Letter to George, Prefect of Africa 1 part 11/14

Let us not, then, lose heart in our afflictions, honored Father, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not put to shame, having as its certainty the eternal enjoyment of the goods for which we suffer;

but let us bear nobly what befalls us, looking to Jesus, the author of our salvation;

who, being true God, willingly accepted death on our behalf;

so that, suffering, we may rejoice, having been united with him, being worked through death, as by leaven, toward the resurrection of indestructible life.

Since it has been established as the will of the divine law that we, doing good, should suffer unjustly, as disciples of Christ, unto the condemnation of sin;

which sin the noetic serpent introduced through deceit, having persuaded man to transgress the divine commandment and to prefer temporal things to eternal ones;

whom we have received authority to trample underfoot, by keeping the grace that guards us, which is preserved through the keeping of the commandments;

which grace is accomplished, by those who love the Lord, only through the affliction of the flesh, both voluntary and involuntary, with sober reasoning.

Having fastened all your desire upon him, you do not feel the afflictions, O holy Father;

since you have the joy of the things hoped for prevailing over the present affliction;

which may we all obtain, Christ our great God and Savior distributing these to us, as he knows, according as each is worthy;

by the intercession of his immaculate and all-holy ever-virgin Mother, and of all the saints.

By the same author, to Julian the Scholastikos of Alexandria, concerning the ecclesiastical doctrine on the incarnation of the Lord.

him who for this reason became man: that he might gather the nature of mankind to himself, and might make it cease from being borne ill toward itself — or rather, from rising up in faction against itself and being divided, and possessing no stability at all, because of the unsteady movement of the intention concerning each individual —

believing that the Son and Word of God the Father, having truly become man from men, for men, according to men, without sin, was not turned from being God even when he became man;

nor indeed has he been diminished from truly being man, having remained what he was, and is, and shall always be by nature: God;

but, being God according to essence and nature in himself, he truly became man immutably according to the economy for our sake, namely by the assumption of flesh possessing a rational and noetic soul;

inasmuch as this [flesh] is indeed one of the natures brought together for the union according to hypostasis in the mystery of his incarnation — that is, his perfect enhominization — a nature which in no way denies itself on account of the union, but preserves its own essential principle and definition, that is, its natural property, unconfused and unchangeable in relation to the other nature after the union.

For the union does not abolish the difference of those natures brought together into one hypostasis;

but it entirely excludes their division into separate parts.

Since, then, the things out of which Christ consists are preserved undiminished in Christ according to nature even after the union;

how is it not right to confess the things out of which Christ consists, even after the union — as some fail to perceive how precarious and dangerous it is, and how it entails harm for every soul, to fight against what is manifest and openly to deny the truth that exists;

and that this is a trait belonging only to those who altogether do not expect resurrection and judgment.

for to whom is the word of truth not evident and manifest, being simple and unadorned, and having nothing riddling about it at all?

For if Christ is God and man in reality and truth after the union, and is said to be God and man not merely by title and appellation;

it is clear that the one who says and believes Christ to be, after the union, both God and man together, has thereby confessed, along with the names, the natures of which the names are names;

unless indeed he thinks that the appellations are applied to Christ as bare titles, altogether devoid of realities.

What absurdity, then, has the holy catholic Church of God committed, if she says that the things out of which Christ consists are preserved in Christ, according to an indivisible union, unconfusedly and undividedly according to nature, even after the union?

And what has she thought that is alien to the teaching of the holy Fathers, if she holds that neither has the divine nature of the Word been turned into the nature of the flesh;

nor does she believe that the very nature of the flesh has passed over into the nature of the Word on account of the union — this she teaches the faithful to think and say after the union.

And how does she not rather confirm the patristic tradition, by teaching to think in this way, and confessing one Lord and one Christ, and one and the same Son, and one incarnate nature of God the Word himself who became incarnate, with flesh possessing a rational and noetic soul — taking up this expression according to the interpretation of our holy and blessed Father Cyril;

by saying 'incarnate', understanding thereby that the reference to our essence is being introduced, and not denying the nature of the flesh of the Word on account of the union.

For it is the property of true faith to confess what we have been taught to think.

If, then, the things out of which Christ consists are preserved according to nature after the union, it is certainly right also to think that they exist in Christ after the union.

And if it is right to think that the things out of which Christ consists are preserved after the union, then to confess them would be much more the most just and, at the same time, the most fitting, and most essential for all who are concerned about salvation;

if indeed the demonstration of true faith is the confession that corresponds to it without any deficiency.

And so much, then, concerning these matters.

For there is no need to say more, since I am addressing this discourse to you, and to those who, by grace, are ignorant of nothing pertaining to the right faith of Christ.

Concerning the things you wrote to me, most honored ones, I have conveyed our esteemed letter also to the blessed servant of God, the all-laudable prefect;

and he promised eagerly to fulfill every command of yours;

and I do not cease reminding him, until he should altogether bring your command to completion.

And may the Lord and God of all, and our Savior Jesus Christ, who willingly accepted death on our behalf, and by his own blood redeemed us from the power of darkness, and gave us the new commandment that we love one another to the same degree that we ourselves have been loved;

may he himself hold your right hand, and guide you into every good work, and direct your steps according to him;

bearing you, in the fullness of the fruits of righteousness, into the wondrous place of his tabernacle, where is the dwelling of all who rejoice.

18. By the same author, in the person of George, the all-laudable prefect of Africa, to ascetic women who had apostatized from the catholic Church in Alexandria.

I, for my part, thought that you had truly been well founded, and had the foundations of your soul unshaken, grounded in the right and pious confession and hope that accord with the blameless and unfaltering faith of Christ — you who revered the grace of God that had called you, and that had united you to the living, perfect, and blameless body of the holy catholic and apostolic Church;

and had already restored to health you who had fallen away through the wasting disease of error and ignorance, and had made you a useful member of the common body of the Church;

the Church in which the pious, right, true, and salvific word of the apostolic faith is proclaimed in full vigor, making all that is under heaven to be within itself;

and continually adding and joining what is lacking to that which has already been gathered together;

and showing that all people, from the ends of the earth to its ends, are one soul and one tongue in the Spirit, according to the concord and unanimity of the faith;

which faith the Word of God, the Creator of mankind, having ineffably and truly become man — from men, for men, according to men — by the assumption of flesh possessing a rational and noetic soul, and having become man not by any change of the deity, namely without sin, taught us men to confess and to embrace, in no way whatsoever denying either of his natures after the union, that is, after the enhominization;

neither the divine nature, according to which he is and remains always, in himself, God, and consubstantial with the Father;

nor the human nature, according to which the same one truly became man for our sake, as the lover of mankind, and is consubstantial with us.

For neither was he turned from what he was and is, and shall forever be by nature: God;

nor indeed did he alter the nature of that which he became — man, by an indivisible union with ensouled flesh — being one and the same, both God and man;

in truth being properly God and man, and being truly so named.

That which results from the union is one and unique according to hypostasis, but does not have oneness according to nature, as the Fathers teach, saying: 'For even if the combination of both is one, it is not one by nature in their conjunction' — according to which union, having condescended, as good, to become composite for our sake by the economy, he preserves unimpaired, even after the incarnation, that which is simple according to nature, according to which he is of the same nature as the Father and remains consubstantial with him.

For divinity and humanity are not the same thing.

For even though the Word of God became man, he became man by the assumption of flesh united to him indivisibly according to hypostasis, in a noetic manner;

being both this and that without deficiency;

neither being confused by the utterly unique character of the hypostasis, according to which the principle of difference is altogether absent;

nor being divided by the pure otherness of the natures out of which he is constituted;

according to which otherness the principle of difference is in no way abolished on account of the union.

Since, then, the difference of the natures out of which Christ consists is preserved unconfusedly even after the union, there is not, I think, any argument whatsoever able to show that it would be right for the number of the things that differ naturally and are preserved in Christ according to an indivisible union not to be confessed;

because every difference certainly introduces along with itself a number of certain things that differ from one another in some respect.

For never could anyone, even if he be most resourceful and most inventive, be able to assert that there is difference apart from number, if he thinks rightly and gives even the slightest consideration to truth;

clearly knowing that every difference is either an otherness of certain things according to essence, or a dissimilarity of certain things according to quality and property;

which difference the quantity of the underlying realities certainly produces, whether they exist in union or even apart from it.

For in the case of those things in which one and the same principle is not observed in every respect, there is an implication of quantity, of which difference is the property.

If, then, in the case of Christ, it follows according to reason to say that what is altogether unique according to hypostasis belongs to the union, as the Fathers teach;

then, to the difference of the natures out of which Christ consists, which are preserved in Christ even after the union unconfusedly and undividedly, it is consistent and fitting to attribute number;

it is clear that, just as the one who does not say that Christ, on account of the hypostatic union, is one incarnate nature of God the Word — rightly understood according to the interpretation of our most holy Father and teacher Cyril — does not believe that the union has taken place;

so also the one who does not confess the two natures after the union, out of which Christ consists, cannot say that the difference is preserved.

For the difference after the union is a difference of the natural otherness of the things out of which Christ consists, and not merely of a dissimilarity according to quality alone, apart from the natures underlying the qualities.

without which it is among the things impossible for quality to exist in itself,

lest we introduce a bare — or rather, to speak more properly, a false and non-existent — difference.

Persuaded that we hold this confession of the faith precisely, according to the Fathers, I never hesitated to write to all, everywhere, at any time — to patriarchs and bishops and rulers, and to our most pious and ever-radiant emperors themselves — for the thanksgiving of God, making manifest to all your genuine transference to Christ and your faith,

and I never thought, as I said, that you would so quickly be turned away from your saving calling.

But since, because of my sins, the evil one — who from the beginning through deceit drags the human race down into ruin and destruction — was also able to persuade you to prefer falsehood to truth,

and, on account of an evil habit, [to prefer], more than God and the goods laid up for the saints, to hand yourselves over to a deception unto death — [the deception] of those who have been taught to do nothing but entice —

you resolved to turn away from the grace of Christ.

For the time being, give the gifts that have come to you from me to the man Theopemptos, who alone was sent by me for this very purpose, together with a written mandate, so that you may have no doubt whatsoever concerning this.

And again, if it should seem fitting to our most pious, Christ-loving, and ever-radiant emperors, and to the most holy patriarchs — who, through me, as I come with God's help into the presence of their Serenity, are learning all things concerning you, concerning your apostasy and such great wickedness and ingratitude — that something [further] be done, I shall judge it to be well.

For I will not pass over so great an evil in silence.

But if, taking to mind the fearful tribunal of Christ, at which, in the presence of angels and archangels and the whole host of the heavenly armies, and of all human nature, the case that I shall bring against you concerning this will be convened, you repent, and return again to the God who has called you in grace —

then I wish you to keep possession, even now, of that very foundation which was granted to you by me;

and I will not cease, for as long as I am appointed to live this present and temporal life, to devise ways for your greater support.

And I would not refuse to give myself as a ransom for your souls, should occasion necessarily call for this to come to pass.

Indeed I will give [myself] readily, as God, through his grace, calls me to this —

if only you would restore yourselves again to Christ God,

and, through your return, would rightly heal the cutting-off and separation that has come upon you from his body.

19. Of the same [author], to Pyrrhus, the most devout presbyter and abbot.

Having read your holy letter, O Father honored by God, I recognized your whole mind to have been wholly imbued with the Spirit,

and I perceived it to have stood so far outside natural understanding, as I discerned it to have laid hold of divine and supra-natural wisdom.

For through your letters I seemed to see, as it were present, your very own God-wise mind, flashing forth with the undefiled rays of the Spirit alone —

rays by which it is naturally transfigured toward the more divine, [that mind belonging to] him who has been deemed worthy to be adopted as son by the Father of all;

and I recognized it redeeming me from ignorance of the divine doctrines, to the very degree that I had previously seemed to cling to knowledge of them.

"Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked."

But I do not only call blessed her who bore you, honored Father, as one deemed worthy to become the mother of such a man;

but I also [call blessed] your understanding, which ever conceives, and bears in the womb, and gives birth to pious reason —

as one shown, by grace, to be a womb capable of containing the Word who is above nature, on account of the affinity of your mind's intent toward the Word himself.

And indeed, according to your steadfast dispositions issuing from your heart, by which, after the manner of breasts, you nourish the Word both in practice and in contemplation — [the Word] growing together with the supply of pious thoughts and manners —

and, paradoxically speaking, making its own growth to be the deification of the mind that nourishes it.

For what else could I have uttered to you, honored Father, beholding you to have become the begetter of such words —

through which words, as from a certain mountain-peak of the height of knowledge, you disclosed the decree concerning the divine doctrines, brought and issued as it were like god-inscribed tablets, through the new Mediator and, for us, the great Moses, the priest of priests, and the exarch of the divine priesthood over the whole inhabited world;

[a decree] which bound the churches yet more together in concord, as they counted for nothing the innovation concerning the faith that appeared to many to have occurred in the city of Alexandria.

For the decree that was given preserved, in its entirety, this very understanding, according to which our God-bearing Fathers handed down [the faith] for the holy churches to believe:

declaring [him to be] one and the same God the Word, both before the flesh and with the flesh —

[flesh] which he himself, for our sake, united to himself hypostatically, [flesh] ensouled with a rational soul, having been assumed from the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary;

he himself having deigned to become, that is to say, the very sowing of his own incarnation,

so that he might also truly become man,

and might show, by the seedless conception and the incorrupt birth, that nature was being renewed, and yet suffered no diminishment through this renewal.

For the mystery was, on account of God's goodness toward mankind, a voluntary self-emptying — but the willing condescension through the flesh was not a lapse of divinity;

for he remained what he was, even while becoming what he was not.

And what he became, he preserved, having remained what he was — for he is a lover of mankind —

and through the things he suffered in a manner befitting man, [thereby] confirming that what he was underwent no change.

For he operated the divine things in a fleshly manner, because it was through flesh that was not devoid of its natural operation;

and the human things divinely, because he admitted the experience of human sufferings according to volition, sovereignly, but not according to [external] necessity.

For neither [did he do] the divine things divinely [alone], since he was not a bare God;

nor the human things fleshly [alone], since he was not a mere man;

and the sufferings did not occur apart from a wonder;

but the former — the wonders, if I may dare to say so — were not impassible;

And both were paradoxical, because both the divine [things] and the human, proceeding as from one and the same incarnate God the Word, through both realities really confirmed the truth both of that from which he [was composed], and of what he actually was.

For that which is brought to completion, unconfusedly, from certain [components], by a union according to natural conjunction, both preserves unchanged the natures from which it is constituted, and preserves undiminished their constitutive powers, unto the fulfillment of one single work.

whether what took place was a suffering or a wonder, according to the image of your marvelous example, Father, fitting for the mystery of the divine incarnation — that of the sword that has been set aflame, whose cutting we know to be burning, and whose burning we know to be cutting.

For a conjunction of fire and iron has come to be according to hypostasis, with neither having departed from its natural power on account of the union with the other;

yet neither does it possess this [power] as unrestrained after the union, nor as separated from that which is compounded and subsists together with it.

This, then, is the precision of the divine doctrines that I found wisely woven into your letters; and, having set my mind upon it according to the limited power for understanding that is united to me, I prayed to become able to guard it, and to hold it fast in my understanding, so that it might not admit any effacement through some forgetfulness.

But you, O Father honored by God, have compassion on me, your servant, and, as one who loves mankind, grant the pardon that is due to one who is unable to undertake the things commanded.

And do not condemn me for disobedience;

but rather accept me as one who strives to become aware of his own ignorance.

For rashness is hateful, and the firstborn offspring of the utmost ignorance,

according to which the disease of pride is naturally wont to show itself, creating in those who are seized by it a disposition set against God;

and receive my refusal in this matter as pure of all base affection,

and do not reject me, as I set before you the very same words which, in such matters, Moses first, and Jeremiah afterward, set before God:

"I am slow of speech and slow of tongue."

Slow of tongue, and deprived of the understanding needed to speak good things well;

having neither a mind capable of laying hold of divine things, nor speech in utterance able to serve the magnitude of the matters inquired into.

For I am still young with respect to the passions, and I possess the rebellion of the flesh gaining the advantage over the law of the spirit.

Moreover, even if we should grant, hypothetically, that I lack nothing of the capacity needed for these matters, who is so brazen and so bold as to add further ordinances to what has already been decreed hierarchically according to the divine vote?

Rather, I beseech you, by your honored letters, to clarify for me by definition: what is 'operation,' and in how many senses is 'operation' spoken of, and what, distinct from this, pertains to the product of operation;

and what difference we ascribe to these in relation to 'work' and 'action,' so that I may be able to know the meaning of what has been written.

For I have not yet been able to determine precisely what, and in what sense — whether spoken or conceived — one ought to understand the term 'one operation.'

For we do not simply utter meaningless sounds, but we signify concepts by our words.

for the mystery of our salvation consists not in syllables, but in thoughts and deeds.

For the one thing they did, caring for peace;

and the other, establishing souls in the truth.

And so much, then, concerning these things.

and that they undertook to become all things which the exact sense of the divine commandment requires, as men desiring the things of God, and having the incarnate Word alone as the pattern of their own life.

For they are worthy of your zeal for this, because they draw blamelessly the divine yoke of virtue and knowledge.

and let it be justly said of me too, what one of the wise men outside our own discourse said, upon observing a certain tasteless person puffed up over something —

"The wise man, with a smile, provoked the fool to outrage."

In all things, then, holy Father, forgive me, your servant, and by your all-holy prayers propitiate Christ God on my behalf, whom you continually serve through purity of mind and exactness of life.

20. By the same author, to Marinus the monk.

I, for my part, knowing the multitude of my own transgressions, and foreseeing the condemnation that will, as is likely, come upon me for them after my departure from this life,

and considering in my soul that great and dreadful tribunal as already convened, at which each of us shall receive, according to our worth, recompense for what we have done —

I resolved to keep silence as my companion, sparing myself in every way, as it seems to me, from the divine words that are beyond me, lest I be condemned the more, and the more justly, as one who utters the words of God while they lie deadened by my own want of good works, and are therefore unable to impart to the hearers the life that is in grace;

and having no power to display, in my own conduct as the one who speaks them, the manner of the virtues,

but rather having slain those very words, and offering to the hearers, in my whole wicked conduct of life, a living and to-all-manifest image of contempt toward them.

I, then, as I have said, both knowing and fearing these things, shook off my eagerness for speaking and writing the divine words, judging it to be the greatest injustice — and a ruinous loss — to receive empty praise from my hearers for things whose practice I do not possess.

But since the most holy abbot — a man of great prudence, and altogether precious to me, whom I was unable to refuse on account of the beauty of the virtues that fittingly adorn him according to divine understanding — has overcome my resolve of silence with the many charms of divine reasonings,

and has compelled me to compose this modest letter to your piety, having recounted to me some part of your achievements in accordance with God, and having greatly benefited me thereby;

I thought it necessary to state briefly those things which are profitable and salutary to you and to me, and to all who are willing to hear.

"The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord;"

"and good understanding belongs to all who practice it."

But if fear is established as the beginning of wisdom, then clearly the end of wisdom is, by nature, good understanding, for those who practice it.

If, then, these things are so, let us strive with all our power to acquire the fear of God, and good understanding.

Fear, so that we may flee the defilements of sin, shaking them off from the soul through expectation of the eternal punishments;

and understanding, so that we may be shown to be knowledgeable doers of all the divine wills.

For he who fears the penalties for transgressing the divine commandments is not captured by the passions that defile his soul;

and he who possesses good understanding inwardly — distinguishing, according to right reason, temporal things from eternal — becomes richly adorned with all divine goods, in no way permitting the knowledge within him to be shown idle.

For as fear, in those who truly fear God, becomes the destroyer of unclean passions,

so too understanding, in those who are truly understanding, becomes the fashioner of all the virtues.

Therefore let us fear God, and do nothing of what He does not will;

and let us love His understanding;

and let us neglect nothing of what He wills us to do.

For he who fears God hates all lawlessness, and he who has made good understanding to dwell within him loves all righteousness.

For just as hatred of lawlessness signifies the one who fears God,

so too love of righteousness makes manifest the man of understanding.

Let us not, then, fashion our fear by mere outward manners of gloominess, nor display piety as existing only up to appearances;

but by the disposition of the soul, and by humility of heart, secured deep within by frequent sighs;

and by the scourge of the memory of former sins striking it invisibly in the conscience, and therefore, drawing inward upon itself, it does not bear to look at all upon the faults of others.

For he who feigns the fear of God by mere outward manners differs in no way whatsoever from the ape, which imitates the manners and gestures of men.

For this creature, among the four-footed animals, though standing by nature far removed from human nature, seems by its imitation of manners to those who observe it to be a man, although it possesses nothing human by nature;

just as also the one who imitates the manners of those who truly fear the Lord, so as to deceive those who behold him, but does not have the disposition of his intent formed by the divine fear equally with them, is in reality — and is rightly called — some other Sadducee or Scribe;

preserving the outward form of piety with external decorum,

but falling short of the reality, on account of the unclean affection for the passions lying somewhere in the depths of the soul.

Nor, again, let us display divine knowledge by mere utterance of words polished for beauty;

nor let us define good understanding as consisting merely in the bare ability to speak, apart from acting;

but rather by the disposition of the soul shaped through practice by the virtues, and therefore, on the one hand, by action making bright the radiance of knowledge;

and, on the other hand, by knowledge illumining the vigor of action;

so that fear, joining together through deeds with the desire for God that comes by good understanding, may work in us perfect divine wisdom;

beginning, on the one hand, in the abstention from evils that comes through divine fear, and being perfected, on the other hand, in the practice of the commandments that comes through good understanding.