even keep away from contention. But I wish to inquire with you about disputed matters as with brothers. Do I not speak the truth when I say that the power could not receive the sufferings of the flesh? I, then, am silent; let whoever wishes say what the power suffered. Did it fail? See the danger. Was it quenched? See the blasphemy. Did it no longer exist? For that is the death of a power. Say what could take hold of it, so that it suffered, and I will not contend. But if you cannot say, why are you angry with me because I do not say it? What you cannot name, it did not receive. Drive a nail into a soul, and I will grant it into the power. … what is ‘suffered with’? As the nail into the flesh, so the pain into the power. Let us say this … For pain certainly follows suffering. But if even a body often despises pains when the mind is strong, through its strength … either what it suffered, or what it suffered with it. What then? Did Christ not die for us? How did he die? ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ The spirit withdrew, the body remained; the body remained breathless. Did he not die, then? He died for us. The shepherd offered the sheep, the priest offered the victim; he gave himself for us. And ‘He who did not spare his own Son, but gave his Son up for us all.’ I do not reject the sayings; I seek the meaning of the sayings. The Lord says that the bread of God came down from heaven. And interpreting it — even if I cannot speak more clearly because of the mysteries — he says this much: ‘It is my flesh.’ Did the flesh of the Son come down from heaven? It did not come down from heaven. How, then, does he say, ‘The bread of God lives, and has come down from heaven,’ and then interpret it? Because the power, having assumed [the flesh], came down from heaven, what the power has is reckoned to the flesh. Then turn it round: what the flesh suffers is reckoned to the power. How did Christ suffer for us? He was spat upon, he was struck on the cheek, they put a crown around his brow, his hands and feet were dug through. All these sufferings concern the body, but they are referred to the one who dwells in it. Throw a stone at the image of the king: what is said? ‘You have insulted the king.’ Tear the king’s robe: what is said? ‘You have risen against the king.’ Crucify the body of Christ: what is said? ‘Christ died for us.’ But what need is there of me and of you? Let us go to the evangelists. How did you receive from the Lord how the Lord died? They read, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ The spirit above, and the body on the

cross for us. For he offered the sheep; whatever happens to the body is reckoned to him.” Of the same, from the same discourse. “He came to save our nature, not to destroy his own. If I wish to say that a camel flies, you are at once astonished, because it does not suit its nature; and you do well. And if I wish to say that human beings live in the sea, [you are astonished, for] … nature. Just as, then, when I say strange things about these natures, you are astonished, so if I say that that power which is before the ages, incorporeal in nature, impassible in dignity, which is with the Father, beside the Father, at the right hand, in glory — if I say that that incorporeal nature suffers, do you not hold your ears? If you do not hold your ears on hearing these things, I will hold my heart. Can we do anything to an angel, such as strike it with a sword, or split it at all? Why do I say an angel? Can we do so to a soul? A soul does not receive a nail; the soul is not cut, is not burned. And if you say to me, ‘Why?’ I tell you, ‘Because it was created so.’ Are his works impassible, and is he himself passible? I do not reject the dispensation; I welcome the outrages [he endured]. Christ died for us and was crucified. So it is written, so the nature received it; I neither erase the words nor blaspheme the nature. But [if] these things are not true, let truer things be said. The one who teaches is a benefactor, not harsh; not an enemy, unless the one taught is ungrateful. If you have something good to say, the ears are open with gratitude. If someone is contentious, let him pursue contention at his leisure. Were the Jews able to crucify the Son of God, to put the power itself to death? Can the living one die? The death of such a power is its extinction. Our body remains when we die. If we put that power to death, we bring it to non-existence. I do not know whether you were able to take this in. If the body dies, the soul is separated and remains. But if a soul dies, since it is incorporeal, it no longer exists at all. A soul that dies does not exist at all; for the death of immortal things is into non-existence. Consider the other case; for I do not even dare to say it. We say these things as we understand them; we do not lay down laws, if anyone is contentious. But one thing I know: each will reap the fruit of what he thinks; and each departs with these to God, and puts forward what he said and thought about him. For do not suppose that God knows by books, or is burdened with memories: ‘What did you say, and who heard it?’ All things are plain. The judge sits; Paul, the one from here, is brought forward: ‘You called me a man; you have no life with me. Since you did not know me, I do not know you.’ Another comes forward: ‘You called me one of the things that exist; you did not know my dignity; I do not know you.’ Another comes forward: ‘You said that I did not … of immortality.’ Another came forward: ‘You said that I was not born of the Virgin, so as to save the body of the Virgin: you will not be saved.’ Each carries away his thoughts about the faith.” [Orthodoxos:] You have seen also the other band of your teachers, from whom you were thought to have learned that the Godhead of the Only-begotten suffered, abhorring this blasphemy, and proclaiming the impassibility of the Godhead, and breaking the phalanx of those who dare to attach the passion to it.

Eranistes: I have seen them, and I marvelled at his contests, and I admire the man for his arguments and thoughts. Orthodoxos: Then, my good friend, imitate the bees: flying in mind around the meadows of the divine Scripture and the lovely flowers of the all-praised Fathers, weave for us in yourself the honeycombs of the faith. And if anywhere you find a plant that is neither fit to eat nor sweet, such as this Apollinarius and Eusebius, but has something useful for making honey, there is nothing unreasonable in taking what is useful and leaving what is harmful. For the bees too leave what is deadly and gather what is proper to them. These things, my friend, we put before you according to the law of brotherly love. You will do well to accept the exhortation. But if you disobey, we shall say that apostolic word: “We are clean.” For we have warned you, as the prophet says, as we were commanded.

1. We have confessed one substance of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and we have said with one voice that it is immutable. If, then, the substance of the Trinity is one, and it is immutable, then the only-begotten Son, being one person of the Trinity, is immutable. And if he is immutable, he surely did not become flesh by being changed, but … 2. Another. If God the Word became flesh by undergoing change into flesh, then he is not immutable. For no one in his senses would call what is altered immutable. And if he is mutable, then neither is he consubstantial with the one who begot him. For how is it possible, in the reckoning of the simple substance, for one part to be mutable and the other immutable? If we grant this, we shall surely fall into the blasphemy of Arius and Eunomius; for they say that the Son is of another substance. 3. Another. If the Son is consubstantial with the Father, and the Son became flesh by undergoing a change into flesh, then the substance is mutable and not immutable. And if anyone dares this blasphemy, he will surely increase it by a blasphemy against the Father; for he will surely call him mutable as well, since he shares in the same substance. 4. Another. The divine Scriptures say that God the Word took flesh, and indeed a soul as well; and the most divine evangelist said, “The Word became flesh.” It is necessary, then, to do one of two things: either to accept the change of the Word into flesh, and to turn away from the whole divine Scripture, Old and New, as teaching falsehood; or to obey the divine Scripture, and confess the assumption of the flesh, and drive the change out of our reasonings, understanding the Gospel saying in a fitting way. And this, then, is what must be done, since we both confess that the nature of God the Word is immutable and have countless testimonies to the assumption of the flesh. 5. Another. What dwells in a tent is other than the tent it dwells in. The evangelist called the flesh a tent, and said that God the Word dwelt in it as in a tent: “For the Word,” he says, “became flesh and dwelt among us.” If he became flesh by being changed, he did not dwell in flesh. But we have learned that he dwelt in flesh. For the same evangelist in another passage too called his body a temple. We must believe, then, the evangelist, who unfolded the saying and [cleared up] what seems doubtful to some. 6. Another. If the evangelist, having written “The Word became flesh,” had added nothing able to resolve the ambiguity, the dispute about the saying might perhaps have had some reasonable pretext, the obscurity of the letter. But since he at once joined to it “and dwelt among us,” those who strain against the yoke quibble in vain. For what follows is the interpretation of what was written before. 7. Another. The all-wise evangelist openly proclaimed the immutability of God the Word. For having said, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” he at once added, “and we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” If, as the foolish hold, he had undergone the change into flesh, he would not have remained what he was. But if, even though covered with flesh, … he sent forth the rays of his Father’s nobility, he surely has an immutable nature, and shines even in the body, and sends forth the gleams of the invisible nature. For nothing can dim that light: “For the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it,” as the most divine John says. 8. Another. The all-praised evangelist, wishing to express the glory of the Only-begotten, and then unable to accomplish the attempt, shows it from his fellowship with the Father. For he is, he says, from that nature. He does as someone would who, speaking to people who saw Joseph serving below his worth and did not know the distinction of his family, said that Jacob was his father and Abraham his forefather. For so this evangelist too said that even dwelling among us he did not dim the glory of his nature: “For we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father.” And if even when incarnate he was plainly the one he was, then he remained what he was, and did not undergo the change into flesh. 9. Another. We have confessed that God the Word assumed not flesh only but also a soul. Why, then, did the divine evangelist leave out the soul here and mention the flesh only? Is it not clear that he pointed out the visible nature, and through it indicated the nature naturally yoked to it? For with the mention of the flesh, the mention of the soul surely comes in too.

For when we hear the Prophet saying, “Let all flesh bless his holy name,” we do not think that the Prophet is exhorting soulless flesh, but we believe that the whole is called to hymnody by naming the part. 10. Another. “The Word became flesh” indicates not change but his ineffable love for humankind. For the all-praised evangelist, having said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and having shown him to be the Creator of things visible and invisible, and having named him life and true light, and set down certain other things like these, and having spoken of him as God as far as the human mind could contain and the tongue was able to serve its colors, added, “And the Word became flesh,” as though astounded and marvelling at the boundlessness of his love for humankind: he who always is, and is God, and made all things, and is the fountain of eternal life and of true light, for the salvation of human beings put on himself the tent of the flesh. And this alone was thought to be what was seen. For this reason he did not mention the soul either, but only the flesh, which is perishable and mortal; he left out the soul as immortal, so as to show the immeasurable greatness of his goodness. 11. Another. The divine Apostle names Christ the Lord the seed of Abraham. If this is true — and it is true — then God the Word was not changed into flesh, but took hold of the seed of Abraham, according to the teaching of the Apostle himself. 12. Another. God swore to David that from the fruit of his loins he would raise up the Christ according to the flesh, as the prophet said and the great Peter interpreted. But if God the Word was changed into flesh and so named Christ, we shall nowhere find the truth of the oaths. But we have been taught that God is without falsehood, or rather that he is Truth itself. Therefore God the Word did not undergo the change into flesh, but [took flesh] from the seed of David according to the promise … 1. Those who believe that one nature of Godhead and humanity came about after the union destroy by this argument the properties of the natures; and the destruction of these is the denial of each nature. For confusion of the things united does not allow us to understand either the flesh as flesh or God as God. But if even after the union the difference between the things united is distinct, then no confusion took place, but the union is unconfused. And if this is agreed, then Christ the Lord is not one nature, but one Son, [showing] each nature … 2. Another. We too say that the union took place at the conception. If, then, the union mixed and confused the natures, how was the flesh after the birth seen to have nothing new, but showed the human character, and kept the measures of an infant, and submitted to swaddling bands, and drew at its mother’s breast? But if these things were accomplished in appearance and seeming … but they do not, as they say, admit appearance and seeming; then what was seen was truly a body. And if this is agreed, then the union did not confuse the natures, but each remained [unimpaired]. 3. Another. Those who have put together this motley and many-shaped heresy sometimes say that God the Word became flesh, and sometimes say that the flesh received a change into the nature of Godhead. Each statement is stale and vain and full of falsehood. For if, as they themselves say, God the Word became flesh, why do they name him God, and that only, and are unwilling to name him man as well, but strongly accuse us when we say that he is man as well as confessing him God? And if the flesh was changed into the nature of Godhead, why do they partake of the antitypes of the body? For the type is superfluous when [the archetype] has been done away. Another. An incorporeal nature is not circumcised bodily. And “bodily” is added because of the spiritual circumcision of the heart. Circumcision, then, surely belongs to the body. And Christ the Lord was circumcised after the union. If this is agreed, then the argument for confusion too has been refuted. … [we have learned that] Christ the Saviour [hungered, thirsted, and grew weary], and we believe that these things truly happened, and not in seeming. But these are proper not to an incorporeal nature but to a body. So Christ the Lord had a body, which before the resurrection received the sufferings of nature. And the divine Apostle bears witness to this: “For we do not have,” he says, “a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every respect according to our likeness, without sin.” For sin belongs not to nature but to evil choice. 6. Another. The prophet David said concerning the divine nature, “He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” But the history of the Gospels shows Christ the Lord sleeping in the boat. Now sleeping is contrary to not sleeping; then the words of the prophets are surely contrary to those of the Gospels, if indeed, as they argue, Christ the Lord is God only. But they are not contrary; for these and those are streams of one Spirit. Christ the Lord, then, had a body, akin to other bodies, which received the need of sleep; and the argument for confusion has been shown to be a myth.

4. Another. The prophet Isaiah said of the divine nature, “He will not hunger, nor grow weary,” and what follows; and the evangelist says, “Jesus, wearied from the journey, was sitting thus by the spring.” “He will not grow weary” is contrary to “he grew weary”; so the prophecy is contrary to the history of the Gospels. But it is not contrary; for these and those are of one God. Not growing weary, then, belongs to the uncircumscribed nature, for it fills all things; but moving from place to place is proper to the circumscribed body; and what moves from place to place, being obliged to walk, undergoes the toil of the journey. So it was a body that walked and grew weary. For the union did not confuse the natures. 5. Another. [The Lord, appearing] to the divine Paul, [said,] “Do not be afraid, Paul,” and what follows. And he who drove away Paul’s fear so feared the passion, as the blessed Luke said, that [he gave out] drops of sweat … and sprinkled with them the ground beneath his body, and was strengthened by angelic help. These things too are contrary. For how is fearing not contrary to driving away fear? But they are not contrary. For the same one is both God by nature and man; and as God he encourages those who need courage, while as man he receives courage through an angel. And yet the Godhead and the Spirit were present with him, the Spirit as his anointing. But neither the united Godhead nor the all-holy Spirit then supported the body or the soul; they entrusted this service to an angel, so as to show the weakness of both the soul and the body, and so that through the weakness the natures of those that were weak might be shown. These things took place, clearly, with the divine nature permitting them, so that, of those who were to come later, those who believe in the assumption of the soul and the body might be confirmed by the proofs, and those who speak against it might be refuted by the clear testimonies. If, then, the union took place together with the conception, and the union, by their argument, made both natures into one nature, how could the properties of the natures have remained intact, so that the soul was in agony and the body sweated so as to give out drops like blood from the excess of fear? But if the one is proper to the body and the other to the soul, then one nature of flesh and Godhead did not come about from the union, but one Son appeared, showing in himself both the divine things and the human. 6. Another. And if they should say that after the resurrection the body received the change into Godhead, one should answer them thus. After the resurrection it was seen to be circumscribed, and to have hands and feet and the other parts of the body; and it was tangible and visible, and had the piercings and the wounds, just as it had before the resurrection. One must, then, say one of two things: either attribute these parts to the divine nature too, if the body, having been changed into the nature of Godhead, had these parts; or confess that the body has remained within the bounds of its nature. But the divine nature is simple and uncompounded, while the body is compounded and divided into many parts. So it was not changed into the nature of Godhead; but even after the resurrection it is immortal and incorruptible and full of divine glory, yet still a body, having its own circumscription. 7. Another. After the resurrection the Lord showed the unbelieving apostles his hands and his feet and the marks of the nails. Then, teaching them that what they saw was no phantom, he added, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.” So the body was not changed into spirit; for it was flesh, and bones, and hands, and feet. Therefore even after the resurrection [it is] a body … the thrice-blessed Stephen said [that he saw] the Lord. So even after the ascension the body of the Lord is a body. For it was this that the victorious Stephen beheld, since the divine nature cannot be beheld. … the whole nature of human beings … will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, according to the word of the Lord himself; but to Moses he himself said, “No one shall see my face and live.” Both are true; so he will come with the body with which he went up into heaven. For that is visible; and the angels said this to the apostles: “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come again in the same way as you saw him going into heaven.” If this is true — as indeed it is true — then there is not one nature of flesh and Godhead; for the union is unconfused. … 1. We have been taught both by the divine Scripture and by the holy Fathers who assembled at Nicaea to confess that the Son is consubstantial with God the Father; and nature teaches the impassibility of the Father, and the divine Scripture proclaims it.

So we shall also confess the Son to be impassible. For the sameness of the substance teaches this definition. When, then, we hear the divine Scripture proclaiming the cross and the death of Christ the Lord, let us say that the passion belongs to the flesh. For the Godhead, which is impassible by nature, cannot suffer in any way. 2. Another. “All that the Father has is mine,” said Christ the Lord; and one of all these things is impassibility. If, then, he is impassible as God, then he suffered as man; for the divine nature does not admit passion. 3. Another. The Lord said, “And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” And again, “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and I am known by my own, and I lay down my soul for the sheep.” So the good shepherd gave a body and a soul for those who have a soul and a body. 4. Another. The nature of human beings is composed of body and soul. It sinned, and needed a sacrifice free from every blemish. So the Creator, taking a body and a soul and keeping them untouched by the stains of sin, gave the body for bodies and the soul for souls. If these things are true — and they are true, for the words are those of Truth itself — then those who attach the passion to the divine nature talk nonsense and blaspheme. 5. Another. The blessed Paul called Christ the Lord the firstborn from the dead; and the firstborn surely has the same nature as those of whom he is called the firstborn. So it is as man that he is firstborn from the dead. For he first [loosed] the pangs … the sweet hope. And in that in which he rose, in that he also suffered. So he suffered as man, and as God … 6. Another. The divine Apostle named Christ the Saviour the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep; and the firstfruits has kinship with the whole of which it is the firstfruits. So it is not in that he is God that he has been called firstfruits. For what kinship is there between Godhead and humanity? The one is an immortal nature, the other mortal. And such is the nature of those who have fallen asleep, of whom Christ was called the firstfruits. To this nature, then, belong both the death and the resurrection. For we hold its resurrection as the pledge of the common resurrection. 7. Another. Christ the Lord, wishing to persuade the doubting apostles that he had risen, having destroyed death, showed them the parts of his body — his side, and hands, and feet — and the tokens of the passion kept in them. It was this, then, that rose; for it was surely this that was shown to those who disbelieved. And what rose was also buried; and what was buried had also died; and what had died was surely also nailed to the cross. So the divine nature remained impassible, while united to the body. 8. Another. Those who call the Lord’s flesh life-giving make the Life itself mortal by their argument. They ought to have seen that it is because of the Life united to it that the flesh itself is life-giving. But if by their argument the Life is mortal, how could the flesh, which is mortal by nature and becomes life-giving because of the Life, remain life-giving? 9. Another. God the Word is immortal by nature, and the flesh is mortal by nature. And it too became immortal after the passion by participation in the Word. How, then, is it not shocking [to say that] the giver of such immortality … 10. Another. Let those who insist that God the Word suffered in the flesh be asked the meaning of the saying. And if they dare to say that, when the body was nailed, the divine nature endured the pain, let them learn that the divine nature did not fill the place of a soul; for God the Word assumed a soul together with the body. But if they turn away from this argument as blasphemous, and say that the flesh suffered by nature, while God the Word made the passion his own as … [let them not use ambiguous] words, but let them state clearly the meaning of the ill-sounding saying. For in this interpretation they will have as fellow-voters those who choose to follow the divine Scripture. 11. Another. The divine Peter in the Catholic [Epistle] said that Christ suffered in the flesh. And whoever hears “Christ” does not understand God the Word as incorporeal, but as incarnate. So the name of Christ indicates each nature; but “in the flesh,” added to the passion, signifies not that each nature suffered, but that one of them did. For whoever hears that Christ suffered in the flesh understands him again as impassible as God, and assigns the passion to the flesh alone. For just as, when we hear him say again that God swore to David to raise up the Christ according to the flesh from the fruit of his loins, we do not say that God the Word took his beginning from the seed of David, but the flesh, which is of one race with David, which God the Word assumed: so whoever hears that Christ suffered in the flesh must know that the passion belongs to the flesh, and confess the impassibility of the Godhead. … While being crucified, Christ the Lord said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Those of Arius and Eunomius say that this spirit is the Godhead of the Only-begotten; for they think that the body was assumed without a soul.

But the heralds of the truth say that the soul is so called, having understood this from the words that follow. For the all-wise evangelist at once added, “And having said this, he breathed his last.” This is how Luke related it; and the blessed Mark likewise set down “he breathed his last”; the most divine Matthew, that “he yielded up his spirit”; and the inspired John, that “he handed over his spirit.” All of them, however, have spoken according to human custom. For “he breathed his last,” and “he yielded up,” and “he handed over his spirit” are what we are accustomed to say of the dying. So none of these suggests Godhead; they indicate the soul. And even if one were to accept the Arian sense of the saying, it will show no less, even so, the immortality of the divine nature. For he committed it to the Father; he did not hand it over to death. If, then, even those who deny the assumption of the soul, and say that God the Word is a creature, and teach that he was in the body in place of a soul, do not say that he was handed over to death, what pardon could they obtain who confess one substance of the Trinity, and leave the soul in its own immortality, but dare openly to say that God the Word, consubstantial with the Father, tasted death? 13. Another. If Christ is both God and man, as the divine Scripture teaches and the all-praised Fathers continually proclaimed, then he suffered as man, and as God remained impassible. 14. Another. If they confess the assumption of the flesh, and say that it was passible before the resurrection, and proclaim the nature of the Godhead impassible, why do they pass over the passible nature and attach the passion to the impassible? 15. Another. If our Saviour and Lord nailed our certificate of debt to the cross, according to the divine Apostle, then he nailed the body. For every human being fixes the stains of his sins in his body, like letters. For this reason he handed over, on behalf of those who had sinned, the body that was free from all sin. 16. Another. When we say that the body, or the flesh, or the humanity suffered, we do not separate the divine nature. For just as it was united to the humanity when it hungered, and thirsted, and grew weary, and indeed slept, and was in agony over the passion — undergoing none of these things itself, but permitting the humanity to receive the sufferings of its nature — so it was joined to it also when it was crucified, and permitted the passion to be accomplished, so that by the passion it might destroy death. It received no pain from the passion, but made the passion its own, as the passion of its own temple and of the flesh united to it, because of which those who have believed are called members of Christ, and he himself has been named the head of those who have believed. Immutable, unconfused, impassible remains the Word, who with God the Father has no beginning, even though he took flesh at the last of times, having received God-given grace from on high. You who are impious, … to these three … you who do not fear to attach wickedly change, confusion, and passion too to the … And a cord, as Solomon writes somewhere, unbreakable like a threefold noose for us, let the trinity of these wise words be …