Antirrheticus Against Apollinarius 1 part 7/7

And just as — for nothing prevents demonstrating the mystery of the dispensation of the resurrection by a bodily image — just as, if a reed were split in two and someone were to join the ends of the reed's two pieces at one point, the whole segment of the reed would necessarily be fitted back to the whole by the joining and clamping at the one point, being fastened to the other end, so too the union of the soul with the body which took place in that one through the resurrection brings the whole of human nature, which by continuity had been divided by death into soul and body, toward growing together again through the hope of the resurrection, having fitted together the concurrence of what had been separated;

And this is what is said by Paul, that Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, and, As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.

For according to the example of the reed, from the end that pertains to Adam our nature was split apart through sin, the soul being divided from the body by death; but from the part that pertains to Christ, nature takes itself up again, the division being entirely grown back together with itself in the resurrection of the man according to Christ.

For this reason, then, we die together with him who died for us — I do not mean this necessary and common death of our nature;

for this will happen even to those who do not wish it;

but those who wish to die together with him who died must, it is fitting, devise for themselves a death that comes from deliberate choice;

for the imitation of the voluntary death cannot come about through the compulsory one.

Since, then, the death that lies by nature upon each comes about entirely and altogether, both for those who wish it and those who do not, and one could not reckon that which comes about altogether as voluntary, for this reason we die together with him who died voluntarily in another manner, being buried in the mystical water through baptism;

For, it says, we were buried together with him through baptism into death, so that, as we follow the imitation of his death, the imitation of the resurrection might also follow.

Let us now pass to what follows in the argument.

'How,' he says, 'does God become man without being changed from being God, unless a mind came to be established in a man?' Now, did he understand what he uttered? He says that the divine is unchangeable, and in this he speaks well;

for that which is always the same by nature has no capacity to become something other than what it is;

but it comes to be in something else, without itself becoming that other thing.

What, then, is that mind, as Apollinarius says, which came to be in man? Did it remain in the majesty of its unchangeable nature, or has it made its transition to the lowly, circumscribing itself within the smallness of the human and becoming as much as the human mind is? Then the human mind would be equal to the divinity, if indeed, as Apollinarius says, the divine nature became the mind of man.

For if human nature receives, in like manner, either our mind or, instead of the mind, God, these would be of equal magnitude and equal weight to one another, if indeed the divinity is comprehended within that very space in which the mind is contained;

as if someone were to measure out wheat, or some other kind of grain, into an empty vessel — one would not say that what is made equal by the same measure differs from the other in quantity;

for it is equal, wheat to spelt, whenever, after those seeds have been emptied out of the measure, the other kind fills it in their place.

So then, if the divinity comes to be in place of the mind, one could not say that the divinity exceeds the mind, if indeed it too is contained by nature in the same manner as that mind.

Either, then, the mind is equal to the divinity, as Apollinarius wishes, and, having passed from the one into the other, it was not altered;

or, if the mind is inferior to the divine, then that which came to be this mind out of that divinity has been altered toward the meaner.

But who does not know that everything conceived of within creation falls short, in equal measure, of that inaccessible and unapproachable nature, so that the alteration would be the same whether one says the divine has been changed into a creature or into a mind? So then, if Apollinarius does not think that coming to be in a mind constitutes an alteration, then neither does being mingled with man apart from a rational mind testify to the unchangeability of that which was mingled.

But if indeed he was not altered by becoming flesh, much more did he remain unalterable also in making the mixture with the mind;

but if he charges alteration upon the divine's coming to be in a mind, then neither does its appropriation to the flesh at all escape the charge of alteration.

Again he says (for I pass over what lies in between):

'If after the resurrection he has become God and is no longer man, how will the Son of Man send his angels? And how shall we see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds? And how, moreover, before being united and deified, does he say:

'I and the Father are one'?' These things he sets forth at length through what has been said, establishing that the nature of the body has in no way been changed toward the more divine, but that the hair, the nails, the form, the shape, the circumscription of the bulk, and the rest — that is, both the visible and the hidden parts of the body — still remain about him.

As for me, I consider it superfluous to establish by argument that one ought not to conceive of God in so groveling and lowly a manner, since the very argument of my opponent proclaims its own absurdity of itself.

But lest he should reckon that the divine oracles cooperate with him in his myth-making, I shall run briefly through each of the things he has said.

He thinks that one must believe throughout that he is confined within human properties;

and he does not remember the voice of the Gospel, where in many places, through his own words, the Lord named the God who is over all things 'man'.

There was a man, a householder, who let out the vineyard to farmers, who, after the killing of his servants, sent also his only-begotten son, whom the farmers cast out of the vineyard and murdered.

And who was that man who sent his only-begotten son? And who was the son who was murdered outside the vineyard? And he who held the wedding-feast for his son — was he not himself represented by the Word in human fashion? And if this too must be said: that, in order to help the weakness of those who despise the nature like their own, and are for that reason unable to believe in his divinity — so that, by contracting the laxity of their thinking through fear, he might most effectively strengthen them toward faith — he says that the angels are sent by the Son of Man at the judgment, so that the expectation of terrible things might heal their unbelief regarding what appears in him.

Moreover, it says, 'You shall see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of heaven with glory and great power.'

And this accords with what has already been said, whether we understand it of that man who planted the vineyard and held the wedding-feast for his son, or according to the meaning already given.

And that this passage is entirely removed from the lowly conception of Apollinarius, and that such a statement supposes nothing bodily to be thought concerning him, is clearly demonstrated by the fact that added to the statement announcing his manifestation at the end of the ages is this: that the Lord will be seen by creation in the glory of his Father — so that, on the basis of what has been said, it would be necessary either to suppose that the Father too was fashioned in human form, so that the Son, appearing in human shape, might appear in the glory of the Father;

or, if the majesty of the paternal glory is free of every form conceived as a visible shape, then neither is he — who is promised to be seen in the glory of the Father — fashioned in human form.

For the glory of man is one thing, and the glory of the God who is over all is another.

'But,' he says, 'speaking through the flesh to men, that: I and the Father are one.'

O the folly of thinking that the saying — uttered by the Lord speaking through the flesh — that he is one with the Father, constitutes a proof that his manifestation would afterward be human!

Does he, then, by these means, altogether establish by his argument that the Father too lives precisely in flesh? For if he who said that he was one with the Father supposes the unity to be understood, as Apollinarius thinks, not according to the spiritual but according to the human, then the Father is precisely that which the Son was then seen to be, according to man.

But surely the divine is outside every bodily conception.

Therefore the union of the Son with the Father was not according to human form, but according to the communion of the divine nature and power.

And that these things are so is made especially clear from what he says to Philip:

'He who has seen me has seen the Father.'

For the exact apprehension of the majesty of the Son enables one, as in an image, to see the archetype.

As for what follows — its incoherence and unintelligibility — lest I linger vainly over vanities, I shall pass over it, since even to those who follow the writing with careful attention it does not make clear what he even wishes to say.

For I am unable to see what use it is to his argument that 'no one snatches out of his hand the sheep given to him by the Father';

nor that he draws the sheep to himself by the paternal divinity;

and, 'If Christ,' he says, 'was united to the Father before the resurrection, how is he not united to the God within him?' — for this he inserts into his own arguments as if deliberately refuting his own myth-making, by which the distinction and union of the man with the divine is demonstrated.

For he who said, 'If Christ is united to the Father, how is he not united to the God within him?' has thereby said that in the same way the man who is according to Christ, being distinct, is united to the God within him.

As for the passages requiring reading that refute the errant and incoherent nature of his doctrine, I shall pass over them in my discourse;

but I shall mention only this one:

'The Savior,' he says, 'suffered hunger and thirst and weariness and anguish and grief.'

And who is the Savior? God, he says in what precedes this, not two persons, as though God were one and the man another.

So then God suffered the things he has said he suffered, and that which does not admit of suffering suffers — not by the compulsion of an unwilling nature, as man suffers, but by the consequence of nature.

Who, then, will suffice to refute such vanities? In what does he see the necessity of nature differing from the consequence of nature? For truth sees the same meaning signified in both; for instance, what I mean is this: it is a consequence that one whose eyes are not healthy should be weak in sight, and again I say this very same thing, that it is necessary, if one's eyes are not healthy, that he be weak in sight.

Is it not the same thing in both cases? For the one who spoke of necessity indicated what results by consequence;

and the one who mentioned consequence signified what is necessary.

What then does the wordsmith's cleverness intend, in attaching the passions of nature to the Savior not by necessity of nature but by the consequence of nature? 'It was necessary,' he says, 'that the passions be set in motion after the likeness of human beings.'

Did not the one who said 'it was necessary' plainly proclaim necessity? Is this not the usage of Scripture? And indeed it is possible to take proofs of this statement from the Gospels themselves.

"It is necessary that stumbling-blocks come";

"for indeed these things must come to pass."

Is the sense of each of these two expressions not one and the same? For the one who said it is a necessity that stumbling-blocks come, by that expression indicated that stumbling-blocks must come;

and the one who said "these things must come to pass" foretold that which was bound of necessity to come into effect.

But again I shall pass over the nonsense that follows, heaped up haphazardly and at random out of vain reasonings.

And near the end of his treatise he says: "And though the body is in heaven, he is with us until the consummation of the age."

Who is it that is with us? Clearly the wordsmith, in dividing that which cannot be divided, does not understand what he is doing.

For if he lodges the body in heaven, yet says that the Lord is with us, he plainly produces a certain disjunction and division by such a distinction in his statement.

For he did not say that his body both remains in heaven and is with us; rather, that while the body is in heaven, and we are not in heaven,

he has therefore believed that some other one, besides the body which is in the heavens, is with us who are upon the earth.

Such are the lofty teachings of Apollinarius!

But we say that, having spoken these things, he was taken up, and the one who was taken up is with us, and there is no division in him;

rather, just as he is present to each one of us and comes to be in our midst, so too he extends throughout all the bounds of creation, appearing with equal honor to every part of the world.

If he is present to us who are bodily beings in an incorporeal manner, then he is not present in a body to the beings above the world either.

But now he says that the Lord, thus divided, comes to be present among his subjects incongruously, by way of opposites: incorporeal to the fleshly, but in a body to the incorporeal.

For, having seated the flesh in heaven, he mingles himself with human beings spiritually.

As for the things which, gasping his last breath near the end of his treatise, he clings to like fitful gasps with thoughts that have no substance, I think it best to pass them by unexamined — in which, being hard-pressed, he calls upon the Greeks to plead the case of his own myths, and whatever else is akin to these.

Whoever is pleased to observe the feebleness of this heresy running through everything it says, let him go through the writings themselves;

but we do not have so much leisure as to delve deeply into such arguments, which carry, of themselves and even prior to examination, the manifest refutation of their own absurdity.