Works 3

BOOK ONE. I. We have learned that a great and grave peril of the faith—one which can neither easily be perceived nor easily avoided by most (since it is overshadowed by an appearance of piety)—rages through many Churches of the East with domestic strife; and is defended with so stubborn an obstinacy of minds that it neither could nor can be cut away either by the traditions of the ancient Fathers or by the severe sanctions of religious princes. For human hearing, forestalled by the error of a false opinion, is found hard and most difficult for perceiving the reason of truth, with however many witnesses it be pressed.

For he prefers more perversely to vindicate the sentence of the depraved dogma with which he was once infected, rather than to change this same opinion, refuted by so many authorities of divine and human laws, for the better and more salutary course. This deadly and death-bringing plague, then, of a pernicious crisis, so fiercely ravages everything within the venerable approaches of the Church that it harms the more, the less it is understood to harm. For thus, taught by the mastery of the foulest serpent, it has stretched out the ambiguous snares of its ambushes on right and left, so that it has left a most narrow and exceedingly arduous path of the way for travelers. For if you should wish to set wavering footsteps a little to either side, you will at once be caught. II.

Between, then, the sacrilegious dogma of Nestorius, once of the Church of Constantinople—not its governor but its destroyer, not its shepherd but its plunderer—and the nefarious and detestable sect of Eutyches, the craftiness of the serpentine assault has so tempered itself that most cannot avoid the one without peril of the other; for if anyone condemns the perfidy of Nestorius, he is thought to succumb to the error of Eutyches. Again, while he destroys the impiety of the Eutychian heresy, he is accused of setting up the dogma of Nestorius. But these clouds of empty accusations are cast forth especially by those who are sick either with the vice of ignorance or with the disease of contention.

And while they are puffed up with the haughtiness of a petulant mind, they despise the rules of faith handed down of old by the Fathers for this reason alone: that they may introduce into the Church the ill-conceived opinions of their own novelties. On this account too, to us, like masters of the dialectical art rather than truly disciples of Christ, they stretch out the inescapable syllogism of an ambiguous response, judging that they can ensnare Christian souls with these snares of propositions. But the fortitude of the Church experiences nothing new, nothing foreign, having been agitated by such whirlwinds of questions from nearly all heretics; obtaining a triumph from things contrary, and immovability from adversities.

For when she fits herself in armed contest against Sabellius, she vindicates the existences of the persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit; that he is one who begets, and another who is begotten; and one is the proceeding, another from whom he proceeds; one the sender, another the sent; one is God the Word who is born of the Virgin, another the Father who remains ever unborn; one who through the dispensation of the flesh fulfills all the offices of our frailty, another the Father who remains without all these. You may at once see Arius, as if seizing the material of a triumphal victory, more loftily exult, and under the detestable yoke of his perfidy wish to subjugate the necks of the faithful. 'Know,' he says, 'that he who sends is greater than he who is sent;'

'he who obeys is inferior, he to whom the bounty is shown is more worthy.' III. Likewise, when I beat back the Manichaean concerning the truth of the Lord's body—that it was not assumed by a deceptive pretense and by certain juggleries of illusions—I allege the swelling womb of the Virgin; I urge the delays of the awaited time, which he passed for a long while within the lodging of the maternal womb, even to the lawful day of birth; the cradle of childbirth, the wailing of the infant, the progress of age, at the last the mockeries of the passion, the gibbet of the cross, the fastenings of the nails, the blood together with the water of his opened side, the descent, the burial, the resurrection; and that which the Lord himself also says: 'Do you wish to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you?' (John

8:40). And the Apostle: 'As by one man came death, so also by one man the resurrection of the dead' (1 Cor. 15:21). And: 'There is one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus' (1 Tim. 2:5). When I plead these things against the Manichaean, Photinus strives to swallow the whole, as it were a prepared food, with the greedier jaws of his perfidy. Again, when I have armed myself against him with the weapons of the life-giving reading, and have brandished many darts of testimonies attesting that the Son of God is true God, I needs must among the rest also bring forward this: that he was 'made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man' (Phil. 2:7).

In which passage the Manichaean strangles me, and with all the exultation of a triumphing mind cries out that he has made me run back to him. But it is a great labor, and exceedingly toilsome, to unravel such little nooses of sentences, by which the fraudulent stealth of heretical machination strives to take captive the liberty of the catholic faith. IV.

And since against all these pests of heretics it has been most fully disputed by our forebears (so that, even if no books were composed for the destruction of their error, this very thing alone—that they have been pronounced heretics—would suffice for the security of the orthodox), let us now look at those whose mind that foulest serpent has so corrupted from the chastity of the faith which is in Christ Jesus, that he has armed the forehead of their shamelessness, hardened with a callus, into open adultery of nefarious preaching, so that that prophetic oracle may justly redound upon them: 'Thou hast had a harlot's forehead' (Jer. 3:3).

For if it is not so, what then does it mean that they yield neither to so many decrees of councils nor to so very many sentences of the ancient Fathers? They accuse us, therefore, while we confess Christ of both natures, as though we asserted two Christs—one God, the other man—and seemed, according to the unspeakable error of Nestorius, to assert a duality of nature. But we profess one God, the same Son of God and Son of man, not two; and that the Word so sowed for itself the beginnings of flesh within the secret recesses of the virginal womb, that is, was incarnate, that nevertheless the nature of the Word was not changed into flesh. And likewise that the nature of the flesh so passed, through the commixture of the one assuming, into the person of the Word, that it was nevertheless not consumed in the Word.

For each remains, that is, the nature of the Word and of the flesh, and from these two, which remain even today, there is one Christ and one person. For who, clothed with a sacrilegious opinion, would be so far out of his senses? Who would cast himself into so abrupt an abyss of error as to deny that the Son of God—without his own proper flesh, which he so united to himself from the womb of the holy Virgin by an ineffable commingling of fellowship, that the Word became man, and man God, and the same one, with the kinds of the natures unchanged, became one—sits today at the right hand of the Father and is to come to judge the living and the dead; when he is not ignorant that the Lord himself said: 'When the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father' (Matt. 16:27)?

Not that, as we have often said, the Son of man is one and the Son of God another; but He willed to show to such a degree that the nature of our kind was not consumed through the undivided unity of the commingling, that He even calls Himself the Son of man while set in heaven, so that by the title of a true name you may recognize the truth of the abiding nature. If therefore the inviolate nature of the Word still abides even now, there abides also, undiminished, the nature of the humanity which the same Word took up without any change of Himself. V. How is it defended today that Christ has only one single nature? If it be so, then surely one nature also was abolished out of two. Which one, then?

If the human nature is abolished, then the nature of the Word alone remains, and it will be false that Christ Jesus shall come in the same manner as He was seen to go into heaven. For that same Lord appeared to the eyes of the beholders as bodily, under the form of our kind; just as again, in the same bodily form, He shall show Himself at the consummation of time to the eyes of those who pierced Him. For if of these two one is extinguished, or rather consumed, and one is left, the consequence will be that the Lord Jesus Christ must most impiously be proclaimed either only God and not also man, or only man and not also God. We ought not, therefore, through this madness of foolish preaching, to make void the mystery of His condescension and of His dignity.

Of His condescension, namely, because God condescended to become man; but of His dignity, because, the nature of the Word abiding immutably in the union with the flesh, the same man is God through the hidden secret of one person. And this catholic understanding admits a uniting of the natures coming together in themselves, not a unifying into one nature; for from the two united, while they remain the same, one Christ is believed to be at once God and man. For according to those who contend that there is only one nature, either the Word was changed into flesh, that it might become one; or the flesh was consumed in the Word, so that, losing its own subsistence through its own abolition, it can be no longer at all, that the one nature of the Word alone may remain.

How impious and how sacrilegious this is appears most plainly, it seems to me, to anyone who follows apostolic doctrines and not human inventions. But because the same God is man, and the same man is God, subsisting of both and lacking neither, it is evident that He is of both natures, since He can lose neither. VI. But why these men, or in what manner, shun the name of property in both natures, I know not; unless they are so far covered with the veil of faithlessness that they do not see, nor understand, that in Christ one thing befits His divinity and another His humanity, though both be common to Him. For He says to His disciples: If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I (John 14:28). And again:

It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you (John 16:7). And surely the Word of God, the power of God, the wisdom of God, was always with the Father and in the Father, even when He was among us with us. For when He mercifully dwelt among earthly things, He did not depart from His heavenly habitation. For He is wholly with you and with the Father in equal divinity, which no place contains. Indeed all things are full of the Son, nor is there any place void of the presence of His divinity. Whence then, and whither, does He say that He will go? Or how does He assert that He will go forth to the Father, from whom He never, without doubt, departed? But this was to go to the Father and to depart from us, namely to take away from this world the nature which He had taken up from us.

You see, therefore, that it was proper to that same nature that it should be taken away and depart from us — the nature which is to be restored to us at the end of time, according to the voice of the angels who testify: This Jesus who is received from you, shall so come, as you have seen Him going into heaven (Acts 1:11). For behold the marvel, behold the mystery of the property of each nature. The Son of God according to His humanity departed from us; according to His divinity He says to us: Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world (Matt. 28:20). If He is with us, how did He depart? If He is with us, how does He say: The days will come when you shall desire to see one day of the Son of man, and you shall not see it (Luke 17:22)?

But He is both with us and not with us. For those whom He left and from whom He departed in His humanity, He did not leave nor forsake in His divinity. For through the form of a servant, which He carried up from us into heaven, He is absent from us; through the form of God, by which He does not depart from us, He is present to us on earth: yet both present and absent He is one and the same to us. VII. Hear also another property of each nature. That the Son of God was buried we all read, we all believe, we all alike proclaim, nor does any Christian dare to doubt it. Now here, if you please, let us treat with peaceful moderation: what of Him could have been buried — the Word, or the soul, or the body, or all of them together?

But it is utterly absurd to say that either the Word or the soul was wrapped in linen cloths. It remains, therefore, that only the body, which was lifeless, and which was also borne by the hands of those who buried it, was enwrapped in a shroud and laid in the bosom of the tomb. For here there is no need to argue, where the truth itself manifests itself most clearly. The Word of God needed no funeral rites; the soul could not be buried; therefore the flesh alone underwent the office of burial. And yet apostolic authority taught that the Lord Jesus Christ was buried. You see, then, that there is something proper to the flesh which cannot belong to the Word; but that it is nevertheless also of the Word, because that flesh is the Word's, to which all these things can more fittingly be applied. VIII.

The Gospels record that the Lord Jesus Christ grew through the courses of age, and reached even to the sturdy limbs of a youthful body. O you who would have nothing be proper to the flesh, do you suppose that the Word, together with that flesh in which He was born of the Virgin, grew equally through the successions of the ages and through the increase of the limbs, and was consolidated into a greater bulk of His own body? Do not, I beg you, quibble; choose the one you will. This growing and increasing of the Lord Jesus Christ, and His reaching even to perfect youthful age — whose is it? Of the Word, or of the flesh? I know what straits you suffer, with what heats you pant. If you say it is proper to the flesh, you confess the property of nature.

If you say it belongs both to the flesh and to the Word (which indeed is true through the unity of person, not through the property of nature) — if, I say, you say that this growth of stature belongs to the Word, you introduce a mutable and convertible Word of God. For perhaps some portion of Him had filled the virginal womb; and therefore this small portion together with its body felt increase; while that greater portion which remained, and which had not filled the womb of the Virgin, gradually mingled itself with its own portion, which it had in the man, through the increase of that body itself; and in this way, according to you, God was born not whole, nor perfect, but small, and through the fitting proportions of age was made great.

But if it is impious and detestable either to speak of a portion of the Word, or to believe that the Word felt any increase in its own nature — while it is nevertheless clear that the Lord Jesus Christ had advancement in age — who does not see that this growing is proper to the flesh, not to God, who took flesh from our kind? If in that most glorious passion the Lord Jesus Christ were either beheaded, or punished by any cuttings-off of His other members, do we suppose these men would say that a part of the Word was lopped off with the head, and another part cut away with the hands? And because He was circumcised, one must beware lest they imagine that a part of the Word was likewise cut off with that despoiling of the member;

for not even today would anyone who is more soundly and rightly wise say this truly of men who have been mutilated. For it is not lawful to suppose that, when a man's hands are cut off, a portion of his soul is likewise severed. That visible light too is taken away from a man through any affections of the eyes; yet that light by which it is able to discern between justice and iniquity is not taken away from the soul. For one thing is proper to the body, another to the soul. IX. Meanwhile, this above all is to be contemplated by the mind: that if the nature of God were of such a condition as to be subjected, of itself and in itself, to some kinds of sufferings, there would surely be no necessity of taking up a human body.

For what need was there for God to take to Himself the nature of mortals, if His own nature could lie subject to the laws of death? But because death, which had crept in through the transgression of the Fall, had to be destroyed by death, just as the Lord Himself had foretold, saying: I will be thy death, O death (Hosea 13:14), the Son of God found it necessary, by the higher and deeper counsel of His dispensation, that — since He Himself is of an impassible nature — He should take up a body of passible nature, in which He might be afflicted with injuries and sufferings even to such a degree that, coming through a nature liable to death even to the loss of death, He might destroy death in its own seat, and, plundering all the rights of hell by the triumph of His victorious encounter, might return to the regions above.

You see, therefore, that for no other reason did God permit Himself to die, in the nature He assumed, except because His own nature is in no wise held by the condition of mortality; and that thus there is something proper to Christ which befits His divinity, and something else which befits His humanity — although, on account of the unity of person, both death is referred to the divinity, and immortality to the humanity of the same God. X. We must indeed beware lest these men, who through a most empty fear refuse on that account to accept the property of each nature — lest they seem to introduce two Christs — should similarly raise some question against us also concerning the Trinity; namely, that because there are certain things proper to the Father, which pertain neither to the Son nor to the Holy Spirit;

and there are certain things proper to the Son, which pertain neither to the Father nor to the Holy Spirit; and there are also some things proper to the Holy Spirit, which are shown to pertain neither to the Father nor to the Son — they might charge that we Catholics worship three gods separated from one another. But lest perhaps you be troubled by an unexpected question, attend to these things one by one. The dispensation of the assumed flesh pertains neither to the Father nor to the Holy Spirit, but to the Son alone: for properly the Son, not the Father, was born of the Virgin. Again, that voice which was heard over Him: This is my beloved Son (Matt. 3:17 and 17:5), pertains neither to the Son nor to the Holy Spirit, but to the Father alone.

Likewise the form of the dove which appeared at the Jordan, and the manifold distribution of the fiery tongues, is shown to pertain properly to the person of the Holy Spirit. But lest you still doubt concerning these properties, hear more plainly. It is proper to the Father to have begotten, and proper to the Son to have been born; but it is proper to the Holy Spirit to proceed. Nor does that which is specially proper to each person at all pass over into another person. If, then, these three persons, each having their own properties, by which they are more significantly distinguished — not by which they are separated — are one God; how is the Son, the property of each nature being preserved, not one Christ? XI.

For in man too, if we would dispute more subtly, you will find very many things so distinguished apart by a certain property that, if you wished there also to cavil, you might make many men out of one man. That man therefore consists of five senses, through the ordered distinctions of the bodily members, no one is who does not know: which senses so hold by nature the property of their own office that they can have nothing in common with one another, nor claim for themselves anything of another's property. And, to mention all in particular, sight so performs the proper office of its ministry that it can neither hear, nor smell, nor taste, nor touch anything.

Hearing so administers the office of its nature that it undertakes neither the office of seeing, nor of smelling, nor of tasting, nor of touching. Smell too discharges the service of its function in such a way that it neither hears, nor sees, nor tastes anything, nor touches. Taste likewise neither sees, nor smells, nor hears, nor touches. Touch, finally, which is the last sense, neither enjoys sight, nor perceives hearing, nor takes in odor, nor discerns taste. And although all these kinds of members are so diverse, so distinct, so set apart by their natural properties that they have nothing of communion, nothing of fellowship with one another, but fulfill the ministry of their own function by a certain private and solitary right;

yet it is one and the same man who, since he consists of five bodily senses differing from one another by a fivefold property, ought, according to the ravings of these men, to have five persons, so that there should be as great a number of persons as there are properties of the senses. Furthermore, to be afflicted with hunger and to eat, to thirst and to drink, to sit and to walk, to go to bed and to rise from sleep, to suffer cold and to be parched with heat — although the body neither suffers nor does these things without the soul's fellow-feeling, yet these are proper to the flesh.

Likewise to be wise, to understand, to forget, to recall to memory, to be uplifted by joy, to be cast down by sadness, to grow gentle through mildness, to wax fierce through rage and wrath, and very many things similar to these, which it would be long to pursue — although they are not done in the soul without the body, yet they are proper to the soul. Nor yet has anyone presumed, or dares, to say that a man has two persons, in whom he discerns such great differences of properties to exist. XII. But the rashness of these men, which, according to the number of natures, foists in a diversity of persons, must be shattered by apostolic authority and utterly crushed. The Apostle certainly knew Christ to be of both natures, since he proclaims Him both man and God, and yet the same one. As man indeed when he says:

There is one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). And again: As by one man came death, so by one man the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:21). And of His Son he says: Who was made to Him of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom. 1:3). And: Be mindful that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead, of the seed of David according to the flesh (2 Tim. 2:8). But as God when he says: Of whom is Christ, who is over all things, God blessed forever (Rom. 9:5). And very many things similar to these, which it would be long to recount.

He, therefore, who proclaimed this same one as both God and man, so as to show from both natures one Christ, I marvel how he did not fear these distinguished slanderers of our time when he ascribed one person to Christ, saying: And if I have forgiven anything, it was in the person of Christ (2 Cor. 2:10). XIII. They are also wont, with their accustomed boldness of rashness, to find fault with this also, when they hear Catholics say: God and man; supposing that by the interposition of this syllable two persons can be signified: but how foolishly they think this, listen. For what is God and man, except He who is God, and was also made man — not losing what He was, but taking up what was ours?

For when in our confession we put first God, and follow by saying and man, we assert not only that God remains, but also that the same one subsists as man, so that neither does the deity depart from itself, nor does the humanity perish in the deity. Yet let us see whether perhaps by divine authority this syllable was interposed. For thus we read: And He is man, and who shall know Him (Jer. 17:9, according to the Septuagint)? And again David: The mother Sion shall say, A man, even a man is made in her, and the Most High Himself hath founded her (Ps. 87:5). Why then did he not simply, without the prefixing of this syllable, say: A man is made in her, but prefaced it, saying: And a man is made in her? Or in the other prophecy, why did he prefix the 'and'?

For according to these men he ought to have said: He is man, and who shall know Him? — unless the sense be such that Him whom you confess to be God, you should not, by a like confession, deny to have been made man also. XIV. These men are indeed said — if it is true — to confess that Christ is of two natures up to His resurrection; but after the resurrection they declare Him to be of one. How absurd and how foolish this is, the very truth of things shows. For after the resurrection, to demonstrate the truth of His body, He both ate and drank, and offered Himself to be touched by the disciples, saying: Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have (Luke 24:39).

But perhaps while He was still set on earth He was of each nature; but afterward, when He ascended the heavens, He began to be of the divine nature alone. And what then does the name 'Son of man' do there, if the nature of humanity is not there? How is an empty name ascribed to a thing that does not exist? How does the truth of the name remain, if the property of the nature is absent? Finally He says: When the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father. And again: As lightning comes out of the East and appears even unto the West, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be (Matt. 24:27). And again: When the Son of man comes, do you suppose He shall find faith on earth (Luke 18:8)? Daniel too says: Behold, in the clouds of heaven the Son of man was coming (Dan. 7:13).

If, therefore, the nature of humanity is lost, why is its appellation retained? Or is it because the name was needed, while the reality of the name, as being unnecessary, was to be repudiated? So let them play the fool who are ashamed of nothing of their own error and folly. But the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to show that the nature of our kind was not consumed, truly calls Himself the Son of man. According to this same nature He also intercedes with the Father for us, according to the words of the apostle John, who says: If we have sinned, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus. He Himself intercedes for our sins (1 John 2:1).

Tell us therefore, O distinguished teachers, when the Son intercedes today with the Father, does He make request according to His deity, or according to the dispensation of His humanity? But as far as the bent of your faithlessness shows (you who, destroying the human nature, assert that the divine alone exists), He intercedes according to His deity, He discharges the office of advocate according to His deity, He fulfills the ministry of priest according to His deity; according to His deity also He shall in the end be subject to the Father, when all things shall have been made subject to the same Son. XV. Long did we wait, long did we look out, whence the rivulet of your error draws its source, and whither it runs its course.

At length we have found that the Eutychian heresy, derived from the most bitter fountain of Apollinaris, is borne along by turbid channels even to the muddy gulf of Arius; with which it is joined in such a bond of faithlessness that it refers to the dishonor of the divinity all things which Christ either spoke or did according to the dispensation of the flesh; while it contends that there is only one nature of the divinity. Wherefore we exhort all men who are followers of this nefarious faithlessness, while life remains, while it is permitted to repent, to change the opinion of their error.

And rather to follow the teaching of Gregory and Basil, of Theophilus too and of John, the most renowned bishop of the city of Constantinople, as also of Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, and of very many others who in ancient times flourished in the Church, concerning the property of each nature; whose opinions on this matter we offer them from without, to be read through. Meanwhile I ask the reader not to despise altogether the meanness of our discourse: for perhaps the speech might have been more eloquently adorned. But we have so tempered our style that we might commend to readers the substance rather than the words. And above all, this work ought not to be inflated with the buskin of swelling eloquence, lest there arise some necessity of translating it into Greek.

For the integrity of the meanings can with more difficulty be preserved with equal beauty of expression in another tongue. I. Various indeed and diverse, yet from one fountain, has the error of heretical depravity emerged. For the worst hinge and origin of evils, which has of itself brought forth the occasions of all impieties, is this: when the force of the heavenly sayings, profaned by the fault of those who understand ill, is not weighed according to the quality of its own meaning, but is diverted to other things according to the choice and will of the reader, otherwise than the reason of truth demands. But this is most easy for anyone to detect from the fabrications of all the heretics. There is also another occasion of impiety, which, in a wondrous manner, excessive piety has furnished to the less cautious.

And on this account it is greatly and abundantly to be lamented, that the evil of a deadly faithlessness becomes impious there, whence another becomes pious; that there wretched captives are allotted the toils of bondage, whence the power of liberty is acquired; that they are entangled in errors there, where every error of ignorance is loosed; that one becomes faithless there, whence another is faithful; that by the same light one is blinded, by which another is most brightly illumined.

And that this is so may appear by clearer proofs, let us compare the dogmas of the opinions of Sabellius and Arius, of Manichaeus and Photinus, of Nestorius and Eutyches; in which we find them to have stood so contrary to one another that — what is the more wonderful — their error bears testimony to the truth, and the discordant opinions of the faithless sound together into one harmony of right faith, and their empty contests beget the trophy of our victory. II. For the faithlessness of Sabellius condemns the error of Arius. Again, the error of the Arian dogma excludes the impiety of Sabellius.

For Sabellius, deceived by a confession of one nature — plausible indeed — thought that there was one person of the Trinity, so that from this, that the nature of the three is one, one person also should be understood to be. On the contrary, Arius, accepting three subsisting and distinct persons, as indeed they truly are, believed their natures to be three and dissimilar; and what pertains to distinction, this he referred to the disparity of those same persons; wherefore he dared to define them as far unequal both in merits and in degrees.

Let this man's error, then, serve to confute the impiety of the Sabellians, and let Sabellius hear that there are three persons of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, to such a degree that Arius dares to profess them dissimilar in power and diverse in nature. Let this same Arius hear, on the other hand, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one power and one nature, to such a degree that Sabellius says there is one person of them. Correct, then, your evil, O Arius, by his evil, and let him correct his own evil by your evil; that the good which both of you hold along with us may be common to you. For it is good, O Arius, that you say there are three persons, but it is evil that you separate them too far both in degrees and in natures.

Likewise you, O Sabellius — it is good that you say there is one nature, but it is evil that the truth of the one nature compels you to confess one person. I bring a compendium to your dispute: nay, not I, but Christ, who, as a most just judge, decreed that the controversies of your suits should be settled by one sentence of the Word, saying: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). For by saying I and the Father, He distinguished what Sabellius wrongly confounds; but by adding we are one, He united what Arius wrongly divides, so that 'one' avails for the unity of nature, and 'we are' for the distinction of persons. Of such a kind is this: Baptize the nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19);

in the one name of the three insinuating that there is one nature of the deity. Thus the best Judge, amid the noxious and lethal contentions of Christians, pronounced a saving sentence of judgment, that he should perish by his own fault who has impugned the sentence of the Judge. III. Likewise Manichaeus, while he regards the miracles of such great powers which the Son of God wrought, will not confess Him to be man. Photinus, while he attends in Him to the nature of our body, judges Him not to be God. The one, to fortify himself, reiterates the powers; the other, the infirmities. The one alleges the proclamations of the deity, the other those of the humanity. From the one the majesty of so great a name recalls him from the profession of the humanity;

the lowliness of the injuries which he sees to be unworthy of God retains this other one only in the confession of man. Miracles call the one away, sufferings hold the other back. The one is deceived by the deity, the other is offended by the humanity. The one says, He is God; the other says, He is man. A great marvel, that the truth is confirmed by the assault upon itself; and that each speaks the truth, while each lies. Hear, then, O Manichaeus: that He is God, you say truly; that He is not also man, you are deceived. Hear, O Photinus: He is truly man, as you assert, though not as you assert; but the same is also God, which you impiously shun. He is God to such a degree that Manichaeus denies Him to be man; He is man to such a degree that you do not believe Him to be God. Since therefore you are both contrary to each other, you both make for us:

you are far separated, and in the midst is the way which you have left: one on this side, the other on that. Come hither to us, and you will find one another: let the one pass over into the other's opinion, yet so that he does not abandon his own: let what you hold privately be common to you: let the one confess the man, do you confess the God, and so by your own proper truth depart at length from your own proper error. IV. Let us come now also to Nestorius and Eutyches, who have striven throughout the whole East to overshadow the serenity of the catholic faith with the dark mists of faithlessness.

And although their wicked teaching has been refuted along with its authors, yet their followers, having gained an ample occasion of time, so spread abroad the pernicious and lethal poisons of their savage dogma that what the onslaught of the authors could not accomplish, the far-raging disease of their pestilent assertion has wounded almost the whole Church. To these, since I have already answered competently in one little book, I will now briefly and concisely show their empty anxieties and vain fears. It is certain that the Lord Jesus Christ, according to the catholic faith and the proclamations of the Scriptures, has two nativities — one of the Father without time, the other of the mother without seed:

and bearing the nature of each of these two nativities — namely that of God, by which He was born of the Father, and that of man, by which He was begotten of the mother — Christ is one and the same God and man. For the twofold nativity gave to the one Christ a twofold nature, since He who is God of the Father, the same is also man of the mother. These natures, therefore, which He has from each parent, the Apostle calls two forms, saying of Him: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:6-7). And of these forms — whether that which He has from God the Father, or that which He received from man the mother — it is more clearly set forth by prophetic foretelling.

Isaiah speaks thus concerning the form of His servanthood, which through the lowliness of the Passion appeared in a manner unseemly: 'His countenance,' he says, 'was inglorious among men, and His form among the sons of men' (Isa. LII, 14). And again: 'We saw Him,' he says, 'and there was in Him no comeliness nor beauty; but His form was despised and failing beyond the sons of men' (Isa. LIII, 2). And these things Isaiah spoke concerning the servile form, in which He bore all the injuries of the Passion. But concerning the form of His divinity, which, retaining its beauty through its own impassibility, though battered by the injuries of the Passion could not be defiled, David sang more plainly, saying: 'Beautiful in form beyond the sons of men' (Ps. XLIV, 3).

Do you perceive that in the one person of Christ the mystery of both forms, that is, of both natures, is contained? The form of the servant is proclaimed unseemly and despised; the form of God in Him is proclaimed beautiful and most fair. Let another take these things however he will; meanwhile, by the prophetic and apostolic proclamation we have taught that Christ has two forms. Now let us teach that in both He is one and the same, and has one person. The Apostle says: 'And what I have given, I gave in the person of Christ' (II Cor. II, 10). It has therefore become clear that Christ subsists out of two abiding natures in the union of person. V. Now let us see by what error Nestorius and Eutyches were deceived. Nestorius, by introducing two natures, supposed there to be two persons;

and on this account he thought, by a sacrilegious doctrine, to introduce two Christs. Eutyches, looking to the one person, judged there to be one nature, and on this account dared to deny the human nature. And because in Christ there is both the property of the natures and the union of person, Nestorius, attending to the property of the natures, fell away from the union of person, and supposed two Christs, one passible, the other impassible. Eutyches, fixing upon the one person, departed from the property of the natures, and asserted that the very divinity suffered. To such a degree, therefore, are there not two Christs, nor two persons, that Eutyches believes there to be one nature.

Again, precisely because there is not one nature but two, Nestorius supposes there to be two Christs and two persons. And so Nestorius, to fortify the impiety of his doctrine, whereby he wishes the one Christ to be understood as suffering in the Passion, makes use of that testimony of the Apostle, who writes thus to the Hebrews: 'For we saw Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour, that He might, apart from God, taste death for all' (Heb. II, 9). Again Eutyches, in order to subject the deity to the Passion, nonetheless brings forward the Apostle as his witness, who says of the princes of this world, who did not know the wisdom of God: 'For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory' (I Cor. II, 9).

You see of how great a peril it is, either not to believe one person in Christ, or to be unwilling to profess two natures. Great snares of treachery are stretched out on both sides, which Solomon, by the prophetic Spirit, more cautiously commanded to be avoided: 'Remember,' he says, 'that thou walkest in the midst of snares' (Ecclus. IX, 20). For on this side Eutyches, on that side Nestorius, stand armed with the daggers of perfidy. While I defend against Nestorius the one person of Christ, I am thought, according to Eutyches, to deny the human nature. While against Eutyches I assert two natures, I am thought, according to Nestorius, to profess two persons—because he believed that two Christs and two persons must be ascribed to the two natures. VI.

But that we may refute the impious and detestable errors of these men by a catholic understanding, let us treat the mystery of the property of each nature and the secret of the one person. Christ is one, the same God and the same man, having in His words and deeds the one thing that belongs to His humanity, the other that belongs to the nature of His proper divinity—although both together pertain to His one person or substance—as that which is said: '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' (John I, 1). And what He Himself says: 'Before Abraham was, I am' (John VIII, 58), cannot be referred to the nature of His humanity, by which He took His beginning from the Virgin. Again, what is said of Him:

'And the child grew and was strengthened, full of wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him' (Luke II, 40); and: 'When He was twelve years old, He went up with His parents to Jerusalem'; and what follows: 'And Jesus advanced in age and in wisdom and in grace with God and men'—this cannot agree with the nature of His deity, because the deity neither receives advance in age, nor feels any increase, nor is subject to the course of times, nor is reckoned by the number of years. And, to say all things briefly: it is not of one nature, though it be of one person, to call the Father equal to oneself and to declare oneself less than the Father; to have no beginning, and to subsist from a beginning.

This is the property of the natures, out of which Christ, subsisting as one Son of God and the same Son of man, has and bears one person only. Therefore this one and the same is both equal to the Father according to His deity, and inferior to the Father according to the nature of His humanity; and thus He both has no beginning, because He is God, and has a beginning, because the same God is man. If, then, you ask me whether Christ has a beginning or has not, I will answer you that He both has and has not: He has according to His humanity, He has not according to His divinity. When I say 'He has' or 'He has not,' it pertains to the union of person. When I say 'according to His divinity and according to His humanity,' it pertains to the property of the natures:

And that this understanding may shine forth with clearer proofs, let us set down yet plainer things. VII. We believe that the Word of God descended from heaven, without flesh, without the appellation of man; yet so as not to forsake the heavens; that this Word was incarnate in the virginal womb, not changed into flesh, made and called the Son of man. If anyone believes otherwise, without doubt he is anathema. If anyone says that the man, that is, the flesh, descended from heaven, assuredly he is anathema. What then does the same Lord mean when He says: 'No man hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven' (John III, 13)? And again: 'If you shall see the Son of man ascending where He was before' (John VI, 63).

Behold, the Son of man is read to have descended from heaven, although it is agreed that the Word alone—that is, the bare Word, without flesh, without the appellation of man—descended from heaven. Behold, the flesh, that is, the Son of man, is read to have been then in heaven, which never descended thence and which had not yet ascended thither. But this is the mystery of the one person, this the sacrament of the one Christ subsisting in both, this the secret of the property of both natures. For because the Word is so united with the flesh, in an inexplicable manner, that the Word itself is called flesh—though it is not flesh, because it was not changed into flesh—and the flesh is called God, though it was not changed into the nature of the deity; but the Word, on account of its flesh, is man, and the flesh, on account of the Word, is God;

and whatever is proper to the Word is common with the flesh, and whatever is proper to the flesh is common with the Word—since the Word and the flesh are one Christ and one person. Therefore, on account of this communion which the union of person grants while the property of the natures is preserved, the Word with the flesh, that is, the Son of man, is read to have descended from heaven, although the Word alone descended without flesh; and God is read to have been buried and to have lain three days in the tomb, although the flesh alone was buried. Therefore according to the property of nature the Word alone descended from heaven; according to the union of person the flesh also descended at the same time, since the person of the flesh is in the Word which descended.

Likewise, according to the property of nature, the flesh alone felt death, the flesh alone underwent the office of burial; but according to the union of person, God died and was buried, because the person of the Word is in the flesh which felt the loss of death. Therefore according to the property of nature the Word descended from heaven, not the flesh; according to the property of nature the flesh died, not the Word; but according to the union of person both the flesh descended from heaven, and the Word died and was buried. VIII. When, therefore, we say that God suffered and died, let not Nestorius take fright, because we say it according to the union of person. Again, when we say that God neither suffered nor died, because He is wholly impassible,

let not Eutyches be afraid, because we say it according to the property of nature; and rather it is not we who say it, but the Scriptures who speak. For the authority of the Creed holds that the Lord suffered, and the Apostle handed it down, saying: 'For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory' (I Cor. II, 8); and again, that God did not suffer is taught nonetheless by apostolic authority, Paul speaking thus to the Hebrews: 'For we saw Jesus, made a little lower than the angels, on account of the suffering of death; crowned with glory and honour, that He might, apart from God, taste death for all' (Heb. II, 9). What then is it to taste death apart from God, except that the Word is immortal, and the suffering is according to the flesh? Whence also the apostle Peter says:

'Christ therefore having suffered in the flesh' (I Pet. IV, 1). The Passion therefore belongs properly to the flesh according to nature, but to the Word according to person; because of both the Word and the flesh there is one and the same person, and through this God both suffered and did not suffer: He suffered according to the union of person, He is impassible according to the property of nature. IX. And that this very thing may shine forth yet more clearly, we prove it by more evident testimonies. It is established that the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on the sixth day, and on that same day descended to hell, on that same day lay in the tomb, on that same day said to the thief: 'This day thou shalt be with me in paradise' (Luke XXIII, 43).

The flesh therefore on that day was not in paradise, nor in hell, but lay lifeless in the tomb. The soul through those three days was in hell, not in the tomb; and yet rightly do we say that the Lord Jesus Christ lay in the tomb, but in the flesh alone; that the Lord Jesus Christ was not forsaken in hell, but in the soul alone. And although in all these Christ is, and in each one of these Christ is, yet there is one Christ, of whom one part was thus in the tomb, another in hell, in such a way that He Himself, one and whole, was nonetheless everywhere, even though He dispensed Himself separately through the several places. Therefore we say that God lay in the tomb, but in the flesh alone; and that God descended into hell, but in the soul alone.

Just as we say that a man heard a voice, but with his ears alone; and saw the light, but with his eyes alone: so we say that God suffered, but in the flesh alone; and that God did not suffer, but in His divinity alone. And through this, because He is also God, there is one Christ, who both suffered according to that which He is as man, and remained impassible according to that which He is as God. Which I shall conclude in a brief saying: God suffered in the union of person, He did not suffer in the property of nature. For indeed even the divinity bore the injuries of the Passion, but His flesh alone fully felt the suffering. Just as we rightly say that a ray of the sun, or the body of a flame, can indeed be cut by a sword, yet cannot be divided:

so we rightly say that the Word of God bore the injuries of the Passion, yet in no way felt the suffering. I shall speak yet more plainly. The divinity was pierced with nails; but it itself could not be penetrated, as His flesh could—since the flesh, laid open, gave place to the wound; for the deity remained indivisible and impenetrable. Thus therefore, by undergoing the sufferings and yet not yielding to their effects, it appears that God the Word suffered impassibly. But because His flesh not only bore all these things but also felt them and yielded; deservedly and rightly do we say that God was sensibly affected with all these conditions of suffering in His flesh, without sense or change of His divinity. Therefore to bear suffering belongs to both natures;

but to yield to suffering does not belong to both natures, since it is of one and the same person. X. Many of the orthodox, less attending to these things, or unwilling to attend, or unable to discern, have divided themselves into two parties—not by diversity of opinion, but by the profession of words; so that what they hold in the same way, they are afraid to pronounce in the same way: indeed by an idle and superfluous fear, so that that prophetic word may rightly be applied to them: 'There they trembled with fear, where there was no fear' (Ps. XIII, 5). For most of the orthodox, while they expound the understanding of both natures in a catholic manner and retain it in a catholic manner,

yet on this account they are unwilling to say two natures, lest, according to Nestorius, they be thought to confess two persons—withdrawing from the confession of both natures not in heart, but in voice only. For they use a certain circumlocution of exposition, so as to show that they believe two, but do not pronounce two in plain speech. For although they believe and confess that not the man, but the Word, descended from heaven, and that the same was so incarnate in the womb of the Virgin, that is, so assumed flesh, that He was not changed into flesh; that the Word was so made man, that He remained true God; that He so assumed our nature, that He neither changed nor cast away His own; that God was so made man and man God, that yet neither of the two was consumed:

who does not see that by this understanding two natures are plainly built up and demonstrated? Since, then, this is gathered by a true exposition and retained as the opinion of the mind, why, by a superfluous fear, is it kept silent in the profession of the voice? Again, others, fearing lest they fall into the doctrine of Apollinaris and Eutyches, are unwilling to say that the Lord suffered and died, although they believe His person to be one, and confess this one and the same to be God and man. If, therefore, He is one as indeed He is, why do you dread to call Him who suffered, whom you do not dread to call one, nor dare to call another according to the impious sense of Nestorius?

Behold, there are most empty fears and vain anxieties, which have made the orthodox fasten upon themselves the names of heretics, while in voice is trodden down what is more expressly cried aloud in the heart. For those who wish to confess with the mouth one person, which they defend by an exposition of the faith, are thought to be Eutychianists, though they are not. Likewise, those who publicly profess two natures of the one Christ are thought to be Nestorians, though they are not. And you may see them, with certain mournful insults worthy of all lamentation, accusing one another by the name of heretic. 'You,' says one, 'are a Eutychianist,' and 'You are a Nestorian'—wholly forgetful of the apostolic saying which declares: 'See that, when you accuse one another, you be not consumed by one another' (Gal. V, 15).

I ask you, since you are sound in understanding, why do you rave in your words? Why do you err through a perverse fear of speech, you who stand firm in the right stability of mind, in the profession of the faith? Why do you fear to say two natures, when the Apostle did not dread to say two forms—one whereby He is God, the other whereby the same God is man? Why do you dread to say two natures, which Athanasius, most approved by the judgment of all ecclesiastical men, said? In which profession of faith all the expositors of the Greek tongue—which I recalled in the earlier book—and all the apostolic men of the Latin tongue, that is, Ultanus, Eusebius, Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome, imbued with heavenly doctrines, agree together and alike.

And you, why do you fear to say that God suffered, when the apostolic proclamations everywhere attest this? Weigh well both the exposition of this little book, and be not afraid to confess with the mouth what is plain to you that you feel in the heart. For it profits nothing to believe in the heart unto righteousness, unless confession also be made with the mouth unto salvation. Whence the Prophet says: 'I have not hidden Thy justice within my heart; I have spoken of Thy truth and Thy salvation' (Ps. XXXIX, 11; cf. Rom. X, 10). Confess therefore also with the mouth what you hold in the heart, that the divine humanity and the human divinity may be propitious to you. 1.

Since the Eutychian heresy has slipped into such impiety that it not only believes one nature of the Word and the flesh, but also says that this very flesh was not assumed from the sacred body of the Virgin Mary, but was brought down from heaven, according to the abominable error of Valentinus and Marcion—so obstinately asserting that the Word was made flesh, that He is seen to have passed through the Virgin as if water through a pipe, yet not so that He is believed to have assumed from the Virgin anything that is of our race—I have judged it best to destroy also this portion of impiety by the assertion of truth, and to dispel utterly the dark mist of the foul doctrine.

Especially because it profits much toward the truth of the confession of both natures to prove by divine testimonies that the Son of God took a human body from the flesh of the Virgin. II. Therefore, since these men, according to the more correct path of the catholic faith and the authority of the Council of Nicaea, confess that the Son of God was begotten not from without, not from nothing, but from the Father, and is of the same nature of which the Father is—so that the truth of His generation may be especially recognized, if in the Son the property of the Father's nature is not denied—they must be admonished, according to this rule of confession, that this same Son, born of the Virgin, assuredly had the nature of the flesh of that same Virgin.

Nor let the Arian heresy hold them bound here by an insoluble noose of a question, using such a syllogism of objection: If the Son of God, born of a human mother, had nothing from her that was of human nature, then without doubt, born of the Father, He had nothing from Him that could be of the same nature. 'For if you truly assert,' he says, 'that the Son was born of the Virgin and did not have the nature of the maternal body, grant me also, on equal terms, who confess that the same Son, born of the Father, cannot have the nature of the Father.' Why then, O Eutychianists, do you submit your necks to such mighty objections of perfidy, and pass from falsehood to falsehood, so as to confess that the Son begotten of the Father is an exile from the nature of the paternal divinity,

just as you confess that the same Son, begotten of the mother, did not have the nature of the maternal, that is, the human, body? Why do you not rather, if you have any wisdom, destroy the falsehood by the truth—so that, just as you believe, and truly believe, that the Son born of the Father without time has the nature of the Father, so you may believe that the same Son, born of the mother without seed, has the nature of the human body? III. For what did the angel say to Mary? 'The Holy Spirit,' he says, 'shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; and therefore the holy one that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God' (Luke I, 35). He did not say, 'that shall be born through thee,' so as to indicate, as it were, a bare passage of the Word through the Virgin;

but, 'that shall be born of thee,' so as to declare more manifestly the truth of the body to be assumed from the Virgin. For what was the reason for God the Word to make a passage through the womb of the Virgin, if He sought to assume nothing therefrom? Or how is He believed to have been born, or made, of the seed of David, if He is denied to have assumed a body from the lineage of his race? Finally, the apostle Paul says thus: 'Concerning His Son, who was made to Him of the seed of David according to the flesh' (Rom. I, 3). And again to the Galatians: 'God sent,' he says, 'His Son, made of a woman' (Gal. IV, 4).

How is He who already was 'made,' since to be made is wont to be proper to him who never before subsisted, except because, made what He was not—that is, man—He assumed flesh from no other source than from the race of men, from which He was made what He had not been? Whence also the Son Himself speaks of being formed from the womb through Isaiah, saying: 'And now the Lord saith, who formed me from the womb to be His servant' (Isa. XLIX, 5). What, then, do you take to have been formed from the womb—the Word, or the flesh? If the Word, then it was either formless, or wholly non-existent, so that the formation either gave it its essence, that it might subsist; or advanced it from a subsisting formlessness of matter into a better quality of state, that it might appear perfect and entire.