Did he, then, who asserts that truly God of God, and the Son of the invisible and divine nature, suffered for us—did he wish two sons to be understood, as though He who suffered for us were of one subsistence, and the Only-begotten, who truly as God of God is of the invisible and divine nature, were of another? Or could he say of one whom he believed to be a mere man: 'For if you have come to know,' He says, 'who I am, you will know Him also, so far as is possible, contemplating through me the nature of the Father, whose Son I am, existing from Him according to essence, and existing of the same essence with Him'? And in order to show that not another, but the very One consubstantial with the Father, underwent the passion for us, repeating this very thing again, he says:
'For this reason also the Lord Himself, in that very same discourse, near to His passion, in order to show their weakness, whence they might receive a more perfect doctrine, said: I have many things to say to you.' The Lord Himself, therefore, who is consubstantial with the Father, and not another, is said by Theodore to have suffered for us. Nor indeed is the Father pronounced by him to be the One who is the Son: otherwise, speaking of Philip, he would not say: 'For to wish to see the Father was a sign that he did not know Him Himself'—that is, Christ; or as he goes on there to say, in the person of the Lord: 'For if you have come to know,' He says, 'who I am, you will know Him also, so far as is possible, contemplating through me the nature of the Father':
and whatever similar things are contained there, which, concerning the Father and the Son—whose nature is one—cannot be understood as said except for the distinction of persons. But at the very end of his statement he intimates all three persons together, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, when in the person of the Lord he says: 'When that Spirit of truth shall come, He will lead you into all truth. For there shall come upon you the grace of the Holy Spirit, by which you shall know the whole subtlety of the doctrines.' Accordingly, if they were taught the divinity of the Only-begotten, they would also assuredly be taught the Father to be God.
Why, then, have the accomplices of the heretics, to the prejudice of the holy Synod, endeavored to obscure so great an evidence of facts, as though they could thus close the eyes of all, just as they closed their own? For interpreting the Gospel according to John, he says: 'He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not' (John 1:10). Saying that the Lord Christ came into this world, he rightly inferred 'He was in the world,' in order to show that He referred His coming to His manifestation. For 'in substance and nature He was in the world,' he says, 'even before.' And as if this were too little, he inferred: 'the world was made by him': that is, what wonder if He was in the world, who would not be unless He had willed it?
'But nevertheless He was indeed in the world even before, and He Himself also made the world, and the world knew Him not. Well did he here say also 'knew Him not,' as if he should say, they knew not their own Lord.' It is altogether confirmed what the most wise John, together with the Oriental council, says concerning Theodore. For in very truth, as appears, he neither was ignorant of nor denied the supreme unity—he who both said those many things which we recounted above, and who said concerning Christ coming in the manifestation of the flesh, that 'in substance and nature He was in the world even before Him,' saying that He who was afterward manifested in the flesh had before existed in the world. And pronouncing it to be no wonder that Christ is said to have been in the world even before, who would not be unless He had willed it:
affirming again that the same One in the beginning made the world, whom he declares, coming in the last times, to have been not known by the world as its own Lord. Wherefore this man knew Christ, coming in the manifestation of the flesh, to be the Maker of the world and its own Lord; nor, by saying that there are two natures of Christ, did he say there were two sons, or two Lords, or two Christs, as the heretics falsely allege. For thus openly, in his book to the baptized, he spoke: 'For neither, if we say two natures, does any necessity constrain us either to say two sons, or two men, or two Christs: since to think this is the mark of extreme madness.'
But what he says also in the fifth book On the Incarnation, chapter 52, against the Apollinarists and the Arians who ask whether it is one and another, or the same Himself, I beg you to deign to consider more attentively. For in it not only does his right faith concerning the Incarnation of Christ appear, but also according to what reasoning, or according to what manner of speaking, he uttered other things for which the heretics slander him. For he says: 'When anyone distinguishes the natures, he necessarily finds one and another; and to this matter I do not think that they themselves are opposed, since it is conceded that God the Word is one by nature, but that which was assumed, whatever it may be, is another:
but meanwhile, in respect of person, the same One Himself is here found, the natures by no means being confused, but on account of the union which was made of the assumed to the Assumer. For if it is fully conceded that this is another from that by nature, and it is manifest that what was assumed is not equal to the Assumer, nor is this like to that, nor is what was assumed the same as the Assumer: it is manifest that the same One Himself will be found by the union of the person. Thus, then, it was fitting to divide the things which pertain to Christ: for to these divisions nothing is contrary; for these have also much consonance with the divine Scriptures. Thus neither will there be a confusion of natures, nor a certain perverse division of the person. For let the principle of the natures remain unconfused, and let the person be recognized to be undivided.'
'The one indeed by the property of nature, that which was assumed being divided from the Assumer; but the other by the union of the person, the nature whether of the Assumer or also of the assumed being considered in the one appellation of the whole; and so, that I may speak thus, in the appellation of the Son we both name God the Word, and signify together with it the assumed nature, whatever it may be, on account of the union which it has with Him.' Is there anyone, most clement Emperor, of so darkened a heart and so utterly alien from human understanding, who, hearing and re-reading these things, would suppose that Theodore preached two sons?
For I rather judge that his accusers, in the things they did toward the annulment of the Synod of Chalcedon, act deceitfully against their own conscience, rather than err through ignorance in manifest matters. But this is what I have sought, that you should more attentively observe: namely, the manner of speaking by which he speaks, where he seems to give offense to the unskilled and to those ignorant of his intention: because, while distinguishing the natures in Christ, he says one and another, he does not thereby introduce two sons; but because the one is God the Word by nature, as he here most evidently teaches, and the other is that which was assumed, which nevertheless, in respect of person, is found to be the same One Himself. These are not my words, but his, expounding himself, and teaching how he ought to be understood in other passages, where he speaks thus:
who, repeating this very thing, as was fitting, charges us that wherever any such thing is said, it is not to be received by us otherwise. 'For if it is fully conceded,' he says, 'that this is another from that by nature, and it is manifest that what was assumed is not equal to the Assumer, nor is this like to that, nor is what was assumed the same as the Assumer, it is manifest that the same One Himself will be found by the union of the person.' You perceive, O Augustus, that it is not the person, but rather the nature, that he calls the Assumer to be another from the assumed, and that he wishes this to be understood concerning the natures, of which there is much diversity, and concerning whose principle it is fitting to say that what was assumed is not the same as the Assumer: but concerning the person he says that the Assumer and the assumed are the same.
Could anyone have said more than 'the same One Himself'? which in this statement he says not only once, but again: and so he goes on, saying thus: 'Neither will there be a confusion of natures, nor a certain perverse division of the person.' What more evident could we seek, or what more could we expect concerning him? And yet he still adds and says: 'For let the principle of the natures remain unconfused, and let the person be recognized to be undivided.' And again, heaping up upon what is already heaped, if it must be so said, he says: 'The one indeed by the property of nature, that which was assumed being divided from the Assumer.'
'But the other by the union of the person, the nature whether of the Assumer or also of the assumed being considered in the one appellation of the whole; and so, that I may speak thus, in the appellation of the Son, we both name God the Word, and signify together with it the assumed nature, whatever it may be.' But he says 'whatever it may be,' because the heretics against whom he acts dissent concerning the Incarnation even with a divergent error among themselves. For the Apollinarists indeed believe that the Lord assumed the nature of flesh and soul, but without mind; the Arians, however, that He assumed only flesh. For this reason also he says above: the one is God the Word by nature, but the other is that which was assumed, whatever it may be.
But after this rule, plainly established for us by him, and not once or twice, but trodden out again and again, wherever in his sayings he is found speaking of Christ to sever one from another, and so to distinguish the Assumer from the assumed that he affirms this and that not to be the same—ought we not to take it as said for the division of the natures, rather than for the division of one person, since he says that in respect of person the Assumer and the assumed are the same One Himself, and repeats this very thing, and commends it by varied manner of speaking? This reasoning of his ought, therefore, to profit us for those things which seem obscure, that from these most certain things we may judge others which perhaps are doubtful.
Let us not look at the stolen particles of his statements, which the heretics for that reason cut off, so that in them the speaker's intention may not appear. What, then, they say to us—that Theodore, disputing about the Incarnation of Christ, wrote that the assumed is not the same as the Assumer, but is one and another—this we too have shown by present testimony that he said, but for the diversity of two natures, not for the division of one person: just as we say that the inner man, made to the image and likeness of God, is one, and the outer man, made more like to the beasts, is another: not that there are two persons, but that there are two natures.
Which his own manifest words also declare, and commend to us, by manifold repetition, as a thing to be held unshaken. Let them, then, rather prove this to us, if they can, where he said that according to person He is not the same, or that He is another, so that we too may confess that he erred. But we demand that this be proved, not that it be bandied about on the suspicion or will of I know not whom, so that he may be judged deservedly, not from the conjecture or slander of others, but from his own words. But if no such thing can be proved against him, how do they say that he ought to have been condemned by the Synod of Chalcedon as the inventor of the Nestorian dogma? He who again, in the sixth book of the same work, chapter 54, against the same Apollinarists, who wish us to seem worshippers of man, thus replied:
'If, then, by calling Christ man we seem to them justly to be called worshippers of man, this, before we said it, the Scripture taught—that all men are called by those terms by which it does not refuse to call Him man, just as we have shown above in many places that Christ is called by this name. But, they say, calling Christ a mere man, you ought to be called worshippers of man: this is now an open falsehood, if indeed they meant to say this. For no one ever heard us say these things; and I think that not even these men can sustain so open a lie: not because they are not familiar with lying, but because they see that they can most easily be refuted—although, if one cares less for that, this too perhaps may happen.'
'For we deem it to be the height of madness to say these things—that is, to deny the divinity of the Only-begotten. Or what now remains, that we should be separated from the heretics? For the sake of what do we endure such and so great persecutions? Or who is ignorant that war is always waged against us by the heretics? Every mine and every desert place is filled with men of ours, on account of the doctrine of piety.' And after a little: 'But all these things,' he says, 'when blessed Meletius first endured them, and with him afterward many throughout the provinces and cities and places suffered them from the heretics—for the sake of what? Was it not because they confessed the Lord Christ to be true?'
Was it not because they proclaimed the true Son of God, begotten of the Father's essence, ever existing together with the Father who begot him, while they also added a devout confession concerning the Holy Spirit? How then can we, who have suffered so much for the sake of this confession, suffer to be slandered by these very men, as though we were calling him a mere man, when the very facts plainly refute so manifest a calumny? How shamelessly, and indeed how impudently, is this man accused, since I do not know that he ever called Christ a mere man.
For he long ago answered the Apollinarists, the originators of the Eutychians, who denied the two natures of Christ and on that account slandered as 'man-worshippers' the orthodox who confessed Christ to be both man and God, that it was false that they were supposed to call Christ a mere man, affirming that no one had ever heard this from them, and protesting that to say such a thing was the height of madness. Saint Meletius, bishop of Antioch, and other catholic confessors with him, he says, filled the mines and every desert place for this reason: because they confessed Christ to be true God, begotten of the Father's essence and ever existing with the Father who begot him, while adding also a devout confession concerning the Holy Spirit. Therefore, since the Lord says in the Gospel:
By your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned (Matt. 12:37), how could the holy synod condemn this man—justified by his own words—by the words of the Apollinarists and Eutyches? Behold, he cries out and repeats again and again that he does not call Christ a mere man, but true God and the true Son of God, begotten of the Father's substance and ever existing together with the Father who begot him; and yet I know not who they are who say that the synod ought to have anathematized him after his death, as though he called Christ a mere man and denied that he is the very one who according to essence is the Son of God.
Here let them at once observe, and not pretend not to see, that even when he says that Christ the Son of God is begotten of the Father's essence and ever exists together with the Father who begot him, and further, as he goes on quoting, 'while adding also a devout confession concerning the Holy Spirit,' he likewise proclaims the Trinity, which he is similarly alleged to have denied. Let them therefore recognize their own gullibility, and at last understand that they have been deceived—they who concerning Theodore have believed heretics, or the patrons of heretics, rather than the holy Fathers of the catholic Church. Likewise in the tenth book of the same work, chapter 70, he speaks thus:
For just as through such expressions of divine Scripture we are taught the differences of the natures, so also we learn their union, as often as it brings the properties of both natures together into one, and speaks as of some one subject. For this is to display at once both the differing natures and the union of the person: from the difference indeed of the things that are said, the difference of the natures is understood; but when they are brought together, we discern the manifest union. Thus the blessed John the Evangelist says: On the next day he saw Jesus coming to him and says: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. This is he of whom I said, that after me comes a man who was made before me, because he was prior to me, and I knew him not (John 1:29).
For here, by saying 'He saw Jesus coming to him,' and 'Behold the Lamb of God,' he seems to me plainly to signify the humanity. For this is what John the Baptist saw, this was that which underwent death—namely the body, which was offered for the whole world. But what follows, 'Who takes away the sins of the world,' in no way now befits the flesh. For it did not belong to the flesh to take away the sin of the whole world, but this was assuredly a work of the divinity. Who would not suppose such things to have been said after the rise of the Nestorian and Eutychian heresies, did not the title of the author of these sayings indicate otherwise?
Thus this man walks in the middle between both, upright; thus by the testimony of divine Scripture he refutes both—he who is said to have deserved to be refuted by the Council of Chalcedon as the author of the Nestorian error, so that the reader may find nothing else to have been defined either by the Council of Ephesus or by the Council of Chalcedon itself. But would that the Nestorians and Eutychians followed these things together with us, for then they would not be heretics. Would that at last the Nestorians and Eutychians would follow these things with us, that they might not be heretics—wherein the difference of the two natures in Christ is so proclaimed that it is at the same time also proclaimed that of both natures there is one person.
Therefore let not the Eutychians pretend that they hate Theodore because he proclaimed two persons, of the Son of God and of the son of man, since from the things which have been recounted it is shown that they rather hate him for this reason: that he proclaimed there to be two natures of one and the same. For these matters we do not require an ingenious interpreter, but rather a reader who is not disdainful. A matter that is open and manifest needs no interpretation: it is only required that those who with closed eyes resist the truth should at last be willing to see. For also in the third book of the said work he says, 'But if anyone wishes to ask what at last I say Jesus Christ to be, I say God and the Son of God.' Behold what manner of confession was his—he who is falsely alleged to have called Christ a mere man:
of whom it must be feared lest, when we refuse to allow him to be charged by these calumniators with Jewish impiety, they on the contrary fasten upon him the crime of the Manichaeans in the mystery of the Incarnation: for in this passage, confessing Jesus Christ to be God and the Son of God, he said nothing of his humanity. For what wonder is it, if those who fasten upon him that he once proclaimed God to be solitary, without Son and Holy Spirit, and on the contrary taught two sons, should with like inconsistency also fasten this upon him: that, when they have said that he, like the Jews, believed Jesus Christ to be a mere man, as though he were not also God, they should again say of him, like Manichaeus, that believing the Lord Christ to be only God and the Son of God, he denied that he was man:
since, as we have shown above, they would have him to be stained with the error both of the Jews and of the Manichaeans, as though he made void all the prophecies made concerning Christ. For all things are permitted to their cunning, and there is nothing that pleases them and which they do not believe to be expedient for themselves. But just as he does not therefore deny Jesus Christ to be man, because, keeping silent of his humanity, he here confesses him only to be God and the Son of God: so likewise he does not deny Jesus Christ to be God, where, keeping silent of his divinity, or making a distinction of the natures, he is silent that the same one is also God and the Son of God. For neither did the apostle Peter deny Christ to be God, when, speaking to the Jews, he by dispensation kept silent of his divinity, which they could not bear to hear even with a slight hearing;
and said: Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God among you by powers and wonders and signs, which God did through him in the midst of you, as you yourselves know, this man, delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you, fastening him by the hands of the wicked, slew, whom God raised up, loosing the pains of hell (Acts 2:22-24), and the rest of such things that follow. Neither did Paul his apostle deny Christ to be God, when he said: One God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all, a testimony in his own times (1 Tim. 2:5-6):
as though Christ were not God, but only a mediator of God and men, or as though he were not the creator and ruler of all times, so that certain times might be called, as it were, his own—just as we are accustomed to speak of any one of us men in a similar way, and to say, 'At his own times he says or does this or that.' But according to the diversity of occasions the intention of the speaker is always diverse. For even the Lord himself in the Gospel says to the Jews: But now you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken to you the truth, which I heard from God (John 8:40). In saying these things, did he deny that he was God and the Christ?
Accordingly, let us believe that his apostles and the doctors of the Church spoke certain things after this same manner, as dispensers of the divine mystery, not delivering the same things to all, nor in the same way. And those who have died in the peace of the Church we deal with piously and religiously if we are willing to interpret them in the better sense, thus excusing the men so as to accuse the errors. Moreover, in the fifteenth book, with which he concluded the whole work on the Incarnation, testifying that both natures came together into the person of one Son, he says: 'For which reason each is justly called Son, there being one person, which the union of the natures effected.'
But I have dwelt longer upon this work of his concerning the Incarnation than seemed necessary for faith and reason—or, if not longer than for these, yet not longer than seemed necessary against the calumnies and obstinacy. For to one who knows well, would not the very title alone of that same work suffice for recognizing Theodore's faith? For who, hearing that he composed books on the Incarnation, or, to express this more properly with a word that is indeed less Latin but necessary—as the Greeks say, on the 'Inhumanation' of the Son of God—would suppose that he proclaimed two sons? For how could he speak of the Son of God, that is, God the Word, without also calling him man, whom he called 'inhumanated'? For I do not shrink from the word which the principle of faith and its usefulness demands of me, against those who say that the Son of God assumed not a whole man,
that is, flesh and a rational soul, but only flesh, or flesh alone and a soul without reason. How then could he not call God the Word, whom he taught to be 'inhumanated,' also himself man? Or how, teaching two sons—as though the Word of God belonged to one person, but the man assumed to another—and not the same God the Word in person who is man, could he call the very Word of God 'inhumanated'? Each of these is contrary to the other, and they ought to have been ashamed to accuse on this score a most learned man—or, if they will not say this, a man at least proclaimed by the testimony of most learned men:
of whose impudence the Council of Chalcedon is shown not to have been a partaker—a council which ought to have understood that where Theodore, of necessity dividing more fully the properties of the natures against the heretics, would assert that the one who assumes is other than the one assumed, he would call it 'other' by nature, as we have shown above, not by person. Now let us pass from this work on the Incarnation to another which he published against Eunomius, where in the tenth book he says: 'For all the Jews awaited the Christ who was to come, from the prophetic utterances, as one who would be some great person and an author of many good things to them. Wherefore,
when Herod, after the coming of the Magi, asked the Scribes and Pharisees where Christ was to be born, they answered him and named the place, that it was in Bethlehem of Judah. But not on that account did they know Christ the Son of God to be God; rather they supposed Christ to be a mere man who, according to the most approved of the prophets, was to come, though somewhat better than these—which is what anyone may see the Jews to think even now.' Does it still seem just that the holy and great synod should be blamed because it did not itself convict Theodore at once both of Jewish unbelief and of the Manichaean plague, so as to condemn him along with the Jews, as though he believed Christ to be only a man;
and along with the Manichaeans, as though he did not accept that the prophets spoke concerning Christ—since he convicts even those Jews on the ground that, although they supposed him to be somewhat better than the most approved of the prophets, they nevertheless did not know him to be God; and against these very men he declares that the Jews awaited Christ as one to come according to the prophetic utterances, according to which they also answered Herod when he asked, that he would be born in Bethlehem of Judah?