與狄奧多西辯論 第 1 章 第 1/10 段

(≡Γ_≡> The things that were set in motion concerning our blameless Christian faith, and concerning the innovation introduced in opposition to it, between the abbot Maximus and Theodosius, bishop of Caesarea in Bithynia — I have judged it necessary to make manifest to all of you who continue in orthodoxy, so that, having more exact knowledge of these matters, you may all the more glorify the God who loves mankind, who gives a word at the opening of the mouth (==) to those who fear him;

lest, as is their custom, the enemies of the truth, proclaiming the contrary of it, trouble your hearts.

Accordingly, on the twenty-fourth of the month of August, in the fourteenth indiction now past, he went out to him, to the place of exile in which he was being kept under guard — [Publisher's note: The work of Saint Maximus has been divided into volumes, and the pages are numbered following the "Gregorios Palamas" series of "To Vyzantion" Editions, Thessaloniki, "Philokalia of the Neptic and Ascetic Fathers," so that the reader may easily consult the translation.]

[Publisher's note: There is also an indication of the page of the Patrologia (==) when the text is drawn from there.]

that is, in the fortress of Bizya — the aforesaid bishop Theodosius, sent, as he said, on behalf of Peter, the president of Constantinople;

and Paul and Theodosius the consuls, as they too said, sent on behalf of the emperor;

and having come up to the aforesaid monk Maximus, in the place where he was shut up, they sat down, and permitted him also to sit — the bishop of Bizya, of course, being present together with them (≡Γ_≡>

And Theodosius the bishop says to him:

As God foreordained, before all the ages, the providential course of events concerning me, so it stands with me.

Before all things, concerning each one of us, God has determined (foreordained).

If indeed he foreknew, then assuredly he also foreordained;

What is this very thing, "he foreknew," and "he foreordained"?

Foreknowledge is of the thoughts, words, and deeds that are in our power;

whereas foreordination is of the things that happen which are not in our power.

Which things are in our power, and which are not in our power?

So it seems, my lord, though knowing all things, converses with his servant so as to test him.

By the truth of God, I asked in ignorance, wishing to learn the difference between what is in our power and what is not in our power;

and how the former exist under the foreknowledge of God;

while the latter are under his foreordination.

All voluntary things are in our power, that is, virtues and vices;

but not in our power are the visitations of the punitive circumstances that befall us, or their opposites.

For neither is the punishing sickness in our power, nor the gladdening health;

and so too their qualities and their causes.

For example, the cause of sickness is disorder, just as the cause of health is right order;

and the cause of the kingdom of heaven is the keeping of the commandments, just as the cause of the eternal fire is the transgression of these.

Is this, then, why you are afflicted in this exile — because you have done certain things worthy of this affliction?

I pray that God, by this affliction, may limit the exactions due for the sins I have committed against him in the transgression of his righteous commandments.

For many, the affliction that is brought upon them is not for the sake of testing.

The testing is of the saints, so that through affliction their dispositions toward the good that is by nature may be made manifest to the life of men, these dispositions themselves displaying together the virtues unknown to all, as in the case of Job and Joseph.

For the one was tried for the manifestation of his hidden fortitude;

while the other was tested for the proclamation of his sanctifying temperance;

and every one of the saints who was afflicted involuntarily in this age was afflicted according to some such dispensations, so that, through the weakness permitted to be brought upon them, they might tread underfoot the proud and apostate dragon, that is, the devil. (==) For endurance is, in the case of each of the saints, the work of testing.

By the truth of God, you have spoken well;

and I confess the benefit of it;

and I have always sought to converse with you on such matters;

but since it is on another matter that I, together with my lords the future patricians, have come to you, and have traveled so great a distance, we beseech you to accept what is proposed by us, and to bring joy to the whole world.

What are these things, my lord, and who am I, and whence am I, that my assent to what is proposed to me should bring joy to the whole world?

Command, my lords, to say what you wish, and what you have heard.

The emperor and the patriarch entreat, through us, to learn from you for what reason you do not commune with the throne of Constantinople.

Do you have a written commission concerning this from the most pious emperor, or from the patriarch?

You ought not, my lord, to have distrusted us.

For even though I am humble, I am called a bishop;

and my lords happen to be members of the senate;

and we have not come to tempt you.

In whatever manner you have come to your servant, I will state, without any reservation, the reason for which I do not commune with the throne of Constantinople;

Yet even if it belonged to others to ask me for what reason, it is you who already know the reason more certainly than I do myself.

You know the innovations that occurred, beginning from Alexandria in the sixth indiction of the past cycle, through the nine chapters set forth by Cyrus — who became, I know not how, president there — innovations which were confirmed by the throne of Constantinople;

and the other alterations, additions and subtractions, made synodically by those who presided over the Church of the Byzantines — I mean Sergius, and Pyrrhus, and Paul;

innovations which the whole world knows.

Let the stumbling-blocks set by the aforesaid men be removed, together with those very men who set them, as God said:

"And cast the stones out of the way" — and I walk the smooth and well-trodden road of the Gospel, free from every thorny heretical evil, just as I found it to be, without any human exhortation whatsoever.

But so long as (==) the presidents of Constantinople glory in the stumbling-blocks that have been set, and in those who set them, there is no word or manner that can persuade me to commune with them.

For what evil do we confess, that you should be separated from communion with us?

Because, by saying that there is one energy of the divinity and the humanity of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, you confuse both the doctrine of theology and that of the economy.

For if one must be persuaded by the holy Fathers, who say, "Of those whose energy is one, of these the essence also is one" —

then you make the Holy Trinity a Quaternity, inasmuch as his flesh becomes of one nature with the Word, and its kinship in nature with us and with her who bore him is displaced.

And again, by abolishing the energies, and ratifying a single willing of his divinity and his humanity, you take away from him the distribution of good things.

For if he has no energy at all, according to those who have decreed this, it is clear that, even if he should will it, he cannot show mercy, since the operation of good things has been taken from him — for apart from a good operation, nothing that exists is by nature able to operate or act.

Moreover, you also make the flesh, by the will, a co-creator of all the ages and of the things within them, together with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit;

while by nature it is created — or, to speak more truly, without beginning in respect of willing, since the divine willing is without beginning, as belonging to a Godhead without beginning;

while by nature it is recent — which surpasses not only all folly, but impiety as well.

For you do not simply say there is only one will, but also that this will is divine.

But of the divine willing, no one can conceive a temporal beginning or an end, since neither can one conceive such of the divine nature, of which the willing is essential.

Again, by introducing yet another innovation, you altogether remove all the distinguishing and constitutive marks of the divinity and the humanity of Christ, decreeing by laws and decrees that neither one nor two willings or energies are to be spoken of concerning him;

which is characteristic of a thing that does not exist.

For nothing that exists — whether it is intellective, is deprived of the power and operation of will; or sensitive, is deprived of sensory operation; or vegetative, is deprived of the operation of growth and nutrition (≡Γ_≡>

or is altogether inanimate and devoid of all life, is deprived of the operation and aptitude called "according to habit."

And all things that exist in this way make themselves manifest, being apprehended by the senses of perceiving beings.

For the operation of such things is altogether to fall under sight, through their own visible surface;

or under smell, through some inherent vapor appropriate to it;

and by touch, through resistance.

For just as we call ‘seeing’ the energeia of sight, so also ‘being seen’ is the energeia of the things seen.

And we observe that all the rest come about in the same manner.

If, then, none of the things that exist is utterly bereft of all natural energeia,

yet our Lord and God (be merciful, O Lord!) has no natural willing or energeia according to either of the [natures] out of which, in which, and which he is,

how can you either be, or be called, God-fearing, when you say that the one whom you worship exists in no way as capable of willing or of operating?

For we are clearly taught by the holy Fathers, who say:

“That which has no power at all neither exists, nor is anything, nor is there any predication whatsoever of it.”

“What came about for the sake of economy, do not take as authoritative doctrine.”

If it is not authoritative doctrine for those who accept it — the Typos which decrees and enacts as law that no willing or energeia of the Lord be spoken of, [wills and energeiai] whose removal indicates the non‑existence of him from whom they have been removed — then for what reason have you handed me over to barbarous and godless nations, without honor?

By the God who is to examine me, both when it was made I said, and now I say the same, that the Typos was badly made, and to the harm of many.

The occasion for its being issued was the mutual strife among the orthodox concerning wills and energeiai;

and, so that all might be at peace with one another, some thought it right that such utterances be silenced.

Let us consider, my great lord, into what evil this matter comes when closely examined.

For if God set in the Church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, for the perfecting of the saints,

having said in the Gospel to the apostles, and through them also to those after them:

“He who receives you, receives me;”

“and he who rejects you, rejects me;”

it is clear and evident that he who does not receive the apostles and prophets and teachers, but rejects their words, rejects Christ himself.

God, having chosen them, raised up apostles, and prophets, and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints;

but the devil, having chosen them, raised up false apostles and false prophets and false teachers against piety, so that both the old Law and the Gospel might be assailed.

By false apostles, and false prophets, and false teachers, I mean solely the heretics;

whose words and reasonings are perverted.

Just as, then, he who receives the true apostles, and prophets, and teachers, receives God;

so also he who receives the false apostles, and false prophets, and false teachers, receives the devil.

He, then, who has cast out the saints together with the accursed and unclean heretics (bear with me speaking the truth), has manifestly condemned God together with the devil.

If, then, in examining closely the innovations that have occurred in our times, we find that they arrive at this utmost evil, take heed lest, while pretending peace, we be found to have fallen sick with apostasy, and to be proclaiming that which the divine Apostle said would be the forerunner of the coming of the Antichrist.

These things I have said to you without reservation, my lords, that you might spare both yourselves and us.

Command, then, that having these things written in the book of my heart, I should come and commune in the Church in which they are preached;

and become a partner with those who — casting out the devil together with God — in truth cast out God, while only ostensibly [casting out] the devil.

May this never be granted me by God, who for my sake became [man] without sin!

And having made a prostration, he said:

As for me, whatever you command to be done to your servant, do it;

but I shall never become a communicant with those who accept these things.

And, struck dumb at what had been said, they cast their heads down and were silent for a considerable time;

and having lifted up his head and fixed his gaze upon Abba Maximus, Theodosius the bishop said:

We give you our word on behalf of our lord the emperor, that if you commune, he will lighten the Typos.

We are still very far from one another;

what shall we do about the formula, confirmed synodically, of the ‘one will,’ with the rejection of all energeia, [put forth] by Sergius and Pyrrhus?

That document has been taken down and cast away.

It has been taken down from the stone walls, but certainly not from your intelligent souls.

The synod at Rome has no force, since it took place without an imperial command.

If it is the commands of emperors, and not the orthodox faith, that ratify the synods held, then let them accept also the synods held against the homoousion, since they too took place by command of emperors;

I mean the one at Tyre, the one at Antioch, the one at Seleucia, the one at Constantinople under Eudoxius the Arian;

the one at Nike in Thrace, the one at Sirmium;

for all of these were assembled by imperial command, and yet all of them were condemned on account of the godlessness of the impious doctrines that were ratified.

And what canon declares that only those synods are approved which were assembled by imperial command, or that all synods whatsoever must be assembled by imperial command?

The pious canon of the Church recognizes as holy and approved those synods whose doctrines’ rectitude has been vindicated.

But, as my lord well knows, and teaches others also, the canon has decreed that a synod be held twice a year in every province, making no mention whatsoever of any imperial command, for the security of our saving faith, and for the correction of all matters not in accord with the divine law of the Church.

It is the rectitude of doctrines that validates the synods;

yet you do not accept the libellus of Menas, in which he set forth as doctrine one willing and one energeia of Christ.

It is you who do not accept, but reject, all the teachers who came after the holy synod of Chalcedon, who contended against the abomination of Severus;

and as for me, I am indeed prepared to accept the libellus of Menas, the one composed after the synod —

through which he manifestly advocates for Severus, and Apollinarius, and Macedonius, and Arius, and every heresy, and accuses the synod;

but rather utterly rejects it, through the very things he has set forth as doctrine —

do you utterly refuse to accept one energeia?

And which of the approved teachers speaks of one energeia?

And Theodosius brought forward the citations — circulated among them under false names — attributed to Julius of Rome, and to Gregory the Wonderworker, and to Athanasius, the holy ones, and read them out.

Let us indeed fear God, and let us not wish to provoke him to anger by the production of heretical citations.

No one is unaware that these belong to the impious Apollinarius.

If indeed you have others, show them;

since, by bringing these forward, you convince everyone all the more that in truth you have fallen sick with the false doctrine of the impious Apollinarius and of those who share his mind.

And the same bishop Theodosius brought forward two citations in the name of Chrysostom, which Abba Maximus, having read them, said:

These belong to Nestorius, who was afflicted with the [error of a] personal duality in Christ.

And immediately, boiling with anger, the bishop said:

Lord monk, Satan has spoken through the bridle of your mouth.

Let not my lord be grieved at his servant.

And taking [the text], he immediately showed him that these very words were indeed Nestorius’s, and in which of his writings they were found.

God knows, brother, the patriarch gave me these citations;

but behold, you have said that some belong to Apollinarius.

And having adduced the quotation of the holy Cyril, which says:

demonstrating, through both, an operation that is one and akin, he said:

There are some who have shown, in truth, that it was inserted as an addition into the interpretation of the Gospel composed by this holy Father, [the addition] made by Timothy Aelurus.

Let us, then, examine the meaning of the patristic sayings, and we shall know the truth.

This I do not permit to happen;

for you are obliged to receive the words in their plain sense.

Tell me — I beg you as a suppliant — the difference between plain words and elaborate ones.

"So that you may receive the word as it is, and not search into its meaning." (MAX.)

Manifestly you are introducing new and foreign institutions into the Church, even concerning the meaning of words.

If, according to you, it is not necessary to search the words of the Scriptures and of the Fathers, then we cast out the whole of Scripture, both the Old and the New.

"Blessed are they who search out his testimonies; with their whole heart shall they seek him;"

since no one is able to seek out God apart from searching.

"Give me understanding, and I will search out your law, and I will keep it with my whole heart;"

since the searching leads to the knowledge of the law, and the knowledge, through desire, persuades those who are worthy to keep it in their heart, by the fulfilling of the holy commandments laid down in it.

"Wonderful are your testimonies; therefore my soul has searched them out."

And why does the language of Proverbs wish us to search out parables and riddles and dark sayings?

And why, when the Lord speaks in parables, does he wish the disciples to understand, teaching them the meaning of the parables?

And why does he command, "Search the Scriptures," since they bear witness concerning him?

And what does Peter, the chief of the apostles, wish to teach when he says, "Concerning which salvation the prophets sought out and searched diligently,"

And what does Paul, the divine apostle, [mean] when he says:

"Even if our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled among those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, so that the light of the knowledge of Christ should not shine upon them."

It seems, then, that you wish us to be made like the Jews, who — by "plain words," as you call them, that is, by the letter alone — having buried the mind as under some rubbish, fell away from the truth, having the veil upon their hearts, so as not to perceive the sovereign Spirit hidden within the letter, concerning whom it says:

"Let my lord be fully assured that I cannot bear to receive a word apart from the meaning inherent in it, lest I become an evident Jew."

Having heard this, Theodosius said:

We are obliged to say that Christ has one hypostatic energy.

Let us consider the evil that is engendered from this, and let us flee this foreign expression;

for it belongs only to heretics who hold to many gods.

for we would be compelled, just as to the Son, so also to the Father and the Spirit, to assign hypostatic energies;

and, according to you, the blessed Godhead would then have four energies;

three distinguishing the persons in which it exists, and one common, signifying the natural commonality shared by the three hypostases;

and, according to the Fathers — if indeed we accept their teaching — we would fall sick with a doctrine of four gods.

For they declare that every energy is natural, and not hypostatic.

And if this is truly so — as indeed it is — we shall be shown to be saying that there are four natures, four gods, differing from one another both in hypostasis and in nature.

Moreover, who has ever seen or observed a particular energy belonging to any one whatsoever of those things brought by nature under a species, and ranked by nature under the common definition of that species?

For that which is common by nature never becomes the property of one thing alone.

For the hypostatic marks — such as an aquiline nose, or a snub nose, or grey eyes, or baldness, and whatever else of this kind — are distinguishing accidents belonging to those who differ from one another numerically.

For every man is by nature constituted to act as being something with respect to nature, but not as being someone with respect to hypostasis, according to the predicative account most properly and commonly understood and spoken — namely, "animal," "rational," "mortal" — which belongs to the generic account applicable to us.

For we all partake of the same life, the same rationality, and the same influx and efflux [of nourishment], and of sitting and standing, and of speaking and being silent, and of seeing and hearing and touching;

which belong to the common account conceived with respect to us.

One ought not, therefore, to innovate expressions that have no authority — neither scriptural, nor patristic, nor natural;

but [rather one that is] foreign, and devised by the perversions of men.

Yet show me this expression set down in any Father whatsoever, and again we shall seek out the mind of the one who spoke it.

One ought not, in any way whatsoever, to speak of one energy in the case of Christ.

In accordance with the holy Scripture and the holy Fathers, we have received no tradition to say any such thing; rather, just as we confess Christ to have two natures, those out of which he is, so also we have been permitted to believe and confess his natural willings and energies fittingly for him, who is, at once by nature, both God and man, the very same one.

"Indeed, my lord, we too confess both the natures and their different energies — that is, divine and human — and [we confess] his divinity as possessing will, and his humanity as possessing will, since his soul was not without willing."

When number is applied to natures, it does not effect a division; but when it is spoken of willings and energies, it carries the force of division.

In every case, the Fathers too, avoiding division, did not say ["two"] concerning willings and energies, but rather "one and another," and "divine and human," and "double and twofold"; and as they said it, I say it, and as they have spoken, I speak.

Or when [you say] "divine and human," how many do you understand [there to be]?

Or when [you say] "double and twofold," how many do you understand [there to be]?

I know how I understand it, but I do not say "two."

Then the abbot Maximus, turning to the officials, said:

And they said: "Since you have put us under oath — 'one and one,' we understand two; 'one and another,' we understand two; and 'twice two,' we understand four."

And Theodosius, as though put to shame by their answer, said:

What has not been said by the Fathers, I do not say.

And the abbot Maximus, immediately taking up the book of the acts of the holy Apostolic Synod, showed that the holy Fathers spoke expressly of the two willings and energies of our Savior and God, Jesus Christ; and Theodosius the consul, taking this book of the acts from him, likewise himself read through all the citations of the Fathers.

"God knows, had this synod not itself personally pronounced the anathemas, I would have accepted it more than any other man; but, that we may not waste time here — whatever the Fathers have said, that I say, and I will at once put it in writing: two natures, and two wills, and two energies;"

"and come in with us to commune, and let there be union."

But if God has pierced you with compunction to receive the sayings of the holy Fathers, then, as the canon requires, send word of this in writing to [the see of] Rome — that is, the emperor and the patriarch and the synod under him.

For even if this is done, I will not commune, so long as those who have been anathematized continue to be commemorated in the holy anaphora.

For I fear the condemnation of the anathema.

God knows, I do not condemn you for your fear, nor does anyone else.

But give us counsel, for the Lord's sake, as to whether this can possibly be done.

What counsel do I have to give you concerning this?

But give me your word, that if they send me, you will come with me.

for that man knows the language too, and they respect him deservedly, since he has been punished for so long a time, both for God's sake and for the orthodox faith that prevails on their throne.

We have various altercations with one another, and I am not glad to go away with him.

Then, after conversing briefly with one another concerning the life according to God and the keeping of the divine commandments, Theodosius the bishop, turning to the abbot Maximus, said:

It is never possible for me to say this,

since it is an expression foreign to the holy Fathers, to say that two natures have one will and energy.

And, moreover, whoever says this, by every manner [of reasoning], finds absurdity meeting him squarely.

For if I say 'natural,' I fear the confusion [that would result]; if I say 'hypostatic,' I divide the Son from the Father and the Spirit, and I shall appear to be introducing three wills that do not coincide with one another, just as the hypostases also [do not coincide].

And if I say 'one will and operation, as belonging to one [subject],' I am compelled, even against my will, to speak likewise of the will and operation of the Father as belonging to one, and of the Spirit as belonging to one; and the argument will be found to fall into polytheism.

That there is one will of our Savior on account of the union we ought to say wholly and altogether, just as Sergius and Pyrrhus, as I think, have written, having rightly understood [it].

If, on account of the union — as Sergius and Pyrrhus and Paul have written — there came to be one will of God and our Savior, then, according to them, the Son will be of a will differing from the Father's: for it is by nature, and not by union, that the Father has one will together with the Son — since indeed union and nature are not the same.

If, according to them, one will of our Savior came to be on account of the union, then that will has as its cause, altogether, the union, but neither of the two natures of which he consists; and, according to them, the will will manifestly belong to relation, not to nature.

For the reasoning of truth knows the union to be a relation, but not a nature.

If, on account of the union, as they said, one will of our Savior came to be, by what will do they say that this very union came to be?

If, on account of the union, one will of the Savior came to be, it is clear that before the union he was either possessed of many wills or altogether without will.

And if he had many wills, then, being contracted to one, he underwent a diminution of the many — that is, of will — and he manifestly suffered the passion of mutation: the diminution of the many wills that naturally belonged to him.

But if he was altogether without will, then he has declared the union to be superior to nature, since from it he obtained a will which nature was unable to supply; and again he has shown himself mutable, having acquired through relation that which did not belong to him by nature.

[He would be] a man without beginning in will, while remaining recent [newly created] in nature — which is impossible, not to say impious.

It has shown him who is by nature fleshless — God — to have truly become incarnate, without deceit; and it has plainly presented the Creator of all things as having by nature become man, not by a mutation of nature or a diminution of anything belonging to nature, but by a true assumption of flesh ensouled with an intelligent [rational] soul — that is, of a complete humanity, pure by nature of every ancestral transgression.

And [it shows], by the principle of reciprocal exchange [of properties], that which is truly wondrous and astonishing to all: the same one wholly God in the things human, remaining entirely within what is his own; wholly man in the things divine, remaining entirely without falling away from what is his own.

For, according to the teaching of our God-speaking Fathers, on account of the union there has come to be a mutual interpenetration [perichoresis] of the natures and of the natural [properties] belonging to them, one into the other — but not a transposition or a diminution; which latter is characteristic of those who wickedly make the union into a confusion, and who, for this reason, entangle themselves in manifold innovations, and, for want of stability in their own doctrine, persecute the pious.

Having heard these things, Theodosius the bishop, together with the rest of those who had come with him, seemed to accept what had been said.

And again the same bishop says to the abbot Maximus:

What do you mean by what you said to us — that no one operates as a 'who' [according to hypostasis], but as a 'what' [according to nature]?