Institutes & Conferences 3 part 11/11

Did He then, as was the custom of those who received power from God, likewise beg that power be given Him to accomplish it by the invocation of the divine name? Why did He not, just as the apostles worked in His name, likewise Himself work in the name of the Spirit? Finally, what does the Gospel testify concerning Him? 'He was,' it says, 'teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes and Pharisees.' Or wouldst thou perhaps have Him to have been proud and arrogant, who reckoned to His own power the authority which, as thou sayest, He had received from God? But what do we make of the fact that power never obeyed servants except through the name of the Author, nor could have any efficacy if anyone reckoned to himself something out of it as his own?

But why do we contend so long with evident, yet lesser, arguments against this raging blasphemy? Let us hear God Himself speaking to the disciples: 'Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.' And again: 'In my name,' He says, 'ye shall cast out demons.' Did He then, who made His very own name to be a power, need the name of another for exercising power? But what more is added? 'Behold,' He says, 'I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy.' He Himself, certainly, says that He is meek—as indeed He was—and lowly in heart.

And how, on behalf of the highest authority surely, did He command others to work in His name, if He Himself worked in another's name, or gave to others as His own that which He Himself, as thou wouldst have it, had not possessed unless He had received it from another? But tell me: who of the saints, receiving power from God, ever worked thus?

Or would not Peter have been thought insane, or John frenzied, or Paul out of his mind, if to any sick or ailing they had said, 'In our name rise up,' or to the lame, 'In our name walk,' or to the dead, 'In our name live,' or that saying to certain men, 'We give you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy'? Understand therefore from this very thing thine own madness, since, just as these words are insane if they be of human presumption, so thou art most insane, who understandest not that these are of divine power.

For thou must confess one of two things: either that a man can both have and give divine power, or else certainly, if no man at all can do this, that it was God who could. For no one can bestow divine power in bounty unless he has had it in his nature. But there follows in thy blasphemy that His flesh was made a temple by the Spirit, for this reason, because John said: 'For I saw the Spirit descending from heaven and remaining upon Him.' Since thou strivest to confirm thy frenzied assertion even by divine testimonies, let us see for what cause this sacred testimony, which thou citest, said, 'For I saw,' he says, 'the Spirit descending as a dove and remaining upon Him.'

Discern here, if thou canst, who is the greater, who the more honored—He who descended, or He to whom descent was made? He who bore the honor, or He to whom honor was borne? Where in this testimony does it sound that the Spirit made His flesh a temple, or wherein did it diminish the honor of God, if God Himself descended to manifest God to the human race—since assuredly He whose dignity was pointed out ought not to be understood as less than He who was the pointer-out of that dignity? But far be it to believe or to suppose any distance in the Godhead, because the one same Deity and equal power utterly excludes the notion of an impious inequality.

And therefore in this matter, since there is both the Person of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and since it is the Son of God to whom descent is made, the Spirit who descends, the Father who bears the testimony—no one had more of honor, no one received any injury, but equally it all redounds to the fullness of the Deity, because whatever Person in the Trinity contains in itself the honor of the whole Trinity. And therefore there is no need to say more from this, except only to make manifest the cause and origin of thine impiety, because assuredly thorns and thistles springing up from their roots betray their stock by their own quality, and by that very thing which they are, indicate whence they are born.

So then thou too, thorny offshoot of the Pelagian heresy, showest in the shoot the same that thy father is reported to have had in the root. For he, as Leporius his disciple said, asserted that our Lord Christ was made so through baptism; thou sayest that in baptism He was made a temple of God through the Spirit. The words indeed are not fully the same, but there is fully one perversity. And thou addest also to thy aforesaid impieties this: that the Spirit granted the Lord elevation into heaven—showing, forsooth, by thy sacrilegious sense, that thou believest Christ, the Lord of laws, to have been so feeble and so needy, that, unless the Spirit had elevated Him into heaven, thou wouldst perhaps reckon Him to be even today still upon the earth.

And to prove thy saying, adducing also a sacred testimony, thou sayest: 'for it says: Giving commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, through the Holy Spirit He was taken up.' What shall I call thee, what shall I esteem thee, who by corrupting the divine letters dost so act that the sacred testimonies may not have the force of testimonies? A ninth kind of audacity, which strives to accomplish by the arguments of its own wickedness that the truth should seem to confirm falsehood! For it was not so said in the Acts of the Apostles as thou sayest. For what does the Scripture say? 'Which Jesus began to do and to teach, until the day on which, giving commandment to the apostles through the Holy Spirit whom He had chosen, He was taken up.' This indeed is a hyperbaton, and is to be understood thus:

[Scripture speaks of the things] which Jesus began to do and to teach until the day on which he was taken up, giving commandment to the apostles whom he had chosen through the Holy Spirit—so that perhaps no fuller answer can be given you on this point than this very testimony; for surely the integrity of a testimony ought to suffice for the full establishing of truth, if corruption could be enough to establish falsehood. Yet you, who suppose that the Lord Jesus Christ could not have ascended into heaven unless he had been lifted up by the Spirit, tell me how he himself says: 'No man ascends into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven.'

Recognize, then, how ridiculously and foolishly you suppose that he could not ascend into heaven—he who, when he had descended to earth, is said never to have been absent from heaven. Ask whether it was possible for him, on leaving the lower world, to ascend into heaven, when it was easy for him, though set upon earth, to remain always in the heavenly places. And what of that which he himself says: 'I ascend to my Father'? Did he in this ascension imply that he would need the aid of another—he who, in the very statement that he would ascend, displayed the power of his own authority? David too, concerning this very ascension of the Lord, says: 'God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet'; plainly he set forth the majesty of the one ascending by the power of the ascension.

But let us see, after all, with what addition you conclude your foregoing blasphemies: 'He who bestowed so great a glory on Christ,' you say. You name it 'glory' only to inflict an insult. For in asserting that the Lord was endowed with glory, while you say that he received it, you blasphemously imply that he was in need of it. For this is what your impious mind is bent upon: to make the bounty of the giver prove the neediness of the receiver. And—O your wretched impiety!—where then is that which the Godhead itself long ago foretold concerning the Lord Jesus Christ ascending into heaven, saying: 'Lift up your gates, O princes, and the King of glory shall enter in'? And when it had, as the divine word is wont, answered itself as though under the person of an enquirer—'Who is this King of glory?'—it at once added:

'The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle'—under the name of a battle waged he assuredly shows the victory of the Lord in his triumph. Then, when to complete the exposition of the matter he had repeated the text of the aforesaid utterance, he displayed the majesty of the Lord entering heaven with this conclusion, saying: 'The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.' Namely, lest the assumption of a body should diminish the honour of the supreme Godhead, he taught that the very one whom he had above declared the victor in the battle of hell is himself the Lord of hosts and the King of heavenly glory. Go now and say that glory was bestowed upon the Lord, when the prophet has called him King of glory, and he himself has thus testified concerning himself: 'When the Son of Man shall come in his glory.'

Resist, if you can, and gainsay it, so that, while he bears witness that he possesses his own glory, you may say that he received one that was another's—although we say that he possesses glory as his own in such a way that we still do not deny that this very property of glory is common to him with the Spirit and the Father, since whatever God possesses belongs to the Godhead, and the kingdom of glory is so proper to the Son of God that it is nevertheless not divided from the property of the whole Godhead. But it is time at last to set an end to this book, or rather to the whole work—if, however, I first append a few sayings of holy men and illustrious priests, so that what we have already established by the authority of the sacred testimonies we may further strengthen by the faith of the present age.

Hilary, a man of all virtues and graces, and no less distinguished in eloquence than in life, who as a teacher of the churches and a priest grew great not only by his own merits but also by the progress of others, and amid the storms of persecutions stood so unmoved that through the strength of his unconquered faith he attained even the dignity of a confessor—in the first book On the Faith bears witness that the Lord Jesus Christ is true God of true God, both born before the ages and afterward begotten as man. Likewise in the second book: 'The one only-begotten God, inserted into the form of a little human body in the womb of the holy Virgin, grows; he who contains all things and within whom all things are, is brought forth by the law of human birth.' Likewise in the same book:

'The angel is witness that God is with us—he who is born.' Likewise in the tenth book: 'We have taught also the mystery of God born into manhood from the Virgin's childbearing.' Likewise in the same: 'For although God was born in man, he was not born on that account so as to cease to remain God.' Likewise, in the same author's preface to his exposition of the Gospel according to Matthew: 'For it was first necessary for us that the only-begotten God should be recognized as born a man for our sake.' Likewise in what follows: 'that unto that which was God there might be begotten, as man, that which he then was not.' Likewise in the same: 'The third point that followed was fitting, namely that, since God was begotten a man in the world,' and so forth.

These indeed are but a few out of a great many, yet even from what we have said you see that he plainly and evidently proclaims that God was born of Mary. And where now is that saying of yours: 'A creature could not bring forth the Creator,' and: 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh'? It would be tedious to cite the agreeing testimonies of each person one by one: what is called for is an enumeration rather than a full setting-forth of their sayings, since they suffice of themselves for their own demonstration. Ambrose, that outstanding priest of God, who, never departing from the Lord's hand, ever shone like a jewel upon the finger of God, thus records in his book addressed to virgins: 'My kinsman is white and ruddy—white, because he is the splendour of the Father; ruddy, because he is the offspring of the Virgin.'

'Yet remember that in him the tokens of the Godhead are more ancient than the mysteries of the body. For he did not take his beginning from the Virgin, but he who already was came into the Virgin.' Likewise the same author, on the Lord's Nativity: 'Behold the miracle of the Lord's mother: a virgin conceived, a virgin gave birth, a virgin in travail, a virgin with child, a virgin after the birth—as it is said in Ezekiel: And the gate was shut and was not opened, because the Lord passed through it. Glorious virginity and illustrious fruitfulness! The Lord of the world is born, and there is no groan of one giving birth: the womb is emptied, the infant is received, and yet virginity is not violated. It was fitting that at God's birth the merit of chastity should increase, and that what was whole should not be violated by the coming-forth of him who had come to heal what was corrupt.'

Likewise in the exposition of the Gospel according to Luke: 'that she above all was chosen to bring forth God, who was espoused to a man.' Assuredly he proclaims that God was born of a virgin, and he names Mary the mother of God. And where now is that monstrous and execrable utterance of yours in which you say: 'How can she be the mother of one alien to her own nature? But if she is called mother by them, then what is born is a human being, not God'? Behold, this outstanding teacher of the faith both says that she who bore him is a human being and teaches that he who was born is God—and yet holds this to be, not a ground for unbelief, but the miracle of faith. Jerome, teacher of the catholics, whose writings shine throughout the whole world like divine lamps, in his book to Eustochium says: 'The Son of God, for our salvation,

was made the Son of Man. For ten months he waits in the womb to be born, and he in whose fist the world is enclosed is confined within the narrowness of a manger.' Likewise the same author, in his commentary on Isaiah: 'For the Lord of hosts, who is the King of glory, himself descended into the virginal womb and entered and went out by the eastern gate which is ever shut, concerning which Gabriel says to the Virgin: The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you; therefore that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God; and in Proverbs: Wisdom has built herself a house.' Compare this now, if you please, with your teaching—nay, with your blasphemy in which you say: 'For God is the creator of months, and not the offspring of months.'

For behold, Jerome, a man as of the greatest learning so of the most approved and purest doctrine, in almost the very words in which you deny that the Son of God was born by months, testifies that he was born by months. 'For ten months,' he says, 'he waits in the womb to be born.' But perhaps the authority of this one man seems slight to you: consider, then, that all say the same thing, and in the same words, since whoever does not deny that the Son of God is the offspring of the Virgin confesses that he was born by months. Rufinus too, a man of Christian philosophy and no despicable portion of the church's doctors, thus bears witness in his exposition of the Creed concerning the Lord's nativity:

'For the Son of God,' he says, 'is born of a virgin, not joined primarily to the flesh alone, but generated with the soul mediating between the flesh and God.' Has he not testified, though obscurely, that God was born of man? Augustine, priest of the town of Hippo Regius, says: 'But that men might be born of God, first God was born of them; for Christ is God. And Christ, born of men, sought nothing but a mother on earth, since he already had a Father in heaven: born of God, through whom we are made, and born of a woman, through whom we might be remade.' Likewise there: 'And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Why then do you marvel that men are born of God? Consider God himself born of men.' Likewise the same author, in his letter to Volusianus:

'But both Moses himself and the rest of the prophets most truly prophesied of the Lord Jesus and ascribed to him great glory. They proclaimed that he would come, not as one equal to themselves nor as one superior merely in the same power of miracles, but fully as the Lord God of all and as one made man for the sake of men. And for this reason he too willed to do such works, lest it should be absurd that he himself did not do what he had done through them. Yet he had also to do something proper to himself: to be born of a virgin, to rise from the dead, to ascend into heaven. He who thinks this too little for God—I know not what more he can expect.' But perhaps, because these men whom we have enumerated lived in different parts of the world, they seem to you less credible in their authority:

Ridiculous indeed, for faith is not diminished by place, and it is what a man is, not where he is, that must be considered—especially since religion unites all, and those who are in one faith are known to be also in one body. But nevertheless we will bring forward for you some men, whom you may not despise, even from among the easterners.

Gregory, most splendid radiance of learning and doctrine, who, though long since departed from this life, yet even now lives in his authority and faith, and though long since absent in body from the churches, yet does not withdraw in voice and teaching, says: 'When, therefore, God had come forth from the Virgin in that human nature which he had assumed, being one out of two things mutually contrary to one another, flesh and spirit, the one is assumed into God, the other confers the grace of Godhead. O new and unheard-of commingling! O wondrous and inscrutable conjoining! He who was, comes to be; the Creator is created; he who is immeasurable is contained, with the soul mediating between God and flesh; and he who makes all men rich is made poor.' Likewise again, on the Epiphany: 'But what happens?

What is being done concerning you, or for our sake? A certain new and unheard-of exchange of natures is brought about, and God becomes man.' Likewise there: 'And the Son of God began to be also the Son of Man, not changed from what he was—for he is unchangeable—but assuming what he was not—for he is merciful—so that he who could not be contained might be contained.' You see how excellently and magnificently he proclaims the majesty of the Godhead in such a way as to imply the graciousness of the incarnation, knowing full well, this admirable teacher of the faith, that in all these things which God, coming into the world, bestowed upon us, there is a heaping-up of benefits, not a diminishing of his honour; since whatever God has granted to man ought to increase our affection toward him, not lessen his dignity.

Athanasius, priest of the city of Alexandria, an outstanding example of steadfastness and virtue, whom the storm of heretical persecution did not terrify but proved, and who, ever keeping a life like a shining mirror, had almost attained the merit of martyrdom before he took the dignity of a confessor—let us see what he held concerning the Lord Jesus Christ and concerning the Lord's mother. 'This, then,' he says, 'is the intent and the character of Holy Scripture, as we have often said: that there is a twofold signification of the Saviour in it—that he both was always God and is the Son, the Word and Light and Wisdom of the Father, and that afterward, for our sake, he took flesh of the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer (Theotokos), and was made man.' Likewise, after other matters:

'Many, then, have been holy and clean from sin: Jeremiah indeed was sanctified from the womb, and John, while he was in the womb, leaped for joy at the voice of Mary the God-bearer.' He says, therefore, that God, the Son of God—who, to speak the faith of all in his own words, is the Word and the Light and the Wisdom of the Father—took flesh for our sake, and therefore he calls the Virgin Mary Theotokos, because she is the mother of God. John, the glory of the bishops of Constantinople, whose holiness, without any storm of heathen persecution, attained the merits of martyrdom—hear what he held and proclaimed concerning the incarnation of the Son of God.

'And him,' he says, 'whom, had he come in his naked Godhead, neither heaven nor earth nor the seas nor any creature could have sustained, the unharmed womb of the Virgin bore.' His faith, then, and his teaching, if you were ignorant of the others', you ought to have followed and held—the one for whose love and longing the devout people chose you as their bishop; for when it took you as its priest from the church of Antioch, from which it had before chosen him, it believed that in you it would recover whatever it had ceased to have in him. Have not, I ask, all these men said all this as though long ago by a prophetic spirit, to confute your blasphemies? For you cry out that Christ, our Lord and Saviour, is not God, whereas they proclaim that Christ the Lord is true God:

You blaspheme that Mary is Christotokos (Christ-bearer), not Theotokos (God-bearer); they, so far from denying her to be Christotokos, acknowledge her to be Theotokos as well. Not only are the facts themselves opposed to your blasphemies, but even the very words used of them, so that we may plainly understand that long ago there was prepared by God against your blasphemies an impregnable bulwark, which would break the coming force of heretical assault upon the wall of truth already made ready. And you, O most impious and most shameless defiler of a glorious city, grievous and deadly plague of the catholic and holy people, dare to stand in the church

and to speak, and with your blasphemies and frenzied cries to defame priests of ever-unblemished faith and catholic confession, saying that through the fault of former teachers the people of the city of Constantinople is in error? Are you, then, the corrector of former bishops, the condemner of the priests of old—you more excellent than Gregory, you more approved than Nectarius, you more eminent than John and than all the other priests of the eastern cities, who, though not of the same name as those I have named, were yet of the same faith? And this indeed, so far as concerns this cause, suffices; for when it is a question of faith, all are, in this respect, the same as the best, in that they are partakers with the best.

Hence I too, humble and obscure in name as in desert, though I cannot claim the place of a teacher among the distinguished bishops of the city of Constantinople, yet presume upon the zeal and affection of a disciple. For, having been adopted by John, the bishop of most blessed memory, into the sacred ministry and offered to God, though I am absent in body, I am present there in affection; and though I am not now mingled by presence with that people of God, most dear and most venerable to me, yet I am joined to them in mind. And hence it is that, grieving and suffering with them, I have now burst forth as it were into a voice of common sorrow and pain, and, as the one thing I could do, through the mournful lament of these little works of mine I have cried out as though for the infirmity of my own members and limbs.

For if, according to the Apostle, when a lesser part of the body suffers, the greater grieves and suffers with it, how much more, when the greater suffers, ought the lesser to suffer with it. It is indeed most inhuman that in one and the same body the lesser members should not feel the infirmity of the greater, when the greater suffer for the infirmities of the lesser. Wherefore I beseech and implore you all, who are set within the compass of the city of Constantinople and are my fellow-citizens by love of country and my brothers by the unity of faith, that you separate yourselves from that man—as it is written—that ravening wolf who devours the people of God as though it were the food of bread. Touch not, nor taste, anything of his, for all is unto destruction. Go out from the midst of him and be separated, and touch not the unclean thing.

Be mindful of your teachers and priests of old: of Gregory, renowned throughout the world; of Nectarius, distinguished for his sanctity; of John, wondrous in faith and purity—of John, I say, of that John who truly, after the likeness of John the Evangelist, both as a disciple of Jesus and as an apostle, ever reclined as it were upon the Lord's breast and in his love. Of him, I say, be mindful; him follow; ponder his purity, his faith, his doctrine and his holiness. Be ever mindful of him, your teacher and nurturer, in whose bosom, so to speak, and embrace you grew up, who was the common master of me and of you, whose disciples and formation we are.

Read his writings, hold fast his instruction, embrace his faith and his merit. And though to attain to it is a great and difficult thing, yet to follow it is beautiful and sublime, since in the highest matters not only the attainment but even the very imitation is to be praised; for scarcely ever is anyone wholly without some portion of that thing to which he strives to climb and attain. Let him, then, be ever in our thoughts and, as it were, before our eyes; let him dwell in our mind and in our meditation; let him, in short, himself commend to you even these things that have been written by me, since what I have written he himself taught me.

And therefore believe these things to be not so much mine as his, since a stream derives from its spring, and whatever is thought to belong to the disciple ought wholly to be ascribed to the honour of the master. But you, before all and above all, O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I beseech with suppliant voice and mind alike, that what we have written out of the bounty of your gift, you would instil by the gift of your love.

And since, as your only-begotten, our Lord and God, himself taught us, you so loved this world that for the world's salvation you sent your only-begotten, grant this to your people whom you have redeemed: that concerning the incarnation of your only-begotten Son they may taste both your gift and his love; and that this—that for our sake your only-begotten, our Lord and God, was both born and suffered and rose again—all may so understand and love, that the condescension of the sacred majesty may be the increase of our love, and that in the minds of all his humility may bring no diminishment of his honour, but ever beget an increase of charity; and that we may all so piously and wisely understand the benefits of your sacred mercy, that we may know ourselves to owe so much the more to our God, by how much the humbler God was made, for our sake, by himself.