BOOK ONE. ON THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST THE MEDIATOR, RETAINING TWO NATURES IN ONE PERSON. CHAPTER I. A book sent by the king to Fulgentius. Fulgentius's reply at the king's command. To be unwilling to assert the faith is to deny the faith. The necessity of replying is from the divine precept. To your triumphant judgment, most pious king, I could never believe it has been withdrawn by forgetfulness, that recently you commanded a certain volume to be sent to me by the courier Felix, bidding me reply forthwith.
Since its length was so great that it needed rather more time to be reviewed, and the end of the day was at hand, night drawing near, having barely tasted the very beginnings of that volume by a hurried run through a rapid reading, I had asked that a space of one night be granted us for reading through everything in the order of a full review; which the will of your gentleness altogether decreed should be denied, so that you did not even command us to be allotted time for reading through the remaining portions of the Scripture.
But I, since for the space of some days I awaited the direction of your eminence, and since thereafter, the tenor of that inquiry being withdrawn, only a reply was demanded of us, have destined to be reviewed by your gentleness these few things—for which, with the Lord's help, the smallness of our talent suffices—concerning that same inquiry, which from the beginning I came to know only slightly; lest perhaps I be thought puffed up out of disdain, or be judged bound by the fault of silence, which your loftiness might suspect—either not to render a reply out of pride, or to have been silent out of a distrust of the true faith.
For to your zeal, most clement king, I do not doubt it is well known that among those who have been redeemed by participation in Christian grace, to be unwilling to assert the faith is almost the same as to deny it. Since indeed the only-begotten God himself, the founder and redeemer of the human race, testifies with a wholly certain declaration that, just as he will confess the one confessing, so he will deny the one denying, saying: 'Whoever confesses me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven' (Matt. X, 32, 33). So again, he himself, coming in his majesty, will be ashamed of the one who is ashamed of him and of his words.
The standard of this saying Luke is known to have set down in such a sentence, where he confirms the deadly silence of this shame in such a way that he does not keep silent that the one who is ashamed must be consigned to perdition; recalling among other things that the Lord said this: 'For what does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, but loses himself and suffers the loss of himself?' (Luke IX, 25). And, indicating the cause of this perdition, he added: 'For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him the Son of man will be ashamed, when he comes in his majesty, and the Father's, and the holy angels'.' And not undeservedly is such a servant both cast out and punished, since by one and the same silence he confirms error, who, possessed by terror or by torpor (al.
tepidity) possessed, does not by his silence build up the truth. And whoever does not confirm the Lord's glory, empties it out, and whoever does not refute the divine reproach, heaps it up. Very often a slothful soldier, weighed down by drowsy torpor, delivers the royal camp to the besiegers, while he does not defend it with fitting watches. These things I have taken care above all to send beforehand, lest your piety should wish in any way to censure me for a proud reply, upon whom the very necessity of replying imposes the duty of a free reply: for when the matter concerns God, it is no light guilt if what pertains to salvation be kept silent. For thus it behooves us to believe in the heart unto righteousness, that confession may likewise be made with the mouth unto salvation (Rom. X, 10);
since the word of God is not bound (2 Tim. II, 9). To this is added that oracle of the divine precept which binds the person of every ecclesiastical preacher by a certain fellowship not only of faith but also of service, the Lord saying: 'Cry out, do not cease, lift up your voice like a trumpet' (Isa. LVIII, 1). What is said to Isaiah in one person is commanded to many; the only-begotten God himself saying to his disciples: 'What I say to one of you, I say to all' (Mark XIII, 37). Therefore blessed Peter also, by the prompting of fatherly love, bids us to be ready to reply: 'Being ready always,' he says, 'to reply to everyone who asks you a reason for the faith and hope that is in you' (1 Pet. III, 15).
Since we are commanded to render a reason for our faith and hope to everyone who asks it, all distinction ceases utterly, whether of rank or of person. For to whom shall it be thought that the disclosure of truth ought to be denied, when the prophet testifies that he spoke without confusion in the presence of kings, saying: 'I spoke of your testimonies in the sight of kings, and was not confounded' (Ps. 118:46)? CHAPTER II. In answering, regard must be had to royal dignity. God is to be feared and honored more than an earthly king. Praise of a barbarian king for his zeal for wisdom. Wherefore, when for our faith we answer freely, so far as we have divinely received the ability, we ought not to be marked by any suspicion of stubbornness or of insolence,
since we are mindful neither of our own lowliness nor of your royal dignity, and know that fear is to be shown to God and honor to kings, the apostolic teaching thus forewarning us: 'Render to all their dues,' and a little after: 'to whom fear, fear; to whom honor, honor' (Rom. 13:7). Blessed Peter opened to us the clear knowledge of this fear and honor by his distinction, saying: 'Honor all men as servants of God, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king' (1 Pet. 2:17). Now no small measure of love and honor does he show to your clemency, whoever answers you, when you inquire, that which pertains to the faith of the truth.
Fittingly, therefore, we offer the homage of honor to your gentleness, upon whom we perceive the summit of the royal crown to have been conferred by divine bounty. Yet it escapes no wise man with how great fear that everlasting King of kings and Lord of lords ought to be reverenced, who commands that even temporal kings be honored. If anyone fears him too little, he greatly despises him; whoever lessens the honor due to him increases his own injury; nor does he escape the guilt of the ungrateful, who supposes that the perpetual immensity of the Creator and the immense perpetuity of things is to be estimated by the qualities of creatures. This your kindly gentleness beyond doubt discerns, this the sagacity of your genius and zeal recognizes;
and whoever knows how to consider it declares it truly to be marveled at — not because it is unusual for a man to apply himself to the study of the Scriptures, but because it is thus far held rare that the mind of a barbarian king, continually occupied with the numerous cares of the realm, should be so kindled with the fervent delight of coming to know wisdom, since such tireless efforts of this kind only a man of leisure or a Roman is wont to have. Through you, most merciful king, through you, I say, the pursuits of learning strive to make their way into the customs of a barbarian people, which is wont to claim ignorance for itself as though by native right.
You have proved yourself to be one who surpassed even yourself, while you so preside over the government of the African realm by your rule that you desire rather to enlarge the spaces of your soul than of your kingdom. You know, venerable king, and (as I do not doubt) you firmly hold as established by settled judgment, with how much better advantages he is joined who desires to know the truth, than he who, having subdued nations, desires to extend more widely the bounds of a temporal kingdom. CHAPTER III. The king's mistaken zeal in the Arian perfidy. The inquiry into truth confers a great good, which nevertheless is not then frustrated of its desired effect, if the mind leans upon right lines toward the knowledge of the true. Then also it will profit to have run with swift genius, if the steps of one tending toward the truth are held by no error of crookedness.
But how is that credulity to be esteemed wholesome, which supposes the worship of divine religion to consist in this — that either the Godhead should be deprived of its natural truth, while there is denied in it what is not denied in man; or the mystery of our redemption should be perverted by uncertain confusion, so that anyone should dare to deny the Lord Christ, the Son of God and of man, to be either truly God of the Father by nature, or perfect man; or if the Godhead should be reckoned to have been subject to the sufferings of the man, or the whole man should be believed not to have existed in the powers of the deity?
And thus the truth is emptied out by an error not unlike, if either in the one person of the true God and true man Christ that which stands to be substantially diverse is confounded, or in the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, a substantial diversity being believed, that which is one and indivisible of the Trinity is separated: since the divine simplicity neither permits a partial diversity to be ascribed to itself, whereby it would not undeservedly lie subject to composition; nor does rational understanding in any way need any zeal for diversity, which knows the faith of only one simple and everlasting nature to be sufficient for the fullness of its salvation, inasmuch as it is not ignorant that God himself thunders to it by the heavenly oracles:
'Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord' (Deut. 6:4). And 'the Lord your God you shall adore, and him alone shall you serve.' And 'You shall have no gods besides me.' But neither must this be unknown to human minds, with how great a loss of eternal salvation he is fined, whoever does not fear to inflict insult by impious and death-dealing thoughts or words upon the proper and only-begotten Son of the true God — as regards the immense and everlasting substance of his divinity — whether of local motion or of any changeableness; whence he is not undeservedly to be condemned by that saying of the Davidic song: 'The fool has said in his heart, There is no God' (Ps. 13:1). For truly, if he is local, he is not immense;
if he is changeable, he is not God. CHAPTER IV. The errors of the heretics arising from an evil understanding concerning the mystery of the Incarnation. Thence also the blindness of the Jews. Now it is certain that nearly all the errors of heretical depravity have from this point crept in upon certain men in manifold ways, since — while the great sacrament of piety, 'which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to angels, preached to the nations, believed in this world, taken up in glory' (1 Tim. 3:16) — some either do not believe it as it is, or do not believe it at all; and that stone, which, rejected by the builders, was made the head of the corner, becomes, for certain men possessed by the blindness of a depraved credulity, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense (1 Pet.
2:8). Whence not undeservedly, when Simeon, rejoicing, had been counted worthy to bear in his aged arms the infant Christ, the Lord of the temple, brought to his own temple according to the precept of his law (Luke 2:28) — and, bearing the figure of the present age, already wearied with fleshly old age, the old man took up the new man, namely him who alone could, out of sinners (as he says to the aged one: 'You are God my Savior, and for you I have waited all the day' [Ps. 24:5]), not only remove ingrained oldness, but even renew youth like the eagle's (as one to whom the apostolic trumpet also would truly sing: 'As the truth is in Jesus, that you put off, according to
sicut) pristinamconversationemveteremhominem, quicorrumpitursecundumdesideriaerroris; renovaminiautemspiritumentisvestræ, etinduitenovumhominem, eum (al. novumeum) quisecundumDeumcreatusestinjustitiaetsanctitateveritatis (Ephes. IV, 22); illeigiturSimeon, mundanæcernensadessesalvationisacrenovationiseffectum (nonenimmisitDeusFiliumsuumutjudicetmundum, sedutsalveturmundusperipsum [Joan. III, 17] ), cumprimumsevitæpræsen. tisangoribusprecareturabsolvi, dicens : Nuncdimittisservumtuum, Domine, secundumverbumtuuminpace : quiavideruntoculimeisalutaretuum, quodre-parasticantefaciemomniumpopulorum;
the former manner of life, the old man, which is corrupted according to the desires of error; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, him who according to God was created in the justice and holiness of truth' (Eph. 4:22)); that Simeon, therefore, perceiving the effect of worldly salvation and renewal to be present (for God did not send his Son to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him [John 3:17]), when first he prayed to be released from the anguish of the present life, saying: 'Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word, in peace: for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples;
a light for the revelation of the nations, and the glory of your people Israel' (Luke 2:29-34); a little after he testifies this concerning the same child: 'Behold, this one is set for the fall and rising again of many' (ibid., 34). There, therefore, perfidy generates a fall for those who believe wrongly, where right credulity exalts the faithful. In one and the same Christ, true Son both of God and of man, the bleared vision of those who see less clearly is thus far darkened, in whom the manifest knowledge of the true light shines to those who are enlightened. Thence it is that the Jew, blind, saw the man Christ and fell, to whom long before Isaiah did not cease to proclaim: 'With your ear you shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you shall see, and shall not see' (Isa. 6:9).
But what those seeing were not going to see, he showed by what followed, while by an evident prophecy he testifies that God was to be born of a Virgin: 'Behold,' he says, 'a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel' (Isa. 7:14), which the evangelist interprets, saying: 'God with us' (Matt. 1:23). The Jew, therefore, hearing, remained deaf, and seeing, was made the more blind; by whom neither is the everlasting and only-begotten Son believed to be of the true Father, and the fruitfulness of incorrupt virginity is denied. CHAPTER V. The error of Mani concerning the flesh of Christ. It is refuted from the book of Wisdom. It is convicted from the epistle of John.
Hence also Mani dreads to believe true flesh in the true God, since — believing human flesh to be polluted not by the fault of guilt, but by natural property — he, being blind, attributes to a nature of evil (which he lyingly feigns for himself) so great a power that, if he should believe the true God to have assumed a true nature of flesh, he would not believe the divinity (which by a deceitful profession he calls incapable of defilement) to be exempt from the pollution of the flesh; and therefore in Christ he preferred to believe a phantasm of flesh rather than a nature, and while he did not see the human infirmity assumed by him with medicinal power, he wretchedly excluded himself from the remedy of salvation.
But this madness of impure falsehood, the foreknowledge of the Holy Spirit resisting it, was extinguished before it was begotten, the Instrument of the Old Testament commending the incorruptible state of wisdom in these words in its course: 'Wisdom is more mobile than all mobile things: and she reaches everywhere by reason of her purity. For she is the vapor of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the brightness of the almighty God; and therefore no defilement runs into her. For she is the splendor of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of the majesty of God, and the image of his goodness. And though she is one, she can do all things; and remaining in herself, she renews all things' (Wis. 7:24, 27).
Concerning this incorruptibility of wisdom and the truth of the incarnation, that man, who from the very bosom of wisdom was counted worthy to draw enlightened the understanding of the heavenly mysteries, being secure, says with confidence: 'Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is of God. Every spirit that does not confess Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is not of God, and this is Antichrist' (1 John 4:2-3): for he felt not the defilements of foul flesh, who came to take up the true substance of flesh and to cleanse that same foulness of flesh. Because for this reason he deigned to take up immaculate flesh, that, saving the flesh, he might be able to remove every stain of flesh, the same John again testifying:
'We know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin' (1 John 3:5). Again: 'For this the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil' (ibid., 8). For because the work of God was held bound by the bond of the diabolical work, the Son of God appeared that he might loose the one and save the other. CHAPTER VI. The heresy of Photinus. From the beginning of John many errors are refuted. God was the Word by nature, not by mere designation. Photinus too is ignorant of the great sacrament of piety which the Apostle recalls (1 Tim. 3:16), who confesses Christ's beginning from the Virgin: being ignorant that in the one Christ the truth of the flesh is to be believed as being from time in such a way that the natural truth of the everlasting divinity from the Father is not to be denied.
And therefore he does not believe God without beginning to have been substantially born of God the Father, in whom he confesses the truth of the flesh from the Virgin, not understanding that that Word was substantially born of God the Father — the Word which, in the fullness of times made flesh, dwells among us, which according to the divine substance which it has from the Father, 'in the beginning was, and was with God, and was God' (John 1:1). By these three sentences of the evangelist there is shown both the everlasting nativity of the Word, and the personal unconfused property, and the undivided substantial unity of the Father and the Son, so that in the Word made flesh, and dwelling among us,
the fact that it 'in the beginning was' — the recognition of everlastingness — should take away the suspicion of a begun nativity; the fact that it 'was with God' — the unconfused property of each person — should exclude the union of the Sabellian error; and the fact that it 'was God' — the truth of the essential name — should show the unity of substance of the begetter and the begotten. For John did not say, 'The Word was called God,' but 'God was the Word': so that, while in the God-Word the natural truth of the divine essence is recognized, consequently there should be proved the truth not of a designated name, but of a natural name. For the truth of nature is never deprived of the truth of the name. And thus that true incarnation of the Word, not of an uttered but of a substantial Word, is then
soundly believed, if we believe the eternal Word, which took up flesh from time, to be neither subject in the beginning of its existing, nor confused in person with the Father, nor other in nature than God. CHAPTER VII. Another error, of those who deny in Christ both the true deity and the true humanity together. Another error, of those who refer the works of the humanity to the deity. There are also certain persons, in this most greatly ungrateful to the gracious Savior, that in Christ — namely, in one who is true God and perfect man — they so assert themselves to receive the nature of God and of man, that they do not hesitate to preach in the Son of God one substance as false, the other as half-full.
For they are unwilling to believe the true deity of Christ, whose true nativity from God the Father they deny to have existed substantially, wishing to take from God the Son the nature of a true name, from whom they cannot take away the name of natural truth. For they say that in the name of the only-begotten God there is not a natural substance from the Father's generation, but only a designation granted by the gift of a title. The human nature also they so believe in Christ that they take away what is better of the man; what is inferior, this they leave:
and, considering too little the great sacrament of piety which the Apostle recalls, they strive to separate the rational soul from that marvelous assumption by the Mediator — a soul which they utterly assert not to have been in the Mediator of God and men. Yet another crime is added by these to the aforesaid error, whereby they admit the huckstering of a most foul confusion.
For in the unity of person (in which God and man, the one Christ, commending the inconfusible and inseparable truth of each nature, showed himself to be true God by his divine works and true man by his human sufferings, having the impassible whereby man was created sound, taking up the passible whereby the sick man might be healed) these men are so deceived by I know not what deception, that whatever the Lord — showing the true assumption of the servile form — humbly did or said, they do not fear to divert wholly to the insult of the divinity, which they subject to the suffering of changeableness,
while they distinguish by no consideration the truth of each nature, resplendent by the most clear manifestation both of words and of works: not attending where infirmity is shown to be taken up by the invincible and impassible power, where through infirmity there shine forth the tokens of invincible power: and thus they attempt to frustrate the effect of the divine mystery, because truly man could not be saved, if either he who took up man was not by nature true God, or in the taking-up by the true God something of man was lacking. CHAPTER VIII. The twofold nature of the Mediator to be demonstrated from the Scriptures. From the words of Isaiah three things are proved in Christ: flesh, soul, and divinity.
And that every ambiguity of doubt may be removed, in the one person of the man Christ, the Mediator of God and men, the perfection of the divine and human substance must be demonstrated by prophetic and apostolic testimonies. Isaiah, as we have recalled above, says: 'Behold, a Virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, before he knows or utters evil, he shall choose the good; for before the child knows good or evil, he does not believe malice, that he may choose what is good, and the land shall be left desolate; for before the child knows to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus, and the spoils of Samaria' (Isa. 7:14-16).
In this testimony the whole fullness of the saving mystery is contained: for the truth of the flesh is known in the virginal conception, and the intellectual soul is shown in the choosing of the good, and the true nature of the deity is displayed in the name Emmanuel; and thus in the true God the assumption of man was neither false nor half-full. For it was fitting that in the sacrament of human redemption neither should truth be lacking to perfection, nor perfection to truth. For if true flesh was not in Christ, what did the Virgin conceive in her womb? and if a soul or intellect of human nature is believed to have been lacking in Christ, what is the infant said to have been ignorant of, good and evil?
Or do we subject that divine nature of the Son of God to the ignorance of good and evil, so as to deny in Christ a human soul? Is the man thus assumed by God to be believed to have been able in any measure to know the things of God, in whom wisdom itself is said to have lacked the knowledge of good and evil? The human soul, therefore, which by nature was made capable of reason, is said not to have known good and evil in the infant Christ — the soul which, according to the evangelical truth, in the boy Jesus is narrated to have advanced in wisdom and grace: as Luke sets down and says: 'And the child grew, and was strengthened, full of wisdom, and the grace of God was in him' (Luke 2:40). And a little after: 'Jesus advanced in wisdom, in age, and in grace with God and men' (ibid., 52).
For as it belongs to the flesh to advance in age, so it belongs to the soul to have advanced in wisdom and grace, which nevertheless would in no way advance in wisdom, if it did not have the natural understanding which was granted to men for the sake of reason — not because God the assumer had need of this, but because the effect of the pious assumption required this for the remedy of our salvation, so that, while flesh and rational soul are assumed by God, both alike might be saved: for neither was the flesh itself to be assumed by the Son of God, unless it were to be saved by the divine assumption. But if God had no need of flesh, but took it up that he might save it, so likewise God had no need of a rational soul, but took it up to be saved together with the flesh:
the assumption of which human soul holy David, in prophetic manner, intimates, saying: 'For behold, God helps me, and the Lord is the sustainer of my soul' (Ps. 53:6). He assuredly helped what he took up, which beyond doubt, unless he took it up, he would not have helped. CHAPTER IX. The straying sheep is the sinner wandering from God. The ways of the Lord are faith, justice, mercy, and truth. But I think it necessary that the perfect assumption of man in Christ be shown also by the recounting of the evangelical parable, namely of the straying sheep, which the Lord carried back to the house borne upon his own shoulders; for the seeking of which David long before implored aid with a tearful petition, saying:
'I have gone astray like a sheep that was lost; seek your servant' (Ps. 118:176). When, therefore, the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying: 'This man receives sinners, and eats with them' (Luke 15:2), the evangelist reports that the Lord spoke this parable to them: 'What man of you who has a hundred sheep, and if he shall lose one of them, does he not leave the ninety-nine in the desert, and go after that which was lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing; and coming home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them: Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost' (ibid., 4ff.).
This sheep, in which the nature of sinful man is signified, by what error shall we say it went astray? of heart or of body? by error of feet or by error of morals? I do not suppose anyone so devoid of human reflection as to think that a man in any way goes astray from God by remoteness of dwelling and not by perversity of thought. In the way of God one walks not by the step of the body, but by the going of the mind. The way of God is right faith, which is shown to be so entirely a way that the Apostle testifies that we walk in it: 'By faith,' he says, 'we walk, and not by sight' (2 Cor. 5:7). The way of the Lord is justice, by which blessed David records himself to have been led, saying: 'Upon the water of refreshment he brought me up, he converted my soul:
he led me upon the paths of justice for his name's sake' (Ps. 22:2). In turn, the mercy and truth of the Lord (Ps. 24:10), by which assuredly one walks not by the step of the body, but rather by the affection of the soul. This doctrine of walking blessed John intimates to us, saying: 'He who says he abides in Christ ought, just as he walked, himself also to walk' (1 John 2:6). By which way Christ himself commands that he be followed, saying: 'If you would be perfect, go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor; and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me' (Matt. 19:21). Not therefore by bodily step alone does anyone follow Christ, or stray from Christ.
Indeed, the quality of this error the Lord himself and our Savior showed, while he rebuked the Sadducees, saying: 'You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God' (Matt. 22:29). For this reason assuredly they miserably erred, because they did not know him who is the power of God. As, therefore, the knowledge of the power of God holds fast to the heavenly journey, so ignorance is the mother of error. Which blessed David also showed, saying of certain men: 'They have not known, neither have they understood; they walk in darkness' (Ps. 81:5). By these and testimonies of this kind it is most evidently demonstrated that the error of that sheep is to be attributed not only to the body, but also to the soul;
namely for this reason, that even if some sin seems to be committed bodily by a man, it takes its beginning from the heart, nor is anything accomplished outwardly, unless this be put forth inwardly by the judgment of thought. The truth of this thing Truth itself showed us, thus speaking to the disciples: 'For from the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. These are the things that defile a man' (Matt. 15:19). In this, therefore, does each one err, in which he defiles himself by the assent of evil thought. CHAPTER X. From the parable of the sheep carried back it is proved that the whole man was assumed by Christ. Christ received the Church into marriage through his soul.
Christ is rightly called the head, the Church the body. Wherefore, since that error is understood to be at once of the soul and of the body, if the Son of God, without a rational soul, took only the flesh of man, he carried back to the house the inferior part of that sheep, but the better part (which God forbid) he abandoned to perpetual error: for it is manifest that he called back that which he carried back upon his own shoulders. But if he himself professes to have carried back the whole sheep laid upon his own shoulders, let the whole man be recognized in Christ. For then is the redemption of man to be believed, if in the Son of God the fullness of the human assumption, that is, of that sheep carried back, was not lacking. For God saved in us that which he took for us;
and God the Son of God made that nature partaker of eternal salvation, which he joined to himself in the unity of person: that nature he introduced into the heavenly palace, with which the Bridegroom went forth from the chamber of the virginal womb: for he himself, 'as a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, rejoiced as a giant to run the way' (Ps. 18:6-7). But who would strive to say that the bride of the Word of God was the flesh, not the soul? to which soul it was long ago said by the Lord himself through the prophet: 'And I will betroth you to me forever; and I will betroth you to me in justice, and in judgment, and in mercy, and in loving-kindness' (Hos. 2:19). Of which mystery Isaiah too stood forth a faithful witness, who from the person of Christ speaking says these things:
'Rejoicing I will rejoice in the Lord, and my soul shall exult in my God, who has clothed me with the garment of salvation, and has surrounded me with the robe of justice, as a bridegroom decked with a crown, and as a bride adorned with her jewels' (Isa. 61:10). Behold, one is the bridegroom, the same is also the bride, who testifies that he also has a soul: which, that he might show it to have been assumed not without understanding, he showed the heart (which is proper to the human soul) to have exulted in God together with the flesh, from the person of the man assumed, saying: 'My heart and my flesh have exulted in the living God' (Ps. 83:2).
But since the Lord, receiving the first-fruits of nature, so received in his own soul the souls of all the faithful — as in his own body the body of all the faithful — through the unity of nature and the grace of justification: through this he took the whole Church into marriage of perpetual incorruptibility for himself; the wondrous sacrament of which betrothal the faithful servant of the Bridegroom so commends to the bride herself, that it may be understood to be more of the mind than of the body, saying: 'For I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, so your senses may be corrupted, and fall away from the simplicity that is in Christ' (2 Cor. 11:2-3).
There, therefore, the spiritual adulterer seeks to corrupt the chastity of the virginal marriage, where he perceives that fidelity of wedlock is owed to be kept to the heavenly Bridegroom. But in vain does the Apostle command the chastity of the soul to be guarded, if the man assumed by God did not have in himself the first-fruits of this conjunction; especially since the same Teacher of the nations does not cease to preach Christ and the Church as head and body, saying: 'According to the working of the might of his power which he wrought in Christ Jesus, raising him from the dead, and setting him at his right hand in the heavenly places above every principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
and he put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all' (Eph. 1:20-22). In another place too it is said: 'The man is the head of the woman, as Christ is the head of the Church, himself the Savior of the body' (Eph. 5:23). How then shall the soul of the Church be able to be saved, if the soul was lacking to the Savior? or what kind of effect of deliverance shall be believed to follow in the body, which did not go before in the head? For as he says to his own faithful: 'If the Son sets you free, then you shall be truly free' (John 8:36), so also concerning himself he declares: 'For he has become like a man without help, free among the dead' (Ps.
(Psalm 87:5). Therefore what the Head made free in itself, this it also freed in the body; for entering into the house of the strong man and binding the strong man (Matthew 12:29), He there freed from bondage that which He had first taken up in Himself on behalf of the servant; nor will anything else reign in the body than what went before (or, proceeded) in the Head to heaven. Paul, bearing the belief of this matter faithfully and confidently, exults and says: But our conversation is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). There, then, he does not doubt that his own soul dwells, where he is confident that the human soul reigns in Christ; wherefore he also urges the Colossians with the utterance of such preaching, saying: If you have risen (or, you have risen)
you have risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. CHAPTER XI. Another argument from Peter. Nor is that in any way to be omitted, that Peter commends in Christ, with a great wonder of preaching, that He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth. For thus he says: Christ died for us (or, for you), leaving you an example, that you should follow His steps; who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth (1 Peter 2:22).
For if the Son of God did not have a human soul in the assumption of the flesh, and this is believed to have been said by blessed Peter concerning His divinity, what is it that is said as a great thing to the praise of Christ, that His divinity could be free from the stain of sin, since it is proper to God not only not to sin, but even to save from sin? He therefore alone can grant pardon, because He alone cannot admit fault; therefore He alone is the physician of the wounded, because the divine nature never receives a wound in itself. But if this is believed to be referred to the flesh of Christ, how can justice be preserved by our souls, to which the assumption of Christ, cited as apostolic example, gave no pattern?
But that blessed Peter might show that righteousness—which He commands us to imitate—had gone before in both the soul and the flesh of Christ together, he added, following on: Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; which pertains properly to the patience of the soul. Wherefore in another place also he says: Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing: because to this you are called, that you should inherit a blessing (1 Peter 3:9). Of this blessing our Savior commends the beginning as coming forth from the heart, saying: A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things (Matthew 12:35).
It is agreed, therefore, that goodwill resides in the soul, whence we can render blessing to those who curse us. But that blessed Peter might show the example both of the soul and of the flesh in Christ, when he had said: Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, he added, following on: When He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judges justly; who bore our sins in His own body upon the tree, that we, being separated from our sins, should live with righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed (or, we were). For you were as sheep going astray; but now you are converted to the shepherd and bishop of your souls (1 Peter 2:23-25). CHAPTER XII. Christ is rightly called both shepherd, and sheep, and lamb.
Another argument from Leviticus, because Christ, since He was High Priest, was bound by the law to be a whole man. The Son of God, therefore, is the visitor and shepherd of our souls, because He deigned to become the receiver of a human soul, to whom, in the person of the human nature He was to assume, it is said in the psalm: Receive me according to Your word, and I shall live (Psalm 119:116). Christ, then, is our shepherd, whose sheep apostolic authority testifies we are; yet He, that He might fully deign to show Himself the receiver of our nature, did not disdain to call Himself not only shepherd but also sheep; as indeed of whom, moved (or, touched) by the Holy Spirit, the prophet testifies:
Like a sheep He was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer He was dumb, so He opened not His mouth (Isaiah 53:7); and He Himself again through Jeremiah: I was like an innocent lamb led to be sacrificed, and I knew not: they devised a wicked device against me, saying: Come, let us put wood into His bread (Jeremiah 11:19); concerning whom also John the Baptist proclaims: Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins (or, sin) of the world (John 1:29). Peter the apostle also sets forth things not unlike concerning Christ (or, concerning whom), saying:
Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, silver or gold, from your vain conversation received from the tradition of your fathers, but with the precious blood, as of a lamb undefiled and immaculate, that is, of Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19). One and the same therefore is the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, Himself both shepherd and sheep, Himself both bridegroom and bride, Himself both priest and victim, one and the same both the offerer of the gift and made the gift of the offerer, so that neither might the offerer depart from the quality of the gift, nor the gift differ from the merit of the offerer. For if He had anything less of human nature, He could neither take the person of a high priest, nor be offered for sins: for in the law he could not exercise the priesthood, if any man (or,
of men) had something less in himself, he could not exercise the priesthood; nor was it lawful for anyone to offer for sacrifice a beast that was diseased or imperfect: but who would doubt that our high priest is Jesus Christ, whom Paul evidently commends under this title: But having (he says) a great High Priest, who has passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one tempted in all things according to the likeness, without sin. Let us therefore come with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable help (Hebrews 4:14-16). And that he might show this office of the priesthood to belong to human nature, he added:
For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in the things that pertain to God, that he may offer gifts and sacrifices for sins; who can have compassion on those who are ignorant and err, since he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason thereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins. And no man takes this honor to himself, but he that is called by God, as Aaron was. So also Christ did not glorify Himself to be made a high priest, but He that said to Him: You are my Son, this day have I begotten You (Hebrews 5:1-5). Yet He calls this high priest tempted in all things according to the likeness, without sin. But in what things He was tempted, he clearly showed above, saying:
For nowhere does He take hold of angels, but He takes hold of the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things He ought to be made like unto His brethren, that He might become merciful, and a faithful high priest toward God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that in which He Himself suffered and was tempted, He is able to help those who are tempted (Hebrews 2:16-18). CHAPTER XIII. Another argument from Paul, because Christ was tempted both in flesh and in soul. If then in that in which He was tempted He gives help to the tempted, surely in that in which He was not tempted He ministers no help to the tempted; whence it follows that those who assign to Christ only human flesh, and deny the soul, seek the help of Christ in the flesh alone, but in the soul remain destitute:
For the Son of God helps in man that which He assumed for man. But if they delight to merit the help of Christ both in soul and in flesh, they must of necessity confess (as the truth holds) that He was tempted alike both in soul and in flesh. Both the human soul, therefore, and the flesh together were tempted in Christ. But if both the soul and the flesh were tempted together in Christ, both were together assumed by Him; and if He deigned to assume both, He deigned without doubt to save both.
For it was fitting, and agreeable to our salvation, that the true God, alone substantially born of the true Father, should assume a true human soul and flesh, which He Himself made; that in both He might fight with the tempter, in both conquer, and thereafter in both minister help to the tempted, since in both He offered to the weak and to those about to die the example of victory. That saying also, which the Truth itself uttered, demonstrates the mystery of the Mediator by manifest token, saying: For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). Let us attend, therefore, to what perished by the fall of the earthly man, and let us acknowledge what was sought by the coming of the heavenly man.
Let us consider what the servant sold by sinning (or, by sin), and it will appear what the Lord redeemed by assuming. Let us attend to what the robber wounded in the seduction of man, that it may be clear what the physician healed in the assumption of man. Did not the first man, composed of flesh and soul together, receive the commandment of God? But if he is known to have received God's commandment in both, in both he ought to have kept the obedience of the commandment. But if the commandment was to be obeyed in both, by both the transgression was committed: for as sin was begun by the desire of the soul, so it was completed by the carnal eating: and therefore, because the whole man incurred the guilt of transgression, the devil took the whole man captive to himself.
Quodsitotustenebaturcaptivitatisvinculo, totuseguitliberatorisauxilio. Siautemtotamdebuitliberarepietas, totumdebuitsusciperedivinamajestas. TotiusergofuithominisaDeosuscipiendanatura, quoniamintolofuitcaptivitascaptivanda, utntotasimulacquirereturde. captivatacaptivitatevictoria : et (al. ut), secundumprædicationisapostolicæsen. tentiam , captivamducenscaptivitatem (Ephes. IV, 8), principatusetpotestatestraduceretconfidenter, palamtriumphansillosinsemetipso (Coloss. II, 15). CAPUTXIV. Aliaratioadivisioneperquatuormembra. Adextremumdicaturcurabillaineffabilidivinitatenonfueritanimaenaturasusceptacumcarne ?
But if the whole was held by the bond of captivity, the whole had need of the help of a deliverer. And if piety ought to free the whole, the divine majesty ought to assume the whole. The whole nature of man, therefore, was to be assumed by God, since the captivity to be captured was in the whole, so that in the whole together victory might be won over the captured captivity: and (or, that), according to the sentence of apostolic preaching, leading captivity captive (Ephesians 4:8), He might confidently lead forth principalities and powers, openly triumphing over them in Himself (Colossians 2:15). CHAPTER XIV. Another argument from the division into four members. Finally, let it be said why the nature of the soul was not assumed together with the flesh by that ineffable divinity?
Was it not made by God? Or was it not corrupted by sin? Or did the universal medicine despise it as viler than the flesh? Or was the Almighty unable to cure it, wounded by the wound of sin? But those who hold the first and last of these are rebels both against the power of the Creator and against the might of the Savior, if either they think any creature was not made by God, or they say that the power of the Almighty is too weak to confer salvation upon the soul. But as for the two middle ones, they consider neither the sin of the rational creature, nor its merit;
not understanding that that which grants life to the flesh cannot be viler than its own flesh, and that that which by intelligence could better resist the tempter was the more grievously wounded. That almighty power, therefore, and holy wisdom, neither despised as foreign that which it knew to have been made by itself, nor scorned to heal that which it knew to have been more grievously wounded, nor excluded from the remedy of salvation that which it had made superior to the flesh: but as the devil struck down the whole man by deceiving, so God saved the whole by assuming: that the same might be acknowledged as the Creator and Redeemer of the whole creature, who was able both to make what was not, and to repair what had fallen away. CHAPTER XV. Another argument, from the name of the Mediator, that He may have in Himself the whole nature.
Moreover, all who desire to be partakers of eternal salvation ought to acknowledge alike and to hold that the man Christ Jesus is not called in vain the Mediator of God and men, save because the same God assumed into Himself the whole nature of man, and the same man has in Himself the whole substance of the deity (or, divinity). For because through sin man was separated from God, between the wrathful God and the sinning man there ought indeed to intervene such a person of a Mediator, who, for the propitiating of God to man, might have in Himself the whole and true God born of God, and, for the reconciling of man to God, might contain in Himself the whole and true man born of man, and thus from both and in both there might be one Christ, so that the fullness of the deity
might not consume the man it assumed, but advance him; and the fullness of humanity might neither diminish the immense, nor change the impassible deity: and so the nature of man, which had been changed for the worse, might through Him be wholly restored, than whom nothing is better. Therefore the Mediator of God and men deigned to show Himself full God and full man. CHAPTER XVI. Other arguments also from various places of Scripture. But if anyone doubts, or does not at all believe, let him choose whether he wishes what we assert to be demonstrated to him by name or by deed: for Holy Scripture, in one and the same Christ, has passed over neither the appellation of God nor of man, the evangelist saying:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: the same was in the beginning with God; all things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing (John 1:1-2). And a little after: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (ibid., 14). He surely asserts that Word to have been made flesh which he had mentioned above to be God, so that he might show the same to be true God from the Father, who is true man from man. He shows besides in what respect we should believe Him to be naturally eternal from God the Father, and in what respect we ought to accept Him as made man in time from man, showing one thing in the opening, another in what follows. The eternity of the Son of God, therefore, is asserted, while the Word is proclaimed to be God in the beginning.
There he does not say the Word was made, since he knew it to be begotten of the Father; there is no name of time, where there is eternity, which can have neither beginning nor end. But when he comes to the appellation of flesh, then the Word is said to be made flesh, that we might acknowledge that He who had not been made, but was always born of the Father, then willed to be made, when He deigned—being made His own work—to repair what He had made. In this deed blessed Paul too took care to profess, as the truth of the manhood, so the truth of the time, saying: But when the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons (Galatians 4:4-5).
This very thing, agreeing everywhere with the prophets (or, the prophetic writings), the apostolic authority preserves, so that, proclaiming Christ made, it may clearly show both what He was made, and whence He was made: that it may be acknowledged that the Lord of all things so took the form of a servant, that He took true flesh not from elsewhere, but from man. David, therefore, says: Mother Sion shall say: A man, and a man was made in her, and the Most High Himself founded her (Psalm 87:5). Behold, in one Christ, as one person is asserted without doubt, so the truth of God and man is shown unconfused: for He who was made man in her, the Most High Himself founded her. To this saying that apostolic word is altogether to be compared:
Whose are the fathers, of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever (Romans 9:5). What David says: And a man was made in her, this Paul confirms, saying: Whose are the fathers, of whom is Christ according to the flesh; and what David asserts: The Most High Himself founded her, this Paul follows, saying: Who is over all, God blessed forever. The Old Testament chimes with the New; David agrees with John and Paul. Whom David calls true man, because Mother Sion shall say: A man, and a man was made in her, the same he believes and proclaims to be true God, because the Most High Himself founded her. Whom John knew to be true man, hearing Him say:
You seek to kill me, a man, who have told you the truth (John 8:40); the same he shows to be true God, saying: This is the true God, and eternal life. He recognizes Christ as true man, because the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and shows the same to be true God, because in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Whom Paul knew to be true man, because by voluntary love the Lord of man was made of a woman, and the Lord of the law was made under the law (Galatians 4:4) (as he himself testifies: Because God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law; and because He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and: Whose are the fathers, of whom is Christ
is according to the flesh); the same he ceases not to confess as true God, saying: Who is over all, God blessed forever. CHAPTER XVII. An objection, that Christ was made flesh, therefore He lacked a soul. Flesh for the whole man. Soul for the whole man. Nor indeed are we unaware that this is objected on the other side: that when the Word is said to be made flesh, and He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and Whose are the fathers, of whom is Christ according to the flesh, in the aforesaid places the carnal understanding of certain men is so held by the name of the flesh, that, the flesh having been assumed, Christ is not believed to have assumed also a rational soul. But those who so think give less heed to the fact that it is a feature of human speech, whereby not seldom the whole is signified by a part.
Let them know, therefore, that in the Holy Scriptures the whole man is sometimes shown by the name of flesh only, and sometimes by the appellation of soul alone; the truth of which matter I shall easily teach thoroughly, not only from the Old Testament, but also from the New. David signifies the whole man by the name of flesh, saying: Hear, O God, my prayer, to You shall all flesh come (Psalm 65:2). But what is all flesh, if not every man? Similarly by the same in another psalm it is said: In God I will hope, I will not fear what flesh can do to me (Psalm 56:5). And that he might show that by the name of flesh he designated the whole man, a little after he says again identically: In God I will praise the word, in God (or,
in the Lord) I will praise His word; in God I will hope, I will not fear what man can do to me (ibid., 11). With these sayings the sayings of Isaiah also agree, when, announcing the coming of our Savior in the flesh, he says: The crooked things shall be made straight, and the rough ways plain, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God (Isaiah 40:4-5). But what is all flesh, if not every man? Or shall we perhaps so raise up lifeless flesh, that we do not hesitate to attribute to it divine vision? In the New Testament also the very Creator and Lord of the human race is found to have named the whole man by the name of flesh, when, foretelling the quality of the extreme tribulation, He speaks these words to His disciples:
For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the world until now, nor shall be: and unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved; but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened (Matthew 24:21-22). That the whole man is also signified by the appellation of soul, the series of the Old Testament thus demonstrates, when it is said: And all the souls of Jacob were seventy-five (Genesis 46:27). Again in the same Testament: Whatever soul shall sin before the Lord unwillingly, in any of the commandments of the Lord which ought not to be done, and shall do one of these: if indeed the anointed priest who is prince shall sin, that so the people may not do, let him offer (or,
offeret) prodelictosuo, inquodeliquit, vitulumexbobusimmaculatumDomino (Levit. IV, i, 3). Ecceanimadicitur, etsacerdosunctusdeincepsnuncupatur, utcumanimamaudimus, totumsimulhominemcogno-iscamnis. NecinNovoTestamentohujussiguiticationispotuitdeesselocutio : siquidemcumsanctiSpiritusadventufirmatidiscipuli, rejectaformidine, publicaeprædicationisauspicarenturofficium, consummatoPetrisermone, liberActuumapostolorum, Lucanarrante, siccontinet: Quiergoreceperuntsermonemejus, baptizatisunt; etappositæsuntindieillaanimæcircitertriamillia (Act. II, 41).
he shall offer) for his sin, in which he has sinned, an unblemished bullock of the herd to the Lord (Leviticus 4:1-3). Behold, a soul is spoken of, and next the anointed priest is named, so that when we hear 'soul' we may recognize the whole man at the same time. Nor in the New Testament could the expression of this signification be lacking: since indeed when the disciples, strengthened by the coming of the Holy Spirit, having cast off dread, entered upon the office of public preaching, the sermon of Peter being completed, the book of the Acts of the Apostles, as Luke narrates, thus reads: Those therefore who received his word were baptized; and there were added in that day about three thousand souls (Acts 2:41).
Whoever strives to deny that men are signified here by the name of souls, must of necessity show how souls without bodies could be believed to have received the sacrament of baptism from the apostles. Something similar to this place blessed Peter also sets down in his Epistle: In the days of Noah, he says, while the ark was being built, in which few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water (1 Peter 3:20). Since therefore it is manifest that by the custom of the Scriptures the whole man is designated sometimes by the appellation of flesh, sometimes of soul alone, surely it is shown that when the evangelist says: The Word was made flesh, nothing else ought to be understood than the Word was made man. CHAPTER XVIII. The Mediator Christ therefore assumed the whole man.
On account of the two natures in Christ, both the man is called the Son of God and God the Son of man. In Christ there is true flesh and a true soul. Therefore indeed the man Christ Jesus is proclaimed by the Apostle the Mediator of God and men; for because the Word was God, in that God assumed the whole man for us, the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. The Word indeed was made flesh in that there is one person of God and man in Christ: But He dwelt among us, because in Christ the true and whole divine and human substance remains. For the Word dwelling in the man was not changed into man.
But where could the Word dwell most of all, than in that substance which He made after His own image, that is, in the soul of that man whom He assumed? Which we perceive to be prophetically (or, by prophecy) intimated by spiritual grace through Solomon, when it is said: The soul of the just is the seat of wisdom (Wisdom 7:27). For that it may be shown that Christ dwells especially in the substance of the soul, let Paul offer us the support of his attestation in truth, who says: For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named:
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts (Ephesians 3:16-17). Behold, he both names the soul, and calls it the heart, where he affirms Christ to dwell. Whence it is clearly known that the Word, God, assumed the whole man, since it is proved that the indwelling of the Son of God is shown in the soul rather than in the flesh. The truth of this inseparable sacrament, whereby God deigned to assume the whole man, and the whole man is shown to remain assumed in God, made both that which is naturally of man to be called the Son of God, and that which is naturally of God the Father to be called the Son of man, the angel saying to Mary:
The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you: therefore that which shall be born of you holy shall be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35). Mark's declaration too is not discordant, setting down for his Gospel such an opening: The Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God (Mark 1:1). Nathanael also, of whom He had said: Can anything good come from Nazareth (John 1:46)? does not hesitate to call Him the Son of God: Rabbi, he says, You are the Son of God, You are the King of Israel (ibid., 49). Where Jesus, that He might show the full mystery of His piety, not only gladly heard that which is naturally always from the Father, but also most evidently proclaimed that which was mercifully made of a woman, saying:
Amen, amen I say to you, you shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man (ibid., 51). On account of this unity of person in Christ, and the unconfused truth of the divine and human substance, one and the same Christ is both called a Child by Isaiah, and equally proclaimed Son and God, as he says: A Child is born to us, a Son is given to us; whose government is upon His shoulders, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, God, Mighty (Isaiah 9:6). In one Christ there are not two persons, so that one should be called Child, and another God;
but in one person there is full God and perfect man, because substantially the Child is one thing, and God another, while yet personally the Child is not one and God another. For there is one Son, both Child and God, because the Child, who is born to us, and the same Son who is given to us, His name is called Wonderful, Counselor, God, Mighty. Yet this Child, as He had true flesh, so also had a true soul, that that true divinity might both assume the whole nature of man to be renewed, and might be able to renew the nature assumed, as was shown above, Luke bearing witness: For the Child—that is, Jesus—increased in age and in wisdom and in grace with God and men (Luke 2:52).
Therefore the Lord Himself did not omit to show in Himself either the name of flesh or of soul, showing indeed that He had most true flesh, when He says: That which is born of the flesh is flesh (John 3:6). Whose full truth shone forth also by the manifestation of His works, when the infant, being born, is not only wrapped in swaddling clothes and confined in a narrow manger, but also, receiving circumcision, is shown to have true flesh. Moreover, even after the resurrection He informs the hesitating disciples, saying: Handle and see, that a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me to have (Luke 24:39). That He had also assumed a soul together with the flesh, He ceased not to intimate neither by name nor by deed, when He says:
I lay down my soul for my sheep (John 10:15); and My soul is troubled (John 12:27); and the rest, which shall be shown below. That He assumed this soul not without a rational intellect, the divine oracle through Isaiah thus demonstrates: Behold, my Child shall understand, and shall be exalted, and shall be greatly magnified. CHAPTER XIX. The last argument from the Acts of the Apostles, concerning the true flesh and soul of Christ. And although many things remain by which our assertion might be confirmed, yet, since the course of our discourse hastens to the end of the little book, we shall set down from the Acts of the Apostles also an evident token of this sacrament, the sermon of the blessed apostle Peter, which he uttered forth from that wonderful new spiritual inebriation. Here (or,
Hence), when, instructing the Jews out of divine authority, he had set forth the utterance of David, which, taught by God, he had sung from the person of Christ, saying: I foresaw the Lord before me always, for He is at my right hand, that I be not moved. Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced, moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope. Because You will not leave my soul in hell, nor will You give Your holy one to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life, You will fill me with joy with Your countenance (Psalm 16:8-11). When blessed Peter had recalled this testimony of the psalm, that he might show it to have been manifestly said concerning Christ, he added, following on:
Men and brethren, let me freely speak to you concerning the patriarch David, that he both died, and was buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this present day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn to him with an oath, that of the fruit of his loins one should sit upon his throne, foreseeing this he spoke concerning the resurrection of Christ, that neither was His soul left in hell, nor did His flesh see corruption (Acts 2:29-31). This testimony we have thought fit to insert in the present place, so that the evident distinction of names and things might teach both flesh and soul together in Christ. But a more suitable place will be given to it, when we shall speak concerning the mystery of the Lord's passion (below, book).
(in chapters 22, 23, and 24); where also there is that which He said: 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death'; and 'Now is my soul troubled'; and 'Greater love than this hath no man, than that a man lay down his soul for his friends.' These we hope, with the Lord's help, to treat in such a way that the true substance of both flesh and soul in Christ may be shown, demonstrated not only by words but also by the manifest tokens of natural functions. CHAPTER XX. Epilogue of the first book, concerning the divine and human nature of the Mediator in one person. The argument of the two books that follow.
Accordingly, if the truth of our salvation is believed to reside in the Saviour, it follows that in the one and same Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, the undivided and unconfused perfection of the divine and human substance must not be denied; since the Son of God, begotten of the Father's substance, neither lost the everlastingness of the divine nature when He took upon Himself that which was temporal for the eternal salvation of temporal beings; nor was He deprived of the lordship of His natural and true divinity, He who exalted the truth of the servant's form which He had assumed into an unending and inamissible lordship; nor could the true Power be weakened when it took up our infirmity, that Power which removed the defect of infirmity from the infirm; nor could He be imperfect who granted perfection to the imperfect.
Nor did the divinity of Christ descend locally to the nether world—that divinity which, without any mass, is so wholly present everywhere that, though no place can be without it, yet no place can locally contain it. For the true and infinite substance of God is ineffably whole in each single creature and whole in all; it is not lessened in the least things nor increased in the great; it is not enclosed by time, not circumscribed by quantity, not begun by any beginning, not to be ended by any term: by which substance the whole man was both created unto righteousness and, after his ruin, taken up without sin. Now therefore, since concerning the mystery of the Mediator (as far as He Himself, who is the Word of the Father, has granted by the gift of His grace)—
—the truth of our discussion has left nothing ambiguous, whereby one and the same Christ is shown naturally to have the whole Godhead from the Father and to have the whole nature of man in the man, it must next be provided against this: that upon certain persons who think carnally of the things that are divine, the error of the falsehood they have conceived pours itself the more grievously, in that they confess the divinity of Christ either to have come locally from heaven or to have descended locally to hell; and who also do not hesitate to affirm that Christ, having suffered in the flesh, suffered together also in His divinity. For the demonstrating, therefore, of the truth of these matters (as far as shall suffice), I have appointed separate little books to treat each one, so that the one may set forth the immense divinity of the Son of God;
and the third indeed may contain the mystery of the Lord's passion with the most manifest clearness of things. Let this first book, then, close with the moderation of debate that has been kept, so that God may open for us the door of speech unto the things which are next to be discussed. THE SECOND BOOK. ON THE IMMENSITY OF THE DIVINITY OF THE SON OF GOD. CHAPTER I. The incomprehensibility of the divine Trinity. The infinite Essence. Man, since he does not fully know that which is in himself, can far less know God who is above him. As often as the infirmity of the human condition, about to know itself, strives somewhat to pass beyond the bounds of its own littleness, and, made pregnant with the conception of heavenly illumination, begins to travail with the inquiry into its Creator and Redeemer, that alone—
—that immutable everlastingness of the Trinity, as I judge, will be found to be an incomprehensibility worthy of wonder, which so surpasses all that we can think or perceive, just as it surpasses all that we are. This the truthful series of the divine volumes attests to us, Isaiah saying: 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts' (Isaiah LV, 8, 9). What skill of human learning, then? what liveliness of mind? what sagacity of heart could touch the secret of that Essence (that is, of the Trinity, which is the one true and only God)?
—that Essence which neither began to be nor ceases; in whose substance there is nothing which was not, and nothing that was can cease to be; nothing of which is enclosed by place, because the whole is immense; nothing of which is anticipated by a beginning, because the whole is everlasting; which by this token especially showed itself to be everlasting, uncreated, and immutable, when out of nothing—that is, out of that which did not exist—it was able to create that which had come to be;
—and which exalted the rational part of its creation above the rest with this privilege of grace: that, endowed with the gift of eternity and reason, it might hence clearly not at all doubt that the Essence of its Creator and Restorer is altogether without beginning, since it had come to know that it, though not made without beginning, would nevertheless never thereafter be consumed by total abolition. Hence likewise it would forthwith be admonished by how great a height of infinity and incomprehensibility the creative Power and Wisdom of all things exceeds the measure of the intellectual creature, since the full knowledge of its own comprehensibility—comprehensible indeed and finite to the Creator, yet incomprehensible and infinite to itself—wearied the rational creature itself.
But when it perceived that the investigation of its own nature, which is not outside itself, was both inmost to it and hidden, so that, though it be not above itself and be within itself, it cannot trace out the whole of itself as it is, then, so much the more trembling and marvelling at the greatness of the supernal infinity that exceeds all bounds of intelligence—whose peace (as Paul says) 'surpasseth all understanding' (Philippians IV, 7), whose judgments also are 'a great deep' (Psalm XXXV, 7)—it might look to be borne up by the humble ascent alone to the knowledge of the Most High, from whom by the fall of proud thought it once deserved to be separated. CHAPTER II. The angelic nature could not repair man, because it too fell.
But this it could never at all attempt, if it had lacked either an exemplar or a beginning. There had to be sought, therefore, one whose eternal equality might justify the impious, whose truth might instruct the ignorant, whose power might make firm the weak, so that (as its being) it might remain to be reformed, be informed by light, be confirmed by power. But could man find this through man alone, or in any single man whatsoever? By no means. For what man could exist as a physician of the human wound, when a fellowship of natural vice encompassed all in the corrupted root? Or how could he by himself alone bring healing to the wounded, whose own origin was held fast in the wound?
Or in what manner could he exist as a universal bestower of beneficence, whom nature showed to be in need of another's help? Man, therefore, drained of the riches of true salvation and deprived of the perennial possession of good things, was perhaps to be raised up by angelic aid; so that he who, foul in the prison-house of his house of clay, had been unable in any degree to aspire to the faculty of a purer life, might be helped by the grace of angelic assistance, whereby he might lay aside the filth of his former offence and take up again the dignity of the purity he had long since lost. Nevertheless, neither could this gift of restoration be obtained by angelic support. For the angelic nature would then be in some measure fit to repair man, if by the mutability of falling it had never naturally been bound fast:
—but since it truly testifies by the proof of a consubstantial ruin that it is in need of help, assuredly it is recognized that what cannot suffice for its own stability can far less avail to effect the restoration of man. That its own powers were sufficient for its own keeping might not unfitly be believed, if no part of it had slipped into the worse. For the natural unity, embracing the whole of the angelic nature, would doubtless remain wholly upheld by the firm foundation of impassibility, if it could not be subject to suffering, nor ever suffer in the remainder what it could not endure in the whole. But since a certain part of it is seen to have been rolled down from the lofty summit of blessedness into deepest and perpetual misery, the blessed Peter saying:
—that 'God spared not the angels that sinned, but delivered them into the dungeons of the darkness of hell, to be reserved to be punished at the judgment' (2 Peter II, 4)—assuredly it is recognized that all could have been oppressed by one uniform fellowship of ruin, unless that Power had defended from the fall of depravity whom it willed, that Power which alone could not naturally be changed or corrupted. CHAPTER III. The divine Power alone both repaired man and guarded the angel. Christ the Power and Wisdom of the Father. Christ is naturally God, immense, most high, everlasting. So is the Father in the Son as the Son in the Father.
That same Power, therefore, was also necessary for repairing man, because no other could guard the standing angel from ruin save that which could repair fallen man after his ruin. One grace worked in both: in the one, that he might rise; in the other, that he might not fall; in the latter, that he might not be wounded; in the former, that he might be healed. From the one it repelled infirmity, the other it did not suffer to be made infirm; to the one it was food, to the other medicine. But whoever is soundly wise does not doubt that this One is the Son of God, who is the Power and Wisdom of the Father: the Wisdom which ordered all things, the Power which created all things; the Wisdom which enlightens, the Power which affords help; the Wisdom, because immutable; the Power, because insuperable.
He who by His infinite natural power is always present to every creature, and being immense is never absent; who has this being in Himself naturally, which the Father is, and therefore was able both to establish the angel in the heights and, for the reparation of fallen man, to descend to the lower regions, as He Himself testifies, saying: 'I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me, of the Father' (John VI, 38). Certain persons, when they hear that He descended, strive to affirm His descent to be local, because they know not how, as is fitting, to consider the power of God, nor are they able to recognize that God was so made man for man that, having taken the form of man, the divine substance remained immutable;
—nor do they understand Him to have been born in time in such a way as to hold that as everlasting He always existed. These are they who also scorn to consider how He descended, while He remained immense, or how He was humbled, who remained most high. For if His nature be inquired into, He is essentially God, because 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' He is also everlasting, because He is 'the everlasting power of God, and divinity' (Romans I, 20). He is immense, because Jeremiah says of Him: 'He is great, and hath no end; lofty and immense' (Baruch III, 25). And a little after, that he might show he had said these things of the Son, he added: 'This is our God, and no other shall be accounted beside him.'
'He hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. After this he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men' (Baruch III, 36, 37, 38). But who would dare to deny the Son of God to be the Most High? Of whom David says: 'Mother Sion shall say: A man, and a man is made in her, and the Most High himself hath founded her' (Psalm LXXXVI, 5). Of whom also Zachariah, at the birth of John, thus prophesies: 'And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Most High: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways' (Luke I, 76).
If, then, He is taught to be naturally God, if immense, if most high, if He is also everlasting, let it be said what is better than God, what greater than the immense, what higher than the most high, what prior to the everlasting. God, therefore, does not differ from the Father; the immense lacks not the Father's equality; the most high is not deprived of loftiness; nor is the everlasting later in origin. For because in God the Father there can be nothing mutable, of God was born God; because there is nothing local, from the immense proceeded the immense; because in God there is nothing lowly, the most high begat the most high; and because nothing initial could be found in God, the everlasting brought forth the everlasting. That generation showed no separation of the Father and the Son,
—but excluded the error of confusion, lest we should scarcely believe Him to be begotten whom we heard to be one with the Father. Of God could God be born, but the immense could not be separated from the immense. For He came forth as begotten, He did not depart: for such is that divine and unspeakable nativity, that whom the Father begat of Himself, He might have in Himself. This rule of ours the unity of His very true divinity shows us through Isaiah, the said prophet saying: 'For in thee is God, and there is no God beside thee. For thou art God, and we knew it not, the God of Israel, the Saviour. They shall be ashamed and confounded, all that oppose thee, and shall go in confusion' (Isaiah XLV, 16, 17).
But who are they that oppose the Son of God, save those who through natural unity deny that the Father is in Him and He in the Father, and who through a natural diversity dare, by the vice of treacherous unbelief, to separate the Father and the Son? For so is the Father in the Son as the Son is in the Father; the natural unity there so shows both to be equal, that the immense begat the immense, and the immense begotten of the immense had nothing less of the paternal immensity. CHAPTER IV. The Father made all things through the Son. I pray thee, illustrious ruler, do not suppose that these things which we speak of God are to be thought of corporeally. He who made surpasses all things which He made. Whose it is to be substantially without beginning, His alone it is to have begotten substantially without beginning;
—whose it is by His ineffable immensity to fill the whole of what He made, His it is by the unity of nature to be wholly in the Son, and always to have the whole Son in Himself, whom He begat. If the Son did not order all things with the Father, He is not the Wisdom which says: 'When he prepared the heavens, I was present with him, and when he separated his seat over the winds; when he made strong the clouds above, and when he set firm the fountains beneath the heaven' (Proverbs VIII, 28, 29); and lower down: 'When he made strong the foundations of the earth, I was with him ordering all things.' But if Wisdom is not believed to be coeternal with the Father, it is necessary that God also be declared mutable in an order that was begun. If the Son did not make all things, He ought neither to be called the Power nor the Hand.
And where is that which is said through the prophet: 'Heaven is my seat, and the earth my footstool: what house will ye build for me, saith the Lord? or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these things?' (Isaiah LXVI, 1, 2)? For the evangelist also says: 'All things were made by him, and without him was made nothing' (John I, 3). If the Son is anywhere lacking, He is not immense; if no air uttered Him forth, He ought not to be called Word; if He was not begotten of the womb of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father, then by a false name (which be far from us) is He called true God, of whom John testifies that 'this is the true God, and eternal life' (1 John V, 20).
'In the beginning also was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' Here is shown everlastingness, here is found immensity, here is manifested the essential nature. For that which was in the beginning never was not, because it always was; that which was with God was not local, but was immense, because since God is not local, the Word which was with God was not in a place; but that the Word was God in the unity of nature and the truth of the name—this surely was that which that God was with whom the Word who was God was. CHAPTER V. An objection concerning what is said, 'In the beginning,' and not 'before the beginning,' the Word was. Christ the beginning and the end. Christ eternal life.
How the catholic truth understands Christ to be the beginning and the end. Or perhaps, because we have heard it said 'In the beginning He was,' shall we dare to assign to the Son some beginning of existing, and therefore is He not believed to have been born without a beginning, because John testifies that He was not before the beginning, but in the beginning? Far be it that this insipid thought should touch the mind of any wise man! far be it that this should, by the contagion of deadly treachery, infect in anyone the purity of the Christian religion! For who would not consider that to be worthily called the beginning which could be anticipated by no beginning? For whatsoever thou shalt wish to think of before any beginning, this it is necessary thou confess to be the true beginning.
And since in ever thinking of a beginning no one finds a term, therefore that is to be called truly the beginning which is essentially everlasting. Hence it is indeed that the Son Himself, wishing to show to the Jews by an altogether sure manifestation the immensity of His own everlastingness, when they asked who He was, answered: 'The Beginning, who also speak unto you' (John VIII, 25). But perhaps, because He is called that which is the beginning, He will rather be thought subject to a beginning of existing.
But if from this word anyone strives to construct a prejudice against the truth, so that, because he knows Him to be called by the name of beginning, he supposes Him to have had some beginning of nativity, he will assuredly give also to the Father (which is impious) some beginning of existing, whom together with the Son we know to be named the beginning, as He Himself says: 'With thee is the beginning in the day of thy power, in the brightness of the saints; from the womb before the day-star I begat thee.' But what will he answer, who from the name of beginning asserts that the Son has a beginning of nativity? But if anyone, because He is called the beginning, believes the nativity of the Son to have a beginning, it follows that the same Son, because He is called the end, he should also assert will have an end:
—for the Lord Himself, when the Jews asked, affirmed Himself to be the beginning, saying: 'The Beginning, who also speak unto you.' But Paul names Christ the end, saying: 'For the end of the law is Christ, unto righteousness to every one that believeth' (Romans X, 4). The Lord also says of Himself: 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end' (Revelation I, 8). But if, because He is called the beginning, He is asserted to have begun, then also, because He is called the end, let Him be thought to be about to be ended. And where will be that utterance of John, which he drank from the breast of the living fountain? We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us understanding, that we may know the true, and may be in his true Son Jesus Christ: this is the true God, and eternal life (1 John V, 20-21).
That life he must needs deny to be eternal, whosoever asserts that it will fail. But He Himself who is the true God and eternal life says that the righteous shall go into life eternal. How then shall the life of the righteous be eternal, if the eternal life itself shall at some time not be? Or to what purpose is this labour of holy conversation and of continual struggle against temptations endured, if the reward shall at some time be taken away from the victors? Is this the praiseworthy intention of the whole course in the saints? Do they for this reason chastise their body and bring it into subjection? Is it for this that they presume not to run at uncertainty, and, fighting, know that they beat not the air (1 Corinthians IX, 26)?
Is it for this that they know they have not a wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians VI, 12)? For this do they resist the roaring lion, going about in tireless circuit seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter V, 8)—so that, after they have here lived patiently in tribulation, once the seductive recompense of the divine promise (which is seductive rather than true) is consumed, they should either live in misery, or live not at all? For Christ is called Life, as He says: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life' (John XIV, 6). Christ is called the beginning and the end, because He likewise said: 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end' (Revelation I, 8);
—but this life, if, because it is called the beginning, it is thought subject to a beginning of nativity, it follows that, because it is called the end, it should at some time be thought finally to be abolished. But how shall they live without end to whom eternal life shall be given, if the eternity of that very life shall be brought to an end?
But if these things are altogether absurd, then consequently the truth of the catholic and apostolic faith is to be held, which, just as it therefore names Christ the end—because not only in that substance wherein He was born naturally everlasting from the Father, but also in that which He took in time from His mother, it believes Him to be without end perpetual—so it justly and truly proclaims Him the beginning, because in the divine substance which He has it asserts Him always coeternal with His Begetter. But it is not doubted that nothing is found prior to a true beginning, nothing posterior to a true end. Christ is therefore the beginning, because as everlasting He precedes all things; Christ the end, because as perpetual He concludes all things; Christ the beginning, because He Himself began the things to be perfected;
—Christ the end, because He Himself perfects the things begun; Christ the beginning, because from Him the things that were not have their being; Christ the end, because from Him certain things which began to be have it that they may always be. CHAPTER VI. An objection concerning Melchizedek, of whom it is said he was without father and without mother. Christ the king of righteousness and of peace. Christ without mother, as God; without father, as man. In the one person of Christ a twofold nativity. But what doubt is believed to be left over from this point, when in Melchizedek (who, because he bore the type of the future high priest, Christ) the Apostle showed the person of Christ, the one and same God and man, to be signified,
—showing it both, according to the divine substance, to be everlasting without beginning, and, according to the servile form which He took in time, to be perpetual without end. Thus therefore the same teacher of the nations speaks to the Hebrews: 'For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him: to whom also Abraham divided the tithes of all.'
'First indeed, being interpreted king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem, that is, king of peace; without father, without mother, without genealogy; having neither beginning of days nor end of life; but likened unto the Son of God, he continueth a priest for ever' (Hebrews VII, 1, 2, 3). Perhaps in this testimony the contradiction of the resistant might, concerning the person of this Melchizedek, oppose something to so great a light of truth, if it were to be believed that any creature had naturally existed without beginning.
But since it is clear that every creature in every way, as being made altogether out of nothing, does not lack a beginning—whose origin, by the sole will and power of the Creator, when He judged it should be made (He who has ever held immutable the disposition of mutable works), is known to have been substituted out of nothing, which nevertheless never was before it existed at the beginning of creation—it is by no means accepted that Melchizedek was either begotten without father and mother (which belongs to the first man) or that he naturally lacks a beginning of existing, which belongs to God alone.
He therefore naturally retains the truth of this figure, who is marvellous in both nativities, nor anywhere lacked the truth of a natural origin, and in each was marvellously born as singular. For who is the king of righteousness, save our King Christ, who was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him? Who also is the king of peace? Is it not He who says: 'My peace I give unto you, my peace I leave with you' (John XIV, 27)? For He is our peace, who hath made both one (Ephesians II, 14). To Him the prophet cries out: 'O Lord our God, give us thy peace; for thou hast given us all things, O Lord our God. Possess us; O Lord, beside thee we have known no other; we name thy name' (Isaiah XXVI, 12).
Moreover, Christ the Son of God had no mother in the divine substance, which He always has from the Father. Again, the same had no father in the human nature, which He took from His mother alone. For in the truth of both nativities He preserved the singularity both of the parent and of the offspring: so that, although He was first born of the Father alone and afterward of the Virgin alone, yet it was one and the same who was both first born of the Father and afterward born of the Virgin:
—so that in the wondrous and ineffable mystery of the one true God and true man Christ, neither was the natural substance lacking to the begotten from the begetter, nor was the person doubled in the begetter or the begotten; and although in the one Christ the unconfused truth preserved the truth of the nature of God and of man, yet the undivided truth exhibited in Christ one person of both natures, so that neither should the twofold nativity of the one Christ seem to double the person, nor should the unity of person, either in the name of God or in the man united to God, be able to abolish the true substance.
And although each substance, being true in the one Christ, testifies in itself both the nativity of an origin and the origin of a nativity, yet the wondrous devotion of the mystery, remaining, has shown us also in this human generation a certain sure line of understanding for that divine and ineffable generation which has no end: for He who is ever God of God, the same is temporally of man both God and man; and in whom the everlasting nativity possessed the natural fullness of the paternal substance, in the same the natural truth exhibited the full nature of man.
For the Son of God, that He might raise our understanding from the visible to the invisible, demonstrated in Himself the truth of human nature, so that it might consequently be believed that He, whom it was established to have been naturally born a true man of man, had naturally existed as true God of the nature of the true God. CHAPTER VII. The temporal nativity of Christ leads to the knowledge of the eternal. The immense majesty of Christ, because His nativity is everlasting. There was no place before the Son of God in which He might be born. Nor was there any place coeval with the Word. Christ also had a beginning of His nativity in the nature of man, in which the mother whom He begat could not be without a beginning;
so that, once the truth of his nature is acknowledged, it might be recognized that his divine birth had no beginning, since for the eternal Father, just as there was no beginning of his existing, so no birth of a generation that had a beginning came to him. For in this way Christ Jesus displayed in himself the truth of both substances, that just as in the substance of the man Christ—the prerogative of that singular dignity being preserved—there is found substantially that which naturally belongs in man, so in the same Christ who is God it is believed that there is substantially that which naturally subsists in the Father; so that when in the man Christ the truth of man is seen, in the same Christ who is God the truth of the paternal Godhead may be known;
and when that birth is found to be subject to a beginning—the birth which arose substantially in time from the man who exists in time—that other birth too may be believed to be without beginning, which subsists substantially and eternally from the eternal God. He himself therefore is without a mother in the divine substance, being naturally begotten of the Father alone; he himself indeed is without a father as the fruit of the inviolate Virgin, whom no marital embrace touched; he himself is without genealogy, of whom it is written: 'Who shall declare his generation?' (Isaiah 53:8), so that while faith affords us knowledge in the true generation of the Son of God, yet eternity surpasses speech, in that the steadfastness of faith is nourished by the firm foundation of belief,
while the boldness of speech is restrained by faithful fear, so that the true and natural eternity of the divine generation may be acknowledged. For since what is divine is assuredly true by nature—because in the true God there is nothing false; and since it was neither begun nor created, just as it surpasses every want of thought concerning a nature begun or created, so it exceeds every capacity of speech. Or do we perhaps doubt to receive concerning his generation what we have grasped by the truth of apostolic authority concerning the peace of God? For the most blessed Paul says to us: 'The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus' (Philippians 4:7).
Whose peace therefore, although it surpasses all understanding, is nevertheless believed to be true, eternal, and natural; why then should the natural truth and infinite eternity of his generation—which surpasses all speech altogether—be denied? Where therefore there is eternal peace, let there also be believed an eternal birth; and of whom an eternal birth must be believed, let not an immeasurable majesty be denied, since indeed that is bounded by no natural limit which is not held by any beginning of birth; and therefore that substance is recognized as utterly immeasurable whose birth is not begun but true. For whatever is circumscribed by some limit must necessarily be held by place or by time. But how can he be believed to have made time and place, if he himself were subject to place or to time?
For through him every place was made, since 'all things were made through him, and without him was made nothing' (John 1:3). Through him also time is recognized to have been made, concerning which Paul says: 'In many ways and by many means God, who of old spoke to the fathers by the prophets, in these last days has spoken to us in the Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages' (Hebrews 1:1-2). He is therefore not local through whom place was made, nor temporal through whom time was made; for if he himself, being local, made place, and it is certain that everything local is in a place, it follows consequently that he must have been in a place beforehand, and so could have created place.
But this place, in which the Son of God is said to have been, I ask whether it is believed to be prior to the Son, or coeval with him? But if some suppose the place to be prior to the Son, let them see into what abyss of wicked assertion they run headlong, when they set the material of any work whatever before the maker of all things. And since John recorded that all things were made through him, he must be said (God forbid) to have had no truth in himself, if any work whatever preceded the workman. For how could he make a place before which he could not be, or without which he could not be, if he himself were so made? Then let them further weigh with anxious consideration that they seem to give to place the infinity of eternity, which they strive to take away from the Son of God.
For if they assert that the Son of God was not born without a beginning because the evangelist says: 'In the beginning was the Word,' and does not say, 'before the beginning was the Word'; then those who assert that place existed before the Word must necessarily confess that it also existed before the beginning, since that which they think existed before the Word they suppose to have had no beginning. But if place had no beginning, it is without doubt coeternal with the eternal Father.
And since the eternal cannot stand apart from the eternal, such absurdity assuredly follows upon this impiety: that either we must suppose God to be local, or place must be believed to be that which God is, or they must suppose place itself to be some beginning without God, which by its own eternity naturally persists uncreated. But since these things are not believed without impiety, therefore place must be called not only not prior to the Son, but not even coeval with him. For to him through whom all things were made (Psalm 148:5), no things whatever that were made can be set before or compared. For he who arranged all things in number and weight and measure, just as he could not be numbered by time, so he could not be measured by place. Therefore the psalm truly sings:
'Great is the Lord our God, and great is his power, and of his wisdom there is no number.' And that the infinite immensity of this wondrous eternity might be shown, it is said in another place: 'Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and of his greatness there is no end' (Psalm 145:3). For it is truly necessary that what is naturally eternal be pronounced naturally immeasurable, because what always is is not contained by number, and what is wholly everywhere is not enclosed by place; therefore, finally, in another testimony of Scripture it is said concerning Wisdom: 'She reaches everywhere by reason of her purity' (Wisdom 7:24). And a little after: 'She reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly' (Wisdom 8:1).
Here indeed, when we hear that wisdom reaches from end to end, it must be understood that when she reaches from end to end, she exceeds both ends by the immensity of her infinity. For she is able to reach every creature, whom no creature is able to enclose; for just as, filling heaven, she remains immeasurable, so, reaching from end to end, she remains infinite. For 'She reaches mightily from end to end' is of the same kind as that which is said through Jeremiah: 'I am a God at hand, and not a God afar off. If a man be hidden in secret, shall I then not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?' (Jeremiah 23:23-24). He who fills all things sees all things.
And in this he showed what it is to say 'I will see him,' in that he added, saying: 'I fill heaven and earth'; for God must not be believed to see in a bodily manner, as though he himself were in one place when he sees, and in another place that which he sees. For whatever he sees, he does not see outside himself, since he himself fills all the things that he sees. For it is written: 'For in every place the eyes of God behold the good and the evil' (Proverbs 15:3). And in another place: 'The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears unto their prayers, but the countenance of the Lord is upon them that do evil' (Psalm 34:15-16). CHAPTER VIII. How the omnipresence of the divine nature is to be understood. Here arises the occasion of a question not to be passed over, in that which Solomon says: 'In every place the eyes of God behold the good and the evil.'
And again the prophet says to the Lord: 'Your eye is pure, that it may not see evil' (Habakkuk 1:13). For it must be feared lest he who is said to see those things which he is said to fill be thought to be nowhere present when he is said not to see something; since he would not be substantially everywhere, if he were not even in evils. But in the divine discourses, if humility of heart be maintained, no repugnance to the truth will be found. In a certain sense, therefore, God sees all things, and in a certain sense God does not see certain things, just as in a certain sense he is wholly everywhere, and in a certain sense he is nowhere—not because he is substantially absent from anywhere [concerning whom it is written: 'All things were created through him and in him, and he is before all, and all things consist in him' (Colossians 1:16-17);
and who, according to the prophetic saying, 'has measured the waters in his hand, and the heaven with a span, and all the earth with a closed hand' (Isaiah 40:12)]—but because he is not present to all things equally: for he is present everywhere by his power, not everywhere by his grace. By the power whereby God fills and contains all things, by that same power he sees all things; but by grace he is said to see that which he himself bestows, and that which he works in his faithful ones: 'For God saw all the things that he had made, and behold they were very good' (Genesis 1:31). And by this, both where he does not see certain things in order to bestow, he sees in order to requite;
so likewise he sees evil, and does not see evil, because what he does not see so as to approve, he sees so as to judge; and what he does not see as granted by his grace, he sees as to be exacted from the sinner by justice: since even where the bounty of justifying is not present, the severity of judging is not lacking, as blessed Paul says: 'Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: toward them indeed that fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in goodness' (Romans 11:22). And since these things are so, how can he be substantially absent from anywhere, when even the light shines in the darkness, although the darkness comprehended it not (John 1:5)?
Or how can he substantially not see anything, concerning whom blessed Paul most clearly protests, saying: 'For the word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword; reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature invisible in his sight: but all things are naked and open to his eyes' (Hebrews 4:12-13)? Nor here, as we said above, ought any suspicion of bodily vision to creep in, as though the Son of God were in heaven, and thence saw all things where he is not;
for to God, to see is the same as to be, and however great a vision he intimates, so great does he will his substance to be believed, so that when we hear that all things are naked and open to his eyes, we may suppose no boundary of his substance. CHAPTER IX. That infinity belongs equally to the Son as to the Father. But that the Son might be shown to be of one infinity with the Father, holy Scripture took care to say concerning Wisdom: 'For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of his goodness' (Wisdom 7:26). In this testimony are shown the natural unity, and the property of the persons, and the immensity of the equality of the Father and the Son. For no one doubts that the Father is here called light, and the Son brightness.
Concerning whom the apostolic authority also says: 'Who, being the brightness of glory, and the figure of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power' (Hebrews 1:3). Behold, the Son is declared both to be brightness and to uphold all things. If therefore anyone thinks the Father immeasurable, but believes the Son to be limited by some quantity, let him demonstrate to us how light and brightness can be of diverse substances, since they are neither confounded in name, nor separated in kind, nor does one differ from the other in quantity. For the names of light and brightness are not confused, but the nature of light and brightness is not divided.
Again, brightness is so inseparably united to light that it can in no way be separated from it, and light holds in itself as much brightness as brightness contains in itself of light; nor can light, in order to be silent, be deprived of brightness, nor can brightness, in order to shine, ever be destitute of light; but whatever light fills, brightness also fills, remaining equal in brightness, being likewise equal in light. Wherefore, if even that eternal light could neither be without its brightness, nor can lack the same: consequently either one limit of quality and quantity will be given to the Father and the Son, or of necessity both must equally be declared immeasurable:
for however great the brightness of that light is, so great must you confess the light of that brightness to be; since its brightness so equals the light in all respects that it can there be neither greater nor lesser. CHAPTER X. The Son did not descend from heaven locally. The Father too is said in the Scriptures to descend and to come, but not locally. But we greatly marvel at those who conspire to the outrage of the Son of God, supposing him, according to the substance of his deity, either to pass from place to place by local motion, or to be unable to fill all things at once by the immensity of his deity;
to such a degree that, when they hear that he descended to earth, they believe him not to have been in heaven or among those below, and they affirm that he descended to hell according to the substance of his deity in such a way that they suppose him then to have been absent from heaven and from the earth. How do they not consider, according to the manner of the Scriptures whereby the heavenly words are wont to be adapted to the understanding of little ones, that sometimes similar things are found also in the person of the Father? For, to pass over those places of the legal books in which it is said: 'And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower' (Genesis 11:5), as though if he had not come down he would not see; whereas we have shown above that Scripture said: 'In every place the eyes of God behold the good and the evil.' And,
the Lord himself says to the prophet: 'I am the Lord God of all flesh; is anything hidden from me?' But also that which is said a little after: 'Come, let us go down, and there confound their languages' (Genesis 11:7). So that these things may for now be reckoned in silence, since some are wont to attribute them not to the whole Trinity, but to the person of the Son alone, what will they say concerning that place of the Gospel, in which the Son himself, instructing the disciples before he suffered, says: 'He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me; and he that loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him' (John 14:21). And when Jude the disciple (not the traitor) had answered, saying:
'Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?' Then, to show that the grace of manifestation is signified by the name of coming, Jesus answered and said to him: 'If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him' (John 14:23). Together they love, together they come, and with their lover together they make one abode, together they manifest themselves, because with one light of their coming they illumine the heart of the lover. And since by revealing themselves they manifest themselves, they do not reveal themselves without the Holy Spirit, because they do not manifest themselves without the Holy Spirit. For so they cannot be known without their Holy Spirit, just as they cannot be without their
Holy Spirit they cannot be; and for this reason, just as the manifestation is one, so the revelation of the Trinity is one, and where there is one gift of divine revelation, there is one coming of the undivided Trinity: for just as the Father is shown to reveal, as the Son himself says: 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, because flesh and blood have not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven' (Matthew 16:17); so the Son is shown by his word to reveal the Father; for he says: 'No one knows the Son but the Father, neither does anyone know the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him' (Matthew 11:27). Nor is the revelation of the Holy Spirit to be esteemed unlike, in whom there is the natural knowledge of God himself, the Apostle saying:
'For what man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of a man that is in him? So also the things of God no one has known, but the Spirit of God' (1 Corinthians 2:11). Concerning him the same Doctor of the Gentiles says: 'For to us God has revealed them through his Spirit' (1 Corinthians 2:10). Concerning this he again writes thus to the Ephesians: 'That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation' (Ephesians 1:17). And to show that the knowledge of God works in us the revelation of the Spirit, when he had said: 'May he give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation,' he added: 'in the knowledge of him.'
But the Trinity alone can reveal itself, because the Trinity alone can fully know itself, and as much as it gives itself to be known, so much it grants itself to be revealed; but there is full knowledge of itself where there is no natural distinction: for the immeasurable is fully known by the immeasurable, and the infinity of knowledge remains where the substance has no end, nor is the limit of knowledge attained by any creature, where that which is immeasurable is in no way bounded. CHAPTER XI. God comes to men not by mobility, but by mercy. There is therefore one sole Trinity, which, when it manifests itself, comes ineffably, and when it hides itself from the unworthy, departs altogether ineffably.
The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit come and go in their own and incomprehensible manner: yet neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Spirit is moved locally. They know how to come and go in such a way that they neither come to a place locally, nor depart from a place locally. This coming of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit shows not the mobility, but the mercy of the God who comes: for the one deity of the Trinity, which fills all things and contains all things, is said to come to him to whom it deigns to manifest itself;
and it departs from him from whom it hides the light of its love, yet it is not thereby made locally absent, when it justly abandons the unworthy, nor is it made locally present, when it mercifully visits him whom it has made worthy. Therefore, although God says: 'I fill heaven and earth' (Jeremiah 23:24), yet it is said concerning a certain one: 'God is not before his eyes' (Psalm 10:5); and although the Father fills the whole, yet it is said in the book of Wisdom: 'For perverse thoughts separate from God' (Wisdom 1:3). And although it is said concerning the Son, that is, concerning the wisdom of God: 'She reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly' (Wisdom 8:1), yet the same wisdom says of herself: 'The wicked seek me, and shall not find me.'
And again it is said: 'Into a malevolent soul wisdom will not enter, nor dwell in a body subject to sins.' The Holy Spirit too, although he is proclaimed in every way immeasurable, since 'the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world of the earth,' yet it is said concerning the same: 'For the holy Spirit will flee deceit, and will withdraw himself from thoughts that are without understanding.' As therefore to his substance and power, the Trinity is everywhere—one God whole, filling the whole by virtue, not by mass, whole in each, whole at once in all creatures. But as regards our thoughts, God is said to descend to us, when he so tempers his word to us divinely that,
speaking with us in a human manner, he deigns to make his knowledge and his love intimate to us; but he ascends in us when we ascend through charity and knowledge of the deity, so that we may learn neither to conceive anything local in the immeasurable, nor to esteem anything lowly of the most high, nor to believe anything changeable in God, nor to think anything temporal in the eternal. CHAPTER XII. God rested and worked by will, not by labor. Such is to be believed the coming of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; for just as, the work of the world having been completed at the outset, God is said to have rested—who yet did not labor in the work, because he wrought all things by will alone; for to him it is said:
'For power is at hand to you when you will' (Wisdom 12:18), just as we also hear in the psalm: 'All things whatsoever he willed, he did, in heaven, and in earth, and in the sea, and in all the deeps' (Psalm 135:6). The omnipotence of this will that Gospel leper, enlightened by divine illumination, having recognized, testifies to suffice for the effect of his cleansing, saying: 'Lord, if you will, you can make me clean' (Matthew 8:2); when he says, 'if you will, you can,' he shows the divine will itself to be the fullest power. Finally, the Lord too mercifully showed by the effect of the cure that he who had asked had believed faithfully; for he says: 'I will, be made clean'; and immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
As therefore, cleansing him with confidence, he felt no discomfort of any labor, such that he might restore by a spell of rest strengths exhausted by the labor of working; but when he says that he rested, he shows that we shall rest after good works: so when he is said to have come, or to have descended, the grace of divine revelation toward us is commended; and when he is said not to descend, but to ascend, the advance of our illumination and knowledge is shown. CHAPTER XIII. On the sense of the saying: 'Do not touch me,' etc. The resolution of the apparent contradiction between the Gospels. Such an ascent did the Lord Jesus signify, when he forbade to Mary Magdalene the possibility of touching him.
For after the resurrection, when he mercifully appeared to her as she wept, John records that he said: 'Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father' (John 20:17). This touch, of which the Lord speaks, is proved to be of belief, not of the body; otherwise the assertion of the evangelists would be found repugnant; for while John testifies that the possibility of touching the Lord was taken away from Mary by the command of the Lord himself, saying: 'Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father,'
and Scripture confirms that the Lord, according to his humanity, ascended into heaven on the fortieth day of the resurrection (which not only the undefiled faith of the holy catholic Church retains, but even the diverse and manifold belief of the various heresies—at least those which do not deny the sacrament of true flesh in the Son of God—celebrates together with entirely unanimous assent), if before the Lord had ascended to the Father he was unwilling to be touched by Mary's bodily approach, how does Matthew record that on the very day of the resurrection Mary Magdalene and the other Mary held the feet of Jesus? That this may be more clearly recognized, we have thought fit to insert into this work the whole chapter of that same passage, as Matthew set it down. He says therefore:
'And in the end of the sabbath, when it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And behold there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and coming, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it: and his countenance was as lightning, and his raiment as snow. And for fear of him the guards were struck with terror, and became as dead men. And the angel answering said to the women: Fear not you: for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified; he is not here: for he is risen, as he said; come, see the place where the Lord was laid. And going quickly, tell his disciples that he is risen;'
'and behold he goes before you into Galilee: there you shall see him. Lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, running to tell his disciples. And behold Jesus met them, saying: Hail. But they came up and held his feet, and adored him' (Matthew 28:4-9). How therefore did he, because he had not yet ascended to the Father, forbid himself to be touched by Mary Magdalene, by whom on the same day he permitted his feet to be held? Or is anyone so carried away by a perverse sense as to think that the judgments of Christ were varied by momentary impulses, as though he who afterward, on better reflection, granted to Mary what he had before denied?
But the Vessel of election straightway resists such a thought, who, concerning the immutability of the eternal divinity in the Son of God, does not permit us to err by any suspicion of mutability, writing thus to the Corinthians: 'For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not in him "yes" and "no," but in him it was "yes." For all the promises of God are in him "yes"; therefore also through him we say "Amen" to God unto your glory' (2 Corinthians 1:19-20). Not here therefore does the understanding of the evangelists disagree; nor did Christ either vainly forbid himself to be touched, not having yet ascended to the Father, or permit his feet to be held to no purpose.
For in the one he demonstrated the truth of the flesh, in the other he intimated the glory of the deity; there he permitted the hand, here he removed the understanding; so that in the man Christ the truth of the resurrected flesh might be touched, and in the same Christ who is God the equality of the paternal divinity might be believed. Therefore he says: 'Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to my Father,' because Mary Magdalene did not yet believe him equal to the Father, whom she mourned with womanly devotion as though extinguished. For what is: 'Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father,' but, 'Do not believe in me only that which you think, do not establish in your heart that which you suppose'? For as long as you attend in me only to those things which are of the flesh, you do not perceive my equality with the Father.
And in truth Christ has not yet ascended to the Father for those who do not confess the Son equal to the Father. Therefore one must hasten, so that each one, believing the perfection and truth of human nature in the Son of God, may as it were hold the feet of Christ, and confess the substance of the same Son as born of the Father, so that to him Christ may ascend to the Father through the equality of natural divinity. For what is: 'I have not yet ascended to my Father,' but, 'you esteem below the Father him whom you bewail as dead'? And what is: 'Do not touch me,' but, 'do not fix the motion of your faith in that'? For whenever we wish to touch something with any member, unless we have ended the motion of that same member, we do not speak of a touch;
but we must move that member for so long, until we come to the thing which we wish to touch; yet we do not extend the motion of the member any further, after we have come to a complete touch. So too we fix the motion of our mind there where we establish in our heart by belief. Therefore, if we believe things worthy and fitting concerning Christ, then we touch Christ. But whoever does not believe the Son of God, according to the divine nature, equal to the Father, to him Christ has not yet ascended to the Father; and he to whom the Son has not ascended to the Father does not receive the faculty of touching Christ;
but truly the Son ascends to the Father for that man who does not doubt the Son to be equal to the Father in the parity of eternity and immensity, so that he esteems the Son, God begotten naturally of God the Father, neither later nor lesser: because he is not equal, if he is less than the immeasurable, nor coeternal, if he is later than the eternal; and either sense separates from the touch of Christ, because it does not make the Son equal to the Father, but diminishes him. But one of this kind worthily hears from Christ: 'Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.' For whoever is not permitted to touch Christ is assuredly separated from his body;
But what is the body of Christ, if not the Church of Christ? From this it is understood that, so long as anyone does not believe the Son of God, according to His divine substance, to be equal to the Father, he cannot be joined to the members of Christ by the touch of faith; but he indeed holds the framework of the Lord's body, for whom the Son ascends to the Father; and to that man the Son ascends to the Father who confesses the Godhead of the Son to be equal to God the Father. Plainly, therefore, it is clear that by that ascent of the Son to the Father the advancement rather of our faith is demonstrated; for we in a certain way exalt Him in our hearts when we so grow in the understanding of Him that concerning Him, as concerning the true God, we think such things as are worthy of the divine loftiness.
CHAPTER XIV. What it is to exalt God; what it is to sanctify Him. To this exaltation of God holy David exhorts us, saying: Exalt the Lord our God, and adore His footstool, for it is holy (Ps. 98:5). And a little after: Exalt the Lord our God, and adore on His holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy (ibid., 9). But what is it to exalt the Lord, if not to believe the highest things concerning the Most High? This surely is to adore on the mountain, that when we think of God we should hold no lowly thing about Him. Thus in us He is truly exalted, when we exalt Him, though He Himself is always the Most High;
just as in us He is sanctified, when we sanctify Him, though He Himself always remains holy. For blessed Peter admonishes us, saying: But sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts (1 Pet. 3:15). And what is it to sanctify Christ, if not to think concerning Christ the things that are holy? This thought sanctifies not Him, but us, and by sanctifying preserves us, as Solomon says: A holy thought will keep you. The Lord Himself also commands that in prayer we say: Hallowed be Thy name; and yet blessed Cyprian is known to have so understood this passage of the prayer, that in this sanctification of the divine name he said not that God is sanctified, but that the gift of sanctification is conferred upon us.
For in his epistle on the Lord's Prayer, after certain things premised, he speaks thus: After this we say: Hallowed be Thy name, not that we wish for God that He be sanctified by our prayers, but that we ask of Him that His name be sanctified in us. For besides, by whom is God sanctified, who Himself sanctifies? But because He Himself said: Be holy, for I also am holy (Lev. 11:44), we ask and pray this, that we who have been sanctified in baptism may persevere in that which we have begun to be; and this we entreat daily. For we have need of daily sanctification, that we who daily transgress may cleanse our offenses anew by continual sanctification.
If therefore, in sanctifying Christ, we ourselves are sanctified, and in asking that the name of God be sanctified, we receive the gift of sanctification, why should we not rather believe that, in exalting God, we ourselves are exalted through the advancement of understanding? But if, in exalting God, it is rather we who are exalted, likewise when He is said to come to us, we ought to believe it to be our own advancement, in that the divine majesty deigns to reveal itself to our hearts. CHAPTER XV. How virtue went forth from Christ when the woman touched the hem of His garment. How Christ is said to come to us, or to come unto His own. The Holy Spirit also is immense. The whole Trinity is immense. For if the Son of God descended to us by local motion, then virtue went forth from Him locally:
for when a certain woman, afflicted with an issue of blood (Luke 8:43 ff.), her means and strength consumed, spent all that she had because of her infirmity, and yet could not put an end to the one infirmity which she did not wish to have, and, desiring to be freely healed by the heavenly Physician, secretly touching the hem, by a faithful theft stole for herself the effect of healing—He, conscious of her belief and of her cure, said: Someone touched Me; for I know that virtue has gone forth from Me. What then is this virtue that went forth from the Lord? Did it, in going forth, depart? Or could it, thus going forth to heal, arrive, in such a way that it could not go forth locally from the Savior?
But if virtue went forth locally from Him who is called Virtue, let it be said in what way virtue departed from Virtue. But if such a belief seems incongruous with the Christian faith, let us suppose that going-forth of virtue from Christ to be nothing other than the effect of divine healing: for then the Savior's virtue went forth to the woman, when she knew in herself the virtue of divine healing. So then the Son of God, who is the Virtue and Wisdom of God, the Creator of places and of times, just as, being eternal, He precedes all time, so, being immense, He surpasses every place; who is then said to come to us, when He deigns to enlighten us. For concerning Him the evangelist says: He was in the world, and the world was made through Him,
and the world knew Him not: He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. How then is He said both to have been in the world, and affirmed to have come into the world? Is the former to be assigned to power, the latter to grace? Just so, plainly: for according to His divinity He was never absent from heaven, nor from hell, nor from the world—for all things were created through Him and in Him, and He is before all, and all things consist in Him (Col. 1:16-17); but according to grace He then came into the world, when with wondrous mercy He came to the aid of the perishing world, which He Himself also attests, saying: For God sent not His Son to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:17).
The Son of God, therefore, is immense, like the Father and the Spirit, since concerning Him it is said: He is great, and has no end, exalted and immense (Baruch 3:25); of whom a little after it is said: After this He was seen upon earth, and conversed with men (ibid., 38). The Holy Spirit also is immense: which the prophet, knowing, said to God: Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy face? (Ps. 138:7). And that the said prophet might show this Spirit of God to be the Holy Spirit Himself, he says to God: Cast me not away from Thy face, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me (Ps. 50:13). And that this Spirit of God is the Holy Spirit Himself the Apostle also signifies by this testimony:
Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30). And in another place: He who despises these things despises not man, but God, who also gave His Holy Spirit into us (1 Thess. 4:8). This Holy Spirit of God David proclaims to be so immense, that he says to God (as we mentioned above): Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy face? If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; and if I descend into hell, Thou art present; and if I take my wings straight forward, or (as another translation has it) before the dawn, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.
No one doubts that the hand of the Father names the Son, concerning whom God Himself says: Did not My hand make all these things? Yet the prophet, that he might proclaim the Trinity equally immense, both signified the Father, to whom he said: Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? and the Spirit Himself, from whom he attests he can in no way go or flee; and he demonstrated the Son, where he proclaims that he is to be led by the hand of God even in the uttermost parts of the sea: so that there might be acknowledged one immensity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and one presence in all creatures. This is the Trinity, one God, who, as He alone could found the universe, so He alone can fill all things, neither local in place, nor temporal in time, nor limitable by the limit of a creature. CHAPTER XVI.
God is with you, nay, He hears prayers even in secret. For blessed martyr Cyprian affirms the immensity of the divinity of the Son of God by manifest proclamation and by the attestation of the divine oracles, in his epistle on the Lord's Prayer, saying: Finally, by His own teaching the Lord commanded us to pray in secret, in hidden and secret places, in our very chambers, which better befits faith; that we may know that God is everywhere present, that He hears and sees all, and that by the fullness of His majesty He penetrates even into hidden and secret things, as it is written: I am a God at hand, and not a God afar off. If a man be hidden in secret places, shall I then not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth? (Jer. 23:23-24).
And again: In every place the eyes of God behold the good and the evil (Prov. 15:3). And when we come together in one with the brethren, and celebrate the divine sacrifices with God's priest, we ought to be mindful of reverence and of discipline: not to scatter our prayers everywhere with disordered voices, nor to cast forth in tumultuous loquacity the petition that ought to be modestly commended to God, because God is a hearer not of the voice but of the heart, nor is He to be admonished with shouts, who sees our thoughts, as the Lord approves and says: Why do you think evil in your hearts? (Matt. 9:4). And in another place: All the churches shall know that I am the searcher of the reins and the heart (Rev. 2:23). Blessed Cyprian, assuredly, [calls] God
—whom he said to be everywhere present, to hear all and see all, and by the fullness of His majesty to penetrate even into hidden and secret things—him he also asserts to be a hearer not of the voice but of the heart, nor to be admonished by shouts, who sees our thoughts; him also he sets forth as saying: Why do you think evil in your hearts? And in another place: All the churches shall know that I am the searcher of the reins and the heart. But who does not know that these things were said by the Son of God, as the Apocalypse and the Gospel testify? The Son, therefore (as holy Cyprian asserts), is everywhere present; the same One hears all and sees all, and by the fullness of His majesty penetrates even into hidden and secret things, nor is He, who sees our thoughts, to be admonished by shouts.
With this sense agree the sayings of John the evangelist, who says concerning certain men: That Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He Himself knew all men, and because He had no need that anyone should give testimony concerning man; for He Himself knew what was in man (John 2:24). CHAPTER XVII. Christ never leaves His own alone, because He is present everywhere. All things are manifest to God. Blessed Cyprian, writing also to the Thibaritans concerning the immensity of the Son of God, attests something similar in these words: He is not alone, whose companion Christ is in flight;
he is not alone who, keeping the temple of God, wherever he may be, is not without the Lord; and if a robber should overpower him fleeing in the wilderness and the mountains, or a wild beast attack him, or hunger or thirst or cold afflict him, or, as he hastens by headlong voyage over the seas, a tempest or storm should overwhelm him—Christ everywhere beholds His soldier fighting. In the epistle On the Lapsed, too, whoever wishes will find these words inserted: He sees the hearts and breasts of every one, and, about to judge not only our deeds but also our words and thoughts, He beholds the minds and wills of all, conceived within the very hidden recesses of the still-closed breast.
The Son of God, therefore, both by divine authority and by the faithful and truthful judgment of the holy Fathers, is proved, according to His divine nature, to be infinite and immense, everywhere present, filling all things, now a witness of thoughts and works, and the future judge and recompenser of all. But since the same Son of God, true God, born of God the Father, was made true man for us out of man (for He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh [Rom. 1:3]), containing in Himself the truth of both the divine and the human nature, He did not lose what belonged to true divinity, and received what belongs to true humanity: one and the same, according to the flesh temporally born of a mother, who according to the divinity remains eternal from the Father;
one and the same, a local man out of man, who is the immense God out of the Father; one and the same, according to His human substance absent from heaven while He was on earth, and forsaking earth when He had ascended into heaven; but according to His divine and immense substance, neither leaving heaven when He descended from heaven, nor deserting earth when He ascended to heaven. This can be known from the most certain saying of the Lord Himself, who, to show His local humanity, says to His disciples: I ascend to My Father and your Father, My God and your God (John 20:17). Concerning Lazarus too, when He had said: Lazarus is dead, He added, saying: And I am glad for your sakes, that you may believe, because I was not there (John 11:14-15).
But showing the immensity of His divinity, He says to His disciples: Behold, I am with you all the days, even to the consummation of the age (Matt. 28:20). But how did He ascend into heaven, unless because He is a local and true man? Or how is He present to His faithful ones, unless because the same is the immense and true God? Concerning Him the Scripture again says: For God truly dwells with men upon earth (2 Chron. 6:18); of whom the evangelist says: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And that this Word, even when it was made flesh and dwelt among us, might be recognized never to have departed from heaven, David for this reason says: Forever, O Lord, Thy Word remains in heaven (Ps. 118:89).
Concerning this one and the same eternal Son of God, and the One who would then be the Son of man—in whom the true and immense divinity would have remained, and by whom the true and local humanity was to be assumed—Jeremiah, filled with the recognition of prophetic inspiration, had said: This is our God, and no other shall be accounted beside Him. He found out every way of discipline, and gave it to Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved. After this He was seen upon earth, and conversed with men (Baruch 3:36-38). And since he had said of Him above:
He is great, and has no end, exalted and immense—lest this vision of God upon earth and His conversation with men should be thought to have estranged the immense God from heaven, for this reason the Son Himself, that He might demonstrate the immensity of His divinity while placed upon earth, and might teach that He was present also to heaven, not according to the man which He had assumed while placed upon earth, but according to God, which He always was, said: No one has ascended into heaven, except He who descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven (John 3:13);
not because the human substance of Christ was diffused everywhere, but because one and the same Son of God and Son of man—true God from the Father, as He is true man from man—although according to His true humanity He was then locally on earth, yet according to His divinity (which is in no way contained by place) filled wholly both heaven and earth. CHAPTER XVIII. From the words of the Apostle Christ is proved both immense and local. The bodily ascension of Christ. Christ dwells in us. God the Father dwells in us. The Holy Spirit dwells in us. This true humanity of Christ, which is local, and His true divinity, which is always immense, we see intimated to us also by the apostolic doctrine.
NamutChristiverihominiscorpuslocalitercontineriPaulusmonstraretapostolus, aitadThessalonicen - ses : QuomodoconversiestisadDeumasimulacris, servireDeoviroetvero, etexspectareFiliumejusdecœlis, quemsuscitavitamortuisJesum (7 Thess. I. 9, 10) : ipsumutiquemonstranscorporaliterdecoeloventurum, quemcorporaliteramorluisnoveratsuscitatum. Propterearursusait: Nostraautemconversatioincœlisest. UndeetiamSalvatoremexspectamusDominumJesumChristum, quireformabit (al. reformavit) corpushumilitatisnostræconformecorporiclaritatissuæ, secundumoperationemquapotestetiamsubjiceresibiomnia (Philip. III, 20).
For that the body of Christ, true man, is locally contained, the Apostle Paul might show, when he says to the Thessalonians: How you turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to await His Son from the heavens, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus (1 Thess. 1:9-10): plainly showing that He is to come bodily from heaven, whom He knew to have been bodily raised from the dead. Therefore again he says: But our conversation is in the heavens, whence also we await the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will reform the body of our lowliness, made conformable to the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subject all things to Himself (Phil. 3:20-21).
Interimquoniamelociopportunitasnonestprætereundasilentio, attendaturhiclocusinquodApostolusFiliumdicitomniasibipossesubjicere, ne (aletne) Paterexistimeturcunctatanquaminvalidosubjecisse, dicitetiamcorpushumilitatisnostræreformaturumconformecorporiclaritatissuae. QuodsiveruinestcorpusChristi, locopotestutiquecontineri. HancveritatemcorporisChristidecoeloventuri, Joannesquoqueconfirmat, dicens: Eccevenietcumnubibus, etvidebiteumomnisoculus, etquieumcompunxerunt (Apoc. I, 7). Inlibro. quoqueActuumapostolorumsicejnscorporalisintimaturascensus :
Meanwhile, since the opportunity of the passage is not to be passed over in silence, let attention be given to this place in which the Apostle says the Son can subject all things to Himself, lest the Father be thought to have subjected all things as to one incapable; he says also that He will reform the body of our lowliness, made conformable to the body of His glory. But if the body of Christ is true, it can surely be contained by place. This truth of the body of Christ, which is to come from heaven, John also confirms, saying: Behold, He comes with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and those who pierced Him (Rev. 1:7). In the book of the Acts of the Apostles, too, His bodily ascension is thus intimated:
And when He had said these things, while they beheld, He was lifted up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they were gazing up into heaven as He went, behold, two men stood beside them in white garments, who also said: Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing into heaven? This Jesus, whom you saw going into heaven, shall so come as you saw Him going into heaven (Acts 1:9 ff.). Since therefore the flesh of Christ is shown without doubt to be local, yet His divinity is known to be everywhere always, as Paul testifies, who says to the faithful: Do you seek a proof of Him who speaks in me, Christ? (2 Cor. 13:3). But how could He speak in him, if He was not in him?
Or how did He ascend bodily into heaven, and is proclaimed to be in His faithful ones on earth, if there is not in Him the immensity of divinity which can fill heaven and earth? For to the Corinthians Paul says: Do you not know your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you? (2 Cor. 13:5). And to the Ephesians he says: That Christ dwells in the inner man by faith in your hearts (Eph. 3:16-17). And so the Son is in heaven, and dwells in us on earth—namely by that presence of His immensity by which the Father and the Holy Spirit dwell in us: for God the Father showed His dwelling in us thus, the prophet speaking: For I will dwell in them, and walk among them,
and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Wherefore, come out from the midst of them, and be separate, says the Lord: and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you; and I will be to you a Father, and you shall be to Me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty (2 Cor. 6:16-18). That the Holy Spirit also dwells in us alike, Paul shows, writing thus to the Corinthians: Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? (1 Cor. 3:16).
And lest any of those who reckon the Holy Spirit to be less than the Father and the Son should deny that, here where it is said the Spirit of God dwells in you, this pertains to the person of the Holy Spirit, what will he reply in that place where the Apostle instructs Timothy with the solicitude of fatherly love, saying: Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us (2 Tim. 1:14)? CHAPTER XIX. Such dwelling is not local, but immense. Our heart is enlarged by God dwelling within. This dwelling of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in us is surely not local, but immense; not comprehensible by thought, but venerable by faith:
for the Trinity dwells in its faithful ones, whole in each just as whole in all, which is neither extended by the space of heaven and earth, nor limited by the limit of the whole creation, nor divided piecemeal among separate men or separate places, nor absent from hell, since it is not absent from earth and heaven. For He who could make all things, He alone can fill the universe. But whoever considers the coming or the indwelling of the Son and of the Holy Spirit to be local, it is first necessary that he affirm the Father to dwell in us locally, and not only to dwell but even to walk; whom blessed Paul asserts to have said through the prophet: For I will dwell in them, and walk among them (2 Cor. 6:16).
Let it therefore be explained in what manner the Son or the Holy Spirit dwells in us. For if we believe these things are to be measured after the human manner, then He who is said only to dwell is of greater size than He who is shown even to walk in us: for He who dwells can fill the whole of what He dwells in; but He who is said to walk about is surely shown, beyond doubt, to be smaller than the space in which He walks. But a worse absurdity will follow this ineptitude of thought. For beyond doubt the spaces of our heart will appear greater than the Trinity itself, in which there would be a place which the Son and the Holy Spirit could fill by dwelling, and a place which the Father could not fill by walking about.
But if these things do not agree with the truth, let us believe that the dwelling of the Trinity is ineffably signified according to the incomprehensible majesty of that immensity; and when we hear that God dwells and walks in us, let us so understand it spiritually that we do not believe God is moved locally in our heart, but that our heart is enlarged in God. Of which enlargement of the heart the Apostle spoke, saying: Our mouth is open to you, O Corinthians: our heart is enlarged. And having the same recompense, I speak as to sons, be you also enlarged (2 Cor. 6:11, 13). Where a little after he set down the testimony of the prophet mentioned above, saying:
For you are the temple of the living God, as God says: For I will dwell in them, and walk among them (ibid., 16). CHAPTER XX. The immensity of the Trinity is shown from the form of baptism. Conclusion of the second book on the immensity of the divinity of the Son of God. But neither is that in any way to be omitted, by which the most manifest immensity of the Trinity, and its presence in all things not local, but divine and wondrous, is demonstrated—since, believing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, according to the very command of the Lord, we know that baptism is performed everywhere. For if the whole Trinity is believed to sanctify in baptism, the whole Trinity is surely shown to be present;
but since baptism is everywhere at one time celebrated throughout the whole world in the name of the Trinity, if the whole Trinity is present to sanctify, behold, it everywhere wondrously exhibits the presence of its immense majesty: for it belongs to God alone to fill the universe at once. But if the whole Trinity is not everywhere present alike, if the Son or the Holy Spirit is thought to be absent, then surely He who cannot be present to sanctify is not to be named in baptism. Whoever therefore thinks that the equality of the Father's immensity is to be denied to the Son or to the Holy Spirit, let him first remove their name from the sacrament of baptism.
In this therefore is the truth of the catholic faith most especially recognized, which has rightly been accustomed to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, since it trusts that the whole Trinity is everywhere present alike. The immensity of the divinity of the Son of God could still be demonstrated by innumerable testimonies; but we have preferred to set down a few out of many, wishing also to conclude the second book more swiftly; taking especial care that, in these things which we address to your clemency, a mind happily occupied with royal cares be not burdened by the length of the reading, but instructed by the manifestation of the truth.
Accordingly, the things which have been argued concerning the immensity of the divinity of the Son of God, let us conclude with this ending, so that the things which are to be said concerning the sacrament of the Lord's Passion we may begin afresh with a new opening. THIRD BOOK. ON THE SACRAMENT OF THE LORD'S PASSION. CHAPTER I. The difficulty of the third book on the Lord's Passion. The error of the Theopaschites. The word of the cross is foolishness to those who perish. Although in the second book, supported by the help of the supernal gift, we have proved the divinity of the Son of God to be immense, confined neither by time nor by place, inasmuch as it fills all things, contains all things, precedes all things by eternity, and equally encompasses all things by its immensity;
which we took the greatest care to demonstrate for this reason, that if any, even to now, are unable to think spiritually of God, they might be freed from the error of a local suspicion concerning the Son of God—no less remains to us the solicitude of completing this third volume also, in which we are surely to treat of the sacrament of the Lord's Passion, insofar as He Himself, who suffered for us, shall grant it. Here we are shaken with no small fear, nor are we pressed by light dread: for we are utterly (as far as pertains to us) too weak for the explanation of so great a profundity. But He who opened the mouths of the dumb, and made the tongues of infants eloquent (Wisd.
10:21), He Himself (as we trust) will give a direct and well-sounding speech in our mouth, and will bestow upon this work—which He deigns mercifully to work through us—so great a grace of demonstrating the truth, that by manifest documents of the Scriptures there may be made clear both the rectitude of catholic doctrine and the tortuous and manifold error of heretical depravity. For there are certain men who, thinking otherwise about the sacrament of the Lord's Passion than piety holds, while they seek salvation, incur the loss of salvation, and while they receive in God that which they discern in men, they pierce, as it were with a certain lance of perverse speech, the side of the Savior;
and whereas the unbelieving soldiers did not dare to disparage Him as He died, certain men now, under the disguise of the Christian name, do not fear to derogate from Him as He reigns. These are they who, in the one Christ, true God and perfect man, being perhaps unable—or at any rate neglecting—to consider the human and divine substance according to natural truth, fall into such error that they do not consider the human nature in the Son of God, the immutability of the divine power remaining, but disgrace the divine substance with the passibility of divine weakness. Foreseeing this by the divine Spirit, the Apostle said: For the word of the cross is indeed foolishness to those who perish, but to those who are saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18).
In the word of the cross there perish not only those who suppose that the Son of God could not suffer in the flesh the things which are human, but also those who believe that the divinity of the Son of God substantially felt pains or suffering on the cross. But how is the word of the cross the power of God, if the divine substance could be weakened on the cross? Or in what way will Christ lead us to the grace of immutability and incorruption, if He Himself is proved, according to His divine nature, to have been changed for the worse—since it is proper to the divine nature neither to suffer defect nor to admit increase? CHAPTER II. Christ must be treated of cautiously, on account of the two natures in one person.
Therefore, being about to treat of what in Christ is always impassible, and what before the death of the flesh was passible, we have thought it right first to insert into this little book what we believe and hold concerning the one Christ, God and man: lest anyone, when we have begun to demonstrate in the one Christ those things which pertain to the property of the divine and human nature, should either suppose that we believe in two Christs according to each nature, or think that a fourth person is inserted by us into the Trinity.
For we ourselves, holding fast to the same truth of the Gospel, so acknowledge the properties of each nature in Christ Jesus, the man who is the Mediator between God and men, that we in no way divide the unity of the person; for we know that the property of each substance so remained united in Christ, that the impassible God, suffering in the flesh, both felt a true passion (because he willed it) in true flesh, and yet remained utterly impassible in his divinity; nor did any other suffer in the flesh save he who in the true passion of the flesh remained wholly impassible; nor did any other deign to hand himself over to death, save he who was so able by dying to conquer death, that he could not feel death within death.
But in what manner we say these things concerning the unity of the person, while the property of the substances in Christ is preserved, the course of our profession set forth below will make plain. CHAPTER III. The right faith concerning the divinity of the Son of God. The person of the Father is one, that of the Son another, in one nature. Christ the Only-begotten of God, full of grace and truth. We believe, therefore, that the Son of God, before absolutely every beginning—that is, without any beginning of his own nativity—was begotten of the substance of the Father, God of God, Lord of Lord; not out of nothing, because he is of the Father; not so called merely by name, because he has his name from the truth of his nature; not from another nature, because there was nothing coeternal with God from which an origin might be furnished to the Son.
Nor is the Son later than he who begot him, nor lesser, but (as we also said in the second little book) altogether equal to the Father, both in the eternity of his immensity and in the immensity of his eternity; the unchangeable maker of changeable things, the timeless maker of temporal things and of the ages themselves; whom no place contains, whom no place lacks, because the immense Creator fills all things; who is not therefore not God because he is called begotten, but rather is worthily believed to be true precisely because he is proclaimed to have been begotten substantially of the Father: for when he is called begotten, this is not a name of divinity in the Son, but is a name of nativity in God; so that he who is established to have been begotten naturally of the Father may be established to be nothing other than God.
This one, therefore, existing eternally from the Father, held one nature together with God the Father, but took his own person from his begetter; because the divine nativity did not bring about a division of the natural unity, but distinguished the person of the Son subsisting from the Father; and by the very term "Father" it shows another who was born, so as to exclude the error of Sabellian confusion, just as the Son himself testifies, saying: 'There is another who bears witness of me, and I know that the testimony which he bears of me is true' (John 5:32). And that he might show whom he called "another," he added a little later: 'The Father who sent me, he himself bears witness of me' (ibid., 37). In another place likewise, distinguishing his own person and the Father's:
'I am not alone,' he says, 'because the Father is with me' (John 8:16). To teach thoroughly this distinction of the two persons and the profession of one substance in the Father and the Son, the Son himself says: 'He who believes in me does not believe in me, but in him who sent me; and he who sees me, sees him who sent me' (John 12:44). There is therefore one Son, begotten of the Father's nature, who is for this reason called Only-begotten, that by the property of the paternal nature he may be shown to be one and begotten. But this one who is called Only-begotten from the Father by nature, just as he is inseparable in the unity of nature, so he remains unconfusable in the property of person. For this reason the Son of God names himself alone the Only-begotten, saying:
'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life' (John 3:16). And a little after: 'He who believes in him is not judged; but he who does not believe is already judged, because he does not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.' Concerning the Son alone indeed John testifies and says: 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth' (John 1:14). The Word made flesh is full of the grace of human assumption, because Christ has nothing in himself that is less than man;
and the same, the Only-begotten of the Father, is full of the truth of the paternal substance, because he naturally has in himself the whole fullness of the paternal divinity. Therefore the evangelist recognized as full of grace and truth him whom the grace of a true incarnation would show to be one and the same true man, and whom the truth of an eternal nativity would declare to be true God, the Only-begotten of the Father. But what profit is it to the Son that he be called by the name of Only-begotten, if he is deprived of the truth of the term? For he is called Only-begotten in vain, if in his generation there is proclaimed not a natural truth from a begetting God, but the largess of a creation from a giver. For to others also: 'As many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God' (ibid., 12).
But if the only-begotten Son too is said to have been made by grace, and not truly begotten by nature, then without doubt he has lost the name and truth of the Only-begotten, since he has now begun to have brothers: for he is deprived of the truth of this name, if in the Only-begotten there is no natural truth from the Father. CHAPTER IV. The adoptive sons of God differ not in names, but in gifts; not in life, but in glory. For among the sons of God who do not subsist from the nature of God the Father, the fellowship of adoptive dignity can have a diversity of gifts, not of names; and the grace of the one adopting, though it promises to all who are born of God a gift of differing reward according to the merit of their labor, yet accommodates to all the one name of sons;
and to those reborn through true faith one life of the heavenly kingdom is promised, although a differing glory of reigning is bestowed, as blessed Paul says: 'There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for star differs from star in glory; so also is the resurrection of the dead' (1 Cor. 15:41); and yet to all of these, by that power which he gave them to become the sons of God, it shall alike be said to those on the right hand: 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world' (Matt. 25:34); and likewise of all it is said: 'But the righteous shall go into life everlasting' (ibid., 46).
Equally, therefore, the unity of the adoptive name shall hold all the sons of God, although the difference of glory is destined to show the quality of their merits; nor in that we have begun to be spiritual by the rising of our nativity are we distinguished in name, though by advancement we are to be distinguished in reward. For in that he voluntarily begot us by the word of truth, the grace of the begetter has alike called us sons. But if that divine and eternal nativity of the Son is believed to have subsisted not from the nature of God the Father, but from grace, then he ought not to be called Only-begotten, but only begotten.
Since, just as the largess of the paternal adoption conferred on him the name of "begotten," so the fellowship of the paternal adoption granted also to us has excluded him from the name of "Only-begotten." For he is not called Only-begotten among many, although he can be called begotten together with the begotten. But if this is so, let it be deleted that John dared to write the name of Only-begotten, so that it may be proved false which he deserved to draw from the breast of truth. But if the property of the Only-begotten must be shown by the token of a manifest signification, then let many be called sons of God by grace, in such a way that one is known to be begotten by nature. For who has been born true God of true God, save the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father?
Him alone the exclusiveness of an incommunicable name sets apart from the other sons of God, because in him alone remains the natural truth from the Father. CHAPTER V. Christ emptied himself, and yet remained full of grace and truth. This true God and eternal life, 'though he was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant' (Phil. 2:6): for the true God did not seize by robbery equality with the true God, which as eternal he possessed by natural unity with his begetter. Therefore the only-begotten Son of God, even when, taking the form of a servant, he emptied himself, remained full of grace and truth. 'We beheld,' says John, 'his glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten'
'from the Father, full of grace and truth' (John 1:14). This indeed is that which, in one and the same being who empties himself and is full of grace and truth, by the servant's form assumed, showed the truth of an altogether voluntary self-emptying, in which, remaining eternally the form of God, he displayed the fullness of grace and truth. What, therefore, is that emptying of the Only-begotten, but the passible and mortal humanity of Christ assumed? And what is the fullness of the Only-begotten, but the abiding impassible and immortal divinity of Christ? In whom the perfect man is full of grace, and in whom the perfect God is full of truth: which
without doubt bears the name of fullness, so that it may be shown to be of divinity; let us alike hear the Apostle speaking of Christ: 'For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in him' (Col. 2:9-10). And what is that fullness of the Godhead which dwells in Christ, let John show: 'The Word,' he says, 'was made flesh, and dwelt among us' (John 1:14). Of this fullness John the Baptist declares that we have received, saying: 'And of his fullness have we all received, and grace for grace.' CHAPTER VI. In the one Christ there are two natures, not confused, but united.
One therefore and the same is Christ, the Son of God and of man, who both emptied himself and remained full of grace and truth; truly made changeable, remaining unchangeable; truly suffering, not subject to suffering; truly dead, not feeling death, but extinguishing it. Yet all these things one Christ both did and endured, because in one and the same Christ the true nature of divinity and the true nature of humanity remained, while God, not confused with man but united to him, so displayed in one person the marks of each abiding nature, that as true and full God he shone forth by true and divine powers in the assumed man, and the truth of human weakness showed a true and complete man in God.
Wherefore the blessed Apostle both proclaims one and the same Christ crucified, and declares him the power and wisdom of God, saying: 'But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God' (1 Cor. 1:23-24); and that in the weakness of the human assumption he might show the greatness of the divine power, he added: 'For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men' (ibid., 25). That Son of God, therefore, the power of God and the wisdom of God, in the beginning of our redemption, accomplished something different in the man
different, that is, from what he always had in the Father, because, namely, the nativity of majesty had one thing there, and the mercy of redemption required another thing here: for in that hidden mystery of the eternal nativity the eternal and unchangeable Father begot another, not a different one; and as much as he brought forth by begetting, so great did he himself remain; and he distinguished personally from himself the one whom naturally he has wholly in himself. This is made manifest to us by the utterance of the Son himself, saying: 'I am in the Father, and the Father in me' (John 14:10). Unconfusedly, therefore, nature unites both, although person inseparably distinguishes both; therefore the Son himself testifies: 'I and the Father are one' (John 10:30).
By this, that he says "one," the divinity is not separated from God; by this, that he says "are," the nativity is not confounded in the begetter. CHAPTER VII. It befitted the Mediator to have two natures. God became man, without any change of himself. Now here, while the exchange of our redemption was being transacted, it befitted full and true God to be united to full and true man: yet in such a way that, in the unity of person, neither could God be confounded in the man, nor the man in God: for never would any man have been fit to conquer the enemy of the human race, if in the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, either something of the man had been less, or the man assumed by God had been consumed by the divine assumption;
but human nature could not be consumed in its restoration, since its condemned part will not be consumed by the eternity of punishment. And since it belongs to punishment to consume, but to grace to restore, the Redeemer of the human race must be confessed as full God, assuming a full man, full of the grace by which God deigned to become man, and full of the truth by which the very God who was made man remains unchanged, as he had already said before through the prophet: 'See that I am, and am not changed' (Mal. 3:6). Of whom also Paul records that blessed David sang: 'Thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the selfsame' (Heb. 1:12; Ps. 101:28).
One therefore and the same Christ, in that he is full of grace, having nothing less of human nature, was born a full man from man; and in that he is full of truth, having nothing less of the paternal divinity, is begotten full God from the Father. For the Only-begotten of the Father was not full of grace, if in the Son of God there was something less of man; nor was he full of truth, if in the same son of man there was something less of deity. That ineffable God, therefore, begotten naturally of the Father without beginning, after the fullness of time had come, that, sent by the Father, he might be made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons (Gal. 4:5),
is wholly reigning in the bosom of the Father, wholly forming himself in the womb of the Virgin. CHAPTER VIII. Christ is wholly in the Father and wholly in the womb of his mother. Christ, rich in himself, became poor for our sake. For neither did a part of him remain in the Father and a part of him descend into the Virgin, since he wholly remained in the Father what he was, and wholly became in the Virgin what he was not: wholly with the Father filling and containing the whole world, wholly building for himself a house in the womb of the Virgin (for it is written: 'Wisdom hath built herself a house' [Prov. 9:1]), wholly in the eternal Father, wholly in the assumed man, wholly in heaven, wholly in the world, wholly also in hell:
thus he took the whole man into himself, being true and most high God, and thus the fullness of divinity, while the truth of the divine and human substance remained unconfusedly, joined itself to a full man, so that, the unity of person henceforth abiding for ever, neither could the man Christ be disjoined from his divinity, nor the same God Christ be disjoined from his humanity. For this the remedy of our weakness demanded, that just as the natural unity abides in the Father and the Son, so the personal unity might abide in Christ; and that just as the personal distinction does not make two substances in the Father and the Son, so the natural distinction might not make two persons in Christ;
and again, just as the natural unity does not confound the Father and the Son, so the personal unity would not confound the man and the Word; and just as the only-begotten Son can never be separated from God his begetter through the unity of nature, so the assumed man could never be separated from God the assumer through the unity of person; yet in such a way that, although Christ could never at any time be either confounded or divided, one and the same Christ might both, out of the truth of the human passion, render back what had been ours, and, out of the truth of the divine impassibility, bestow what had been his own: so that, while he was made poor while remaining in his own riches, he might make us rich out of the poor, on whom he had conferred the infinite riches of his poverty.
This the Vessel of Election is seen manifestly to announce, saying: 'For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich' (2 Cor. 8:9). Therefore this inseparable unity of person, in which God and man is one Christ, brought it about both that the man Christ should be born of God by grace, the truth and fullness of human nature being preserved, and that the same God Christ should voluntarily suffer in the flesh, the impassible fullness of the divine substance being preserved. For just as he is one of whom the Apostle says: 'Whose are the fathers, of whom according to the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever' (Rom. 9:5);
so he is one of whom the same Apostle says: 'For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he lives by the power of God' (2 Cor. 13:4). There is therefore one Christ, in whom crucified there was the true weakness of the flesh, and in whom living there shone forth the power of true deity; God having what is human in the truth of human nature, and man having what is divine in the truth of the divine substance. Hence he is proclaimed incomprehensible on the cross, inviolable in the wound, impassible in the passion, immortal in death. CHAPTER IX. When Christ suffered, God did not suffer with him.
While certain persons attend too little to these things, they do not hesitate to subject the divinity of Christ to the passion, and, hearing that Christ suffered in the flesh, they think that God suffered together with the flesh, attending too little to the fact that that divine and unchangeable substance of the Son of God both took up suffering in passible flesh, and yet could not feel suffering together with the flesh. This indeed blessed Peter confirms in the truth of divine inspiration, and says: 'Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind' (1 Pet. 4:1). Who, if he had known that the divinity of Christ was passible, it would have sufficed for him to say: 'Since therefore Christ suffered,' nor would he have added, 'in the flesh.'
But because he knew that in one and the same Christ the human nature had been passible before death, and the divine substance always remains impassible, therefore he confesses that Christ suffered in the flesh, whose divinity he knew to remain utterly impassible. CHAPTER X. The divinity of Christ, although it assumed passible flesh, nevertheless remained impassible, because it is unchangeable. But perhaps it will be said that Christ is proclaimed to have suffered in the flesh for this reason: because the divinity, which before the flesh could not suffer, assuming passible flesh, also perceived the passion together with the flesh, since, on account of the assumption of passible flesh, it, being impassible, could not remain impassible in the passion.
But if this is so, then first the divinity of Christ is asserted to be changeable, and the Apostle is contradicted, who, proclaiming the Son of God Jesus Christ to be unchangeable, plainly says to the Corinthians: 'For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not Yea and Nay, but in him it was Yea' (2 Cor. 1:19). And that he might show that very "Yea" to be utterly unchangeable, he again speaks thus to the Hebrews, where he plainly records that it was said of the Son: 'Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest; and they shall all wax old as a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the selfsame' (Heb.
1:10-11). But what is it to be the selfsame, but to be unchangeable? Just as he testifies of himself, saying: 'I am who am; and thou shalt say to the children of Israel: He who is hath sent me unto you' (Exod. 3:14). But if anyone, wishing to demonstrate a difference of divinity between the Father and the Son, should assert that this place in which it is said, 'I am who am,' pertains to the person of the Father alone, let him first remember that he will confess that it was the Father who appeared to Moses; then, that if there the Father appeared in his own substance, then the Father was visible. But if he even now remains visible, then God is no longer invisible to bodily eyes; but if he was then indeed seen substantially, but afterwards is thought to have been rendered invisible:
then God, being previously subject to changeableness, was surely imperfect, and afterwards, made unchangeable by advancement, received the state of full perfection. But if from imperfect he was made perfect, then another must be sought who is believed to have always been perfect, from whom this one who was imperfect received the gift of perfection. CHAPTER XI. God, invisible in himself, appeared visibly through a subject creature. As the Father is unchangeable, so also is the Son. But if Christian minds and ears do not tolerate these things, let it be believed that God never appeared visibly to men through his own substance, but through a subject creature (as he himself willed); and let the Son be believed equally invisible,
just as the Father; who, as remaining timeless he was able to establish temporal things, so remaining invisible he was able to appear visibly in those visible things which he created. Even though this place in which it is said, 'I am who am,' be assigned by anyone to the person of the Father, not even so is the Son to be believed to be sundered from the equality of the paternal unchangeableness. Since, just as the Father says: 'I am who am,' so the Apostle says of the Son, as we set forth above: 'He was not Yea and Nay, but in him it was Yea.' And again: 'But thou art the selfsame.' Since therefore that singular "IS," just as it is found in the Father, so is found in the Son, either both are believed unchangeable, or both are subjected to changeableness.
But since it is exceedingly impious that we should call the Father changeable, this without doubt is pious: that, as we proclaim the Father unchangeable, so we proclaim the Son unchangeable; and if the divinity of the Son is unchangeable, then surely nothing accrued to him or departed from him in time, since that which subsists immutable by natural truth receives nothing of changeableness. It remains, therefore, that we confess the divinity of Christ, which holy Scripture commends as unchangeable, to have so suffered in the flesh, that we nevertheless believe it did not suffer together with the flesh. For God suffered in the flesh for this reason, because God took passible flesh; but he did not suffer together with the flesh for this reason, because, while suffering in the flesh, the divine nature remained impassible.
The unity of person in Christ, not the confusion of the divine and human nature, made the passion common to the divinity and the flesh. CHAPTER XII. On account of the unity of person, the Lord of glory is said to have been crucified, and the author of life to have been slain. Through this unity of person the Lord of glory is asserted to have been crucified, as blessed Paul says: 'For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory' (1 Cor. 2:8). On account of this unity of person the author of life is said to have been slain, as in the Acts of the Apostles Peter rebukes the Jews, saying: 'And ye desired a murderer to be granted unto you, but killed the author of life' (Acts 3:14-15). But who would call any mere man the author of life, unless God had assumed a man for us?
Therefore from the time that God, the author of life, assumed a man into the unity of person, from that time that man obtained the name of author of life; just as from the fact that the Son of God assumed a man in the virginal womb, from that time God and man together began to be called one Son of God, the angel saying to Mary: 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God' (Luke 1:35). Of whom also a little above he says to the same Virgin: 'Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest' (ibid., 31).
But not only is the Son of God, according to that which was born of man, called Christ, but also that man is called God, on account of the fact that he is assumed by God, which the book of Psalms undoubtedly shows us, in which it is said: 'Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the sceptre of thy kingdom is a sceptre of righteousness. Thou hast loved justice, and hated iniquity: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows' (Ps. 44:7-8). CHAPTER XIII. The anointing too is to be referred to the man rather than to God. That this anointing is to be referred rather to the man, blessed Peter shows, saying: 'Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power' (Acts 10:38).
What, then, could be proclaimed "of Nazareth," save the human nature in Christ? For to such a degree is it the humanity, not the divinity, of Christ that is proclaimed "of Nazareth," that even Philip, who calls him "of Nazareth," reckoned him the son of Joseph: as, speaking to Nathanael, he says: 'We have found him of whom Moses and the prophets did write, Jesus the son of Joseph of Nazareth' (John 1:46). This one, therefore, who is said to be anointed with the Holy Spirit, is named God in the Davidic song; but how could that man have the name of God, save because, assumed by God, he possessed together with him one dignity of name? But if in that which is said, 'God, thy God, hath anointed thee' (Ps.
44:8), the divine nature is believed to be understood, in which the Son is thought to be anointed by God, then the true God surely stood in need of the gift of sanctification, before the same one should be born a true man in the flesh. CHAPTER XIV. There is nothing intermediate between the Father and the Son, through which the Son might be anointed. God anointed Christ according to the flesh. Let it be said, then, what could be holier than the Son of God, by whose anointing sanctification was either given to him not previously possessed, or perfected which was in him imperfect? And if anything is said to be better than the Son of God (to whom they think the Father alone is to be preferred), without doubt, whatever it is, they will confess it to be equal to the Father.
But whether it be made co-equal with the Father, or even placed after the Father, it is meanwhile preferred to the Son—whatever else it is. Unjustly, therefore, is the Holy Spirit joined to the Father and the Son in baptism, when rather that ought to have been joined to the Father and the Son which, by the merit of a superior sanctification, ought to have been set before the Son. But what sort of power would that be believed to be, which sanctified by anointing the divinity of the Son of God, and could not sanctify his flesh? For surely, if it could fully sanctify the man Christ, there was no need that he should be anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power. Let it be considered, therefore, lest perhaps the Holy Spirit is to be believed more powerful and holier both than the Son of God himself and than that power by which he is said to be anointed:
for Jesus of Nazareth—that is, the Son of God according to the flesh, as blessed Peter's assertion makes clear—God anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power. But if the man Christ could not be fully sanctified without the grace of the Holy Spirit, the conferring of that anointing will be called superfluous. But if he could be fully sanctified without the Holy Spirit, and Christ the man did not have the full grace of sanctification without the Holy Spirit—inasmuch as he it was 'whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world' (John 10:36), and who said of himself: 'And I sanctify myself' (John 17:19);
and in whom the sanctification of the Holy Spirit is likewise recognized, since God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power—how does anyone dare to call the Holy Spirit less than the Father or the Son, without whom he sees that the perfection of sanctification cannot stand? But why is it doubted that the Holy Spirit is signified by the name of oil, when both David and Peter, by the term as much of oil as of the Holy Spirit, proclaim one sacrament of the Lord's anointing? For David says: 'God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows,' and he surely signifies the man, when he names "fellows": for that divinity of the Son of God has the fellowship of no creature, since with a creature it has no natural consortium:
God, therefore, was anointed in the flesh, so that in that man Christ, whom his mother both conceived and bore without sin, there might be recognized the full grace of divine sanctification, which was to be conferred upon the faithful in the name of the Trinity. For this reason blessed Peter says: 'Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power' (Acts x. 38). And yet this Jesus of Nazareth is called 'God' in the psalm: whence, I ask, unless because God and man are one Christ? And therefore, while the natural, unconfused, and inseparable truth of the person of man and God abides in unity, just as God the Christ took the name of man in the man, so the same man Christ received in God the title of the Godhead. CHAPTER IV.
Christ assumed not a heavenly but a human body. One and the same Christ is both the Son of Man and the Son of God. For if the personal unity of the name of God and man in Christ does not come from a natural conjunction, then consequently the second man, whom Paul proclaims to be heavenly from heaven, would be thought to have naturally nothing from the Virgin, and according to a heavenly nature would be said to have the substance of a heavenly flesh—especially since the Lord Himself also professes concerning Himself: 'No one has ascended into heaven except him who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven' (John iii. 13).
But if Christ is to be believed to have taken on a heavenly and not a human body, how will the prophecy of David's psalm be upheld in its truth, where it is written: 'That glory may dwell in our land, truth has sprung out of the earth' (Ps. lxxxiv. 10, 12)? And who would dare to deny that Christ is the truth, since He named Himself by this very name, saying: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life' (John xiv. 6)? If, then, truth has sprung out of the earth, how is the second man heavenly from heaven, unless because the matter of an earthly body, taken up by the Son of God, passed over into a heavenly name through fellowship with the Godhead? And again, how does the Son of Man descend from heaven, unless because the Son of God descended not by local motion but by the affection of His mercy?
He who, just as He deigned in the flesh assumed from man to be born, so, on account of the one person of the God assuming and the man assumed, He who was the Son of God deigned to be called the Son of Man. In order that this unity of person might be known without any confusion of the two substances, Christ asks His disciples, saying: 'Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?' (Matt. xvi. 13). And when they at once reported the opinion of the crowd, then the character of the true faith is properly sought from them, so that the falsehood of human error might be removed: this, therefore, is the Lord's ensuing question: 'But whom do you say that I am?'—I, indeed, the Son of Man?
There at once Peter the apostle, supported by the firm foundation of divine revelation, confessed the sacrament of universal salvation: 'You are,' he said, 'the Christ, the Son of the living God.' What is this? As far as the ignorant are concerned, does the answer fit the question? For Peter is asked about the Son of Man, and he confesses the Son of God. Did he perhaps hear Jesus who was asking too little, or did he himself not hold to the truth in his confession? By no means: for how could the error of man be praised by the mouth of the truth? But what Christ truly was, this the questioner said; and what Christ truly was, this He heard from the mouth of the confessing Peter.
For Christ the Son of Man was the Son of the living God, and not undeservedly did He by the divine voice merit blessedness, who by His own voice put forth the truth; on account of this He hears: 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven.' Christ Himself too had already confessed that He was the Son of God, when He declared that it had been revealed to Peter by His Father who is in heaven. Yet I judge this not to be passed over idly, that to Christ, who first named Himself the Son of Man, Peter says: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God': for indeed the Son of God, having taken on the humility of the flesh, ought to display in Himself the sacrament of His great mercy;
but redeemed man ought in the Son of Man to proclaim the true substance of the divine nativity, so that while the benefit of gratuitous compassion is shown by the Redeemer, the homage of divine confession might be rendered by the redeemed; and that no one might doubt Him to be true God of the nature of the Father, whom he had known to be true man of the nature of man—and thus, Him whom it was established to be true man by the sufferings of man, we might believe the same to be true God by the works of the Godhead, the Son Himself saying: 'If you will not believe me, believe the works' (John x. 38). One therefore and the same is Christ, who by human weakness endured suffering, and by the omnipotence of divine power accomplished the miracles of His benefits. CHAPTER XVI.
In Christ the natures are led without confusion or change. In Christ there is the whole man, of a true soul and flesh. From the raising of Lazarus there is proved in Christ soul, flesh, and divinity. The divinity neither was disturbed by the soul nor departed from the dying flesh. For from the very beginning of the virginal conception, the personal unity so abode in Christ, and the unconfused truth of each nature so endured, that neither could man be torn from God, nor God be separated from the man He had assumed; nor yet did God consume the man, nor did the man change God in anything; and although in Christ's death the soul was to forsake the dying flesh, yet the divinity of Christ, being assumed, could be separated neither from the soul nor from the flesh.
Therefore, because that God assumed the whole man, He showed in Himself in truth the sufferings of the whole man; and indeed having a rational soul, He both took on and endured whatever there was of the soul's weakness, apart from sin, so that while He conquered the sufferings of the human soul in the soul which He received, He might also free our souls from their infirmities. Taking on human flesh also, He had in the truth of that same flesh the truth of a voluntary suffering; so that, having died in the flesh, He might slay in Himself the whole death of man, and, rising immortal unto eternal life, He might bestow on us the grace of eternal life.
Therefore the true Christ, in His human soul, about to raise Lazarus (as the evangelist says) 'groaned in spirit and troubled Himself'; and the same true Christ, in His human flesh, when He had said, 'Where have you laid him?' They say to Him, 'Lord, come and see,' 'and Jesus wept' (John xi. 33-35). The same true Christ also, in His divine nature, neither forsook His soul when He troubled Himself, because He Himself troubled Himself; nor departed from His flesh when He wept, because Jesus shed tears; and yet that very divinity, remaining in soul and flesh unchangeable and impassible according to the divine nature, could neither shed tears nor feel any disturbance at the death of the friend.
So too, as the passion drew near, Christ is troubled according to His soul, He Himself saying: 'Now is my soul troubled' (John xii. 27). Likewise on the cross Christ dies according to the flesh, the Apostle saying: 'For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures' (1 Cor. xv. 3, 4).
Since, then, it has been distinguished by evident manifestation what in Christ was proper to the soul, what to the flesh, and what also to the Godhead—since one and the same Christ was both troubled and dead—yet in both cases the truth of God and man is so preserved that, although Christ was troubled according to the soul as the passion drew near, and the same Christ died according to the body on the cross, the divinity of Christ, remaining undisturbed and immortal, neither departed from the troubled soul nor from the dying body, and yet was neither troubled in the trouble of the soul nor did it die in the death of the body: for there is one Christ, 'who was delivered up on account of our offenses, and rose again on account of our justification' (Rom.
iv. 25), just as, truly dead, He could not die, so in a true passion He remained impassible. CHAPTER XVII. Christ demonstrates in Himself the truth of each nature. Christ's person is one, although the nature is not single. He, in order to demonstrate in Himself both the true mortality of man and the true immortality of the Godhead, when the Jews said: 'What sign do you show us, that you do these things?' Jesus answered and said to them: 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up' (John ii. 18, 19). But what that temple was, the holy evangelist showed, saying: 'But He spoke of the temple of His body' (Ibid. 21).
There was shown, therefore, both the truth of the human substance, which the Jews could destroy in Christ, He Himself willing it; and the truth of the divine nature, by which Christ could raise up the temple of His body: for when, Christ having died, the soul forsook the flesh, then that temple was destroyed, which had been built up of soul and flesh; and when the soul returned to the flesh, then that temple was raised up on the third day: and yet, on account of the one person of the God-man Christ, the same one died in His body who raised up the temple of His body.
So too, when, according to the oracle of Isaiah prophesying, He 'gave His back to the scourges, His cheeks to the palms, and did not turn away His face from the confusion of spitting' (Isa. l. 6), God suffered all these things in the flesh, yet did not suffer-with the flesh, because God felt the suffering in the flesh, though He did not feel it with the flesh. For there is one person of the God-man Christ, which Paul also commends, saying: 'For what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, it is for your sake in the person of Christ' (2 Cor. ii. 10); and although the person in Christ is one, yet the substance in Christ is not one: because true God so assumed true man that in the truth of the human assumption He did not lose the truth of the Godhead;
and He so deigned to become what before He was not, that He did not cease to be what He always was; so too God willed to have one person with man, so that although Christ God was not one and Christ man another, yet true God remained in the man, and true man remained in God; and thus in the one Christ there was the perfection of the divine and human natures, unconfused and equally undivided. CHAPTER XVIII. In Christ the things that were of the flesh or of the soul are not to be ascribed to the Godhead. The divinity in no way suffered-with or was made sorrowful. This is proved by the testimonies of Scripture. Now Christ's divinity was not then born in itself, when it was born for us in the flesh. The Word was an infant according to the flesh, and did not have the faculty of speech;
but the same Word, being God, could never be restrained by any silence, because He Himself is the eternal speech of the Father. The boy grew by increase of age, but because in God there is no age, the divine majesty did not grow in the growing boy. We know too that Christ advanced in wisdom according to the soul: but Christ as wisdom could not advance along with the advancing soul. And thus the same Christ both grew in His flesh and advanced in His soul; who nevertheless, both growing in His flesh and advancing in His soul, could neither advance with His soul nor feel the increases of age with His flesh. The same one, according to the assumed soul, was also God made sorrowful;
but He who felt sorrow in the soul could not feel sorrow with the soul. In His soul God willed His sorrow to be, and in His flesh God willed His suffering to be, because God, remaining wholly in the whole man, inseparable, was neither absent from the grieving soul nor forsook His flesh in the suffering; but in the sorrowing and suffering Christ, although the suffering and sorrowing humanity could not be separated from the Godhead, yet in the whole man being sorrowful the divinity was not made sorrowful, and in the whole man suffering the divine nature did not suffer-with; just as, the flesh dying, not only the Godhead but not even the soul of Christ can be shown to have died-with:
for it is one thing to say that God suffered in the flesh, another to declare Him to have suffered-with the flesh; one thing to say He was made sorrowful in the soul, and another to say He was made sorrowful with the soul. God suffered in the man, because there is one person of God and man; God did not suffer-with the man, because in the one Christ the substance of God and man is not confused. This can be proved by the evident testimonies of the Scriptures, so that it may be known that sorrow and suffering are thus to be reckoned to the whole Christ, in such a way that, the truth of the natural functions being shown, there be no confusion of God and man. Matthew relates that the Lord, as the time of the passion drew near, said to His disciples: 'Sit here, while I go yonder and pray';
'and taking Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, He began to be sorrowful and to be heavy' (Matt. xxvi. 36). Mark, however, is known to have put it thus: 'And they come to a field whose name is Gethsemane, and He says to His disciples: Sit here while I pray: and He took Peter, and James, and John with Him, and began to be afraid and to be sore troubled' (Mark xiv. 32). CHAPTER XIX. In the recompense the just shall be as the angels of God. I am not unaware how greatly it now befits the duty of our engagement, that not only in words but also in effects the property of flesh and soul is to be shown in the Son of God:
for then the nature of the divine impassibility will shine forth, when what is proper to the soul, and what to the flesh, has become clear not only by reason but also by the authority of the divine Scriptures. Matthew thus says that Jesus was made sorrowful and heavy; Mark records that He was afraid and sore troubled. Let those, then, whom the assumption of a human soul in Christ displeases, say whether they judge sorrow, grief, weariness, and fear to be reckoned to the divinity or to the flesh. And if indeed they answer that these belonged to the flesh, then the divinity will be exempted from all kinds of sufferings, which was not a partaker of the sufferings of the flesh, although it was not absent even in the suffering from the flesh it had assumed;
but if they assert that Christ's Godhead was shaken by sorrow, grief, weariness, and fear, calling the Godhead passible, they will confess it to be equal to our souls. It remains then that they call it unequal to the angels, which they pronounce to be subject to suffering: for in this respect the angels are by far superior to our souls, because just as they are free from sins, so are they free from sufferings. This too the Lord promises as a recompense to those who worthily worship Him and live holily, saying: 'They shall be as the angels of God in heaven' (Matt. xxii. 30).
Then indeed, when according to the testimony of blessed Paul this corruptible and mortal shall so be clothed with incorruption and immortality that corruption cannot possess incorruption—corruption which consists not only in sin but also in the weakness which is known to have befallen the transgressor from the penalty of sin. For the Apostle attests that we shall then be wholly without sin and weakness, and says: 'Then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your contention? O death, where is your sting? Now the sting of death is sin' (1 Cor. xv. 54, 55, 56).
Therefore, death being swallowed up in victory, there will be no corruption of soul or flesh, since when all iniquity has been removed from us, no weakness will remain. Concerning such ones indeed Isaiah says: 'They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee from them' (Isa. xxxv. 10). Of these too John speaks in the Apocalypse: 'They shall neither hunger nor thirst, nor shall the sun fall upon them, nor any heat' (Rev. vii. 16); and, to show that they shall obtain this grace by the gift of Christ, he adds in what follows: 'For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne shall rule them, and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life, and the Lord shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.'
Since, then, such today is the blessed security and gladness of the angels, wholly ignorant of sufferings, so that they are shaken by no fall of sin, by no assault of weakness; let those at last look back (or come to their senses) into what abyss of blasphemy they are hurled down, who, subjecting the divinity of Christ to human sufferings, endeavor to demonstrate the Lord of angels, in the substance which He has from the Father, to be inferior to the angels. Is it then false, what He Himself says: 'The servant is not greater than his lord' (John xiii. 16)? CHAPTER XX. The objection is met concerning what David says: 'You have made Him a little less than the angels.' Do they think this is to be objected, what David says of the Son of Man: 'Lord, what is man, that You are mindful of him?'
'or the son of man, that You visit him? You have made him a little less than the angels' (Ps. viii. 5, 6). But let them notice that Paul the apostle refers this passage to the understanding of human death, in such a way that he assigns this lessening not only to the nature of the humanity, but even excepts the divinity of Christ from fellowship with suffering and death. For thus he speaks to the Hebrews: 'But Him who was made a little less than the angels, we see, namely Jesus, on account of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that without God He might taste death for all' (Heb. ii. 9);
but here the Apostle did not divide Christ, but showed in the one Christ what substance was passible and mortal, and what remained impassible and immortal. Without God, then, that man tasted death, as far as concerns the condition of the flesh, but not without God, as far as pertains to the assumption of the Godhead; because that impassible and immortal divinity, when in the truth of the form of a servant it deigned both to suffer voluntarily for us and to die, just as in the death of the flesh alone it was immortal, so in the sufferings of the whole man it remained altogether impassible. CHAPTER XXI. Sorrow and similar affections pertain to the soul.
But now it must be shown by us that the suffering of sorrow, grief, weariness, and fear pertains properly to the substance of the soul: so that in that very point in which those ungrateful to the grace of Christ desire to subject His divinity to suffering, it may appear what is proper to each nature, and in this
the wondrous and unconquered clemency of the Lord may be the more recognized, when we shall have proved that the substance of soul and flesh was for this reason assumed by God together with their sufferings, that just as, the state of the divine impassibility being kept safe, He is known by the voluntary assumption of death in His flesh to have slain our death, so by the voluntary assumption of sorrow and fear He may be known to have assumed a rational soul with its sufferings, that He might deign to free our souls from all sufferings. Let us therefore show that the sorrow of Christ pertained neither to the substance of the divinity, nor to that of the flesh, but to that of the soul.
And that this may be known by an unimpaired manifestation, let us attend to what He said to the disciples almost at the very time of the passion, so that He might demonstrate in Himself the true substance of the soul no less by function than by name. 'My soul,' He says, 'is sorrowful even unto death' (Matt. xxvi. 38). But who would doubt that sorrow can neither fall upon the divinity nor pertain to the function of the flesh? For it is proper to the soul to fear, to desire, to be sorrowful, to rejoice, as the text of David's song also shows, saying: 'Why are you sorrowful, my soul, and why do you disturb me?' (Ps. xli. 12). The soul is made sorrowful, it itself is disturbed.
Therefore the Savior Himself too, to show that this disturbance is to be reckoned not to the flesh but to the soul, thus consoles His disciples, when they were made sorrowful over His future departure: 'Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it fear' (John xiv. 1). To the same ones He again speaks thus: 'Now I go to Him who sent me, and none of you asks me: Where are you going? but because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart' (John xvi. 5). Who would dare assign to the flesh or to the divinity that which the Lord says pertains properly to the function of the heart? For when He said above: 'Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it fear,' where by the name of heart He properly demonstrated the human soul, and then said:
'Sorrow has filled your heart,' so that He might more evidently show that both sorrow and joy pertain to the soul; again the Apostle says: 'Amen, amen I say to you, that you shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she gives birth has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she has borne the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And you therefore now indeed have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one shall take from you.' Behold, in man, sorrow, dread, and joy are properly reckoned to the heart, that is, to the soul.
For this reason the Apostle also says: 'Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us everlasting consolation and good hope in grace, console your hearts and confirm them in every good work and word' (2 Thess. ii. 15). But where can consolation be applied, except where sadness can creep in? Which, because they pertain properly to the soul, therefore it is written of Christ: 'For He began to be sorrowful and heavy; and He began to be afraid and sore troubled.' And He Himself says: 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death.' And: 'Now is my soul troubled.' CHAPTER XXII. Joy in the soul of Christ. Desire. Christ took on infirmities, that in us He might perfect virtue.
In Christ there is the power of laying down and taking up the soul. The Savior demonstrated joy also in His soul, when He said to the disciples concerning Lazarus: 'Lazarus our friend is dead: and I am glad, for your sakes, that I was not there, that you may believe' (John xi. 14). The substance of man indeed rejoiced in Christ, which by natural fellowship already had joy over the raising of Lazarus: at the same time so that the disciples too might understand true God in the man, whom they had known not to be hidden even from things set far off. And that Christ might demonstrate in Himself all the functions of the soul, He willed desire too not to be alien to His soul, saying to the disciples: 'With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer' (Luke xxii. 15).
No one can reckon all these things either to the nature of the flesh or to the substance of the Godhead, since the flesh can neither live by itself, nor feel, nor be sorrowful, nor desire, nor fear, nor grieve. The Godhead fears nothing, since it is lord of all; is sorrowful in nothing, since nothing of suffering is brought upon it; fears in nothing, since there is in it no natural weakness; desires nothing, since it can do all things and possesses all things. All these things, therefore, Christ endured in the soul which He had assumed, that He might demonstrate in Himself the true and whole substance of the man He had received, with its infirmities; and by the infirmities which He took on behalf of the weak, that He might perfect the virtue which He bestowed on the weak.
He who also for this reason had the flesh of man mortal, that He might confer on mortals the full grace of immortality; and He assumed the soul of man with its infirmities without sin, that He might expend medicine upon our souls; for just as, Isaiah being witness, 'He was wounded for our iniquities' (which was proper to the flesh: seeing that the soldier struck with a lance the side of one already dead), so 'He was weakened for our sins' (Isa. liii. 5) (which is of the soul, whose infirmities He assumed for us). Having the fullest power of laying down and taking up this soul, He said: 'Therefore does the Father love me, because I lay down my life, and take it up again: no one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself:'
'I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again: this commandment I received from my Father' (John x. 17, 18). I ask in this place of those who say that in Christ there was in no way a human soul, what substance they believe to be named by the word 'soul' here? whether that of the divinity, or of the flesh? or what substance in Christ claims for itself the power of laying down the soul? For if they attribute this power to the divine substance, so that they say the flesh is named by the word 'soul' which the divinity was about to lay down in the passion (that we may for the moment argue according to their will), if the divinity says of the flesh: 'I have power to lay down my soul';
then while it names the flesh by the word 'soul,' it without doubt assigns to the flesh also all the infirmities, when it says: 'My soul is troubled'; when it says: 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death.' Since, then, Christ did not say: 'I am sorrowful even unto death,' but said: 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death'; nor did He say: 'I am troubled,' but: 'My soul is troubled'; He surely showed these to be sufferings of the flesh, but taught thoroughly that His own divinity is altogether impassible. But if perhaps they attribute this power to the substance of the flesh, as though the flesh had said of the divinity:
'I have power to lay down my soul,' does it so delight them to diminish the divine substance of Christ, that they subject it to the power of His flesh, so that it itself should obey the flesh, when the flesh ought to have served it? CHAPTER XXIII. The divinity alone has full power. That voice, then, by which it was said: 'I have power to lay down my soul,' is to be believed to be that of the whole man. For just as the whole one delivered Himself up, and the whole man offered Himself, of whom the Apostle says: 'Walk in love, as Christ also loved us and delivered Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness' (Eph. v. 2), so the whole man laid down his soul, when the soul departed on the cross, the flesh dying;
which flesh, however, the divinity did not forsake even in death, just as neither did it abandon the soul in hell; concerning which the prophet also had said: 'You will not leave my soul in hell' (Ps. xv. 10). Since, then, the man Christ received such great power that when He willed He might lay down His soul, and when He willed He might take it up again; how great power could the divinity of Christ have, to which to will is ever the same as to be able? For in this place the truly impassible and unconquered divinity utterly destroyed all the fabrications of heretical falsehood. For if the power of the one speaking was intact, the weakness of the one suffering was voluntary; and the will which comes from power certainly preserved the natural truth of both the divinity and the humanity.
For natural power would without doubt have been lacking, if there had been any infirmity whatsoever in the divinity of Christ. But how could the humanity have possessed the power of suffering, if the divinity could not possess full impassibility? Let it therefore be acknowledged that where the power is naturally full, there can be no infirmity of suffering; for the power of Christ, by which He remained immortal when the dying Christ laid down His soul in the flesh, itself remained without sadness, even while Christ endured in His soul, out of His own power, a voluntary sadness. And that man had the power of laying down His soul precisely because the divine power took Him up into the unity of His person. But what power is full, save the divinity alone? Of which it is said:
Whatsoever He willed, He did (Ps. 113:12); and to whom it is said: For it is in Thy power to be able whenever Thou wilt (Wis. 12:18). Therefore in Him alone is full power worthily believed to exist, in whom to be able is naturally as great as to will, and to will as great as to be able. CHAPTER 24. That there was a true soul in Christ. Furthermore, Christ deigns to show that He assumed a true soul, both by the name and by the deed, saying: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his soul for his friends (John 15:13).
Whence Peter, knowing that the soul of Christ was named by its own and substantial word, lest anyone should suppose that flesh was perhaps being designated by the Lord under the name of soul, desiring to follow the virtue of that perfect imitation which he was afterward to receive, when the Lord said: Whither I go thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow afterward, replied: Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now? I will lay down my soul for Thee (John 13:36-37). Assuredly he showed that Christ would lay down His soul for him, since he said that he would follow Him in this, that he too would lay down his soul for Christ. For because Peter did not share with Christ a common nature of divinity, he could not say to Him concerning the divinity: I will lay down my soul for Thee.
Again, if Peter had known that Christ had laid down only His flesh for him, he too could have said: I will lay down my body for Thee, just as Paul properly signifies the body when he says: If I deliver my body to be burned (1 Cor. 13:3). But because Peter knew that Christ would lay down His soul for us, therefore he showed that he wished to follow the Lord in this, in which he demonstrated the affection of laying down his soul for Him, so that the very thing which he knew Christ had laid down for him, this he too might likewise lay down for Christ.
And that all darkness of perverse opinion may be utterly dispelled by the most clear light of catholic truth, let us be instructed by the words of John, who, exhorting the faithful to the imitation of Christ, enjoins that what he had known to be done in the Head should be done in the members. In this, he says, we know the love of God, because He laid down His soul for us, and we also ought to lay down our souls for the brethren (1 John 3:16). To lay down one's soul, therefore, is proper to love; but where love is not, the body is said to be delivered, the soul is not said to be laid down, as the Vessel of election, full of love, altogether testifies: If I deliver my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
He shows that without charity the body can be delivered, but the soul cannot be laid down; but where he strives to signify the purity of his love, thus he writes to the Thessalonians: We were affectionately desirous to impart to you not only the Gospel of God, but also our own souls (1 Thess. 2:8). And to show that this belonged to charity, he added: because ye were become most dear to us. Therefore also Peter, who had pledged that he would lay down his soul for the Lord—that we might recognize that the office of laying down the soul consists in love—Christ first invites to the confession of love; and that He might afterward grant to His lover the faculty of laying down his soul, He thus at length questions him: Simon son of John, lovest thou Me more than these? He says to Him:
Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee. And when he had said this also a second time, He says to him the third time: Simon son of John, lovest thou Me? (John 21:15,17). And when Peter, being asked the third time, had rendered a threefold testimony of his love, immediately the Lord granted to Peter the faculty of laying down his soul for Him, saying: Verily, verily I say unto thee, when thou wast younger, thou didst gird thyself and walk whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee and lead thee whither thou wouldest not (John 21:18). And immediately the evangelist added, saying: This He spake, signifying by what death he should glorify God; and when He had said this, He says to him: Follow Me.
Behold how Peter wished both before to follow Him, when he desired to lay down his soul for Him, just as he afterward was counted worthy to follow Him by the right path of love, when for Him he laid down his soul in his passion. CHAPTER 25. That in Christ there were true infirmities, human indeed, but voluntary. The body of Jesus is not said to have been laid in the tomb, but Jesus, because the divinity was there. Wherefore, since it has been proved by the manifest testimony of the Scriptures that love is absent where the body alone is laid down, but that charity is present where the soul together with the body is laid down, Christ, born of the Virgin, must be believed to be full God and full man, that is, a rational soul and flesh.
And as the truth of the catholic faith holds, let us believe that in one and the same Christ, according to the true substance of the flesh, there was a voluntary and true hunger, when hungering He came to the fig tree; a voluntary and true thirst, when He asked to drink from the Samaritan woman, or when He said upon the cross that He thirsted; a voluntary and true weariness, when, wearied by the journey, He sat upon the well; a voluntary and true wound, when His side was pierced by the soldier's lance; a voluntary and true death, when with bowed head He gave up His spirit upon the cross; a voluntary and true burial, when Joseph and Nicodemus, having taken Him down from the wood, laid Him in the tomb.
For all these infirmities of the flesh, voluntary indeed, yet true, Christ had, because He assumed the nature of human flesh not in phantasy but in truth. And He had these passions in His flesh voluntarily for this reason: that in the truth of the flesh the divine power—which could neither ever suffer nor die—might conquer infirmity and death, and raise up His flesh to perpetual life and virtue. Which Paul thus attests with truthful mouth: Christ rising from the dead dieth no more; death shall no more have dominion over Him. For in that He died to sin, He died once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God (Rom. 6:9-10).
But who does not know that Christ died and was buried neither in soul nor in divinity, but in the body alone? Which John clearly shows in these words: After this, he says, Joseph of Arimathea (because he was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews) besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave leave. He came therefore and took the body of Jesus. And Nicodemus also came, who at the first had come to Jesus by night, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. They took therefore the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the manner of the Jews to bury (John 19:38-40).
Behold, having made the distinction of divinity, flesh, and soul, insofar as it pertains to the property of substance, he says that the body of Jesus alone was taken down from the cross, embalmed with spices, and wrapped in linen cloths; but on account of the unity of the person—since God did not abandon, either in death or in the tomb, the man whom He had assumed from the womb of the Virgin—therefore John, continuing, added: Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, wherein no man had yet been laid. There therefore, on account of the Preparation of the Jews, because the tomb was nigh at hand, they laid Jesus (John 19:41-42).
Truly the aged evangelist, full of the divine Spirit, spoke in such a way that, first showing what in Christ had died and been buried, he said that the body of Jesus was received and bound in linen cloths with the spices. And because what God hath joined together man doth not separate (Matt. 19:6), therefore he says not that the body of Jesus, but that Jesus was laid in the sepulchre; for he knew that God, the receiver of the whole man, was wholly present with His flesh in the tomb, wholly with His soul in hell, wholly in the world, wholly in heaven, wholly through the unity of nature in the Father from whom He proceeded, wholly through the omnipotence of His divinity in every creature which He made. CHAPTER 26. The unity of the person of Christ from the words of the Apostle.
Preserving this unity of person in Christ, the Apostle thus confirms the Church of the Corinthians in the truth of the faith: For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-4). He said that not the body of Christ, but Christ, died, that he might preserve the unity of the person of God and man; but that he might show the substantial property of the deity and the humanity, in another place (as we have already set down above) he says: For though He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth by the power of God (2 Cor. 13:4).
The excellent power of the apostolic sayings is to be noted. For if Paul had said of Christ that He was crucified through weakness but lives by power, and had not added, of God, not even so ought the infirmity of human passibility to be confounded with the impassibility of the divine power; but since Paul assigns the power to the deity, who does not see that he declares those things which seem to be of infirmity to belong to the man? For even in that he says of Christ that He liveth by the power of God, He assuredly lives by His own deity, because He Himself is the power of God, and so lives as the Father lives, since He Himself is the way, the truth, and the life. For that the Apostle John might impress upon us the one life of the Father and the Son, he took care to place this at the opening of his Epistle:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; and the life was made manifest; and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the eternal Life, which was with the Father, and hath been manifested unto us (1 John 1:1). The Son of God, whom above he called the Word of God, he named in what follows the Life; but what is the Word of life, save the Word of God? And since the Word of life is life, that Word of life is assuredly one life, and the life whose it is the Word. Therefore Christ, who died through weakness, lives by the power of God, because to that divinity to be life is the same as to be power, and therefore for Him to be able is the same as to live.
And therefore, neither in His passion did power forsake life, nor in the death of Christ did power depart from life, since the divinity of Christ (which is power and life) could not be changed. CHAPTER 27. On account of the unity of the person in Christ, the Son of God is said to have died. The infirmities of Christ are not to be ascribed to His deity. Again, for the most firm commendation of the unity of the person in Christ, Paul thus writes to the Romans, saying of God: Who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all (Rom. 8:32). And that that delivering up might be shown to have been accomplished voluntarily out of the Son's power, he also records that the Son delivered Himself up for us, saying in another place:
And that I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me (Gal. 2:20). But that it might be shown what could be delivered up in Christ, the book of Job prophetically says: The earth is delivered into the hands of the wicked (Job 9:24). And yet, for the unity of the person, the Church holds and confesses that not only the humanity of Christ, but Christ Himself was delivered up, since in that delivering up, the property of each nature being preserved, neither could the man who was assumed be separated from God, nor could God be sundered from the man He had assumed.
As therefore Scripture altogether assigns the suffering of death, and death itself, to the Son of God on account of the unity of the person, and yet pronounces the deity impassible and immortal, so also let it be believed that the sadness and disturbance of soul, which the Son of God voluntarily had in the soul, He so had that we do not deny that even those very passions of the human soul were both true from His will and voluntary in truth. The very divinity of Christ also, which deigned to be saddened according to the soul and, according to the flesh, to die for us, according to the property of its substance, as it is immortal, so is it also to be proclaimed impassible.
Because it assumed a true man, therefore it sustained all the infirmities of human nature, true indeed, but voluntary, within that same truth of nature—only in the human nature. But who is so improvident as to follow so deadly an opinion concerning Christ, that he should believe that hunger, thirst, weariness, suffering and death, and again sadness, disturbance, fear and weariness (which no one can in any way doubt to be of the flesh and of the soul) were so true in the nature of the man, that he would not believe the substance of the deity to be immune from these—when to those who hope in Him Christ has given that they may overcome the very things which He Himself voluntarily felt for us?
Wherefore Isaiah, divinely inspired, resists the faithless and deadly imaginations, saying: The eternal God, the God who made the ends of the earth, shall not hunger, nor labour, neither can His prudence be found out, giving strength to the hungry and sorrow to those who feel no grief. For the young shall hunger, and the youths shall labour, and the chosen shall be without strength. But they that wait upon the Lord shall exult with power; they shall put forth wings like eagles; they shall run and not labour, they shall walk and not hunger (Isa. 40:28ff). The very Bread also which came down from heaven truly promises perfect satiety to those who believe in Him, saying:
He that cometh to Me shall not hunger, and he that believeth in Me shall never thirst (John 6:35). I ask, how shall this virtue be granted to men, if God could not have it? Or how did Christ not have in His divinity that which Paul received from Him in order to have it? For he testifies concerning himself and those like him, saying: We suffer tribulation, but are not distressed (2 Cor. 4:8); and in another place: As dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet enriching many; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things (2 Cor. 6:9-10).
How grievous and unfitting it is, and utterly alien to the true faith in every respect, that Paul, in one and the same substance of the soul, though he be saddened, can in the gift of Christ always rejoice, and yet it should be said of the divinity of Christ that, being sad in the soul which it assumed, it could not remain in itself without sadness. CHAPTER 28. Fear is not ascribed to John; therefore neither ought it to be ascribed to the deity. What no one can take away from servants who receive it, let no one attempt to take away from the Lord who bestows it. John, who says, does not fear: Fear is not in love, for perfect love casteth out fear; but he that feareth is not perfect in love (1 John 4:18). For he had heard from the Lord:
Fear not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul (Matt. 10:28). No one dares to ascribe fear to John, and shall the fear of death be ascribed to the Deity? David hopes in Him and says: In God will I hope, I will not fear what man may do unto me (Ps. 55:11); and the same confidently repeats: The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defender of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? (Ps. 26:1-2). And the Lord Himself says to the apostles: Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (John 14:27). Again He says: Rejoice, because I have overcome the world (John 16:33). Therefore those who wait for Him take courage, they put forth wings by which
they are lifted up to heavenly things; running, they know no toil; walking, they are ignorant of hunger; in tribulation they suffer no distress; dying, they retain life; though they seem sorrowful, yet they always exult rejoicing; though poor, they confer riches upon many, and possess all things while they strive to have nothing; filled with the love of Christ, they are without fear; illumined by Him, they confess that they dread no one; with Him as their defender, they cannot tremble before anyone; from their heart disturbance and dread are driven away; they rejoice, because they see the world conquered by Christ.
If no one can take these things away from servants who receive them, how does faithless blindness, or rather blind faithlessness, attempt to take away from the Lord who bestows them that which He naturally possesses as divine? And who does not see that in those passions of Christ there are contained certain seeds of our virtues? Therefore one and the same Christ felt in His humanity the things that are human, but in His divinity remained impassible and immortal. CHAPTER 29. The names of the Son of God with respect to His divinity. The man Christ, because He had no sins of His own, bore the sins of others. The full humanity of Christ. For the Son of God, the Word and Wisdom of the Father, is Himself the salvation of which the prophet says: Our salvation shall come quickly (Isa. 46:13). He is the power and wisdom:
For Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24). He is satiety, because He is the bread that came down from heaven (John 6:58). He is the way, He is the truth, He is the life. He is our joy and gladness, of whom the prophet says: And Thy word was made to me a joy and gladness of my heart (Jer. 15:16). He is the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world (John 1:9). By these names designated above, He is found unchangeable and impassible. Salvation cannot be sick; power knows not how to be weakened; satiety knows not hunger; the way cannot err; wisdom is not changed; life dies not; light is not extinguished; nor is truth corrupted; gladness knows not how to be saddened;
The Deity cannot be overcome. Therefore assuredly even the humanity of Christ remained without sin, because the divinity, which by nature knows not how to sin, received it into the unity of the person. The man Christ, therefore, since He had no sins of His own, deigned to bear the sins of others; and He willed to bear the sins of those with whom He was held in natural fellowship, as the Apostle says: For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one. For which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying: I will declare Thy name unto My brethren (Heb. 2:11-12; Ps. 21:23). Isaiah the prophet also thus foretells the effect of this loving-kindness, so that he clearly shows the name of man in Him, saying these things:
Lord, who hath believed our report, and the arm of the Lord, to whom hath it been revealed? (Isa. 53:1). When he says the arm of the Lord, he shows the divinity of the Son of God; and thereafter he begins to proclaim the mystery of the Incarnation and the Passion: We declared before Him, as a child, as a root in a thirsty ground. He hath no form nor glory. And we saw Him, and He had no form nor comeliness; but His form was without honour, and abased beyond all men: a man in affliction, and knowing how to bear infirmity, because His face was turned away, dishonoured, and esteemed as nothing.
He beareth our sins, and grieveth for us, and we did esteem Him to be in sorrows, and in affliction, and in vexation: but He was wounded for our iniquities, and was weakened for our sins. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; man hath erred from his own way, and the Lord delivered Him up for our sins; and He, because He was ill-treated, opened not His mouth: He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. In His humiliation His judgment was taken away. Who shall declare His generation?
Because His life is taken away from the earth; for the iniquities of My people He was led to death (Isa. 53:7ff). And that the prophet might demonstrate the full substance of man in Christ, a little below he added: He shall bear their sins. Therefore He shall possess many by inheritance, and shall divide the spoils of the strong, because His soul was delivered unto death, and He was reckoned among the wicked. And He bore the sins of many, and for their iniquities He was delivered up. From these words of the prophet, both the soul and the flesh of the Saviour are known to have been delivered up, because the whole man was led to the cross for us.
For thus it behoved the handwriting of our sins to be blotted out, that while our old man is at the same time crucified, the victory of the triumpher might be displayed, as it were, upon a trophy. CHAPTER 30. The flesh of Christ felt no corruption in the tomb, nor His soul any punishment in hell. The just vengeance of God concerning the sin of the first man. By Christ both the flesh and the soul of man are saved: Christ suffered together with us and had compassion on us. It remained, however, for the full effect of our redemption, that the man assumed by God without sin should descend even to that place whither the man separated from God had fallen by the desert of sin, that is, to hell, where the soul of the sinner was wont to be tormented, and to the tomb, where the flesh of the sinner was accustomed to be corrupted;
yet in such a way that neither should the flesh of Christ be corrupted in the tomb, nor should His soul be tormented by the pains of hell, since a soul immune from sin was not to be subjected to punishment, and corruption ought not to vitiate flesh without sin. For because sinning man deserved to be divided in himself through punishment—since he chose to be sundered by the guilt of transgression from God, who cannot be divided—therefore it came to pass that the death of the sinner led the flesh of sin to the tomb to be corrupted, and straightway consigned the soul to hell to be tormented. But this the equity of the avenging God brought about, which for this reason so sentenced the sinner, because beforehand He had forewarned him not to sin.
This was the retribution to be rendered to the sinner, that he should justly pay the punishment of sin, who had unjustly sinned against the just God. But that the sinner might be freed by a gratuitous gift, it came to pass that the death of the body, which the sinful man had justly endured from the just God, the Son of God unjustly suffered from the sinner; and that the flesh of the just might come to the tomb, whither the flesh of sin had been carried down; and that the soul of the Saviour might descend even to hell, where the soul of the sinner was tormented by the desert of sin. And this was done for this reason: that through the flesh of the just dying temporally, eternal life might be granted to the flesh, and through the soul of the just descending to hell, the pains of hell might be loosed.
But holy Scripture was not silent about either, concerning the resurrection of the flesh indeed, blessed Paul thus speaking: By man came death, and by man the resurrection of the dead; and as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor. 15:21-22). The same is the man Christ, who for us both was made high priest when He offered Himself to the passion, and was made the victim when He Himself underwent the passion. To Him it is said: Thou art a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchisedech (Ps. 109:4). And yet both the priest and the victim are known to be as much offices of human nature as names. And because the same high priest took up and had our infirmities, therefore the Apostle says of Him:
For we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Heb. 4:15); and that he might teach that he was speaking of the human nature, he added: But one tempted in all things according to His likeness to us, yet without sin; and a little below he subjoined: For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in the things that pertain to God, that he may offer gifts and sacrifices for sins, who can have compassion on those who are ignorant and err, since he too is compassed with infirmity (Heb. 5:1-2). In that, therefore, wherein He was compassed with infirmity, in that He suffered together over our ignorance and errors, and in that He had compassion on our infirmities; for there is the unity of compassion where there is the unity of nature;
but that high priest had compassion on us in that wherein we also suffer together, as the blessed Apostle says: The Spirit Himself beareth witness to our spirit that we are sons of God. And if sons, then heirs also—heirs indeed of God, but joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer together, that we may also be glorified together (Rom. 8:16-17). Blessed Peter too exhorts us to the grace of this fellow-suffering, saying: Beloved, be not afraid in the fiery trial which cometh to you for temptation. Be not dismayed, as though some new thing happened to you; but as partakers of the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, that at the revelation of His glory ye may also rejoice, exulting (1 Pet. 4:12-13).
In the human nature, therefore, that high priest, sustaining the truth of the passion, in it assuredly knows how to suffer together with His members. Wherefore also blessed Paul said: That I may fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church (Col. 1:24). CHAPTER 31. We also ought to suffer together and die together with Christ. As we die with Christ, so are we freed from the pains of hell. The divinity of Christ forsook neither the flesh in the tomb nor the soul in hell. And what wonder is it that we suffer together with our high priest by natural communion, since the blessed Apostle testifies that we have even died together with Him in these words:
If ye be dead with Christ, why do ye yet decree, as though living in the world? He also says to Timothy: Remember that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my Gospel, in which I labour even unto bonds, as an evildoer; but the word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with heavenly glory (2 Tim. 2:8-10). Knowing therefore, as the Apostle did, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead of the seed of David (wherein assuredly the communion of human nature is manifested), in that wherein he had known Him to have died, in that he commemorates that we died together with Him, saying: This is a faithful saying: for if we be dead together, we shall also live together;
if we endure, we shall also reign together (2 Tim. 2:11-12). That high priest, therefore, who offered Himself for us (as the Apostle says) an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour (Eph. 5:2), as He died for us, made us all to die together with Himself; so, the pains of hell being loosed, He freed all the faithful from those same pains, as blessed Peter testifies, saying: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by powers and signs and wonders, which God did by Him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves know: Him, delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hands of the wicked have crucified and slain.
whom God raised up, the pains of hell being loosed, inasmuch as it was impossible that He should be held by it (Acts 2:22, 33, 24). Here too that testimony of David, which we set down in the first book, is shown to have been uttered thus: for David speaks concerning Him: 'I foresaw the Lord always before me, for He is at my right hand, that I should not be moved. Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope. For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt Thou suffer Thy holy one to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life, and Thou shalt fill me with joy with Thy countenance' (Ps. 15:8-10).
There the blessed Peter, truly illumined by the divine Spirit, and according to the Lord's word made the light of the world, shows by the most clear light of his preaching how we ought to understand this passage, lest anyone should so understand a true flesh in Christ as to deny a true soul in Him. It follows then: 'Men and brethren, let it be permitted to speak boldly to you concerning the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this present day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn to him with an oath, that of the fruit of his loins one should sit upon his throne, foreseeing this,'
he spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that His soul was not left in hell, neither did His flesh see corruption (Acts 2:29-31). In this therefore the divinity of Christ showed the power of its impassibility, in that—being everywhere always and ineffably present—it was both present according to His soul in hell without pains, and according to His flesh lay in the sepulchre without corruption; for neither did it fail His flesh, since it did not suffer His soul to feel pain in hell, nor did it forsake His soul in hell, since in the sepulchre it kept His flesh from corruption. For it was fitting that the place of the tomb should not corrupt that flesh which the disposition of sin had not corrupted, and that the pain of hell should not touch that soul
which the bondage of sin could not hold. Wherefore in the psalm, when out of the form of a servant, in which Christ bore our sins, He said: 'For my soul is filled with evils, and my life hath drawn near to hell' (Ps. 87:4), in order to show that this same soul of His, free from sin, had descended into hell for us sinners, He added, saying: 'I am become as a man without help, free among the dead' (Ibid., 5). CHAPTER 32. The Son of God is said to have died and risen again by reason of the flesh. According to the divinity the working of the Father and the Son is one.
Nevertheless, although in Christ the flesh alone died and was raised, yet on account of the unity of the person of God and of the name, the Son of God is said to have died. This the apostle Paul plainly attests in these words: 'For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved in His life' (Rom. 5:10). Again, that the Son of God rose is confirmed by Peter's exhortation, thus urging the Jews to faith in Christ: 'Ye are the sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham: And in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed;'
'God, having raised up His Son, sent Him first to you, blessing you, that every one should turn from his iniquity' (Acts 3:24-25). Also in this passage the blessed Peter calls the same Son of God Him whom he mentions as the seed of Abraham; for Christ is not divided. Yet, that He may be known to have risen from the dead not according to that which is from God the Father, but according to that which is from the seed of Abraham, on account of the unity of the person in which Christ is one God and man, the Son of God is not incongruously said to have been raised. And that according to His divinity His nature might be proved one with the Father, one and the same was the working together in the deed.
For just as the Father, by His own act, formed His flesh in the Virgin's womb, so also He Himself formed it (for concerning Christ according to His human nature it is written: 'God hath made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye have crucified' [Acts 2:36]; it is written also: 'Wisdom hath built herself a house' [Prov. 9:1]), so likewise, when He was delivered up by the Father, He also is known to have delivered up Himself; for it is written: 'God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all' (Rom. 8:32); and concerning the Son Himself it is said: 'That which I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself for me' (Gal. 2:20). CHAPTER 33.
Both the Father raised the Son, and the Son raised Himself. In His resurrection too an equality of working is found, because the majesty of the Father and the Son is one. For concerning the Father the blessed Peter speaks thus: 'God, having first raised up His Son, sent Him blessing you' (Acts 3:25). But concerning Himself the Son of God speaks thus to the Jews: 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up' (John 2:19), which John explained, saying: 'But He spoke of the temple of His body' (Ibid., 21). To the Colossians also Paul, speaking, signifies in these words that the Son of God Himself raised His own humanity:
'See that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the traditions of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: for in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are filled in Him, who is the head of all principality and power: in whom also ye are circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen again through the faith of the operation of God, who raised Him from the dead.'
'And you, when ye were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He hath quickened together with Him, forgiving you all your sins, blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was against us, which was contrary to us, and He took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross, stripping Himself of the flesh; and the principalities and powers He led forth confidently, openly triumphing over them in Himself' (Col. 2:8-15). We are not ignorant that this passage is by some referred to the person of the Father; but from the connection of the words, if the careful attention of the reader be applied, the sense of this chapter shows rather this: that one and the same Son may appear, not only the Christ who was raised, but also God Himself who raised Christ;
so that it may be established that the Apostle in this place referred the name of God to that eternal substance of the Son which is from the Father, but the name of Christ to that nature which the Son of God assumed from man; the Doctor of the Gentiles, in faith and truth, deeming it worthy above all things that, just as he preached the same Christ, who was raised, to be man, saying: 'By man came death, and by man the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive' (1 Cor. 15:21-22), so with no less care he might most truly preach the same Son—who raised His own flesh by that power which is equal to the Father—to be God, as the text of this passage has published with clear manifestation.
For God, who raised Christ from the dead, and who quickened us together with Him when we were dead in our sins and in the uncircumcision of our flesh (Col. 2:13), is the same who forgave us all our sins; and He who forgave the sins blotted out the handwriting that was against us, and, taking it out of the way, nailed it to the cross; He who nailed the handwriting to the cross, the same stripped Himself of the flesh; He who stripped Himself of the flesh, He also led forth the principalities and powers confidently, openly triumphing over them in Himself (Ibid., 15). But all these things, Paul being witness, God did, who raised Christ from the dead.
Let it therefore be considered whether the Father nailed the handwriting to the cross, whether the Father stripped Himself of the flesh, whether the Father led forth the principalities and powers, openly triumphing over them in Himself; and if all these things could be fitted to the person of the Father, then it will be worthily denied that the Son is here designated by the Apostle, namely that God who raised Christ from the dead. But if all the things designated above are fitting to the Son rather than to the Father, let it be acknowledged that one and the same is preached by the Apostle—Christ who rose from the dead, and God who raised Christ from the dead. Therefore Christ both raised Himself and was raised:
for just as in that which He wrought in Himself He deigned to be made, and in that which He delivered up in Himself He deigned to be delivered up, and in that which He permitted to be slain in Himself He deigned to die, so in that which He raised in Himself He deigned to be raised. CHAPTER 34. The humanity of Christ was not wholly in the tomb or in hell, but the divinity was wholly there. The right faith concerning the humanity of Christ and His deeds. Various errors concerning Christ. Marcionites. Ebionites. Arians. Eunomians. Apollinarists. Noetians. Sabellians. Patripassians. Valentinians and Apollinarists. Error concerning the Holy Spirit.
The true humanity therefore of the Son of God was neither wholly in the tomb nor wholly in hell, but according to His true flesh Christ lay dead in the tomb, and according to His soul Christ descended into hell; and according to that same soul He returned from hell to the flesh which He had left in the tomb; but according to His divinity, which is neither held by place nor enclosed by any limit, He was wholly in the tomb with the flesh, wholly in hell with the soul; and thereby Christ was full everywhere, because God, who was both in His soul—that, the pains of hell being loosed, He might return victorious from hell—and in His flesh—that by a swift resurrection it might not be able to be corrupted—was not separated from the humanity which He had assumed.
The Son of God therefore took upon Himself for us the whole man with his infirmities, yet without sin: being delivered up in His entirety, this same Christ died according to the flesh alone; the whole Christ according to the soul alone descended into hell; the same and inseparable Christ according to the flesh alone rose from the tomb; the same and inseparable Christ, according to the whole man which He assumed, leaving the earth locally, ascended into heaven, and sat at the right hand of God; and according to the same whole man He shall come to judge the living and the dead;
about to crown the faithful and the pious, namely those who, believing Him to be true, full, and perfect in both, that is, in the divine and human substance, neither diminish anything of the paternal substance from the Son of God, and acknowledge that He assumed for their sake the whole man without sin. But He will condemn the unfaithful, who follow the diverse errors of every kind of faithlessness, and who so persist in them with a heart at once hardened, that they do not abandon them even up to the vile end of the present life: among whom are those who dare to believe a phantasm of flesh in Christ, while they deny that He received the truth of flesh; those also who, denying His divinity in every way, think that there was only the substance of a man in Him;
but also those who either deny that He was naturally born as God of God the Father, or do not believe the whole substance of man in Christ. Likewise He will come to condemn those who, believing the Father and the Son to be one God from a unity of operation, deny that the one was so born of the other, that they confound the Father and the Son personally; and who, assigning to the Father alike a human nativity and death, say that the Father Himself was born of the Virgin, and confess that He Himself also suffered in the flesh. Those also He will condemn to the eternal punishment of the torment of Gehenna, who do not confess that the body of Christ was substantially taken from the Virgin, but feign that it was let down from heaven:
whereas the Son of God deigned to assume the nature of an earthly body from man for this reason, because He had not come to save those who are in heaven, but those who are on earth, as the Apostle says: 'For nowhere did He take hold of angels, but He took hold of the seed of Abraham, whence He ought in all things to be made like unto His brethren' (Heb. 2:16-17). The Son of God therefore assumed our soul, that is, our better part, because He is better than our better part; concerning which John says: 'God is greater than our heart' (1 John 3:20); yet He did not disdain also to assume our flesh, that is, our lowest part, because He had come to set free the whole man;
nor could He become our lowest for us through whom our lowest part deserved to be exalted into that name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-11). He will also deliver to unending torments those who separate the nature of the Holy Spirit from the substance of the Father and the Son, so that either they think Him not personally to exist at all, or esteem Him, as it were a minister, of altogether inferior merit; being themselves contrary to their own profession, who confess that they believe either in Him who altogether does not exist, or in Him who is not God.
CHAPTER 35. The three persons alike give life. They likewise regenerate. There is one love of the three in us. They dwell in us. They give grace. We are the temple of the whole Trinity. What has been said concerning the Holy Spirit is briefly recapitulated. God one and triune. For, that I may add a few things for the sake of this work, let it be said what the Holy Spirit has less than the Father and the Son have, who both together with the Father and the Son made the beginning of our creation, and together with the Father and the Son perfected the effect of our redemption. God is said to have made heaven; but while the Father works, the Son also is found to be a co-worker, and the Holy Spirit: for 'by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power' (Ps. 32:6).
What is believed to have less than the Father or the Son, by whom all the power of the heavens is shown to be established? None can give life save He who is substantially God; but as the Father gives life, so the Son gives life, so the Holy Spirit gives life. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will (John 5:21). And concerning the Spirit the Apostle says: 'The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life' (2 Cor. 3:6). The same again says: 'But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus Christ from the dead dwell in you, He who raised Jesus Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit that dwells in you' (Rom. 8:11).
The Father regenerates, the Son regenerates, the Holy Spirit regenerates; because when baptism is given in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, each one is regenerated by Him in whose name he is baptized. When therefore baptism is given in the name of the Trinity, the whole Trinity, which is the one and only God, together regenerates. Therefore concerning the faithful John says: 'Who were born not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God' (John 1:13). There is in us the love of the Father, of which Paul says: 'But God commendeth His love toward us;'
'for if, when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, much more then, being now justified by His blood, shall we be saved from wrath through Him' (Rom. 5:8-9). There is in us also the love of Christ, the Apostle saying: 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?' (Rom. 8:35). And in another place: 'To know also the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God' (Eph. 3:19). The same is in us also the love of the Holy Spirit, concerning which Paul says: 'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Holy Spirit' (Rom. 15:30). And in another place:
'The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us' (Rom. 5:5). And again he says: 'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace' (Gal. 5:22). In us dwells the Father, dwells the Son, dwells the Holy Spirit, because it is written: 'I will dwell in them, and walk in them' (2 Cor. 6:16). Concerning the Son also the Apostle says: 'That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts in the inner man' (Eph. 3:16-17). The Holy Spirit too he affirms to dwell in us in these words: 'Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?' (1 Cor. 3:16).
Et, utostendereteumdemesseSpiritumDeiquiSpiritussanctusest, Timotheumsicadmonetdicens : BonumdepositumcustodiperSpiritumsanctumquihabitatinnobis (IITim. I, 14). DatgraliamPater, datgratiamFilius, datgratiamSpiritussanctus, sicutprædicatorveritatis, Christoinseloquente, testatur : GratiavobisetpaxaDeoPatrenostro, etDominoJesuChristo (Rom. I, 7). DeSpirituquoquesancloscriptumestinActibusapostolorum, cumPetrusaddocendumCorneliumabipsoSpiritumitteretur : LoquenteautemPetroverbahæc, ceciditSpiritussanctussuperomnesquiaudiebantverbum, etobstupueruntexcircumcisionefidelesquivenerantcumPetro;
And, to show that the same is the Spirit of God who is the Holy Spirit, he thus admonishes Timothy, saying: 'Keep the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who dwelleth in us' (2 Tim. 1:14). The Father gives grace, the Son gives grace, the Holy Spirit gives grace, as the preacher of truth, Christ speaking in him, testifies: 'Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ' (Rom. 1:7). Concerning the Holy Spirit also it is written in the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter was sent by the Spirit Himself to teach Cornelius: 'And while Peter yet spoke these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word, and the faithful of the circumcision who had come with Peter were astonished;'
'because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the grace of the Holy Spirit' (Acts 10:44-45). We are the temple of the Father, we are the temple of the Son, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, as we have learned from Paul our teacher, who says: 'For ye are the temple of the living God' (2 Cor. 6:16). And in another place: 'But if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy: for the temple of God is holy, which ye are' (1 Cor. 3:17). We are also the temple of the Son, whose house we are. For the Son Himself also called the temple a house, the evangelist saying: 'Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep' (John 2:13ff.), etc. And when He had straightway cast them out of the temple, He said to those that sold doves:
'Take these things hence, and make not my Father's house a house of merchandise' (Ibid., 16). Likewise David shows in the psalms that the temple of God is the same as the house, saying: 'But as for me, in the multitude of Thy mercy I will come into Thy house; I will worship toward Thy holy temple in Thy fear' (Ps. 5:8). Since therefore this is the temple of God which is the house of God, the Apostle shows us to be the temple of the Son, whose house we are, thus writing to the Hebrews, he calls us: 'But Christ as a son over His own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and glory of the hope firm unto the end' (Heb. 3:6). For the very body of the Son also, Holy Scripture named both a house and a temple, when Solomon says:
'Wisdom hath built herself a house' (Prov. 9:1); and the evangelist, agreeing with this sense, says: 'But He spoke of the temple of His body' (John 2:21). If therefore that which is the body of Christ is the temple of Christ, we also are His temple, whom the Apostle affirms to be His body, saying: 'Ye are the body of Christ, and members' (1 Cor. 12:27). He also plainly records us to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, saying: 'Know ye not that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom ye have from God?' (1 Cor. 6:19). Where he also showed Him to be God, adding these things: 'And ye are not your own: for ye are bought with a great price; glorify therefore and bear God in your body' (Ibid., 15).
Yet this temple of the Holy Spirit he testifies to be the members of Christ, saying: 'Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?' Let it therefore be said whether He could establish the power of the heavens who is not God? whether He can give life who is not God? whether He can sanctify in the regeneration of baptism who is not God? whether He can bestow love who is not God? whether He can dwell in believers who is not God? whether He can give grace who is not God? whether He can have as His temple the members of Christ who is not God? then worthily shall the Holy Spirit be denied to be God. Again let it be said whether any creature can do those things which have been recounted concerning the Holy Spirit? then worthily shall the Holy Spirit be called a creature.
But if these things were never possible to a creature, and are found in the Holy Spirit—things which belong to God alone—we ought not to call Him naturally different from the Father and the Son, whom in the power of works we cannot find to be different. And thus from the unity of work the unity of power is to be acknowledged; nor let anyone doubt to call the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit—the Trinity of persons being preserved—one God by nature, who was able to create all things by will alone, who can govern all things by the omnipotence of His power, who can fill all things by the immensity of His divinity. CHAPTER 36. Peroration to King Trasimundus the Arian.
These things, most clement king, as the Lord granted, I preferred to write to your piety rather than to keep wholly silent, lest, by keeping silence, I should either be esteemed proud, or be thought doubtful concerning the truth of our faith; since Christ has willed to call the Catholic Church alone His dove, saying: 'One is my dove, one is my beloved' (Cant. 6:9). In which name of the dove love and simplicity are signified. But she alone possesses true love, who says that the Son of God, whom she loves, is not less in divinity, but confesses Him equal to the Father. And she alone possesses the truth of simplicity, who believes the substance of the Trinity to be one, true, and simple.
But we pray God to render the ears of your clemency favourable to the word of truth, and to pour into your pious heart the light of spiritual wisdom, that you may honour the Son of God, God, and our Lord Jesus Christ, even as you honour the Father: for He deserves this of you, that you should confess Him, who made you better than your father, to be equal to His own Father according to the divine nature. I ask, glorious king, that you consider in yourself the bounty of the divine gift, and diminish not the power of the Giver; that He who has given you a temporal kingdom may give also an eternal one. For He Himself says: 'Them that glorify me I will glorify' (1 Sam. 2:30). Which may that Trinity do, which is the one and true God:
He who is able to do all things above what we ask or understand (Eph. 3:20); for of Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things (Rom. 11:36). To Him be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.