Against Apollinarius 1 part 1/3

The way of the pious man that brings no weariness, beloved, is to reverence the universe in silence, and to hymn the beneficent God with cries of thanksgiving, according to the word of Scripture which says:

"He shall sit alone, and shall keep silence, and shall be still, and shall attend to his own affairs;"

Now "alone" and "his own affairs" mean to hold one's own conduct up to judgment, and to keep the commandment of God in one's care.

But since, being aware of the very heavy weariness involved in dealing with those who seem to keep saying the same things, you asked concerning the faith that is in us, and what charge lies against those who suppose they think rightly, who with great excess utter unlawful things without fear —

by whom those unstable in the faith, being led astray, wander and do not understand;

for if they had been firmly established in the faith, they would not have been persuaded by such words.

But since their understanding was idle, they became receptive of such traditions;

from which there sprouts up the arrogance of excess, and a multitude of evil.

Against these it is necessary, to the best of our ability, to bring forward refutation;

so that either some of them, coming to their senses, may see clearly, or else they may no longer be able to deceive others — they who promise the most precise understanding concerning Christ, while understanding neither what they say, nor the matters about which they make their assertions.

For the Fathers have declared that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, true God from true God, and perfect from perfect;

and that afterward he came down for our salvation, was made flesh, became human, and thus in this way suffered, and rose again.

But lest anyone, upon hearing of suffering and resurrection, should imagine that God the Logos had been altered, they define with careful judgment the unchangeableness and immutability of the Son.

But these men either imagine an alteration of the Logos, or suppose the economy of the passion to be a mere appearance;

at one time calling the flesh of Christ uncreated and heavenly, at another time consubstantial with the divinity.

Then, they say, in place of the inner man that is within us, there is in Christ a heavenly mind.

For he made use of the enveloping bodily form as an instrument;

for it was not possible for him to become a complete human being.

For where there is a complete human being, there is also sin;

and two complete beings cannot become one;

since then in Christ too there would be the very warfare of sin that is in us;

and he would have need of the purification that pertains to us, if Christ, having become man, displayed in himself that which thinks and leads the flesh within us.

But, they say, he assumed the mindless element, so that he himself might be the mind within it, and might be wholly untouched by sin, at least as regards the divine nature and the mindless nature of the flesh.

For the flesh could not sin apart from that which leads the flesh, that is, that which thinks, first conceiving the act of sin in thought, and then working through the body to accomplish the sin.

Whence Christ has displayed a newness of flesh according to likeness;

but each one displays in himself the newness of that which thinks within us, through imitation, and likeness, and abstinence from sin.

And thus is Christ understood to be without sin. These are their sophistries, and the notions of their deviation;

and their account is not even one and the same;

for many are the deviations of their unbelief, devised by human reasonings.

...fulfillment, and the grace of that most perfect benefaction;

having questioned in turn their notions, whether they harmonize with the prophetic announcements;

whether they follow the apostolic teachings;

whether they conform to the precepts of the Fathers;

so that from the prophetic announcements, and the apostolic teachings, and the matters fulfilled by the Lord, the confession of the truth may come about, and the refutation of the error.

Tell us, then, you inventors of your so-called new Gospel — which is in fact no other gospel — from where was it proclaimed to you to call the flesh uncreated, so as either to imagine the divinity of the Logos as transformed into flesh, or to regard the economy of the passion, and death, and resurrection as mere appearance?

For only the Holy Trinity of the divinity has shown itself to be uncreated, eternal, unchangeable, and immutable.

But since Christ, according to the flesh, arises from men, from our brethren, as it is written, and is subject to suffering, and is the firstborn from the resurrection of the dead — the Law having foretold this — how do you call the uncreated "subject to suffering"? Or how do you name the "subject to suffering" uncreated? For indeed, in calling the uncreated substance of the Logos subject to suffering, you blaspheme against the divinity;

and, in calling the suffering flesh — fitted together with bones and blood and soul, and with the whole of our bodily nature, and become tangible and visible — uncreated, you fall into a double error:

either supposing the manifestation and endurance of the suffering to be an illusion, after the impiety of the Manichaeans;

or else you suppose the substance of the uncreated divinity to be of such a kind.

And why, then, do you still find fault with those who imagine God in a human form according to the flesh? But you say that it became uncreated by the union with the uncreated.

From this, then, your error will be shown to be self-refuting;

for the union of the flesh with the divinity of the Logos took place from the womb;

for it was from there that the Logos raised it up, having come to dwell among us from heaven;

for that these properties remained untouched has been attested:

he was laid in swaddling clothes, and carried by Simeon in the temple, and received the circumcision of the flesh according to the Law, and increased in stature.

If, then, it became uncreated by the union, how did it not appear complete in itself, but rather the growth of the body took place only as the Logos willed? Yet to attribute growth to the uncreated is impious.

For that which is uncreated by nature is called uncreated precisely because it admits neither increase nor diminution.

But that which has communion with, or is united to, the uncreated is called the very own of the uncreated, yet is not itself uncreated — lest the benefaction of the union be forgotten, and the debt owed for that benefaction be nullified, and humanity, still existing in weakness, fall into hopelessness, being taught according to you that it has no kinship with God, and grace be obscured.

For who, hearing that the body of the Lord is uncreated, and knowing himself to be made and created, will not conclude either that the Holy Scriptures are false, or that he himself has no communion with Christ? If the Uncreated assumed an uncreated body, then the first formation of man has been nullified, the archetypal Adam has perished — he of whom we, to this very day, are the descendants according to the succession of the flesh.

How, then, did Christ make us partakers of himself? And how also does the Apostle say, "For both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one"? But let no one dare to think concerning the divinity of the Son that, just as he is of God, so also are we — as the most impious Arians dare to say;

that is, of the first-formed Adam — the nature which God, existing in the form of God, took.

Now, in general, among created things, that which is called "uncreated" is said to mean that which does not yet exist, because it has not come to be.

Is it not, then, that in supposing the flesh never to have come into being at all within the Logos, you intend, by this seemingly pious expression, at once to imply also its denial — so that you may confess nothing as created within the Uncreated?

For only the existence of the divinity is understood to be uncreated;

so that it is impious both to call the uncreated "subject to suffering," and to name the "subject to suffering" uncreated.

For to hold that the created nature of humanity, by its union with the Logos, is not merely the Logos's own possession, but co-eternal with him, and equalized with the nature of God by identity of nature — this is impious.

For the Lord displayed flesh and blood and bones, and a soul that was grieved, and troubled, and distressed.

But no one could say that these are the nature of divinity;

rather, they became the proper possession of God according to nature, since the Logos was well pleased to submit to a human birth, and to reconstitute in himself, in an image of newness, his own creation which had been dissolved in sin, and corruption, and death;

and the abolition of the curse upon the tree;

and the redemption from corruption in the tomb;

and the destruction of death in Hades;

entering every place, that he might accomplish the salvation of the whole of man, displaying in himself the form of our image.

Since, what need was there for God to submit to a birth from a woman? Or for the Maker of the ages to endure growth in stature, and the counting of years? Or again, of the cross, or the tomb, or Hades, to which we ourselves have fallen subject — unless he was seeking us, giving us life through the form that is like ours, and calling us to likeness and imitation of the perfect image? But how could imitation come about with a view to perfection, unless that perfection which lacks nothing had first existed — according to the Apostle who says:

"Having put off the old man, and having put on the new man, which is created according to God, in holiness and righteousness of the truth."

From where, then, having been taught this, do you say "uncreated"? For if a nature becomes uncreated through transformation, then it must also become invisible and immortal —

not merely delivered from death, but altogether incapable of admitting death.

How, then, did the Lord die, if the Uncreated dwelt on earth in an uncreated manner? Or how did he become visible and tangible? As it is written:

"That which we have seen, and our hands have handled."

Therefore, either deny the divine Scriptures now, or, if you confess them, do not contrive to speak words other than what is written — words of incurable deceit.

But again you say, "We do not worship a creature."

Why do you not consider that even though the body of the Lord was made, it does not receive a creature's worship? For it became the body of the uncreated Logos.

For to him whose body it became, to him you also offer the worship.

Therefore it is indeed worshiped as is due, and it is worshiped in a divine manner.

For the Logos, to whom the body properly belongs, is God.

Since also, when the women approached the Lord, he forbade them, saying, "Do not touch me."

"For I have not yet ascended to my Father" — signifying that there is need of an ascension, and that the ascension will be one.

Nevertheless, when they approached, they took hold of his feet and worshiped him.

They held his feet, they worshiped God.

Feet possessing the tangibility of bones and flesh, yet belonging to God — they worshiped God.

And elsewhere the Lord said, "Touch me and know, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me having" — though he himself was spirit.

And while saying that he had flesh and bones, and giving a demonstration of it, how could he say that "a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me" — not being spirit alone, he says, but having flesh — unless he was teaching by this that the nature of spirit is inexpressible?

so that the body might exist according to its own nature, and yet again be undivided according to the nature of the Logos's divinity.

For thus also death came about:

the body receiving it according to its nature, while the Logos, according to his own will, permitted it, and with sovereign authority gave up his own body to death;

so that he might both suffer naturally for us, and rise divinely for us.

And the whole undertaking of his birth and death is seen to be for our seeking out and restoration.

These things being so, and confessed in the catholic Church of God, how is it that you say again that the body is from heaven? And for what reason did Christ do this? Tell me — was it so that he might bring a body down from the heavens to earth, and make the invisible visible, and the one incapable of insult receptive of insult, and the impassible and immortal one mortal and passible? And what benefit was there in these things, O vain ones, if you say that these things came to be in Christ which came to be in the first-formed Adam? Unless it was that Christ raised up Adam's fall to incomparable stature, having appeared in the likeness of sinful flesh and having condemned sin in the flesh —

so that he might also live his life in the flesh upon the earth, and show the flesh to be unreceptive of sin — the flesh which Adam, having had it sinless from its first formation, made receptive of sin through transgression, and so fell into corruption and death.

so that he himself might be the demonstration of sinlessness.

In vain, then, do those who wander astray imagine and say that the body of the Lord is from heaven.

And yet, what Adam brought down from heaven to earth, Christ has carried back up from earth to the heavens;

and that which Adam, sinless and uncondemned, brought down into corruption and the condemnation of death, this Christ has shown forth as incorruptible and as a deliverance from death;

so as to have authority on earth to forgive sins, and to demonstrate incorruption out of the tomb, and, by entering into Hades, to destroy death, and to proclaim the resurrection to all as good news.

For God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of his own eternity.

But through the envy of the devil, death entered into the world;

and seeing mankind ruled by death unto corruption, he did not overlook it, but himself became man — not merely being converted into human form, nor, by disregarding the true existence of man, making a merely shadowy display of humanity;

but he who is God by nature is born man, so that he might be one comprising both, complete in every respect, having shown forth a birth that is natural and most true.

And he granted him the name that is above every name — to reign over the heavens, and to have authority to execute judgment.

For the Logos, the Creator of all things, appeared as the son of man, not becoming some other one, but the second Adam;

so that from the very name we might also know the truth.

And the Apostle shows the first-formed Adam as prior in order, showing first the soulish man, and afterward the spiritual.

And in speaking of "soulish" and "spiritual," he does not indicate one body and then a different one, but the same body:

the first, indeed, under the dominion and nature of the soul, and therefore called soulish;

the second, under the dominion and nature of the Spirit, and therefore called spiritual;

for in this way it is also possible to understand what is said concerning us, where it says:

"The spiritual man discerns all things;

but the soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit."

And yet, the body being one and the same in either case, he shows that the one who is understood to partake of the Spirit is called spiritual, while the one who remains solely under the dominion of the soul is shown to be called soulish.

...body, and might be a son of man distinct from Adam;

but Luke traces his genealogy as son of Adam and of God.

If, then, you are disciples of the Gospels, do not speak injustice against God;

but walk in step with what is written and what has come to pass.

But if you wish to speak things other than what is written, why do you contend against us, who are persuaded neither to hear nor to speak anything beside what is written? — the Lord saying, "If you abide in my word, you will truly be free."

If we deny him, he also will deny us;

if we are faithless, he remains faithful;

for he cannot deny himself.

What, then, is this so great madness of excess in you, to speak things not written, and to think things foreign to piety? For indeed you even attempt to say that the flesh is consubstantial with the divinity, not perceiving that a double consequence of impiety has come upon you.

For these things have been devised by you to say, so that either you deny the flesh, or you blaspheme the divinity, saying, as they put it:

"We say that the one from Mary is consubstantial with the Father."

But this supposedly pious statement of yours will be shown to be either superfluous or senseless.

For just as the Son, confessed to be consubstantial with the Father, is confessed as perfect in relation to the Perfect — as is likewise the Holy Spirit —

then according to you there will be proclaimed a quaternity instead of a Trinity.

And what is this so great contrivance of impiety? But you say:

"The flesh became consubstantial with the Logos."

How did it become consubstantial? Tell me.

Did it become Logos? Then it also became Spirit.

But if divinity that is not so by nature comes to be divinity at all through transformation, why then do you blame the Arians, who put forward this very same notion concerning the Logos? And yet Scripture says, "The Logos became flesh," not "The flesh became Logos" — it is said, "The Logos became flesh."

that is, the flesh became the flesh of the Logos, and not of some mere human being;

that is to say, God became man;

and it is said, "He became flesh," so that you might not pass over the name of the flesh.

If, then, you are not satisfied with the unconfused natural union of the Logos with his own flesh that came to be,

and with the fact that God became man,

then now you neither listen nor are willing to believe, not being satisfied even though you hear the phrase "the body of God" — a phrase beyond every conception of reverent praise — according to him who says:

"Who will transform the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory" —

which is a signification of the age to come, and it is still called the body of his glory.

"When the Son of man comes" —

he speaks of the Son of God as having become the son of man;

But you wish to abolish the name of the body, or Christ's still being called man.

How can you still read the divine Scriptures? For Matthew writes:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God;

but if you would believe, being taught by the divine Scriptures, that the Logos, being God, became the son of man, you will know that Christ is one, the same being both God and man;

so that the twofold proclamation of his sojourn among us may have a persuasion readily demonstrated, both of the suffering and of the impassibility.

As when the Apostle says:

The man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for us, who is God over all, blessed forever.

And writing to Timothy he also said:

We proclaim his death, until he comes.

If, then, from your confession of the consubstantial you abolish the name of the flesh, and Christ's being called man;

then either you no longer proclaim his death, until he comes, thereby abolishing the Scriptures;

or else, in proclaiming his death, you proclaim, according to your view, the death of the one consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit;

since you do not confess that Christ suffered in the flesh, you will say that the very divinity of the Father and of the Holy Spirit is itself capable of receiving death;

and you have become more impious than all the heretics.

For the death of the flesh has become the death of the consubstantial Logos.

For neither did the Father put on flesh, nor the Holy Spirit, as those who impiously follow Valentinus fantasize;

but the Logos became flesh.

but again, according to the Scriptures, so that, suffering and death having taken place and being proclaimed until he comes, we may confess the suffering and the death as belonging to the flesh of the Logos, while believing the Logos himself to be unchangeable and unalterable,

being, in his divine nature, impassible and unchangeable and unalterable, yet suffering in the flesh, as Peter said, and willing to taste death;

because he became mediator of God and men, the man Christ, who gave himself a ransom for us;

For he became mediator of God and men.

Now a mediator is not of one;

For it is not someone other than the Logos who has taken upon himself death and suffering;

but the impassible and incorporeal Logos himself, having submitted to the generation of human flesh, has fulfilled all things, so that he might have something to offer on our behalf.

And he is said to have become better than the angels;

it is not the Logos himself, the maker of the angels, who has become better, as though he were once inferior, but the form of the servant, which the Logos himself made his own by natural birth, has arisen better than the generation of the first-formed man; and by this he makes us his own, as it is said, having become fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God;

and it has become God's own by nature, the flesh not being in itself consubstantial with the divinity of the Logos, as though co-eternal with it;

But if the flesh is consubstantial with the Logos and co-eternal, from this you will also have to say that all created things are co-eternal with the God who created all things.

And how are you still Christians, entangled in such knots? For that which is consubstantial and impassible and incapable of receiving death does not admit union according to hypostasis with that which is consubstantial with it, but only union according to nature;

whereas that which is united according to hypostasis is that which displays its own particular completeness.

So that, by your so-called well-sounding invention, you either deny the flesh from the Virgin Theotokos, or you blaspheme the divinity,

and you confess the Son to be consubstantial with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, to be the flesh that suffered;

and why then do you still blame us as saying a quaternity instead of a Trinity, when you yourselves, even unwillingly, confess a quaternity instead of a Trinity, saying that the flesh is consubstantial with the Trinity? Therefore your faith is vain;

for you think the same things as the impious Arians, wrongly interpreting the saying, 'The Logos became flesh.'

But the Logos became flesh, not so that the Logos should no longer be Logos;

For what else, different from you, has Marcion said? Did he not say that the body was heaven-appearing, in the likeness of a human being, and not in truth? And what else has Mani said? That the body was god-formed, in likeness only to ours, but alien to human flesh, whose nature he impiously calls sin itself, and not merely its practice? Such is their impiety.

but it is because the Logos, who before the ages is consubstantial with the Father, in the last times raised up anew, from the holy Virgin Theotokos, the formation and making of Adam, making it his own through union;

and thus Christ, who is God before the ages, was seen as man.

And we are members of Christ, as it is written, of his flesh and of his bones.

What, then, is this great contentiousness of your inventions, that with human reasoning you presume to define matters beyond human comprehension, saying:

'In Christ, in place of the inward man within us, there is a heavenly mind'? O lawless opinion, and weak and unseemly words, of those who do not first understand this: that Christ is not spoken of in a single mode, but in that one name itself the signification of both realities is shown, both of divinity and of humanity.

Vain, then, is your sophistry, in attempting to discern in him something other than Christ.

For those who are called christs in an improper sense might perhaps, according to your view, be regarded in this way;

but the only true Christ by nature will not be delineated by human reasoning, as you dare to do, and have become presumptuous.

For neither prophet, nor apostle, nor any of the evangelists uttered these things which you attempt to speak, having become shameless in soul.

For if Christ is other than the heavenly mind that came to be in him, and the mind too is complete, then, according to you, there are two;

and that very thing which you think you are decrying, in this you are convicted of holding it.

But the prophets too possessed a heavenly mind, who spoke of heavenly things and things to come as though present.

Or, if you are not able to show otherwise, the argument is plain: that the soul is neither seen, nor is it killed by man as the body is, just as the Lord has said.

Be persuaded, then, that the man within us is the soul;

this both the first formation shows, and the second dissolution makes clear;

these things being shown not only in our own case, but were also shown in the very death of Christ;

the one part, indeed, reaching as far as the tomb;

was he regarded by death as a mere man? — so that, to the souls held fast in bonds, presenting the form of his own soul (which is not capable of receiving the bonds of death) as though it were capable of receiving them, being present in person to those who were present, he might break asunder the bonds of the souls held in Hades, having firmly fixed the boundary of the resurrection;

so that the former and maker of man, who also subjected him to condemnation, being himself present, might through himself set free man entirely, in his own form.

For neither did death, having prevailed, bring the human soul of the Logos under its own power into a holding of bonds;

nor again did corruption, tyrannically seizing the body, work it unto decay, as though these things happened without providence.

For to think such a thing in this way is impious;

but he who made an examination of the disobedience and brought judgment, gave a twofold sentence of punishment;

You are earth, and to earth you shall go;

and thus man is divided in two, and is condemned to depart into two places.

so that the reconciliation of God with man might come about, and the freedom of the whole man might exist through man, in the newness of the image of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

But if you are able to show yet another place of condemnation, you might reasonably say that man is divided in three;

and that the recall has taken place from the two places, while in the third that which is bound remains in bonds.

But if you have no other place to show besides the tomb and Hades, from which man has been completely freed, since Christ has freed us in his own perfect and most true form like ours;

how then can you still say these things, as though God had not yet been reconciled to humanity? How then did the Savior come to dwell among us? Was it as one unable to set free the whole man? Or as one who abhorred the mind that had once sinned? Or as one fearing lest he himself should become a partaker of sin, if, being God, he should become a complete man? But full of impiety are those who think such things.

For why, in defining these things about sin, do you speak thus, saying that sin is natural, according to the most impious Mani? In thinking these things thus, you become accusers of the creator of nature.

When God formed Adam in the beginning, did he then give him sin as something innate? What further need, then, was there of the commandment? And how did he condemn him for sinning? And how, before the disobedience, did Adam not know good and evil? Him whom God formed for incorruption and for the image of his own eternity, he made a sinless nature, and a self-determining will;

but by the envy of the devil death entered into the world, he having devised the plan of the transgression.

And thus, through disobedience to the commandment of God, man became receptive of the sowing of the enemy.

And thereafter sin worked in the nature of man toward every desire;

the devil having wrought no nature in him — far be it!

For the devil could not be a creator of nature, according to the impiety of the Manichaeans;

but he wrought a perversion of nature through transgression;

and thus death reigned over all men.

What works of the devil did the Son of God destroy? Namely this: the nature which God made without sin, the devil turned aside into transgression of God's commandment and into the invention of sin unto death; this nature God the Logos raised up again for himself, incapable of the devil's perversion and of the invention of sin.

And for this reason the Lord said:

"The ruler of this world is coming, and he finds nothing in me."

he left nothing further for the ruler of this world.

Or also for this reason he found nothing in him: because Christ displayed complete newness, so that he might work out complete salvation for the whole human being — rational soul and body — so that the resurrection too might be complete.

In vain, then, do the Arians play the sophist, supposing that the Savior assumed flesh only, and impiously ascribing the perception of the suffering to the impassible Godhead.

In vain also do you, by another notion, holding the same view as these, say that the Logos made use of the enclosing form, that is, the instrumental body —

"but instead of the inner man within us, there was a heavenly mind in Christ."

And how then was he grieved, and distressed, and praying? And it is written, "Jesus was troubled in spirit."

But these things would belong neither to irrational flesh, nor to the unchangeable Godhead, but to a soul possessing understanding — being grieved, and troubled, and distressed, and perceiving the suffering with the intellect.