Sermons & Letters 94

CHAPTER I. — Although through our men, whom we directed from the City for the cause of the faith, we have sent most full letters to our brother Flavian against the error of exceeding impiety, nevertheless, because through our son the deacon Basil we have received the writings of your charity, which greatly pleased us by their fervor of catholic sense, we have added also this page to accord with those letters, so that with one mind and steadfastly you may resist those who desire to corrupt the Gospel of Christ; since the teaching of the Holy Spirit in us and in you is one and the same doctrine. Whoever does not receive it is not a member of the body of Christ; nor can he glory in that Head in whom he asserts that his own nature is not held.

But what does it profit that most imprudent old man to tear apart, under the name of the Nestorian heresy, the opinion of those whose most pious faith he cannot overturn; when, as far as Nestorius departed from the truth by separating the Deity of the Word from the substance of the assumed man, just so far does this man too swerve from the right path, who thus proclaims the only-begotten Son of God to have been born from the womb of the blessed Virgin, that he indeed bore 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 he who denies that Jesus Christ is a true man must needs be filled with many impieties, and either Apollinaris claims him for himself, or Valentinus usurps him, or Manichaeus lays hold of him: of whom none believed the truth of human flesh in Christ. And if this be not accepted, 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 it is also refused that he was crucified and died and was buried, and that on the third day he rose again, and that, sitting at the right hand of the Father, he will come in that body to judge the living and the dead, in which he was judged.

because these sacraments of our redemption are made void, if Christ is not believed to have taken up the true and whole nature of a true man. CHAPTER II. — Or because the divine signs were manifest, shall the bodily documents be called false? And shall the testimonies of each nature avail that the Creator may be understood, yet not avail that the creature may be saved? What belongs to the Deity, the flesh did not diminish;

what belongs to the flesh, the Deity did not destroy. For he is the same, both eternal from the Father and temporal from a mother, inviolable in his own power, passible in our infirmity, in the Deity of the Trinity of one and the same nature with the Father and the Holy Spirit; but in the assumption of man not of one substance, but of one and the same person: [so that the same was rich in poverty, almighty in abasement, impassible in torment, immortal in death.] For the Word was not, in any part of himself, converted either into flesh or into soul; since the simple and unchangeable nature of the Deity is wholly always in its own essence, receiving neither loss of itself nor increase;

and thus he beatifies the assumed nature, so that, glorified, it remains in the one who glorifies. [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 unlike natures, make one person even without the incarnation of the Word; since it is far easier that the power of the Deity should bring about this unity of itself and of man, than that the infirmity of humanity alone should maintain it in its own substances?] Therefore neither was the Word changed into flesh, nor the flesh into the Word; but each remains in the one, and the one is in each, divided by no diversity, confounded by no mingling:

nor is one from the Father, another from the mother; but the same, in one way from the Father before all beginning, in another way from the mother at the end of the ages; that there might be a mediator of God and men, the man Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:5), in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily (Col. 2:9): because the exaltation is of the one assumed, not of the one assuming, in that God exalted him and gave him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; and every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-11). CHAPTER III.

— [But as to what Eutyches, in the episcopal judgment, dared to say—that before the incarnation there were two natures in Christ, but after the incarnation one—it was necessary that, in order to render an account of his profession, he should be pressed by the frequent and anxious questionings of the judges, lest anything should slip by as something empty, which appeared to be poured forth from nothing but a draught of poisoned dogmas. For I judge that one speaking such things holds this persuasion: that the soul which the Savior assumed had first dwelt in the heavens before it was born of the Virgin Mary, and that the Word joined it to himself in the womb. But catholic minds and ears do not tolerate this: because the Lord, coming down from heaven, brought nothing of our condition with him;

for he took neither a soul that had existed beforehand, nor a flesh that was not of his mother's body. For our nature was not so assumed as to be first created and afterwards assumed, but so as to be created by the very act of assumption. Whence what in Origen was deservedly condemned—who asserted that souls, before they were inserted into bodies, had not only life but also diverse actions—must needs be punished in this man too, unless he prefer to abjure his opinion.] For the nativity of the Lord according to the flesh,

although it has certain properties by which it transcends the beginnings of the human condition—whether that alone he was conceived and born of the inviolate Virgin without concupiscence, or that he was so brought forth from his mother's womb that both fruitfulness gave birth and virginity remained—yet his flesh was not of another nature than ours; nor was the soul breathed into him by a different beginning than into other men, which would excel not by diversity of kind, but by sublimity of virtue. For he had nothing of his flesh opposed to himself, nor did the discord of desires beget a conflict of wills.

The bodily senses flourished without the law of sin, and the truth of the affections was under the governance of the Deity and of the mind, and was neither tempted by enticements nor yielded to injuries. A true man was united to the true God, neither brought down from heaven according to a pre-existing soul, nor created out of nothing according to the flesh; bearing the same person in the Deity of the Word, and holding in body and soul a nature common with us. For he would not be the mediator of God and men (1 Tim. 2:5), unless the same one, being both God and man, were in each one and true.

The greatness of the subject indeed incites us to breadth of discourse; but before your erudition there is no need to labor copiously: especially since we have already, through our men, sent sufficient letters to our brother Flavian, for the confirming of the minds not only of the priests but also of the laity. The mercy of God, as we trust, will grant that, without detriment to anyone's soul, sound things may be defended against the wiles of the devil, and wounded things may be healed. Given on the Ides of June, in the consulship of the most illustrious men Astyrius and Protogenes.

I have received the letters of your charity together with the acts which were drawn up among you concerning the question of the faith. And because the most clement emperor, solicitous for the peace of the Church, wished a synod to be assembled—although it evidently appears that the matter in question by no means needs synodal treatment—nevertheless, most dear brother, I signify that those whom it pleased to appoint in this matter have followed. Nor was it necessary that more be written now, since, God being favorable, you will be more fully instructed concerning those things which we believe pertinent to the cause by the writings which they themselves will carry. Given on the twelfth day before the Kalends of July, in the consulship of the most illustrious men Asturius and Protogenes.

Having received the letters of your clemency, I have perceived that the universal Church must greatly rejoice, because you wish the Christian faith, by which the divine Trinity is honored and worshipped, to be in nothing unlike, in nothing discordant. For what could more effectively avail toward imploring the mercy of God in human affairs, than if one thanksgiving and the sacrifice of one confession be offered to his majesty by all? In which the devotion of the priests and of all the faithful will then at length be full, if in those things which were done through the only Son of God, God the Word, for our redemption, nothing else be held than what he himself commanded to be preached and believed concerning himself.

Wherefore, although no reason permits me to attend on the day which your piety has appointed for the episcopal council—since no precedents have gone before in this matter, and temporal necessity does not allow me to desert the city, especially since the cause of the faith is so evident that it would have been more reasonable to have abstained from convoking a synod—nevertheless, insofar as the Lord deigns to help, I have lent my zeal, so that your clemency's decrees may in some measure be obeyed, brethren of mine having been appointed hence, who may be sufficient for the cutting off of scandals according to the quality of the cause, and who may fill the place of my presence: because no such question has arisen concerning which one either can or ought to doubt.

Given on the twelfth day before the Kalends of July, in the consulship of the most illustrious men Asturius and Protogenes.