Exposition of the Faith 1 part 8/15

In the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, then, since we know two natures but one hypostasis composed of both, when we consider the natures, we call them divinity and humanity; but when we consider the hypostasis composed of the natures, sometimes from both together we name Him Christ and God and man and God incarnate, sometimes from one of the parts we call Him God only and Son of God, and man only and Son of Man, and sometimes from the lofty things only, sometimes from the lowly only;

for one and the same is He who exists likewise as both that and this, the one being always causelessly from the Father, the other having come to be afterward through love for mankind.

When, then, we say 'divinity,' we do not name of it the properties of humanity (for we do not say a passible or created divinity), nor do we predicate of the flesh, that is, the humanity, the properties of divinity (for we do not say an uncreated flesh, that is, humanity).

But in the case of the hypostasis, whether we name it from both together, or from one of the parts, we attribute to it the properties of both natures.

For Christ, which is the both-together, is called both God and man, both created and uncreated, both passible and impassible;

and when, from one of the parts, He is named both Son of God and God, He receives the properties of the co-subsisting nature, that is, of the flesh, being named a passible God and the crucified Lord of glory—not as God, but inasmuch as the same one is also man;

and when He is named man and Son of Man, He receives the properties and glories of the divine essence, being a child before the ages and a man without beginning—not inasmuch as He is a child and a man, but inasmuch as, being God before the ages, He became at the last a child.

And this is the manner of the communication of properties, each nature giving in exchange to the other its own things, on account of the identity of the hypostasis and their mutual interpenetration.

According to this we are able to say of Christ:

This our God was seen upon the earth, and:

This man is uncreated and impassible and uncircumscribed.

On the number of the natures. As, then, in the case of the Godhead we confess one nature, but say there are three hypostases truly existing, and we say that all things natural and essential are simple, while we recognize the difference of the hypostases in the three properties alone—the uncaused and paternal, the caused and filial, and the proceeding—

and we understand them as inseparable and undivided from one another, and united, and interpenetrating one another without confusion; united without confusion (for they are three, even though united), but divided without separation:

for although each subsists by itself—that is, is a perfect hypostasis and possesses its own property, that is, its distinct mode of existence—yet they are united in essence and in their natural properties, and by not being separated nor departing from the paternal hypostasis, and they are and are called one God:

in the same manner also, in the case of the divine and ineffable economy—surpassing all mind and comprehension—of one of the Holy Trinity, God the Word and our Lord Jesus Christ, we confess two natures, divine and human, having come together with each other and been united according to hypostasis, but one composite hypostasis formed out of the two natures.

And we say that the two natures are preserved even after the union in the one composite hypostasis—that is, in the one Christ—and that they and their natural properties truly exist, being united, however, without confusion and without division, and differing and being numbered.

And just as the three hypostases of the Holy Trinity are united without confusion and divided without separation and are numbered, and the number does not work division or separation or estrangement and severance in them (for we recognize one God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit), in the same manner also the natures of Christ, though united, yet are united without confusion; and though they interpenetrate one another, yet they do not admit conversion and change into one another;

for each nature preserves its own natural property unchanged.

Wherefore also they are numbered, and the number does not introduce division.

For one is Christ, perfect in divinity and in humanity;

for number is by nature the cause neither of division nor of union, but is significative of the quantity of the things numbered, whether united or divided:

of things united, as when 'this wall has fifty stones'; of things divided, as when 'fifty stones lie in this field';

and of things united, as when 'there are two natures in the burning coal, I mean of fire and of wood'; of things divided, as when 'the nature of the fire is one and that of the wood another'—another principle uniting and dividing them, and not the number.

Just as, then, it is impossible to call the three hypostases of the Godhead one hypostasis, though they are united to each other, lest we work confusion and abolition of the difference of the hypostases, so also it is impossible to call the two natures of Christ, united according to hypostasis, one nature, lest we work abolition and confusion and non-existence of their difference.

That the whole divine nature, in one of its hypostases, was united to the whole human nature, and not part to part. The common and universal things are predicated of the particulars subject to them.

Common, then, is the essence, but particular is the hypostasis.

Particular, however, not in the sense that it has part of the nature and does not have part, but particular by number, as an individual;

for the hypostases are said to differ by number and not by nature.

And the essence is predicated of the hypostasis, because in each of the hypostases of the same kind the essence is perfect.

Wherefore neither do the hypostases differ from one another according to essence, but according to accidents, which are the characteristic properties—characteristic, however, of the hypostasis and not of the nature;

for they define the hypostasis as essence together with accidents.

So that the hypostasis has the common together with the distinctive;

but the essence does not subsist by itself, but is observed in the hypostases.

When, then, one of the hypostases suffers, the whole

essence, according to which the hypostasis exists, is said to have suffered in one of its hypostases.

It is not, however, necessary that all the hypostases of the same kind should suffer together with the suffering hypostasis.

Thus, then, we confess that the whole nature of the Godhead is perfectly in each of its hypostases—the whole in the Father, the whole in the Son, the whole in the Holy Spirit.

Wherefore also the Father is perfect God, the Son is perfect God, the Holy Spirit is perfect God.

So also in the incarnation of one of the Holy Trinity, God the Word, we say that the whole and perfect nature of the Godhead, in one of its hypostases, was united to the whole human nature, and not part to part.

Indeed the divine Apostle says that in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily—that is, in His flesh; and his disciple, the God-bearing Dionysius, mighty in things divine, says that He communicated with us wholly in one of His own hypostases.

We shall not, however, be compelled to say that all the hypostases of the holy Godhead—that is, the three—are united according to hypostasis to all the hypostases of humanity;

for the Father and the Holy Spirit had no share in the incarnation of God the Word in any respect, except by good pleasure and will.

But we say that the whole essence of the Godhead was united to the whole human nature.

For nothing of what God the Word implanted in our nature when He formed us from the beginning was lacking, but He assumed all—body, a soul intellectual and rational, and their properties (for the living being lacking one of these is not man);

for He, the whole, assumed me whole, and the whole was united to the whole, that He might grant salvation to the whole;

for that which was not assumed is unhealed.

The Word of God, then, was united to the flesh through the medium of the mind, the mind mediating between the purity of God and the grossness of the flesh.

For the mind is the ruling part of both soul and flesh, the purest part of the soul; but God is the ruler even of the mind;

and when it is permitted by its superior, the mind displays its own rulership.

But it is overcome by and follows the superior, and works those things which the divine will wills.

The mind became the dwelling-place of the divinity hypostatically united to it, just as, of course, did the flesh—not a co-inhabitant, as the accursed opinion of the heretics errs;

for, it says, the measure of one bushel will not contain two bushels,

judging immaterial things in a bodily manner.

But how shall Christ be said to be perfect God and perfect man and consubstantial both with the Father and with us, if a part of the divine nature is united in Him to a part of the human nature? But we say that our nature was raised from the dead and ascended and sat at the right hand of the Father—not in the sense that all the hypostases of men rose and sat at the right hand of the Father, but that the whole nature did so in the hypostasis of Christ.

The divine Apostle indeed says:

He raised us up together and made us sit together in Christ.

And this also we say, that the union came to be out of common essences;

for every essence is common to all the hypostases comprehended under it, and it is not possible to find a particular and individual nature, that is, essence, since otherwise it would be necessary to call the same hypostases both consubstantial and of different substance, and to call the Holy Trinity both consubstantial and of different substance with regard to the Godhead.

The same nature, then, is observed in each of the hypostases.

And when we say that the nature of the Word was incarnate, according to the blessed Athanasius and Cyril, we say that the divinity was united to flesh.

The nature of the Word suffered (for the divinity in Him did not suffer), but we say that the human nature suffered in Christ—not, however, signifying all the hypostases of men—and we confess that Christ suffered in His human nature.

So that, when we say 'the nature of the Word,' we signify the Word Himself.

And the Word possesses both the common element of the essence and the distinctive element of the hypostasis.

On the one composite hypostasis of God the Word. We say, then, that the divine hypostasis of God the Word pre-existed timelessly and eternally, simple and uncomposite, uncreated, incorporeal, invisible, intangible, uncircumscribed, having all things that the Father has, as being consubstantial with Him,

differing in the mode of generation and in relation to the paternal hypostasis, being perfect, never departing from the paternal hypostasis; and that in the last days the Word, without departing from the paternal bosom (for in an uncircumscribed manner), dwelt in the womb of the holy Virgin without seed and incomprehensibly, as He Himself knows, and in His own pre-eternal hypostasis caused flesh to subsist to Himself from the holy Virgin.

In all things, then, and above all things He was, even while existing in the womb of the holy Theotokos—but in her by the operation of the incarnation.

He was incarnate, then, taking from her the first-fruits of our lump, flesh animated by a rational and intellectual soul, so that the very hypostasis of God the Word was constituted hypostasis to the flesh, and the hypostasis of the Word, which was formerly simple, became composite—composite of two perfect natures, divinity and humanity—and bears the characteristic and distinguishing property of the divine sonship of God the Word, by which He is distinguished from the Father and the Spirit, and the characteristic and distinguishing properties of the flesh, by which He differs from His mother and the rest of men; and bears also the properties of the divine nature, by which He is united to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the marks of the human nature, by which He is united to His mother and to us.

And He further differs from the Father and the Spirit and from His mother and us, in that the same one exists as both God and man at once;

for this we recognize as the most peculiar property of the hypostasis of Christ.

Therefore we confess Him one Son of God, and after the incarnation the same one also Son of Man, one Christ, one Lord, the only-begotten Son and Word of God, Jesus our Lord.

Reverencing His two generations: one from the Father before the ages, beyond cause and reason and time and nature; and one at the last for us and after our likeness and above us—for us, because for our salvation; after our likeness, because He became man of a woman and at the time of gestation; above us, because not of seed, but of the Holy Spirit and of the holy Virgin, beyond the law of gestation—we do not proclaim Him God only, bare of the humanity that is according to us, nor merely man, stripping Him of the divinity; not one and another, but one and the same at once both God and man, perfect God and perfect man, wholly God and wholly man, the same one wholly God even with His flesh, and wholly man even with His supra-divine divinity—by saying 'perfect God and perfect man' indicating the fullness and unimpairedness of the natures, and by saying 'wholly God and wholly man' showing the singularity and indivisibility of the hypostasis.

And we confess one incarnate nature of God the Word, by saying 'incarnate' signifying the essence of the flesh, according to the blessed Cyril.

And the Word, then, was incarnate and yet did not depart from His own immateriality, and was wholly incarnate and yet is wholly uncircumscribed.

He is diminished bodily and contracted, yet divinely is uncircumscribed, His flesh not being co-extended with His uncircumscribed divinity.

He is, then, wholly perfect God, but not wholly God (for He is not God only, but also man); and wholly perfect man, but not wholly man (for He is not man only, but also God).

For 'wholly' (in the neuter, holon) is indicative of nature, while 'wholly' (in the masculine, holos) is of the hypostasis, just as 'other' (allo) is of nature, and 'another' (allos) is of the hypostasis.

And one must know that, although we say that the natures of the Lord interpenetrate one another, yet we know that the interpenetration came about from the divine nature;

for this nature pervades all things, as it wills, and interpenetrates, but nothing pervades it.

And it imparts to the flesh its own glories, while itself remaining impassible and unpartaking of the sufferings of the flesh;

for if the sun, imparting to us its own energies, remains unpartaking of ours, how much more the Maker and Lord of the sun!

for how could that which is by nature impassible suffer? Nor was the simple one changed in becoming composite;

for change is a kind of suffering, and the impassible is altogether also unchangeable.

He acted, then, in becoming incarnate; He did not suffer;

for neither was His divine nature changed or did it receive any addition, nor was the property of His hypostasis, that is, His sonship, changed;

for He remained the Son of God even after becoming the Son of Man.

He did not suffer, then, but acted, creating for Himself flesh animated by a rational and intellectual soul, and giving Himself to it as hypostasis, and causing it to subsist in Himself.

For one must know that in the case of the heating of iron one must understand two things.

For that which is heated is said to be heated in one way, in that the iron, say, or the wood, entering into pre-existing fire, receives fire from it (fire that did not yet subsist by itself), and it becomes a hypostasis to it (for in the very wood, which pre-exists and pre-subsists, the fire subsists, which it receives from the pre-existing fire); and the hypostasis of the iron and of the fire observed in it becomes one hypostasis, of both the wood and the fire in it (for the fire in the wood did not subsist by itself, but had the wood as the cause of its subsistence and of its existence and compacting, set apart from the rest of fire); and there is one hypostasis of both the wood and the fire that subsisted in it—antecedently of the wood, consequently of the fire;

for pre-existing as wood, it afterward became also of the fire.

But heating is spoken of also in another way, as when the heated wood receives the energy of the fire;

for the finer imparts to the coarser of its own energy.

In the case of heating, then, the wood is that which is heated, and it is called the heating of the wood and not the wooding of the fire;

for the wood both pre-exists and becomes a hypostasis to the fire, and receives the energy of the fire.

But in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ it is not so; rather, the incarnation of the Word is spoken of, as the Word became hypostasis to the flesh (for the hypostasis of the Word pre-existed, and in it the flesh subsisted), but the deification of the flesh;

for this partook of the things of the divinity, and not the divinity of its sufferings;

for through the flesh the divinity wrought, as the fire through the wood, not the flesh through the Word.

The Word, then, did not suffer in becoming incarnate, but wrought the incarnation, imparting to the flesh both the hypostasis and the deification.

And by deification I mean not that the flesh was changed into the nature of divinity, but the participation in the glories of the divinity;

for it gave life, not according to its own nature, but by the union with the divinity.

And on Tabor it flashed forth and flashes forth, not on account of its own nature, but on account of the energy of the divinity hypostatically united to it, as the wood shines and burns, not according to its own natural energy, but on account of its participation in the energy of the fire hypostatically united to it.

Whether the natures of the Lord are to be referred to continuous quantity or to discrete. And if anyone, asking concerning the natures of the Lord, should ask whether they are to be referred to continuous quantity or to discrete, we shall say that the natures of the Lord are neither one body, nor one surface, nor one line, nor time, nor place, that they should be referred to continuous quantity;

for these are the things that are continuously numbered.

And one must know that number is of things that differ, and it is impossible to number things that differ in no respect;

but in the respect in which they differ, in that respect also are they numbered.

For instance, Peter and Paul, in the respect in which they are united, are not numbered;

for being united by the principle of essence, they cannot be said to be two natures; but differing according to hypostasis, they are said to be two hypostases.

So that number is of things that differ, and in the manner in which things differing differ, in that manner also are they numbered.

The natures of Christ are united without confusion according to hypostasis, but are divided without division by the principle and mode of difference.

And in the manner in which they are united, they are not numbered;

for we do not say that the natures of Christ are two according to hypostasis.

But in the manner in which they are divided without division, are they numbered? For the natures of Christ are two by the principle and mode of difference.

For being united according to hypostasis and having the interpenetration in one another, they are united without confusion, each preserving its own natural difference.

Being numbered, therefore, by the mode of difference alone, they will be referred to discrete quantity.

There is, then, one Christ, perfect God and perfect man, whom we worship together with the Father and the Spirit with one worship, together with His undefiled flesh, not saying that the flesh is not to be worshiped (for it is worshiped in the one hypostasis of the Word, which became hypostasis to it), nor worshiping the creation (for we do not worship it as mere flesh, but as united to the divinity, and because His two natures are referred to the one person and one hypostasis of God the Word).

I dread to touch the live coal because of the fire joined to the wood.

I worship the two together in Christ, because of the Godhead united to the flesh;

for I do not introduce a fourth person into the Trinity—God forbid—but I confess one person of God the Word and of His flesh.

For the Trinity remained the Trinity even after the incarnation of the Word.

Reply to the objection, 'If there is no nature without a hypostasis.' For even though there is no nature without a hypostasis nor an essence without a person (since both essence and nature are contemplated in hypostases and persons), yet it is not necessary that natures united with one another should each possess its own particular hypostasis;

for natures, having run together into one hypostasis, can be neither without hypostasis nor have a hypostasis peculiar to each, but both can have one and the same.

For the same hypostasis of the Word, having become the hypostasis of both natures, neither permits one of them to be without a hypostasis nor allows them to have hypostases other than each other—nor is it at one time the hypostasis of this and at another of that, but it is always the hypostasis of both, indivisibly and inseparably; it is not divided or parted, assigning part of itself to this and part to that, but it exists wholly as the hypostasis of this and wholly of that, undividedly and entirely.

For the flesh of God the Word did not subsist by itself, nor did another hypostasis arise beside the hypostasis of God the Word, but subsisting in it, it became rather enhypostatic and not a hypostasis subsisting by itself on its own.

Therefore it is neither without a hypostasis nor does it introduce another hypostasis into the Trinity.

Concerning the Trisagion. Hence we judge as blasphemous the addition made to the Trisagion by the foolish-minded Peter the Fuller, as introducing a fourth person and setting apart the Son of God, the enhypostatic power of the Father, and apart the Crucified as being another beside 'the Strong One,' and as making the Holy Trinity passible and crucifying together with the Son both the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Away with this blasphemous and spurious nonsense!

For we understand 'Holy God' of the Father, not assigning to Him alone the name of Godhead but knowing both the Son and the Holy Spirit to be God; and we apply 'Holy Mighty' to the Son, not stripping the Father and the Holy Spirit of might; and we assign 'Holy Immortal' to the Holy Spirit, not placing the Father and the Son outside immortality, but understanding all the divine names absolutely and without restriction of each of the hypostases, and imitating the divine Apostle who says:

'But to us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we in Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him.' Moreover, also the Theologian Gregory, who says somewhere thus:

'But to us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and one Holy Spirit, in whom are all things'—those words 'from whom,' 'through whom,' and 'in whom' not cleaving the natures (for then the prepositions or the order of the names would not change), but characterizing the properties of one and unconfused nature;

from which they are again gathered into one—if anyone does not

read carelessly that passage in the Apostle: 'of Him and through Him and unto Him are all things;'

to Him be the glory unto the ages.

That the Trisagion has been said not of the Son only but of the Holy Trinity, the divine and holy Athanasius, Basil and Gregory, and all the choir of the God-bearing fathers are witnesses; for through the threefold holiness the holy Seraphim signify to us the three hypostases of the supersubstantial Godhead,

while through the one lordship they make known the one essence and kingdom of the divine-source Trinity.

At any rate the Theologian Gregory says:

'Thus then are the Holy of Holies, which are also veiled by the Seraphim and glorified with three sanctifications converging into one lordship and Godhead;'

which has also been most beautifully and most sublimely treated by another before us.

Now those who composed the ecclesiastical history say that, while the people of Constantinople were in procession on account of some divinely-sent threat that arose in the time of Archbishop Proclus, a child was caught up from among the people and so taught by some angelic instruction the Trisagion hymn, 'Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us;' and that, the child having returned and reported what it had been taught, the whole multitude sang the hymn, and so the threat ceased.

And in the holy and great ecumenical fourth council, I mean the one at Chalcedon, it is handed down that this Trisagion hymn was thus sung;

for so it is recorded in the acts of that same holy council.

It is therefore truly laughable and a mockery that the Trisagion ode—taught by angels, confirmed by the cessation of the calamity, ratified and established by the council of so many holy fathers, and earlier sung by the Seraphim as expressive of the Godhead in three hypostases—should be, as it were, trampled underfoot by the irrational conceit of the Fuller and supposedly corrected by him, as though he surpassed the Seraphim.

But oh, the audacity—not to say the madness!

But we say it thus, even though the demons burst with rage:

'Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.'

Concerning the nature contemplated in species and in the individual, and concerning difference, union and incarnation, and how the one incarnate nature of God the Word is to be understood. Nature is apprehended either by pure contemplation alone (for it does not subsist by itself), or commonly in all the hypostases of the same species, binding them together, and is called the nature contemplated in the species; or it is the same nature considered as a whole, with the assumption of accidents, in a single hypostasis, and is called the nature contemplated in the individual.

So then God the Word, when He became incarnate, assumed neither the nature apprehended in pure contemplation (for that would not be incarnation but a deception and fiction of incarnation), nor the nature contemplated in the species (for He did not assume all the hypostases), but the nature in the individual, which is identical with that in the species (for He assumed the firstfruits of our lump)—not as having subsisted by itself and become an individual beforehand, and so being assumed by Him, but as having come into existence in His own hypostasis.

For the very hypostasis of God the Word became the hypostasis of the flesh, and in this sense the Word became flesh—without change, that is—and the flesh became Word without alteration, and God became man;

for the Word is God, and the man is God on account of the hypostatic union.

It is therefore the same thing to say 'the nature of the Word' and 'the nature in the individual;'

for it signifies neither the individual—that is, the hypostasis—properly and exclusively, nor the common feature of the hypostases, but the common nature contemplated and considered in one of the hypostases.

Now union is one thing, and incarnation another;

for union signifies only the conjunction, but with respect to what the conjunction came to be, it says nothing further.

But incarnation—which is the same as to say enhumanment—signifies the conjunction with flesh, that is, with man, just as 'ignition' signifies the union with fire.

Now the blessed Cyril himself, in his second letter to Succensus, interpreting the phrase 'the one incarnate nature of God the Word,' speaks thus:

'For if, having spoken of one nature of the Word,

we had kept silent, not adding "incarnate," but as it were setting the economy outside, perhaps their argument would have had some plausibility, when they pretend to ask: