because the catholic Church lives by this faith and advances by this, that in the Lord Jesus Christ neither is the humanity believed without true Divinity, nor the Divinity without true humanity. But when in the Council Eutyches professed that our Lord was of two natures before the union, but after the union confessed one nature; I marvel that so absurd and so perverse a profession of his was rebuked by no reproof of the judges; and that a discourse so exceedingly foolish, so exceedingly blasphemous, was so passed over, as though nothing offensive had been heard: since it is as impious to say that before the incarnation the Only-begotten Son of God was of two natures, as it is nefarious to assert that, after the Word was made flesh, the nature in Him was single.
Let not Eutyches on that account esteem this to have been rightly or tolerably said, because it was refuted by no sentence. For then most fruitfully is the true faith defended, when a false opinion is condemned even by its own followers. CHAPTER IX. — Amid these things therefore, by however much Nestorius deviated from the truth, separating the Deity of the Word from the substance of the assumed man, by so much did this man also depart from the right path, who so preaches the Only-begotten Son of God to be born from the womb of the blessed Virgin, that He bore indeed the appearance of a human body, but the truth of human flesh was not united to the Word. Of which prodigy of falsehood, who does not see what monsters of opinions are born?
For if the man Jesus Christ, the mediator of God and men, is denied, it is necessary that it be filled with many impieties, and that either Apollinaris claim Him for himself, or Valentinus usurp Him, or Manichaeus lay hold of Him, none of whom believed in the truth of human flesh in Christ Jesus. Which not being received, not only is it denied that He who was in the form of God, remaining the same in the form of a servant, was born a man according to flesh and rational soul, but also it is refused that He was crucified, and died, and was buried, and that on the third day He rose from the dead, and that, sitting at the right hand of God the Father, He is to come to judge the living and the dead in that same body in which He was judged:
because these mysteries of our redemption are made void, if Christ is not believed to have assumed the true and whole nature of true man. Or shall the divine signs, because they were manifest, cause the bodily evidences to be called false? And shall the testimonies of each nature avail that the Creator be understood, but not avail that the creature be saved? What is of the Deity did not diminish the flesh, what is of the flesh the Deity did not destroy. For the same is both everlasting from the Father, and temporal from the Mother: inviolable in His own power, passible in our infirmity; in the Deity of the Trinity, with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, of one and the same nature; but in the assumption of the man, not of one substance, but of one and the same Person:
so that the same was rich in poverty, omnipotent in abjection, impassible in torment, immortal in death. For neither was the Word converted, in any part of itself, either into flesh or into soul, since the simple and immutable nature of the Deity is whole always in its own essence, receiving neither loss nor increase of itself;
and so blessing the assumed nature, that the glorified nature abides in the glorifying. But why should it seem unfitting or impossible that the Word and flesh and soul should be one Jesus Christ and one Son of God and of man, if flesh and soul, which are of dissimilar natures, make one Person even without the incarnation of the Word, since it is much easier that the power of the Deity should effect this unity of itself and of man, than that the infirmity of humanity alone should obtain it in its own substances? Neither therefore was the Word changed into flesh, nor the flesh into the Word, but each abides in the one, and one is in each, neither divided by diversity, nor confused by commingling.
Nor is one from the Father and another from the Mother, but the same in one manner from the Father before all beginning, in another manner from the Mother at the end of the ages: so that He might be the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2), in whom the fullness of the Divinity dwelt bodily (Colossians 2): because it is the advancement of the assumed, not of the assuming, that God exalted Him, and gave Him a name which is above every name (Philippians 2). CHAPTER X.
For the Lord's birth according to the flesh, although it has certain properties by which it transcends the beginnings of the human condition — whether that He alone was conceived and born of an inviolate Virgin without carnal desire, or that He was brought forth from His mother's womb in such a way that fruitfulness gave birth yet virginity remained — nevertheless His flesh was not of another nature than ours, nor was a soul breathed into Him by any other principle than into the rest of men, a soul which excelled not by diversity of kind but by loftiness of virtue. For He had nothing in His flesh opposed to Himself, nor did discord of desires beget a conflict of wills.
His bodily senses flourished without the law of sin, and the truth of His affections was under the governance of the Godhead and of the mind; He was neither tempted by allurements nor did He yield to injuries. True man was united to true God; He was not brought down from heaven according to a soul existing beforehand, nor created out of nothing according to the flesh, bearing one and the same Person in the Godhead of the Word, and holding a nature common with us in body and soul. For He would not be the Mediator of God and men unless the same One were both God and man, and in each nature both one and true. Furthermore, we do not call Christ God only, as the Manichaean heretics do, nor man only, as the Photinian heretics do;
nor do we call Him man in such a way that something is lacking to Him which certainly belongs to human nature — whether a soul, or a rational mind, or flesh which was not taken from a woman but made from the Word converted and changed into flesh: which three false and empty errors the three various sects of the Apollinarist heretics have brought forth. Nor do we say that the blessed Virgin Mary conceived a man without the Godhead, who, created by the Holy Spirit, was afterward taken up by the Word — a doctrine which we have rightly and justly condemned in Nestorius who preached it; but we say that Christ the Son of God, true God, was born of God the Father without any beginning of time, and that the same, true man, was born of a human mother in the fixed fullness of time;
nor does His humanity, in respect of which the Father is greater, take anything away from that nature which is equal to the Father. Now both of these together are the one Christ, who most truly said, according to His Godhead: 'I and the Father are one' (John 10), and according to His manhood: 'The Father is greater than I' (John 14). Therefore, although in our one Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God and of man, there is one Person of the Word and of the flesh, and both essences have common operations, yet the qualities of their several works are to be understood, and by the contemplation of sincere faith it must be discerned to what things the lowliness of weakness is raised, and to what things the loftiness of power is bowed down: what it is that the flesh does not do without the Word, and what it is that the Word does not accomplish without the flesh.
For without the power of the Word the Virgin would not conceive nor bring forth, and without the reality of the flesh His infancy would not lie wrapped in swaddling clothes. Without the power of the Word there would be no restoration of the weak and no giving of life to the dead, and without the reality of the flesh food would not be needful for one fasting nor sleep for one wearied. Finally, without the power of the Word the Lord would not profess Himself equal to the Father, and without the reality of the flesh the same One would not say that the Father was greater — since the catholic faith receives both and defends both, which, according to the property of the divine and human substance, believes the one Son of God to be both man and Word.
Therefore, although from that beginning in which the Word was made flesh in the Virgin's womb (John 1) no division ever existed between the divine and human substance, and through all the bodily increases the actions of the whole time were of one Person, yet those very things which were done inseparably we do not confound by any commingling, but we perceive from the quality of the works what belongs to each form. For neither do the divine acts prejudice the human, nor the human the divine: since both concur in one and the same so that in them neither is the property consumed nor the Person doubled.
Therefore, although the Lord Jesus Christ is one, and in Him there is one and altogether the same Person of the true Godhead and the true manhood, and the solidity of this union can be sundered by no division;
yet the exaltation — because God exalted Him and gave Him a name which is above every name — we understand to pertain to that form which was to be enriched by the increase of so great a glorification. For in the form of God the Son was equal to the Father, and between the Begetter and the Only-begotten there was no distinction in essence, no diversity in majesty, nor had anything departed from the Word through the mystery of the Incarnation which needed to be restored by the gift of God the Father. But the form of the servant, through which the impassible Godhead fulfilled the sacrament of great piety, is the human lowliness which was raised by the glory of divine power into so great a unity, being joined in Godhead and manhood from the very conception of the Virgin, that neither were the divine acts done without the man, nor the human without God.
Wherefore, just as the Lord of majesty is said to be crucified, so He who from eternity is equal to God is said to be exalted. Nor does it matter from which substance Christ is named; since, with the unity of Person remaining inseparably, the same One is both wholly Son of man on account of the flesh, and wholly Son of God on account of the one Godhead with the Father. Whatever therefore Christ received in time, He received according to His manhood, to which are conferred the things which it did not have. For according to the power of the Word, the Son also has indifferently all things which the Father has: and the things which in the form of the servant He received from the Father, the same things in the form of the Father He Himself also gave.
That faith, when very many of the heretics assailed it, Nestorius and Eutyches attempted to break in upon — with different assertion indeed, but with like impiety. Let Nestorius therefore be anathematized, who believed the blessed Virgin to be the mother of a man only, so that he made one Person of the flesh and another of the Godhead: whereas the Word was so made flesh within the virginal womb that, through an unspeakable sacrament, in one conception and one birth, according to the truth and union of both natures, the same Virgin was both the handmaid of the Lord and His mother.
Let Eutyches also be smitten with the same anathema, who, denying the truth of human flesh and soul, asserted that our whole Lord Jesus Christ was of one nature, as though the Godhead of the Word had itself converted itself into flesh and soul. Such sacrilegious falsehoods have been condemned throughout the whole world by the sentences of the holy Fathers. But the catholic faith, singular and true, justifying the ungodly and creating the just, drawing men to participation in its own humanity, acquires salvation in Him in whom alone man has found One innocent.
That faith, according to the prophetic, evangelical, and apostolic teaching, and the saving doctrine of the Creed, the Council of Nicaea established, the examination of Chalcedon confirmed, and the whole world celebrates and venerates. Defend this same faith, most beloved, with a pious and praiseworthy love; nay, hold it faithfully and firmly, and steadfastly assert it. For, as the blessed Apostle Paul says, great is the sacrament of piety, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to angels, was preached to the nations, was believed in this world, was taken up in glory (1 Timothy 3:16).