Opuscula Theologica et Polemica 1 part 9/12

So too, to say that something is not without essence does not make the hypostasis to be essence, but presents it as possessing essence, so that we may recognize it properly not as a bare property, but together with that in which the property is found.

Just as, then, in that case 'enhypostatic' signifies, properly, 'having real subsistence' —

and 'having real subsistence' is that which partakes of essential and natural existence —

so here too, 'operative', or rather 'operational', properly signifies 'empowered'.

And 'empowered' is that which has essential and natural power.

Therefore, to confess that the natures in Christ are not without hypostasis or without operation is not to gather together hypostases or agents operating, but rather to confess orthodoxly their essential and natural existences and operations, unto that of him who is from them, and in them, and according to them —

I mean, the natures — a true confirmation and assurance of the incarnate God the Word operating according to the indivisible union.

By what reasoning, then, while they themselves refer many operations — indeed more than can be numbered — to one and the same subject, by saying 'every divine and human operation',

— for the word 'every' suggests that we understand not one, nor two at all, nor three, but operations infinite and surpassing number, just as also the words 'all things' and 'everything' do —

they in no way suspect there to be division;

yet this same charge, when directed against those who, following the divine Fathers, confess the two natural operations — going only so far as to acknowledge the difference — they, I know not how or why, associate with those who bring together agents operating.

For if the many and diverse operations according to nature do not divide and cut the one and the same subject into many agents operating, how could the two?

And who is there to charge the onslaught, instead, with being unreasonable?

For if they were not saying and attributing these operations to the same subject and of the same subject — operations that have grown together with one another through their total mutual interpenetration, and are preserved in him according to the indivisible union, and are set in motion by him, moving in unified fashion now according to one, now according to the other, through which he divinely put forth the power of wonders as God by nature, and, willing the experience of the sufferings, accepted them for our sake as man by nature — then indeed their onslaught would not be improbable.

But now, since they do not say this, but rather refer these operations to the same subject and lead them back to the same subject, whence and how do they gather together the charge of agents operating?

And why, if it were reasonable, do they not first charge themselves with the many, so far as concerns the many operations?

For just as, on their view, the two operations entail the two agents, so surely of necessity also the many operations entail the many agents.

But if this is so, I am not able to see how the other conclusion follows — nor, I think, is anyone else who prefers the truth to mere appearance.

And how again, as if self-contradictorily, do they set forth, in his case, the one against the many?

And what is this 'one', and how do they teach it as doctrine?

For it is not possible for the same subject to have both many and one.

And if one, how again many?

For either the one will altogether repel the many, or the many will repel the one, according to their own argument, by which they put forward the one for the overthrow of the two natural operations.

But if perhaps they say that the one is composed out of the many, it does not lie in the nature of things, as has been said, for things that exist in a substrate to be thus composed.

Nor again is it possible for the one, made out of many, to be cut up again into many.

Let them, then, first do away with the many by means of the one operation, lest they introduce many agents operating against themselves.

And let them again, by means of the many, do away with the one, lest they teach as doctrine a consubstantiation, and thus, if indeed they are not powerless, make war against those who profess the two.

For it is not at all possible for those who overturn themselves together with their own tenets to fall upon others, having needed nothing else whatsoever for this.

For that which has a foundation — being itself — is firmly established by it, suffering no falling-away whatsoever from any quarter.

For indeed that alone is truly vigorous and strong which has truth confirming it,

but not that which receives its refutation from another — let alone from itself.

Having let go of these errors, then, it is altogether fitting that we, being pious, and really confessing the existence of each of the natures preserved in the one incarnate God the Word, should also altogether confess the innate operation, just as indeed also the will —

and, through pious and most true belief concerning each — the divine together with the human — to confirm the orthodox teaching of the holy Fathers concerning the things naturally belonging to him, Fathers who have handed down to the holy catholic Churches of God to think and to say these things concerning him;

and to deny nothing of the things which he was from the beginning, and which he became for our sake afterward, nor any of all the properties that naturally characterize these;

for they taught that he is perfect in each nature, and is the same subject in both, preserving without deficiency the natural property of each of those natures out of which he existed, and that he is like us in all things, and likewise was tested in respect of the act of willing, apart from sin alone.

Hearkening, then, to these blessed utterances, we deny nothing at all, either of the things that are ours and natural, or of the things that are paternal and divine, in the case of the same subject;

but we profess that the same subject has different natures, and natural operations, and essential wills — that is, two of each.

For neither our nature, nor indeed the paternal nature, exists apart from essence, or from innate will or operation.

And if this is so, it is clear that he who subsists from these — I mean, from divinity and humanity — subsisting according to one and the same hypostasis, and being properly the very one who is both God and man, is consubstantial with us and of like operation, and has the same innate act of willing according to his humanity;

and is consubstantial with the Father and of like operation, and possesses the same act of willing according to his divinity, and is wholly akin to those above according to all that pertains to that kinship, and wholly akin to those below according to all that pertains to that kinship, apart from sin alone.

And whoever does not so profess does not accept as God-inspired Fathers those who proclaim these things;

but it is clear whom, and what sort of Fathers, he does accept.

May it be granted that all of us, through the mediation of your God-wrought prayers, being guarded always in soul and body within the temple of God, the catholic and apostolic Church, may profess this sincere and orthodox confession of our great God and Savior before him and before all creation, and may offer it to him in place of all things and before all things at his all-glorious appearing, and may be deemed worthy by him of, and share in, the same reward of the eternal and blessed gifts promised to those who confess him without shame before men, and may enjoy in actual experience, according to our prayers, those things of which, having now been deemed worthy in faith, we have already tasted — by the prayers and intercessions of our all-glorious and all-holy immaculate Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, and of all the saints.

'The invisible' is a negation of 'the seen'.

But when it is affirmed, it is not affirmed with reference to sight, but 'the visible' is affirmed;

which is the correlate of 'not-invisible', that is, that to which 'not-invisible' bears its relation.

But of sight, it is not 'not-invisible' but 'blindness' that is the correlate with reference to which it is affirmed.

Against those who say that nature is not without hypostasis:

one must turn the argument back upon them, saying that neither is hypostasis without essence.

Then it must be added that, just as to say that hypostasis is not without essence does not present it as being essence,

— for to do so would be both to divide and to confound: on the one hand the mystery of theology, and on the other that of the economy —

so too, to say that nature is not without hypostasis does not introduce hypostasis.

Every distinction among beings occurs either according to contrariety, or according to opposition — that is, either by division or by abolition.

For example, sensible things and intelligible things have contrariety, as being of different essence, but they are not opposed to one another.

For these are not mutually abolishing of one another, and for this reason they admit, with respect to each other, the distinction according to contrariety, that is, division;

but life and death have distinction, not according to contrariety, but the oppositional kind, that is, the abolishing kind.

For the position of the one becomes the removal of the other;

and the existence of the one constitutes the non-existence of the other.

If, then, something is primarily opposed to another, it has also, consequently, altogether come to be in contrariety with it;

but if something is primarily in contrariety to another, it is not at all, consequently, opposed to it.

...admit, with respect to one another, the distinction according to contrariety, as do soul and body, and all things differing in essence;

but the things around essence, that is, qualities, have the distinction according to opposition, as life and death, and whatever else is of this kind.

For these are plainly mutually abolishing of one another.

SCHOLION. By 'contrariety', understand 'division';

and by 'opposition', understand 'abolition'.

For the one of them exists in the essences, while the other is inherent in what pertains to the essence.

And in the case of some of them, both concur marvelously — negation, and again division.

But the other, in turn, has the power to divide, not to negate.

Union according to essence applies to the hypostases, that is, to individuals.

Union according to hypostasis applies to essences, that is, to soul and body.

Union according to relation applies to the deliberative inclinations, uniting them into one will.

Union according to juxtaposition applies to boards.

Union according to fitting together applies to stones.

Union according to blending applies to liquids, such as wine and water and the like.

Union according to kneading applies to dry and wet things, such as flour and water. Union according to fusion applies to things that melt, such as wax and pitch, and the like.

Union according to heaping applies to dry things, such as wheat and barley, and the like.

Union according to coalescence applies to things that are drawn apart and again restored.

as, for example, a torch-flame proceeding from a fire, and again being restored to it.

Union according to essence occurs among things of differing hypostases.

Union according to hypostasis occurs among things of differing essence.

If, according to the same principle as that of the will, the Fathers also predicated ignorance of Christ, then those who say that the will is not contemplated in Christ by appropriation must of necessity also say that he is ignorant.

And how is he God, who does not know the things to come?

Moreover, this also introduces him as a mere man, according to the heresy of the Agnoetae already condemned.

But if, to avoid the absurdity that follows from this, they say that the ignorance is by appropriation — as also the abandonment and the non-subjection — let them likewise say the same of the will.

For the Fathers coupled ignorance together with the will, preserving for it the same principle as for the will.

as Athanasius says in his book Against the Arians, and Gregory the Theologian in his first oration On the Son, and others in other writings.

If every word and expression not spoken by the Fathers is manifestly established as an innovation, then one of two things is necessary: either to show that the phrase 'to speak of natural wills in the case of Christ' is in fact a phrase of the Fathers;

or, being unable to show it, let them know that they are introducing an innovation of their own teaching under the name of the Fathers.

But if, understanding their other expressions according to their own purpose, they set up such a coinage of terms,

then if the second alternative is blameworthy, so too is the first.

The questions posed by the rhetor, most holy and God-honored father, do not so much possess the reasonableness of a genuine difficulty, as they display the irrationality of that difficulty—

both from his falsehood, and from his contentious aim to overturn the divine incarnation of the Only-Begotten.

For it is not according to the same principle as that of the will, as he claims, that the Fathers predicated ignorance also of Christ.

For who is able to demonstrate this — even though these men, as is their custom, not only fabricate things that in no way exist, but also boldly bring them forward against themselves?

Or thus there would be the same principle for ignorance and for will, bringing into identity with one another things that are, in the proper sense, utterly incompatible;

since the one, indeed, signifies the negation of what exists;

while the other presents the positing of what exists — which is manifestly impossible, just as possession and privation are in no way at all identical to one another.

For it is not the case that, because the divine and great Gregory also enumerates this objection as proposed by the Arians —

I mean, indeed, ignorance — that he thereby declared it to be identical with the will.

For he made no explicit mention of the will at all in the passage where he expounds these things, saying: 'But do you, for me, reckon along with these the sayings of seeming ignorance: "My God," and "your God";'

and 'greater,' 'created,' 'sanctified,' and what follows.

But if, merely because he included it along with the rest, they perhaps attempt to bring ignorance into identity with the will, then surely, in every case, there will also be 'My God,' and 'your God';

and 'greater,' said with reference to the Father, and 'to create' and 'to sanctify,' will, according to them, be identical with ignorance on account of this coordination — since he coordinated these too together with ignorance.

But if this constitutes an aberration of the mind, then that other claim is all the more a deviation on the part of those who reason thus — let alone of those who attempt to say or write it.

Moreover, if the principle of ignorance and of will is the same, then either all things that will by nature must also, in every case, be ignorant; or all things that are ignorant by nature must also, in every case, will;

therefore God too, willing by nature, will fall into the passion of ignorance; and all inanimate things, being by nature ignorant, will be moved by a natural will.

And if this is so, then Christ himself too, who subsists from divinity and humanity, having — as they themselves say — both ignorance and will by appropriation, will surely also, in every case, have by nature an ignorance that stands against the divine will.

And I forbear to say that, even if this is claimed mistakenly on account of the appropriation—

nevertheless they have been shown to be advocates of the very thing they contended against, themselves too establishing two wills — the one according to nature, I mean, and the one according to appropriation;

which are manifestly two, together with an equal number of corresponding ignorances — which is also absurd: to hold a twofold ignorance in Christ, who has not even a single one, but rather utterly abolishes every ignorance, if indeed he is the wisdom and power of God.

But which appropriation, then, do they mean?

The essential appropriation, according to which each thing, having by nature the properties belonging to it, appropriates them on account of its nature;

or the relational appropriation, according to which we naturally cherish and appropriate to ourselves the things belonging to one another, without ourselves undergoing or performing any of these things.

But if they mean the first, then they have rather declared God incarnate to be a mere man, teaching as dogma that he is by nature ignorant;

but if the second, then they declare him to be not man at all, but only God without flesh — as one who appropriates the things of the flesh only in a bare relation, and not, as man, naturally appropriating what is natural, while still being and remaining God.

Since indeed, in the very passage where he posits the ignorance, the Teacher clearly enumerates also all the natural properties of God incarnate;

such as sleeping, hungering, thirsting, growing weary, weeping, being in anguish, submitting to suffering, the cross, death;

along with which also the resurrection and the ascension, by which he has also saved us, having voluntarily received these things according to nature on our behalf, and having suffered.

If, then, they hold that these things came to be in Christ according to a bare relational appropriation, and do not maintain them to be natural, as belonging to the incarnate Logos as man, what then will they leave for Apollinaris and Mani?

For they have exceeded even Severus in impiety, having outdone him in audacity — since he, at any rate, did not so much rise up against the truth, but rather made use of the language of the natural properties, even though he sets aside the nature of the flesh, compressing the differing natures into one.

For these things will befall those who mix together things that cannot be mixed, and who thrust aside and pervert the mind of the Fathers, which sets forth all things distinctly, in due order.

Hence the all-glorious and God-bearing teacher, in his second oration On the Son, sets forth the following concerning ignorance, defining it, as it were, by a certain rule and pattern — although they first brought these very words forward for us without explanation, snatching away the hearer's judgment.

'Surely it is clear to all that he knows without need of explanation as God, but is said to be ignorant as man — if one separates what appears from what is discerned.'

He posits, then, that the ignorance is to be understood only in relation to the conceptual distinction of the essences;

while the natural wills, and everything else that is natural apart from sin alone, are to be recognized in the union according to hypostasis of the natures of the incarnate Logos himself — for the most authoritative confirmation of the natures out of which, and in which, and which he is.

If, then, we contemplate the ignorance in the conceptual distinction, it does not properly belong to him at all — since it does not even belong to us by nature as constitutive, even though it is said to be ours on account of the ancient transgression: such as ignorance, abandonment, disobedience, insubordination.

For what principle of our nature, or what is constitutive of our essence, is present in these things?

For if we know the incarnate Logos not in distinction, nor imagine him according to a bare concept, but believe him to exist in the utmost union of the natures according to hypostasis;

it is clear that none of the things taken in division according to mere conception belongs to him at all;

but we maintain properly and solely as his those things which are natural along with the nature, and which are apart from the disgrace that comes through sin — things really preserved and confessed by the pious, in the unity of person and in the one hypostasis that is his.

Therefore, if the will is not natural and constitutive of our essence, let them demonstrate it.

For man is by nature capable of willing — and this capacity, together with the other natural properties of the incarnate Logos who has come to be, according to essence, man, and who exists, and is known to exist, as capable of willing according to both the natures of which he is composed, truly belongs to him; or else the other natural properties too, together with it — I mean, of course, the natural will — will be known, in the division according to mere conception, only nominally, but not properly and really; and, according to them, the contemplation and mystagogy of the whole economy of salvation will be reduced to the same.

Or rather, the incarnation itself, properly speaking, will be taken by them according to division and mere imagination — since nothing natural is confessed by them to be in Christ according to union, no, not even nature itself at all.

For where nothing natural exists, nature itself can never exist either.

Just as, where nature properly exists, the things that pertain to it are present without exception, apart from sin alone.

to receive this gladly, and sincerely to agree with us;

but not to lean upon the arguments — spun, as it were, from the spider's web of their feeble reasoning — against us who believe orthodoxly in him: that from the things of which Christ consists, in these Christ is;

and in which things Christ is, these things are Christ;

Christ is, therefore, God and man at the same time;

and he is both in divinity and in humanity;

and he was united both from divinity and from humanity

Of the same holy Maximus: Resolution of the second absurdity

On demonstrating that the Fathers speak of the wills as natural — a demonstration we shall then give, whenever those who have stopped up the hearing-faculty of the soul against all things divine and patristic are able, or, to speak more properly, are willing, to understand.

For if they are willing to cleanse this [faculty], as it were from some passion of contentiousness, and clearly — or rather, dispassionately — to fix the eye of the mind, in accordance with reason, upon the many-lit and sacred radiance of the teaching handed down from the fathers, they will surely understand that they call [the wills] natural wills;

from the fact that all of them explicitly say and teach in common: 'natural appetite,' and 'innate appetite,' and that the flesh has, by nature, the not willing to die;

for this is a disparagement of nature

And how, he says, could the will be common to both?

And where, then, would the diversity of nature be manifest in a single will?

For it is wholly necessary that the volition run together with the nature, and that nature does not will to die, but clings to the present life

And just as hungering and thirsting are no fault, neither is the desiring of the present life [a fault]

For the affection for what is present is implanted by nature

since the flesh, which he assumed for our sake together with all the things that naturally belong to it, has also the [property of] shrinking from death

These are the doctrines of Athanasius, and Basil, and Gregory, and John, and Theophilus, and Cyril — the ever-memorable [Fathers] — and of the other approved Fathers

What greater proof than these is there, that they proclaim the wills to be natural?

And what contradiction, and from whom, [could there be], since there is no ambiguity whatsoever in these statements, nor any concealment of any kind?

We, therefore, do not from this innovate expressions, as those on the opposing side allege, but we confess the words of the Fathers;

nor, thinking to our own purpose, do we institute new terms;

for this would be presumptuous, and an invention that is the work of a heretical and deranged mind;

but we piously bring forward these [words] as they were conceived and spoken by the saints themselves

But what room, and from whence, will they have not to understand [it] entirely thus, but to hold opinions otherwise and contrary to these, if indeed they wish to be pious at all, and not to deviate from the patristic teaching?

For if, out of embarrassment at the natural [wills], they shall make them altogether hypostatic, that is, personal, they will thereby also introduce a personal diversity; or [if they make them] contrary to nature, they teach the defection of the essences, having driven the natures — or rather themselves — into non-existence.

For indeed, whatever pertains to the personal, and to what is contrary to nature — even granting that such a thing could be spoken of at all — does not exist;

since it is not known at all, once the wills that exist according to essence have departed.

For whether [they call them] divine and human, or deifying and deified, or created and uncreated, or however else they might wish to name them, we are piously led to call the wills in Christ 'natural,' and not otherwise, wishing thereby to signify the natural diversity of the things of which he is composed.

For if it is altogether necessary, according to the Fathers, that the volition run together with the nature, and it is not possible, evidently, to speak of the will as common to both essences, nor does the diversity of nature appear in a single will, it is clear that the wills must altogether necessarily be called two natural [wills];

and be recognized without division.

What argument, then, do they have against these things, or what coinage of terms would they fashion for themselves, interpreting the patristic [teachings] according to their own purpose?

And what, then, would they wish the pious [believer] to choose, once he has fallen away from the natural wills — the personal ones?

And who will endure the division of the One into persons?

And who could bear the abyss of wickedness and non-existence, into which they are little by little driving themselves?

Yet let them credit themselves with this: that, having set out to war against the number of the wills, they turned instead to [debating] their natural character — which perhaps we even concede to them to name as they wish — while failing on the point of the number in these matters, until, having learned anew from their improper terminology the absurdity [of their position], and the unsuitable end to which it leads them, they too might be persuaded to confess natural wills according to the Fathers.

And who would not marvel at their evasiveness?

how, having resorted to certain circuits and roundabout courses, they contrive to strip away the great mystery of the divine economy concerning us.

For at one time, bringing the will to bear against the natural operations, by means of the one [will], as they say, introducing for themselves the one [operation], they proceeded [to attack] the two operations;

and at another time [bringing forward] ignorance against the wills, on the ground that the will ceases along with it, since it is reckoned among things external [to the nature].

and at another time, the complete denial of all natural things, through [the doctrine of] appropriation, and — as I have said — the total overthrow of the mystery;

all these things being taken by them, in his case, as a mere relation, and not being recognized as natural, belonging to the humanity of God incarnate through union;

whereas it is necessary not to depart from the truth;

but rather to incline towards it in every respect and to plead its cause, in accordance with the unfailing confirmation — a sincere and most steadfast confession — of the natures of the same one Christ our God, and of the things that belong to those natures;

to whom be glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, unto the endless ages.

This you have shown forth in the Holy Spirit — by which very things, vying, O Father honored by God, in the harmony of sacred manners and of yet more sacred deeds, you surpass others in renown to the very degree that you are able to exert your full vigor, making the constant reaching-forward the goal of your course, and the ever-moving ascent of reason toward the Logos [its goal], so that you might transcend nature itself, and burst through every figure, and purely commune with him who is most pure, according to your withdrawal of yourself alike from all things and toward all things, and your complete transition in relation [to them];

Do thou cover both the mind's [eye], and — you exhort [us] to strike away what merely appears — and to rightly accomplish that virtue which is truly blessed, and revelatory of the blessed, so that, supported by your most sacred prayers, I might be able to accomplish this, leaving behind the sin that so easily besets.

I put forward this same [Father] as a clear interpreter and teacher of his own expression, who defines it to be nothing other than the unbroken union of the innate operations, and the result proceeding from them — I mean the work and the act — as being indicative and declarative of these, whether one has shared in the designation according to the operation, which, properly speaking, is at once something particular and universal.

For insofar as it is brought forth from the essential operation according to natural property, it holds the rank of the particular; just as, again, that [essential operation] in turn, in bringing it forth, [holds the rank] of the universal.

For it is natural that particular things share in the designation of the general things, and that the universal [terms] of existence be predicated of the particular things, yet not that they share in [each other's] designation, so that thereby [the universal] might be somehow individualized and reckoned into the rank of the particular.

The result, then, as I have said, of the two innate operations — that is, the act — as having comprehended both according to their union, the teacher, naming it by the term proper to them, called 'one operation,' because nothing divine or human is accomplished separately, but [everything] is brought forth from one and the same [subject], congenitally, at once and unitedly, according to the unitary interpenetration in these [operations];

yet not for this reason did he say that the essential operation, according to his natural property, was one;

just as [he did not say there was] one essence and nature, on account of the very uniqueness of the one person, sharing in neither of the [natures] of which he was composed;

For even in the union of the natures the difference according to essence is preserved, [this difference] properly preserving along with itself also the [difference] of the things that essentially belong to the natures

And as he demonstrated by this the principle of the union, introducing that of the essential difference, he says: 'But [I do] not [call] his property one — may it never be!'

for the property of divinity and that of humanity are not the same;

that is, [the property] which is fittingly disposed toward natural operation, according to him

And further on again [he says]: 'And to state the same thing universally in another way: it is altogether necessary that the operation of the natures that have come together — whichever they may be — is one, evidently by reason of the communion of the union and of its outcome;'

but to speak of their property as one without confusion — even, perhaps, in the case of things where there is absolutely no room for confusion conceivable at all.

Most clearly, then, through his own words the Father made plain his own meaning, not saying that the operation in Christ was one in essence, lest confusion and disorder be brought upon his parts;

nor, on the whole, [saying it was] hypostatic, lest a separation and division of the extremes should occur in him;

I mean, of the Father without beginning, and of the immaculate Mother;

for by hypostasis, and by their hypostatic properties, he is clearly distinguished from them;