Anti-Arian Works 6 part 14/24

'with ambiguities removed, there will be one nature which is incarnate, and another by which it is said to be incarnate; for the nature of deity which is incarnate will not be the same as the nature of flesh by which it is affirmed to be incarnate; nor is the nature of deity incarnate by itself, but the nature of flesh is known to be incarnate. Just as neither did the nature of flesh of itself become sublime by deity, because the divinity too proceeded incarnate from nowhere else than from the womb of the Virgin mother; and the flesh was united to the deity only in those same vitals, the Holy Spirit coming upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadowing her.' Likewise a little after he says: 'Let these men, then, seek what pits of their own madness, by which they are surrounded, they may escape;'

'and let them openly confess that they are either of the number of those who assail the true body of Christ; or let them not dare to deny that it is true only in this way, without which it cannot be true — just as, when we call him the same God, or preach that he speaks or acts as God, it cannot be true otherwise, unless we there confess a true divinity, and a nature of deity remaining in the property of its own substance.' 20. Saint Ambrose too, in the first book On the Faith (ch. 2), in one and the same place, just as he professes Christ God and man, so in him professes divinity and flesh, saying:

'The prophets speak of one God, the apostles hear of one God, one God the Magi believed, and as suppliants they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the cradle of Christ, confessing him King by the gold, and venerating him God by the frankincense. For gold is the treasure of a kingdom, frankincense the sacrifice offered to God, myrrh is of burial. What, then, did the mystical gifts mean, amid the lowly manger, except that we should understand in Christ the difference of divinity and flesh? As man he is born, as God he is adored. He lies in swaddling-clothes, but shines in the stars. The cradle points to him being born, the stars to him ruling. It is flesh that is wrapped, divinity to whom the angels minister. Thus neither is the dignity of natural majesty lost, and the truth of the assumed flesh is proved.'

All these things which are set down above, blessed Ambrose confirmed with this conclusion (in the same place), saying: 'This is our faith. Thus did God will to be recognized by men.' For blessed Ambrose, concluding the foregoing discussion with this definition (ch. 4), so that he said this to be our faith, taught most evidently that, just as we say God and man, so we should by no means hesitate to say divinity and flesh. Also in the second book of the same work he says this: 'Let empty questions about words, therefore, be silent, since the kingdom of God, as it is written, is not in the persuasion of speech, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power (1 Cor. 2:4; cf. 4:20).' The same holy Ambrose continues further (in the same place), saying:

'Let us preserve the distinction of divinity and flesh: one Son of God speaks in both, because in the same one both natures are.' And below: 'This is he who descended, this is he whom the Father sanctified and sent into this world.' And the very text teaches us that it was not the divinity that needed sanctification, but the flesh. Blessed Augustine too, in the book On Faith, Hope, and Charity, which you know is called by many the Enchiridion, says thus (ch. 34): 'For who could suitably explain in words this alone, that the Word became flesh that it might dwell among us — so that we may believe the only Son of God the Father almighty, born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary?'

For the Word was made flesh in such a way that flesh was taken up by the divinity, not that the divinity was changed into flesh. Behold, blessed Augustine shows the divinity to be the receiver of the flesh, which he no less testifies to be also the receiver of death. For in his book On the Presence of God he speaks thus: 'Through our Head we are reconciled to God, because in him the divinity of the Only-begotten was made a partaker of our mortality, that we too might be partakers of his immortality.' And there, at once commending the greatness of this mystery, he added these words: 'This mystery is far from the hearts of the proud who are wise, and therefore not from the hearts of Christians, and thereby not truly wise.'

By all these sayings of the holy Fathers it is shown that what is said of the Only-begotten God may not incongruously be predicated also of his divinity. Yet in this assertion of catholic truth we know that either heretics given over to perversity, or catholics less well instructed in the mystery of right belief, when they hear that what is said of God the Son is said also of his divinity, and nevertheless know that we preach one divinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, are in some measure disturbed, thinking that the communion of the divinity makes a communion of the human assumption; and so from the communion of the flesh they suppose that in Father and Son and Holy Spirit there is a communion of human birth, suffering, and death.

Therefore, that the former may not maliciously lay snares, nor the latter perhaps be incautiously deceived, both ought to consider that we preach one substance of the Trinity in such a way that we do not, however, say that there is one person of that same Trinity. Hence the whole of what nature itself is is found to be common to the three persons in such a way that, nevertheless, something is found by which each single person is known as its own, which yet is found to be neither separable nor able to be common. For we say it is proper to the Father that he begot; we say it is proper to the Son that he alone was born of the Father alone; and proper likewise to the Holy Spirit that he proceeds from the Father and the Son. But in these proper attributes there is no division of nature, but a certain personal recognition.

For although begetting is proper to the Father alone, yet the Son is not separated from it, because while the Father begets, the Son is born. And although being born is proper to the Son, yet he is not separable from the begetting Father, because the Son's nativity would not be naturally true unless he had come to exist as begotten of the Father. Therefore, although the Father begot while the Son was being born, and the Son was born while the Father begot, yet neither did the Son beget together with the Father, nor was the Father born together with the Son; though the Son was born of the Father's nature, and the Father begot the Son's nature from himself. For that propriety of the persons is inseparable in such a way that nevertheless neither the begetting nor the nativity can be common to two persons.

Although, unless there were naturally two persons, of the Father and of the Son, neither could the one beget nor the other be begotten. But if the heretics contend to reject this in God the Father and God the Son, let them be either instructed or confounded by the plain example of human generation. Surely a human father precedes his human son in time, because he himself also began to exist in time; from whom the son would by no means be born in a temporal way, unless the father's nature were subject to a beginning of time. Hence it plainly appears that God the Son was born of God the Father without beginning, precisely because that Father begot the Son from himself, who so did not begin to be as he does not cease to be;

and yet, although a human father is naturally recognized to have preceded his son's nativity, in that same generation of the son neither is the son separated from the father, nor the father from the son, because while the father begets, the son is begotten. And since that generation is the cause of the nativity, and the nativity cannot be separated from the generation, so that generation is not separated from the nativity, so that in one and the same nature the one begets and the other is born. Thus, therefore, that generation and nativity are naturally inseparable in such a way that the communion of begetting or of being born cannot belong to both persons at once. For the propriety of the persons has this: that neither does the Son beget himself together with the Father from whom he is begotten, nor is the Father born together with the Son who is born of him.

Therefore in the unity of nature the unconfused truth of the persons remains; in whom there is something that is found to be not common but proper. And so the Only-begotten God, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit has one and the same nature in such a way that he nevertheless has a person not common at all but proper, therefore did not have the taking-on of the form of a servant in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit, because it was not in the unity of nature, but in the unity of his own person alone, that he received the truth and fullness of the form of a servant. For he who is true and full God, the same was made true and full man, when by the Only-begotten God a rational soul and flesh, without sin, were received into the unity of the person.

For human nature was so received by the Only-begotten God that there existed only one person of the divinity and the humanity, not one nature. Accordingly the Son was indeed not separated from the Father and the Holy Spirit when he took up the full nature of our humanity; but he did not receive that same nature together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, because there was not made in him one nature of divinity and of flesh, so that from this the incarnation of the whole Trinity should be believed; but there is one person in Christ, which the Only-begotten God is found to have inseparable indeed from the Father and the Holy Spirit, yet not to have as one together with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Therefore Christ has his humanity as proper to himself, with which his divinity is found to have not one nature but one person. And because this person of the Only-begotten God is neither the Father's nor the Holy Spirit's, therefore the form of a servant is rightly believed to have been received by the Son alone; because the person of his divinity and of his flesh is one, not the nature. For in Christ there is not one person of the divinity and another of the humanity, but there is one person of both natures. Wherefore, since the operation of the Trinity is inseparable, the form of a servant which the Only-begotten God received, the whole Trinity made; which nevertheless it is certain was made by the whole Trinity, yet pertains to the person of the Son of God alone.

For just as there is in it one operation of the whole Trinity, so there is not found in it a common receiving of the Trinity. For the personal propriety (since the Father is not himself the Son, nor is the Holy Spirit himself the Father or the Son) shows that something was made by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit which yet is found to have been received by the Son alone. An example of this matter cannot be found among creatures; because, apart from the Trinity, which is by nature the one true God, there is no nature that can have in itself three inseparable persons. But since in each individual man we find that the flesh is not the same thing as the soul, nor are both of one nature, although human nature is completed and constituted from both;

which nevertheless are found in each individual man to have one person: accordingly, in these two natures which we know to have one person, let us seek out something similar; so that when here we find something being done by the common work of soul and flesh, which nevertheless is found to pertain either to the substance of the soul alone or of the flesh alone, from that we may infer, and understand as far as the Trinity itself grants, that something could be done by those same three persons by one and the same work at once, which the whole Trinity would so do inseparably that what was done should pertain to one person of the Trinity. Surely when we take food, we provide for the flesh indeed and not for the soul;

and yet in that very taking of food, by which the flesh alone is nourished, the soul works together equally with the flesh, because the flesh, just as it does not live without the soul, so neither does it eat. Behold, so that the flesh alone may receive food, there is found one office of both the flesh and the soul at once: and what by natural propriety the flesh alone receives, the soul, through the unity of the person, works together with the flesh. The operation therefore is common, but the receiving is not common: nor does the soul desert the eating flesh in the work; yet it so mingles the office of its operation with the flesh that, by that same communion of work, the flesh alone receives its vital support.

Something of the sort is found in that same unity of person: the soul of man too claims for itself, when it applies the intention of the heart to the office of divine reading, by which without doubt not the outer but the inner man is nourished, and very often, while the flesh fasts, the soul is the more fattened. Is it not so that, in order for the soul to take food from reading, it also mingles the office of the bodily members? For it cannot read except through the eyes of the body; yet what it reads with the eyes of the body, it understands with the eyes of the heart; and thereby the soul works together with the flesh in that from which it alone is nourished, and alone receives in itself what it does not do alone.

Behold, two natures work inseparably on account of one person, but on account of their proprieties one often receives what it does not do alone—indeed, what without the other it in no way does. And although this is altogether sufficient for a full outline of knowledge, that from what we here see in two natures and one person we may ascend to an understanding of those three persons in one nature, as far as the Trinity itself deigns to grant: yet let a manifest and undoubted recognition of this matter be proved to us also in our very Redeemer.

He indeed so joined and united both natures indissolubly in the unity of his person that, in the one person of the Only-begotten God, neither can the divinity be sundered from his humanity, nor the humanity from its divinity. For the union of the Word and the flesh was made indissoluble when the Word was made flesh: in which the personal union so remained that yet the natural propriety could neither be divided nor confounded. Accordingly, in the one Christ the offices of both natures are so found to be common that, since Christ is not divided in his mighty works and his infirmities, there is nevertheless something which, in the one work of both natures, is not common to both natures.

For, to say nothing now of that ineffable conception and birth, by which the eternal God was so conceived and born in time that yet, in that very communion of the virgin's conception and birth, it belonged properly and naturally to the flesh alone to come to exist from the flesh of his Mother, to be formed into members, and to be brought by the passage of time and work up to the maturity of birth, then to grow through the departing and succeeding ages, and to come in due time to the perfect measure of youth: what shall we say of those subsequent works and sufferings, since in him there was indeed inseparably and naturally true flesh, a true rational soul, and true divinity?

Nevertheless, whatever the truth of his nature had, whether it deigned to suffer or to do, was such that both the whole Christ remained inseparable in suffering or in work, and yet what the personal unity showed to be common to the divinity and the humanity, this same Christ nevertheless showed in himself, by the truth of nature, to be proper to each single nature. For, taking up the hunger of our infirmity, the whole Christ wrought that hunger of his, and so that in eating the whole Christ likewise did it: yet naturally, just as the flesh alone endured hunger, so the flesh alone received food by the work of the whole Christ eating. Wearied from his journey, Jesus sat down upon the well (John 4:6):

but the divinity could not feel that weariness; nor is Christ to be said to have felt that weariness in any way according to the soul either. Therefore that which sat pertained solely to the refreshment of the flesh naturally wearied; in which refreshment, nevertheless, there was a common operation of the deity and the soul. Then in the very time of the passion and death, who does not see that in one and the same Christ, in that very communion of works, the proper things of the natures remain inseparably? His soul was sorrowful even unto death (Matt. 26:38). But neither can the immutable divinity be the receiver of sorrow, nor can the flesh ever feel sorrow.

Sorrow therefore belongs to the rational soul alone, which can naturally inhere neither in the divinity nor in the flesh; yet personally the whole Christ deigned to work sorrow in himself: for he is found to have wrought his own sufferings in himself, who had nothing that he suffered unwillingly. So that he might be sorrowful, the whole Christ did it; but the rational soul alone received that sorrow in itself naturally. Now indeed, since Christ at one and the same time both lay in the tomb and descended into hell, who does not see the inseparable work of both natures? and who does not evidently recognize in that one and inseparable work the proper things of the flesh, and of the soul, and of the divinity?

For that he might lie in the tomb according to the flesh, the whole Christ did it; but the flesh alone was naturally capable of burial. That Christ might descend into hell according to the soul, there was one work of both natures, that is, of the divine and the human; but that descent was of the naturally rational soul alone. Just as at the same time the whole Christ did not cease to work in heaven and on earth; but it belonged to the divinity alone both not to be contained by place, and to work naturally and equally with the Father the things that pertained to the government of the universe.

Hence it is that, in all those works of the passion and death, apostolic authority assigns what the whole Christ wrought in himself to the one person of the one working, in such a way that it undoubtedly shows what belongs to each nature. For the apostle Paul says of the one and the same Christ: 'Though he was crucified through weakness, yet he lives by the power of God' (2 Cor. 13:4). And blessed Peter brought forth the prophetic word from the Psalms in such a way that Christ's soul, which he knew had descended into hell, he said was itself not left in hell. For thus does the same apostle Peter speak concerning blessed David:

'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 neither was his soul left in hell, nor did his flesh see corruption' (Acts 2:30). All these things, therefore, the whole Christ did according to one person, and so the one work of both natures is recognized, in such a way that yet what ought to be attributed to each nature is not denied. By these examples, therefore, let each one be instructed, so that what he here recognizes in the consideration of the natures, this he may understand there in the persons: and let him not doubt that the human nature of Christ was made by the work of the whole Trinity, but pertains to the person of the Only-begotten God alone.

THIRD QUESTION. Your third inquiry is: Whether the soul of Christ has altogether the full knowledge of the deity that assumed it; and just as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit know one another mutually, so this same Son knows himself, through that which he is as man, in that which he is as God, grasping the whole Father from and in each substance. Or perhaps, just as with bodily eyes it in no way sees God the Spirit—lest dignity be believed added to the man, but nature utterly changed—so, though with pious understanding and a most clean heart, the rational soul has not seen nor comprehended the whole essence of the divinity, lest any creature be found to grasp the Creator. RESPONSE.

When I had read these words in your letter, dearest brother, I confess I was confined by great straits, because we are compelled to say what we cannot sufficiently and worthily conceive. For the distinction of Creator and creature, considered, shows to the understanding of the creature the incomprehensible and inexplicable greatness of the Creator: since indeed the peace of God surpasses all understanding (Phil. 4:7), and he who ascends above the Cherubim flies upon the wings of the winds (Ps. 17:10). Now you know that 'Cherubim' is interpreted as 'the fullness of knowledge.' What then is it to ascend above the Cherubim, but to surpass all the fullness of knowledge by an incomprehensible height?

But these things we say confidently and without doubt concerning the holy angels and holy men: any of whom is so called a god by the gratuitous gift of divine adoption, that yet by no reasoning is he called the God of angels or of men. But when we speak of the soul of Christ, we speak of that rational spirit to whom not only did God come through grace, but whom the divinity itself received into the unity of its person. For that soul with the Word is one Christ; that soul with the Word is one Only-begotten God.

And because the Only-begotten God is equal to the Father, and he cannot know the whole Son who does not know the whole Father, let us beware lest, when the soul of Christ is not believed to know the whole Father, to this one Christ himself the knowledge, in some part, not only of the Father but also of himself and of the Holy Spirit, be denied: for it is exceedingly harsh, and utterly foreign to the soundness of faith, to say that the soul of Christ does not have the full knowledge of its own deity, with which it is believed naturally to have one person. But if we should so believe, it is necessary that the preaching of John the Baptist be frustrated, by which he attributed to Christ a singular and measureless bounty of the Spirit, saying: 'For God does not give the Spirit by measure' (John 3:34):

since both our elders receive in us a measure of this bounty, but confess that in Christ there remains the fullness of the Holy Spirit. For blessed Ambrose, in the first book On the Holy Spirit, among other things speaks thus: 'Of my Spirit,' he says, 'I will pour out' (Acts 2:17). He does not say 'the Spirit,' but 'of the Spirit': for neither can we grasp the fullness of the Holy Spirit, but we receive only as much as the Arbiter, according to his own will, has divided of his own to us. Therefore, holy Ambrose, showing that we receive not the fullness but of the fullness of the Spirit, so as to show that Christ received the whole fullness of the Spirit, a little after says this: 'The Father says that you pour out of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh.'

For he does not pour out the whole, but what he poured out abounded for all. Upon us, therefore, it was poured out of the Holy Spirit. But upon the Lord Jesus, when he was in the form of a man, the Spirit remained; as it is written: 'Upon whom you shall see the Spirit descending from heaven and remaining upon him, this is he who baptizes in the Holy Spirit' (John 1:33). Around us there is, from overflowing benefit, the liberality of the giver; in him there remains for eternity the whole fullness of the Spirit. Surely blessed Ambrose evidently and without doubt shows that in the soul of Christ there is the full knowledge of the whole divinity, when he says that around us there is, from overflowing benefit, the liberality of the giver, but in him there remains for eternity the whole fullness of the Spirit.

And in order to say this, he attended to that saying of blessed John, in which he said, when speaking of the Son himself: 'For God does not give the Spirit by measure' (John 3:34). And blessed Augustine too, perceiving and understanding this by the same illumination of the Holy Spirit, confirms that it ought to be received of the person of Christ alone. For when he had explained this same passage of the Gospel (Tractate 14 on John), having set forth that very saying of John the Baptist in which he says, 'For God does not give the Spirit by measure,' the same blessed Augustine thus added: 'What is this: For God does not give the Spirit by measure? Do we find that God does give the Spirit by measure? Hear the Apostle saying: According to the measure of the gift of Christ (Eph. 4:7).'

'To men he gives by measure, to the only Son he does not give by measure.' Likewise in the same homily he says: 'So there are also diverse gifts of the faithful, as it were distributed to the members according to a measure proper to each. But Christ, who gives, did not receive by measure. For hear yet further what follows, since he had said of the Son: For God does not give the Spirit by measure; the Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand (John 3:34-35).' Surely blessed Augustine shows by this evangelical testimony what we ought to think concerning the soul of Christ, since Christ himself, who gives the Spirit, does not receive by measure. For he it is who gives, he it is who receives; and because he is able to give by measure, therefore he could not receive by measure.

For remaining in the form of God, he gives the Spirit; receiving the form of a servant, he received the Spirit. But because he himself gives by measure, therefore he himself did not receive by measure; for the very one whom he gives by measure, he received wholly: for he gives by measure to many sons, but the only Son does not receive by measure; because he is so true man that he is true God. Blessed Augustine had at one time set down this passage of the Gospel differently in the two books which he wrote On the Lord's Sermon on the Mount (St. Augustine, book 1 On the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, ch. 6). Which meaning, however, he emended in his Retractations (book 1, ch. 19), approving and affirming this.

namely, understanding it better afterward, he affirmed that in that exposition of the Gospel it ought to be received of Christ alone. Showing this in the first book of his Retractations, among other things he thus says: 'In another place the testimony which I inserted—For God does not give the Spirit by measure (John 3:34)—I had not yet understood to be more truly received properly of Christ. For unless the Spirit were given to other men by measure, Elisha would not have asked for double what was in Elijah (2 Kings 2:9).' In these sayings of blessed Augustine, therefore, let us especially note that he says the Spirit is given to other men by measure.