Eranistes 1 part 8/13

For just as, when two parties are at variance through a quarrel, some third person, being interposed in their midst, dissolves the strife and dissension of the contenders — so also did Christ.

while we were turning away from a Master who loved mankind;

and Christ, casting Himself into the midst, brought both natures together into friendship, and Himself endured the punishment laid upon us by the Father.

By the same author, from the same sermon.

He therefore offered the first-fruits of our nature to the Father, and the Father Himself marvelled at the gift, both on account of the great worthiness of the One who presented it and the spotlessness of that which was offered.

For He received it with His own hands, and made it a partaker of His own throne.

And what is more, He established it at the very place of His own right hand.

Let us therefore recognize who that one was who heard the words, 'Sit at my right hand'; what was that nature to which He said, 'Be a sharer of my throne'? That was the very nature to which He had said, 'Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.' From the same, a little further on.

What manner of speech shall I employ, with what words shall I give utterance? I do not know.

That decayed nature, that lowly nature, the nature shown to be the least of all, has conquered all things, has surpassed them all.

Today it has been deemed worthy to become higher than all; today it has received back that which the angels long desired throughout so great a time; today the archangels have been enabled to become spectators of what they had long yearned for, and they have beheld our nature shining forth in the glory of immortality upon the throne of the King.

Of the holy Flavian, bishop of Antioch.

From the Gospel according to Luke.

In all things the Lord traces out for us the character of godliness, and in various ways He points out to our nature the paths of salvation;

and He furnishes us with many clear proofs both of His bodily coming and of the divinity that works through the body.

For He wished to give assurance of both His natures.

By the same, on the Theophany.

Who shall truly declare the mighty acts of the Lord, and make heard all His praises? Who could set forth in words the greatness of His beneficence toward us? Human nature is joined to the Godhead, while each nature abides in itself.

Of Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem.

From the fourth catechetical lecture, concerning the ten doctrines.

Concerning the birth from the Virgin.

Believe that this only-begotten Son of God came down from the heavens to the earth on account of our sins, taking upon Himself this humanity subject to the same experiences as ours, and being born of a holy Virgin and of the Holy Spirit—the incarnation having come about not in mere seeming and fantasy, but in truth;

nor as though He passed through the Virgin as through a conduit, but truly taking flesh from her, truly eating as we do, truly drinking as we do, and truly being nourished with milk.

For if the incarnation were a fantasy, then salvation too is a phantom.

Eating indeed as a man, truly as we do;

for He had the flesh's likeness of experience, as we do;

yet feeding the five thousand from five loaves as God;

dying indeed as a man, truly;

yet raising up the dead man of four days as God;

sleeping in the boat as a man, and walking upon the waters as God.

Of Antiochus, bishop of Ptolemais.

Do not confound the natures, and you will not grow numb concerning the dispensation.

Of the holy Hilary, bishop and confessor.

In the ninth book on the faith.

He truly does not know his own life who does not acknowledge Jesus Christ to be, just as true God, so also true man.

For the matter carries the same peril, whether we deny Christ Jesus and the Spirit to be God, or deny the flesh of our body.

'Everyone, therefore, who shall confess me before men, I also will confess him before my Father who is in the heavens';

being Himself the mediator of salvation in that very mystery by which He mediated between God and men, being one and the same the two together, and out of the natures united unto this very end being one and the same through each nature, yet in such a way that in each He lacks neither—lest, as man being born, He should cease to be God, or again, being man, He should not remain God.

This, then, is the blessedness of the true faith among men: to proclaim Him both God and man, to confess both the flesh and the Word, and to know that the God is also man, and not to be ignorant that the flesh is also the Word.

By the same, in the same book.

Born, therefore, from a Virgin as man—the only-begotten God—and destined, at the fullness of the appointed time, Himself to accomplish for Himself the advancement of the man into God, He preserved this order in all the words of the Gospel, so that He might teach men to believe Him to be Son of God, and might remind them to proclaim Him Son of Man;

in that He is man, speaking and doing all that belongs to God;

and again, in that He is God, speaking and doing all that belongs to man;

yet in such a way that, in this very intercourse between the two kinds proper to each, He never at any time speaks except with the signifying of both God and man.

From this source, then, arises the pretext by which the heretics beguile the simpler folk and the ignorant, so that, falsifying the things spoken by Him according to His humanity, they say that these were uttered on account of the weakness of the divine nature; and since it is one and the same who speaks all that He spoke, they contend that He said all these things concerning Himself.

And neither do we deny that all the words that are His belong to His own proper nature.

But if Christ is one, man and God, and the man was not then for the first time God, nor indeed when He was man was He then not also God, nor after the man is the Word in the Lord not man and the Word God, then it is of necessity that there be one and the same mystery of His words, which is also that of His birth.

And when in Him you divide the man from the God according to the occasion, then distinguish the words of God and of the man.

And whenever you confess God and man, distinguish in due season the words of God and of man.

But whenever you consider the occasion—of God and man, and again of the man wholly and of God wholly—if anything of such a kind has been spoken so as to indicate what belongs to that particular time, then fit the things said to that occasion.

And since it is one thing that God is before the man, another again that He is man and God, and yet another that after the man and God He is wholly man and wholly God, do not confound, by the things said and the things done, the mystery of the dispensation.

For it is necessary that, according to the quality of the kinds and of the natures, one manner of intercourse have been proper to them not yet at the mystery of the man's being born, another while He was yet drawing near to death, and yet another when He had already attained to the eternal state.

For even though in the birth, in the passion, and in the death He carried out the acts of our nature, yet all these He accomplished by the power of His own nature.

By the same, in the same book.

Do you see, then, that God and man are so confessed that death is reckoned to the man, but to God the resurrection of the flesh? For understand the nature of God in the power of the resurrection, and you will recognize the dispensation according to the man in the death.

And since each of these came to pass by their own proper natures, remember for me that one Christ Jesus, who is both together.

These things I have briefly set forth for this reason, that we may remember that each nature is to be understood in our Lord Jesus Christ;

for He who was in the form of God took the form of a servant.

Of the most holy bishop Augustine.

By the same, from the letter to Volusianus.

But now He has appeared as mediator between God and men, so as to join both natures together in the unity of the person, both by the true things augmenting those that are customary, and by mingling the true with those that come from custom.

By the same, in the exposition of the Gospel according to Saint John.

What then, heretic? Since Christ is God and man—but if indeed as man, do you slander God? He exalts in Himself the human nature; but you dare to debase His divine nature.

By the same, in the discourse on the exposition of the faith.

For to believe is ours, but to know is His; and thus God the Word Himself, having received all that belongs to man, let Him be man; and the man that was assumed, having received all that belongs to God, let him be nothing else save what God is.

But we must not, because He is said to be incarnate and mingled, suppose His essence to have been diminished.

God knows how to mingle Himself apart from any corruption proper to Himself, and He is mingled indeed according to truth.

He knows how so to receive within Himself that nothing of increase is added to Him, even as He knows how to pour Himself out whole, so that nothing of diminution befalls Him.

Let us not, then, according to the notion of our own weakness and conjecturing from the sensible lessons of experience, suppose God and man to have been mingled after the manner of created things that are mingled with their like; nor by such confusion of the Word and the flesh believe that a single body was thereby produced; lest, after the manner of things that are confounded, we should suppose two natures to have been brought into one substance;

for such a mingling is the corruption of each part.

But God, who contains yet is not contained, who searches yet is not searched, who fills yet is not filled, who is everywhere wholly present at once and pervades all things—by pouring out His own power, as compassionate, was mingled with the human nature; yet the nature of man was not mingled with the divine.

Of Severian, bishop of Gabala.

On the birth of Christ.

O mystery truly both heavenly and earthly, grasped and not grasped, seen and not made manifest!

For such also was the Christ who was born: heavenly and earthly, grasped and not grasped, seen and invisible;

heavenly according to the nature of the Godhead, but earthly according to the nature of the manhood;

seen according to the flesh, invisible according to the spirit.

held fast according to the body, ungraspable according to the Word.

Of Atticus, bishop of Constantinople.

From the letter to Eupsychius.

What, then, was it fitting for the all-wise One to accomplish? By the mediation of the flesh which He assumed, and by the union of God the Word with the man from Mary, both things come to pass: so that the one Christ, united out of both, being disposed in His divinity should remain in the proper dignity of His impassible nature, yet in the flesh, having consorted with death, He might at one and the same time display, in the flesh's nature that is akin to ours, the contempt of death by means of death, and at the same time confirm by His decease the just claims of the New Covenant.

Of Cyril, bishop of Alexandria.

From the letter to Nestorius.

And that the natures brought together into a true unity are indeed diverse, yet there is one God and Son out of both — not as though the difference of the natures were done away with on account of the union.

Of the same, from the letter to the Orientals.

wherefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord.

According to this understanding of the unconfused union, we confess the holy Virgin to be Theotokos, because God the Word was made flesh and became man, and from the very conception united to Himself the temple taken from her.

Of the same, from the same letter.

For there is one Lord Jesus Christ, even though the difference of the natures is not ignored, out of which we say the ineffable union was effected.

in such a manner, we see that two natures came together with one another in an indivisible union, without confusion and without division.

For the flesh is flesh and not deity, even though it became the flesh of God.

And in like manner the Word is God and not flesh, even though He made the flesh His own by way of the economy.

Of the same, from the commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews.

For even if the natures of those that have run together into a unity be thought of as diverse and unequal to one another — I mean of flesh and of God — nevertheless there is but one Son out of both.

Of the same, from the same commentary.

And even if the only-begotten Word of God be perchance said to be united to flesh according to hypostasis, we do not say that any pouring together of the natures into one another has been effected; rather, each remains what it is.

Of the same, from the work On the Scholia.

He has been named man — although according to nature He exists as God, the Word who is from the Virgin's Father — as having partaken of blood and flesh in a manner like unto us.

For thus was He seen by those on earth, not having let go of what He was, but having come to be in the assumption of our humanity, which is complete according to its own principle.

Of the same, from the discourse On the Incarnation.

So then there is one who both before the incarnation is true God, and in humanity remained what He was and is and shall be.

Therefore the one Lord Jesus Christ is not to be divided into a man separately and into God separately;

but we say that Christ Jesus is one and the same, knowing the difference of the natures and preserving them unconfused with one another.

For understand altogether that what indwells is one thing in another — that is, the divine nature in humanity — and it did not, by suffering any mingling or pouring together and transmutation, become what it was not.

For that which is said to dwell in another has not itself become that in which it dwells; rather it is understood as one thing in another.

But in the nature of the Word and of the humanity, He signifies to us a difference only.

For one Christ is understood out of both.

Therefore, having very well preserved the unconfusedness, he says that the Word has tabernacled among us.

For he knows one only-begotten Son, the very one who became flesh and became man.

{ORTHODOXOS.} You have heard, my good man, the great luminaries of the world, and you have beheld the rays of their teaching;

and you have learned exactly that they showed the union of the divinity and the humanity to be unconfused, not only after the birth, but also after the saving Passion and the Resurrection and the Ascension.

{ERANISTES.} I did not think that they divided the natures after the union, yet I have found a great immoderateness of division.

{ORTHODOXOS.} It is madness and insolence to wag the tongue against those noble men, those champions of the faith.

But that you may know that even Apollinaris says the union came to be unconfused, I will bring before you his utterances as well.

Hear him, then, as he says:

From the book arranged in chapters.

The things of God, then, and of the body are united.

Son of Mary, born in the last time, worshipping God, increasing in wisdom, being strengthened in power;

The suffering for sin and the curse passed away, and were changed into impassibility and blessing;

but the flesh did not pass away, nor will it pass away, nor will it be changed into something incorporeal.

Men are of the same substance with the irrational animals as regards the irrational body, but of a different substance in that they are rational.

So also God, being of the same substance with men as regards the flesh, is of a different substance in that He is Word and God.

Of things blended together, the qualities are mingled and not destroyed, so that in a certain manner they even stand apart from the things that were blended — just as wine from water.

Nor is there a blending as toward a body, nor such as that of bodies with bodies, but one that holds also the unmingled, so that the energy of the divinity may, as need requires on each occasion, either act by itself or intermingle — as happened in the fasting of the Lord.

being without need, hunger was restrained;

but when that which is without need was not set in opposition to the want, hunger came about, unto the overthrow of the devil.

But if the mixture of bodies was not changed, how much more that of the divinity? And in another place he says these things:

If the commingling with iron, which shows the iron to be fire so as to do even the works of fire, did not change its nature, neither is the union of God with the body a change of the body — even though the body furnishes the divine energies to those able to lay hold of it.

To these he immediately joins the following:

If a man has both a soul and a body, and these remain being in a unity, much more does Christ, having divinity together with a body, have both remaining and not being confused.

For the human nature partakes of the divine energy so far as it attains to it;

but it is other, as a very small thing to a very great one.

And the man is a servant of God, but God is not the servant of the man nor of Himself.

And the one is a thing made by God, but the other is neither a thing made by man nor by Himself.

If one takes with reference to the divinity, in the case of Christ, the saying, 'What He sees the Father doing, that He also does,' and not with reference to the flesh — according to which the incarnate One is distinct from the Father who was not incarnate — he divides two divine energies;

but it is not divided; therefore it is not said with reference to the divinity.

Then again he set down these things as well:

Just as a man is not irrational when the rational is added to the irrational, so neither is the Saviour a creature when the created body is added to the uncreated God.

To these he joins the following as well: The invisible, having been compounded with a visible body and beheld through it, remains invisible also;

and it remains also uncompounded, inasmuch as it is not co-circumscribed with the body.

And the body, remaining within its own measure, receives the union with God in respect of being made alive, and neither does that which is made alive give life.

And a little further on he has spoken thus again:

If not even the blending of soul with body — although it is from the beginning by natural growing-together — makes it visible on account of the body, nor changes it into the other properties of the body, so as to be cut and diminished, how much more is God, who is not by nature grown together with a body, unchangeably united to a body? And if the body of a man remains in its own nature, and this indeed ensouled, neither in the case of Christ did the blending change the body so that it is not a body.

And after a great deal he set down these things again:

He who confesses soul and body as being presented by Scripture as one thing, contends against himself by asserting that such a union of the Word with the body is a change — a thing not observed even in the case of the soul.

Hear him again, crying out expressly:

If those who do not say that the Lord's flesh abides are impious, much more are those who do not even confess that He was made flesh in the beginning;

And in his little discourse on the Incarnation he has again written these things.

The saying, 'Sit at my right hand,' is spoken with reference to the man;

for it was not said to him who ever sits upon the throne of glory as God the Word after the ascent from earth,

but to him who is now exalted to the heavenly glory as man, as the apostles declare;

and he himself says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.' The command is human, granting a beginning to the session, but the dignity is divine, namely to sit together with God, whom the thousand thousands minister to, and before whom stand the ten thousand times ten thousand.

For he does not subject the enemies to him as to God, but as to man, so that the same one is both God when beheld and man.

And that the words 'until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet' are spoken as to a man, Paul teaches, calling the achievement his own — that is, according to what is divine —

'according to the working,' he says, 'whereby he is able even to subject all things to himself.' Behold divinity and humanity inseparably in the one person.

he says, but that he possesses the glory before the ages he reveals as God.

But let us not be abased, deeming lowly the worship of the Son of God even in his human likeness; rather, as one who honors with royal glory a king who has appeared even in a mean robe, and especially when we behold the garment itself glorified — as befitted the body of God and the Savior of the world, the seed of eternal life, the instrument of divine operations, the loosener of all wickedness, the destroyer of death, and the author of resurrection —

for even if he took his nature from men, yet he had life from God, power from heaven, and virtue that is divine.

Wherefore we worship the body as the Word, and we partake of the body as of the Spirit.

{ORTH.} Behold, the very first who introduced the mixture of the natures has been shown, by using division openly, to contradict you.

This man called the body both a robe and a creature and an instrument.

And indeed he even named it a servant, which none of us has ever dared to say.

This one also said that it was deemed worthy of the session at the right hand, and very many other things which are cast out by your empty heresy.

{ERAN.} And why in the world, being the first to introduce the mixture, did he insert so great a division into his words? {ORTH.} The power of truth compels even those who fiercely contend against it to agree with what it declares.

But if it seems good to you, let us also take up the discourse concerning the impassibility of the Lord.

{ERAN.} You know that musicians are accustomed to rest the strings, and they slacken them by turning the pegs.

And if things utterly deprived of reason and soul need some rest, then we who partake of soul and reason will do nothing unfitting in measuring our labor by our strength.

Let us therefore postpone until tomorrow.

But nevertheless let it be as you have said, and let us keep the inquiry into what remains for the following day.

That even after the union he has remained what he was — undefiled, impassible, unchangeable, uncircumscribed — and that he preserved intact the nature which he assumed, the divine Scripture, and moreover the teachers of the churches and the luminaries of the world, have clearly taught us.

It remains therefore for us to set forth the discourse concerning the passion, as being especially most necessary.

For he himself has brought to us the saving streams.

{ERAN.} I too have supposed this discourse to be profitable.

However, I will not endure the former arrangement, but I will make the questions.

{ORTH.} And I will answer, and I will not shrink from the exchange of arrangement.

For the advocate of the truth, not only when asking but also when being asked, holds the might of the truth.

{ERAN.} Who do you say endured the passion? {ORTH.} Our Lord Jesus Christ.

{ERAN.} So did a man furnish us salvation? {ORTH.} Did we then confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is only a man? {ERAN.} Now then, define what you believe the Christ to be.

{ORTH.} The Son of the living God who became man.

{ERAN.} And is the Son of God God? {ORTH.} God, having the same essence as the Father who begot him.

{ERAN.} So then God endured the passion.

{ORTH.} If he was nailed to the cross bodiless, then fit the passion to the divinity;

but if, having taken flesh, he became man, why in the world do you leave that which is passible impassible, while subjecting to the passion that which is impassible? {ERAN.} But he took flesh for this reason, that through that which is passible the impassible might endure the passion.

{ORTH.} You call it impassible, and yet you fit passion to it.

{ERAN.} I said that he took flesh in order that he might suffer.

{ORTH.} If he had a nature receptive of passion, he would have suffered even apart from flesh; the flesh, then, is superfluous.

immortal, but the nature of the flesh is mortal.

Therefore the immortal was united to the mortal, in order that through the latter it might taste death.

{ORTH.} That which is by nature immortal does not, even when joined to the mortal, undergo death;

and this is easy to discern.

{ERAN.} Demonstrate this, and resolve the dispute.

{ORTH.} Do you say the human soul is immortal or mortal? {ERAN.} Immortal.

{ORTH.} And do we say that man is composed of these natures? {ERAN.} So we say.

{ORTH.} The immortal, then, was joined to the mortal.

{ORTH.} But when the conjunction, that is, the union, is dissolved, the mortal receives the determination of death, while the soul remains immortal, even though sin brought on the death.

Or do you not consider death to be a punishment? {ERAN.} The divine Scripture indeed teaches this.

For from it we learn that God, having forbidden Adam to partake of the tree of knowledge, added:

'In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.' {ORTH.} Death, then, is a punishment of those who have sinned.

{ORTH.} Why then, when soul and body sinned together, does the body alone undergo the punishment of death? {ERAN.} Because it was the body that looked wickedly upon the tree and stretched out the hands and plundered the forbidden fruit.

And again it was the mouth itself that ground it fine with the teeth and smoothed it with the molars.

Then again the gullet, having received it, passed it on to the stomach;

and the stomach, having altered it, imparted it to the liver.

The liver in turn changed what it received into the nature of blood, and delivered it to the hollow vein;

and that to the veins connected with it, and those through the others to the body;

and thus the theft of the forbidden food passed into the whole body.

Reasonably, then, the body alone underwent the punishment for the sin.

{ORTH.} You have expounded to us the matters concerning nourishment in the manner of a natural philosopher — through how many parts it travels, and how many alterations it undergoes, before it is at last changed into the nature of the body.

That one thing, however, you were unwilling to perceive: that apart from the soul the body accomplishes none of the things mentioned.

For when it is forsaken by the soul yoked to it, it lies breathless and voiceless and motionless;

and neither does the eye see wickedly nor again well, nor do the ears receive the sound of voices, the hands do not move, the feet do not walk;

but it resembles an instrument deprived of its musician.

How then did you say that the body alone sinned — the body which, apart from the soul, cannot even breathe at all? {ERAN.} The body receives life from the soul, but it procures for the soul the injurious acquisition of sin.

{ORTH.} Then, it seems, we ought to count the deaf blessed, and those deprived of sight, and those bereft of the other members.

For their souls do not share in the wickedness of the body in respect of these members.

But why, O most wise one, did you mention the blameworthy services of the body, yet leave out the praiseworthy ones? For it is possible to look with friendship and kindness, to wipe away a tear of compunction, to hear the divine oracles, to incline the ear to one in need, to hymn the Maker with the tongue, to teach the neighbor what he ought, to move the hands to mercy, and, to speak in sum, to use the members of the body for the acquisition of every virtue.

{ORTH.} Therefore both the keeping and the transgressing of the laws is common to soul and body.

{ORTH.} It seems to me that the soul also rules over each, employing reason before the body.

to the members of the body, and with colors and materials suited to each of the two.

ORTH. But in the life to come it shall, together with the body, be delivered over to Gehenna.

ERAN. Thus has the Lord spoken:

Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul;

but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. ORTH. Therefore in this present life it escaped death as being immortal;

but in that life it shall pay the penalty, not undergoing death, but being punished while yet alive.

ERAN. The divine Scripture teaches this too.

ORTH. Then it is impossible for the immortal nature to undergo death.

ORTH. How then can you say that God the Word tasted death? For if, where the immortal is created, it was shown impossible for it to become mortal, how is it possible that he who is uncreatedly and eternally immortal, the Maker of both mortal and immortal natures, should partake of death? ERAN. We too know that his nature is immortal, but we say that he partook of death in the flesh.