Antirrheticus Against Apollinarius 1 part 1/7

OF GREGORY, BISHOP OF NYSSA: ANTIRRHETICUS AGAINST [THE WORK] OF APOLLINARIUS. A fine prooemium for our discourse would be the voice of the Lord, bidding us take heed of false prophets, who come, he says, to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves;

"By their fruits you shall know them."

If, then, the fruit distinguishes both the true sheep and the destroyer of the sheep, who under a tame guise slips unguarded into the flock's company and brings into the open the hostile mouth hidden beneath that tame appearance, it is fitting to seek out the fruits, both the good and the worse, by which the guise of deceit is uncovered;

For he says: "By their fruits you shall know them."

Of every teaching, then, the good fruit—in my judgment, at least—is the increase of those being saved within the church, while the corrupting and poisonous fruit is the dissolution of those already established.

If, then, one should increase the flock through his words, and extend the vine into every corner of the house, and plant round about the Master's table young shoots transformed from the error of the wild olive into cultivated olives, and cast the mystic rods into the sweet and drinkable stream of teaching—by which the flocks are made fruitful, so that Laban's possession is diminished while Jacob's portion prospers and multiplies with marked offspring—if one should display such fruit of teaching (for, as has been said, the fruit is the increase of truth), he is truly a prophet, prophesying under the Spirit according to the divine purpose;

But if one should strip the tendrils from the vine, and lay waste the divine table by uprooting the planting, and plot against the spiritual watering-place so that the sheep no longer conceive after the patriarch's rods, nor multiply the flock with marked offspring, but instead are driven from the nourishing pasture—that is, the paternal traditions—and lodge outside the fold and are scattered toward alien pastures: when such is the fruit of the teaching, the wolfish shape hidden beneath the sheep's hide would become manifest.

Let us, then, examine what the teaching of Apollinarius the Syrian has sprouted for us: an increase of the flocks or a diminishment, a gathering of the scattered or a dissolution of the established, a defense or an overthrow of the paternal doctrines.

If, then, the aforesaid man's zeal looks toward the better, he is altogether a sheep and not a wolf;

but if the opposite—"Beware of false prophets," says the Lord—let not the mouth escape notice which has been sharpened, with the teeth of innovation, for the maiming and destruction of the body it approaches, and which tears apart the healthy body of the church of God.

But so that what is said may not seem to be mere abuse, we shall set forth one of the treatises circulated by him, whose title is this:

"A Demonstration," he says, "concerning the divine enfleshment according to the likeness of man."

Perhaps, indeed, one who strips bare with precision the sense of the title would have no need of the treatise itself in order to expose the absurdity of the doctrine.

"A Demonstration," he says, "concerning the divine enfleshment according to the likeness of man."

But it would be better to set beside it the divine utterances, for the refutation of this novel coinage of terms.

...that he might heal, in unchanging fashion, our mutability toward evil.

But this man says that God has not been manifested in flesh—which amounts to the same as saying that the Logos, who in the likeness of man and in outward form held converse with human life through the guise of a servant, did not become flesh—but instead he fashions for the Logos some "divine enfleshment," though I do not know what he means by the term: whether the deity, altered from its simple and uncompounded nature, underwent a change into a fleshly counter-impression; or whether, the divine essence remaining in itself, some other "divine enfleshment" appeared as a borderland between the nature of men and of God, being neither man nor God, but somehow partaking of both—which, in that it is an enfleshment, has kinship with the human, but in that it is divine, is greater than what pertains to man.

But indeed it cannot be God;

for the divine is simple by nature and uncompounded;

and from whatever lacks simplicity, deity too, in equal measure, is altogether separated.

But again, neither is it man;

for man is called "man" insofar as he is constituted of a rational soul and a body;

but that in which the two are not thought together—how shall the name "man" be fitted to it? For we speak of "the body of a man" and "the soul of a man" only so long as each of these is considered by itself;

but the concurrence of these two both is and is called "man."

What, then, this "divine enfleshment" is—being neither man nor God—which the title of the treatise fabricates, cannot be discovered from what has been examined.

"A Demonstration," he says, "concerning the divine enfleshment according to the likeness of man."

What again does this indicate, "according to the likeness of man"? That the divine enfleshment comes to be in a manner like the human.

When is this? Is it at the last of days? And where then is the mystery of virginity? For the Lord is not made flesh "according to the likeness of man," as the writer of the treatise says, but by divine power and the Holy Spirit, as the Gospel says.

But is it before the ages? And how is that which exists made like to that which does not exist? For man is last among the things of creation, but the Lord is king before the ages.

According to the likeness of what man, then, does that "divine enfleshment" occur in its pre-eternal sense? According to Adam's? But he did not yet exist.

But according to some other man? And who is this man, thought of as existing before Adam, that God's enfleshment might be made like unto him as a fixed model? For that which is "like" is altogether like to that which exists, not like to that which does not exist.

So that, according to him, two absurdities appear in the argument;

for either the thing formed is found to be older than the one who formed it, or the divine, in becoming flesh, is made like to that which does not exist;

for in the beginning the deity existed, but Adam did not exist.

Therefore, if the divine nature is made flesh according to the likeness of man, the divine enfleshment is made like to that which does not exist;

and that which is made like to what does not exist would itself, in every respect, not exist either.

But he says that that enfleshment came about in some other manner besides the human one.

And what likeness can there be between things of different natures? If, then, it is possible neither in the pre-eternal sense for the divine enfleshment to occur according to the likeness of man, nor at the last of times—when, according to the Lord's dispensation as man, by which God was manifested in flesh, the enfleshment occurs according to the likeness of man (for the mystery of the virgin birth does not admit of such a notion)—then, on both these accounts, he would have given the treatise this title in vain.

That the title, then, is ill-considered and rests on no coherent thought has, I think, been made sufficiently evident by what has been said to those who attend to it carefully.

It would now be time to set forth for examination the treatise itself, as declared by this writing.

I shall write out the opening portions in my own wording, running briefly through the sense, in those places where it is not risky to pass over something written without examination.

"Only," he says, "pious faith was to be reckoned good;"

"for indeed unexamined faith did not profit Eve either;"

Having thus prefaced these things at greater length, he brings in his argument, saying: "Among unbelievers and the heresies it has repeatedly been bruited about that it is not possible for God to become man and to have converse with sufferings — which is also introduced among the heresies under the guise of faith, heresies which, because of his birth from a woman and because of the sufferings, call Christ a man indwelt by God."

Now, which heresies he has in mind that call Christ "a man indwelt by God," he himself would know, and so would anyone instructed in his teachings;

but we, having sojourned in many places and having earnestly conversed both with those who share this doctrine and with those who stand apart from it, concerning the questions raised about the matter, have not yet heard anyone break forth with such an utterance about the mystery, that Christ was "a man indwelt by God."

It would have befitted, then, one who intended to correct mistaken suppositions about the doctrine and to introduce in their place more pious ones, not to fabricate for himself things that do not exist and to fight against what has no reality, but rather to arm himself against what is actually said by those who hold the opposing view.

For not even skilled physicians bring their art to bear against maladies that do not exist, but by their skill take their stand against the disease that has already occurred.

Let him, then, either show someone who has said that God has not been manifested in flesh but that Christ is a man indwelt by God, and then we shall accept his treatise as not having been composed in vain; or, so long as no such disease is found, all will agree that it is futile to grapple with things that do not exist.

But it is not without purpose that he fashions for himself this pretended necessity for his treatise;

rather, so that he might obtain some path and sequence toward the construction of his own doctrine, he has posited as having been said what was not said, in order that, by seeming to contend against these things through his contrived counter-argument, he might establish that the divine is mortal.

For the whole aim of his treatise looks toward this: that the deity of the Only-begotten Son is mortal, and that it was not the human element that received the suffering, but that the impassible and unchangeable nature was altered into a participation in suffering.

Hence, toward what useful end his argument looks, those who are versed in his mysteries would know;

but what its logical consequence shows in advance even to the utterly simple is of such a kind as not even the most godless of the Greeks would say.

For if the very deity of the Only-begotten has died, then with it there has altogether died also life and truth and righteousness and goodness and light and power;

for these things, according to various aspects, the Only-begotten God both is and is called.

But being simple, without parts, and uncompounded, whatever he is called, he is that wholly—not this in part and that other in part—so that, if he exists, all things are conceived in him as one, and if he does not exist, all things are canceled out together with him.

If, then, the divine was blotted out by death, there was blotted out together with death everything that is conceived as conjoined with his deity.

But indeed Christ is not simply "power," but "the power of God and the wisdom of God."

When, then, these things were extinguished together with the deity of the Son through death, there was no longer with the Father the wisdom of God, nor power, nor life, nor anything else at all of what is named toward the better;

for all these things are believed to belong to God, and all the things of the Father are believed to be in him; and these exist if the Son exists, but altogether do not exist if he does not exist, because it is confessed that all the things of the Father are in him.

If, then, the power was extinguished in death, and Christ is the power of God, what power, in turn, was called back out of non-being—since the power that existed was blotted out by death, and no other was left remaining? For that the power of the Father is in the Son is confessed even by those who contend against us.

they bear solemn witness that what is the Father's belongs to the Son.

For he who has all the things of the Father certainly has in himself also the immortality of the Father;

and immortality, so long as it is what it is called, stands unmixed and without communion with death.

If, then, they say that the deity of the Son is mortal, they thereby establish that he does not have in himself the immortality of the Father.

But indeed he who says that he has the whole Father in himself speaks the truth;

he, therefore, lies who represents as mortal this one in whom the whole eternity of the Father is beheld.

Since, then, according to the reasoning of the pious, the power of the Father and the Son is one (for we see the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son), it is clearly demonstrated that it is the nature capable of suffering that receives death, while the nature incapable of admitting suffering wrought impassibility within the one capable of suffering.

But let us proceed to the next part of the discourse.

But I will state the matter again in my own words, briefly summarizing his sense.

For he says that to call Christ "a man possessed by God" is contrary to the apostolic teachings, and foreign to the councils;

and that Paul of Samosata, Photinus, and Marcellus were the originators of such a perversion.

Then, like a skilled contender grappling with his interlocutor, having found the very author of the phrase, he says this:

"How will you say that he who is attested to have come down from heaven as a man is a man from the earth, and call him who is proclaimed God and Son of God a son of man?" Here again, in these words, the fabrication built upon what preceded is the beginning of a further absurdity;

For in order to show that God died, he admits nothing whatsoever of earthly nature to be contemplated in connection with him, since the suffering of death seems altogether akin to the earth.

"The man who came down from heaven," he says, "is not a man from the earth."

Yet he is a man, even though he has come down from heaven;

for the Lord does not, in the Gospels, refuse such an appellation.

How then does he preserve consistency in what has been said? If the man is not from the earth, but comes down to us from heaven — how then is he who comes down from heaven called "son of man"? For he will surely have to grant that, just as on earth we conceive of fathers prior to sons, so also in the case of the man who, according to him, comes from heaven — since he is called "son of man" — he is not named after a father at random, but that there exists, foreseen in heaven in respect of his humanity, some other man as his father,

for if he leans upon this saying, which states, "No one has ascended into heaven except him who descended from heaven, the Son of Man" (John 3:13), and on this ground severs him from kinship with earthly man, calling him who comes from heaven "son of man" —

then he will certainly have to grant that there exists, for him who came down to us, some other such father in heaven, so that in heavenly life too one must imagine nations of men, and peoples, and clans, and everything else that pertains to this present life.

But gathering together what has been said toward his main point, he brings his argument to this conclusion:

"But if he is Son of Man from heaven, and Son of God from a woman, how is he not the very same, both God and man?" Now I myself affirm that to believe the same one to be both man and God belongs to everyone who upholds right reason — yet not according to the sense of this speech-writer;

for neither is the divine earthly, nor is the heavenly human, as he supposes;

but from above, the power of the Most High, through the Holy Spirit, overshadowed the human nature — that is, took form within it — while from the undefiled Virgin the portion of flesh was united together with it, and thus that which was born in her was named "Son of the Most High";

the divine power possessing its close kinship with the Most High, while the flesh claims for itself its human kinship.

"But," he says, "he is God by the spirit that was made flesh, and man by the flesh that was assumed by God."

Again, what is this "becoming flesh" of the spirit, apart from union with our flesh? And from where was a man assumed, if not from the first man, whose first origin — from the earth, not from heaven — we have heard Moses recount in his genealogy? For God took dust from the earth and formed man;

but we have learned from no one that any other formation of man was constituted from heaven.

Then he adds to what has been said that "the mystery was manifested in the flesh" (1 Tim 3:16) — rightly saying this, this is indeed our own teaching — and that "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14) with respect to the union; and these too are words of sound speech;

for he who says that the Word was united to the flesh is saying nothing other than the concurrence of the two.

"But," he says, "the flesh is not without soul;"

"for it is said [in Scripture] to war against the spirit, and to war against the law of the mind."

Bravo indeed, for such candor!

He does not, for God's sake, fashion the flesh as devoid of soul.

Let us then ask: if the flesh assumed by God the Word was ensouled, as this speech-writer says —

— and we also call the bodies of irrational creatures ensouled —

— then he who attaches to the Word a human flesh, and this an ensouled one, does nothing other than join the whole man to him;

for the human soul has no distinguishing property other than its rational nature, since in every other respect we hold community with irrational creatures:

the appetitive faculty, the irascible faculty, the desire for nourishment, the capacity for growth, satiety, sleep, digestion, alteration, the expulsion of what has become useless — all these are administered equally in us and in irrational creatures through a certain power of soul.

He then, who says that the one assumed is a man, and grants that this man is ensouled, has thereby attested for him nothing other than an intellective power as well — which is the distinguishing property of the human soul — and this from the very words of the Apostle which he himself has cited for us:

for he who said, "The mind of the flesh is enmity toward God, for it is not subject to the law of God" (Rom 8:7), speaks of the clear characteristics of the faculty of choice and of the faculty of discursive reasoning;

for having an obedient or a resistant disposition toward the law is a property of the will, and no one could separate the very term "mind-set" from the activity of thinking.

And not even the most utterly infantile person would deny that "to be minded" is the same as "to think";

and how could that which wars against us and takes us captive be without the activity of thinking? For the fact that the will of evil men is moved toward base things is not proof that there is no mind in them; rather, they are outside of good understanding, yet they think all the same;

since indeed even that serpent — whom we have been taught by the Scriptures to be the originator and inventor of evil — the God-inspired word declares not to be without understanding, attesting to it a greater cunning than the rest of the creatures.

Therefore, from the very things by which he supposes to establish his own argument, the very words he has laid before us convict the impiety of his doctrine.

For it is not only in these passages that the Apostle sets the flesh against the spirit — that is, wicked choice against the more refined life — but he also says to the Corinthians, reproaching them for their passionate condition, "You are fleshly" (1 Cor 3:1, 3).

Was it then, at that time when this word was addressed to them, that, according to Apollinarius' threefold division of human beings, those men were without any share in the activity of the mind? Or rather, was it altogether on account of their immoderate disposition toward the flesh that they were called "fleshly" by Paul, receiving this designation from what predominated in them? And the context of what is written shows that this is indeed the sense:

"For where there is jealousy and strife among you," he says, "are you not fleshly?" (1 Cor 3:3) But to be jealous and to contend belongs to the activity of the mind.

What follows next in his treatise contains, ostensibly, a demonstration, through numerous testimonies, that man consists of three [parts] — of flesh, and soul, and mind — a view which is not far removed from our own teaching

concerning the theory of man;

even though, in this, his argument gives heretics many handles to seize upon;

for it is possible, if one should number the rational faculty by itself, to speak of a different boundary for the irascible faculty, and yet another again for the appetitive faculty;

and perhaps someone, enumerating in this manner the remaining movements of the soul as well, might demonstrate man to be some manifold and much-compounded being, instead of a threefold one.

But let these matters be set aside, lest, by pursuing each point in detail, we extend our refutation beyond due measure; let us instead proceed to what follows in his discourse.

For having established, through many arguments, the tripartite or threefold nature — or however one wishes to name it — of the human compound, he also recalls certain conciliar decrees: both those gathered against Paul of Samosata, who said that the Lord was deified from heaven,

and that proclaimed at Nicaea, whose statement he cited verbatim, in these very terms: "who came down from heaven, and was made flesh, and became man."

And having said this, as though laying the groundwork for the argument he was about to state, he thus lays bare the intent of his own purpose, and says — as it were fitting it to what he has already demonstrated — the following, in these very words:

"Now Christ, having as God the spirit — that is, the mind — together with soul and body, is reasonably called man from heaven."

What in common does this statement have with what preceded it? Where did the council convened against the Samosatene decree any such thing? But I shall pass over what is older than our memory.

What such thing did he demonstrate to exist in the decrees of Nicaea? The faith speaks of him who came down from the heavens and was made flesh, so that the flesh is not conceived of as existing prior to the descent, but rather as coming second, after the descent — namely, him who was made flesh and became man. This is what is proclaimed by all in the churches, and this is our own teaching — or rather, the teaching of the Church.

Where then, in what has been said, is it stated that Christ, having as God the spirit — that is, the mind — together with soul and body, is called man from heaven? For whether you examine his argument by the bare wording, or also by the sense of what is said, in neither will what he has asserted be found.

For the [Nicene] wording is as far removed from his wording as, to speak in the words of the Psalm, "the risings are far from the settings" (cf. Ps 103[102]:12);

and what common ground does the sense of what has been said at Nicaea show with what is signified by his words? This man says that Christ, having been made flesh with human flesh, has within himself, as God, the spirit — that is, the mind;

and this is said by the very one who forbids us to call Christ "a man possessed by God," as though God were in him as one thing is in another — while he himself, before anyone else, is establishing precisely this!

But the voice of the council speaks of him who came down from heaven.

Let, then, the ordinary and simple believer understand the descent from the heavens to us in its plain sense;

for we shall in no way differ from such an understanding, even if the intellect should discern a loftier meaning — not speaking of the divine, which is everywhere present and encompasses all things that exist, as descending in a local sense, but rather signifying by it the condescension toward the lowliness of our nature;

yet however it may please the one who wishes to accept the descent, the statement of the council speaks again, rightly, of him who was made flesh, saying this too well:

for how could it have expressed the birth from a woman more fittingly? For it is not insofar as he is God, in himself, that he was born of a woman;

for he who exists before creation does not receive his very being through having been born through the flesh;

but, having by the Holy Spirit prepared the way for the entrance of his own power, and having needed no material occasion at all for the fashioning of his own tabernacle, according to what is said concerning Wisdom, "She built for herself a house" (Prov 9:1), having made the dust from the Virgin human, through which he was commingled with what is human.

But if the Apostle says that one must in every way reject old wives' tales and profane novelties of speech (cf. 1 Tim 4:7; 6:20), then he must by no means be permitted to fit together things that have nothing in common, and to glue together what is incompatible.

And indeed, he himself, through the very things by which he strains to support what he has said, will rather fight on our side toward the overthrow of his own teaching;

for he says that Paul too calls the first Adam a "soul," existing together with a body — saying this rightly, and on behalf of the truth.

Was, then, the first man — who is mentioned by Paul as "a living soul" (1 Cor 15:45) — possessed of some brutish and irrational soul? And yet the narrative attests to him no small measure of intellectual grace;

for the animals were brought to him by God, and he was master over the discovery of their names, devising for each what was fitting and appropriate.

But also his disobedience, and his complicity in what ought not to be, and his shame at what he had done, and his finding a fitting defense for the accusations against him — all these become proof of the activity of the mind.

And Jacob, sojourning among the Egyptians with seventy-five souls, is not recorded by Scripture as being, at that time, without mind or without flesh.

But the pamphleteer says that the second man is called spiritual, from heaven, and makes this a sign that the man commingled with God is without mind.

And yet the refutation of this absurdity lies ready at hand from the very things he adduced.

For he who said, "As is the heavenly man, such also are those who are heavenly," stands far removed from any such insinuation.

For if those who have believed in him who came from the heavens are themselves also called "heavenly" by Paul — those who have transferred, as he says, their citizenship to the heavens — and the apostle says that these heavenly ones are such as that Heavenly One is, yet none of those who have received the faith is without mind;

it is altogether necessary that this comparison of likeness become a proof that, according to the likeness which men bear, the mind is present in him as well.

"For as is the heavenly man," he says, "such also are the heavenly ones";

so that they will of necessity have to confess that mind exists either in all of them or in none.

For just as the properties of the man of dust are seen in those who come from him, so also, of necessity, according to the apostle's declaration, he who was tried in every respect after the likeness of our life — apart from sin, and mind is not sin — must properly belong to the whole of our nature.

For thus the apostolic word is verified — that we are "after his image" — if it be granted that he too became "after our image," so that, by becoming such as we are, he might make us to be such as he is.

Let us, then, again call to mind the things said by him.

"Wherefore also Paul calls the former Adam 'soul,' the soul existing together with a body and not apart from a body, giving its name to the whole — even though, taken in itself along with the spirit, it too is called 'soul.'"

In saying this he admits that the three are, taken together, called by the name "soul," inasmuch as the signification both of the body and of the spirit is comprehended within the same term.

"But the last [Adam]," he says, "Paul calls a life-giving spirit."

That which, then, he showed to have prevailed as a name over the remaining elements signified in the former case by way of predominance, this surely holds equal force in this case as well.

For if Adam, because he sinned, is called "soul," then the man commingled with God, because he "committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth," is named "spirit" in his entirety.

But such a notion is not admissible;

for it says that the former is "earthy, of the earth," because the body, having been fashioned from the dust, was ensouled —

would "mind" be believed to be meant by this? But this latter one, he says, is for this reason called "from heaven," because the heavenly spirit was made flesh.

What Scripture says this? To which of the saints does it attribute the statement that "the Spirit was made flesh"? We have not heard this from the Gospels; we have not been taught this by the mighty voice of the Apostle. Rather, the proclamation says that "the Word became flesh," and the Gospel narrative says that the Spirit descended "in the form of a dove";

but none of those who speak the mysteries by the Spirit has ever spoken of an "incarnation of the Spirit."

"The glory tabernacled in our land";

and "Truth sprang up out of the earth";

and "God was manifested in the flesh";

but the God-inspired Scripture knows nothing of a "Spirit made flesh."