備忘錄 第 1 章 第 2/6 段

Who are the 'strange gods' but foreign errors which you did not know—that is, new and unheard-of ones? 'And let us serve them'—that is, let us believe them, let us follow them. What at the last? 'You shall not hear,' he says, 'the words of that prophet or dreamer.' And why, I ask you, is it not forbidden by God to teach what is forbidden by God to be heard? 'Because,' he says, 'the Lord your God tests you, that it may be made manifest whether you love Him or not, with all your heart and with all your soul.' The cause is laid open clearer than light why divine Providence sometimes permits certain teachers of the Churches to preach certain new dogmas. 'That He may test you,' he says, 'the Lord your God.'

And surely it is a great temptation when that one whom you suppose to be a prophet, a disciple of the prophets, a teacher and asserter of truth, whom you have embraced with the highest veneration and love, suddenly and secretly insinuates harmful errors, which you can neither quickly detect, being led by the prejudice of an old teaching, nor easily think it right to condemn, being hindered by affection for the old master. XI. Here perhaps someone may demand that those things which have been asserted in the words of holy Moses be demonstrated by some ecclesiastical examples. A fair demand, and not to be long deferred.

For, to begin with what is nearest and most manifest, what kind of temptation do we suppose it was lately, when that unhappy Nestorius, suddenly turned from a sheep into a wolf, began to tear the flock of Christ, while those very ones who were being gnawed still in great part believed him to be a sheep, and were therefore the more exposed to his bites? For who would easily think him to err, whom he saw chosen by so great a judgment of the Empire, attended by so great a zeal of the priests; who, celebrated with great love of the saints and the highest favor of the people, daily handled the divine eloquences openly, and refuted whatever harmful errors of Jews and Gentiles?

In what way, finally, would he not have made anyone believe that he taught aright, preached aright, thought aright—he who, in order to open men's hearing to his own single heresy, assailed the blasphemies of all heresies? But this was that very thing which Moses said: 'The Lord your God tests you, whether you love Him or not.' And, to pass over Nestorius—in whom there was always more of admiration than of usefulness, more of fame than of experience, whom human grace, rather than divine, had for some time made great by the opinion of the crowd—let us rather recall those who, endowed with many advancements and much industry, proved no small temptation to Catholic men. As in the Pannonias, in the memory of our elders, Photinus is reported to have tempted the Church of Sirmium:

where, when he had been received into the priesthood with great favor of all, and for some time administered it as a Catholic, suddenly, like that evil prophet or dreamer whom Moses signifies, he began to persuade the people of God entrusted to him to follow strange gods—that is, foreign errors, which before he had not known. But this is usual. The pernicious thing, however, is that for so great a wickedness he made use of no mean supports. For he was both strong in the powers of his talent and rich in the resources of learning. By the example of that ecclesiastical temptation we learn the danger, and at the same time we are admonished to keep the custody of the faith more diligently. For he himself bred in his hearers great heats and great straits;

for the authority of the Church drew them one way, the custom of their master drew them back the other way; and wavering and tossing between the two, they could not make out what they ought rather to choose for themselves. But perhaps that man was of such a kind as deserved to be easily despised. On the contrary, he was so great and of such quality that in very many matters he was too readily believed. For what was more excellent than he in acuteness, in practice, in learning? How many heresies he crushed in many volumes, how many errors hostile to the faith he refuted, is shown by that work of no fewer than thirty books, most noble and most great, in which he confounded the insane calumnies of Porphyry by a great mass of proofs. It would be long to recall all his works;

by which works he could surely have been equal to the chiefest builders of the Church, had he not, by that profane lust of heretical curiosity, invented some new thing—I know not what—by which he both befouled all his labors, as it were by the admixture of a kind of leprosy, and brought it about that his teaching should be called not so much an edification as rather an ecclesiastical temptation. XII. Here perhaps it may be demanded of me that I should set forth the heresies of those whom I mentioned above—namely of Nestorius, of Apollinaris, and of Photinus. This indeed does not pertain to the matter of which we now treat.

For our purpose is not to pursue the errors of individuals, but to bring forward the examples of a few, by which it may be clearly and plainly demonstrated that which Moses said: namely, that whenever some ecclesiastical teacher, himself a prophet in interpreting the mysteries of the prophets, attempts to introduce something new into the Church of God, divine Providence permits this to come about for our testing. It will therefore be useful, in a digression, to set forth briefly what the above-mentioned heretics hold—that is, Photinus, Apollinaris, Nestorius. The sect of Photinus, then, is this. He says that God is single and solitary, and is to be confessed after the Jewish manner.

He denies the fullness of the Trinity, and thinks that there is no person of God the Word nor any of the Holy Spirit. But he asserts Christ to be a mere solitary man, to whom he ascribes a beginning from Mary; and he dogmatizes in every way that we ought to worship only the person of God the Father, and only Christ as man. This, then, is Photinus. Apollinaris, however, boasts that he agrees, as it were, in the unity of the Trinity—and even this not with the full soundness of the faith; but in the Lord's incarnation he blasphemes by open profession. For he says that in the very flesh of our Savior either there was no human soul at all, or at least that there was such a one as had no mind and reason.

But he also said that the Lord's flesh itself was not taken from the flesh of the holy Virgin Mary, but had descended from heaven into the Virgin; and, ever wavering and doubtful, he preached it now as coeternal with God the Word, now as made from the divinity of the Word. For he was unwilling that there should be in Christ two substances, one divine, the other human, one from the Father, the other from the mother; but he thought that the very nature of the Word was rent asunder, as if part of it remained in God, but part had been turned into flesh; so that, whereas the truth says that Christ is one out of two substances, he, contrary to the truth, asserts that out of the one divinity of Christ two substances have been made. This, then, is Apollinaris.

Nestorius, however, with a disease contrary to Apollinaris, while he pretends to distinguish two substances in Christ, suddenly introduces two persons, and with an unheard-of wickedness wishes there to be two sons of God, two Christs—one God, the other man, one who is from the Father, the other who is begotten from the mother. And therefore he asserts that holy Mary ought to be called not Theotocos (God-bearer) but Christotocos (Christ-bearer): because, namely, from her was born not that Christ who is God, but that one who was man. But if anyone thinks that in his writings he says one Christ and preaches one person of Christ, let him not believe it rashly. For either he has contrived that by the art of deceiving, so that through good things he might the more easily persuade also evil ones, as the Apostle says:

'Through what is good he has wrought death in me.' Either then, as we have said, for the sake of deceit he boasts in certain passages of his writings that he believes in one Christ and one person of Christ; or else, after the Virgin's childbearing, he asserts that two persons came together into one Christ in such a way that nevertheless he maintains that at the time of the Virgin's conception or childbearing, and for some while afterwards, there were two Christs—namely, that Christ as man was first born ordinary and alone, not yet joined to the Word of God in unity of person, and that afterwards the person of the assuming Word descended into him; and that, although now he abides as the assumed one in the glory of God, yet for a while there seems to have been nothing distinguishing him from other men.

These therefore—Nestorius, Apollinaris, Photinus—as rabid dogs bark against the Catholic faith: Photinus, by not confessing the Trinity; Apollinaris, by declaring the nature of the Word to be convertible, and by not confessing two substances in Christ, and by denying either the whole soul of Christ or at least the mind and reason within the soul, and by asserting that the Word of God took the place of the mind's intellect; Nestorius, by maintaining that there either always are, or for some while were, two Christs. But the Catholic Church, thinking rightly both of God and of our Saviour, blasphemes neither in the mystery of the Trinity nor in the incarnation of Christ.

For it venerates one Godhead in the fullness of the Trinity, and the equality of the Trinity in one and the same majesty; and it confesses one Christ Jesus, not two, the same being equally both God and man. It believes that in him there is one person, but two substances; two substances, yet one person: two substances, because the Word of God is not changeable, so that it should be turned into flesh; one person, lest by professing two sons it should seem to worship a quaternity and not a Trinity. But it is worth the effort to unfold this very point more distinctly and explicitly again and again. In God there is one substance, but three persons; in Christ two substances, but one person.

In the Trinity there is one and another, not one thing and another thing; in the Saviour one thing and another thing, not one and another. How in the Trinity one and another, not one thing and another thing? Because, namely, the person of the Father is one, that of the Son another, that of the Holy Spirit another; yet the nature of Father and Son and Holy Spirit is not one and another, but one and the same. How in the Saviour one thing and another thing, not one and another? Because, namely, the substance of the Godhead is one thing, that of the manhood another; yet the deity and the manhood are not one and another, but one and the same Christ, one and the same Son of God, and of the one same Christ and Son of God there is one and the same person;

just as in a human being the flesh is one thing and the soul another, yet the soul and flesh are one and the same human being. In Peter and Paul the soul is one thing, the flesh another; yet there are not two Peters, flesh and soul; nor one Paul the soul and another Paul the flesh; but there is one and the same Peter, one and the same Paul, subsisting from the twofold and diverse nature of soul and body. So therefore in one and the same Christ there are two substances; but one divine, the other human; one from God the Father, the other from the Virgin Mother; one coeternal with and equal to the Father, the other from time and less than the Father; one consubstantial with the Father, the other consubstantial with the Mother; yet one and the same Christ in both substances. Therefore the Christ who is God is not one, the man another; nor one uncreated, another created;

not one impassible, another passible; not one equal to the Father, another less than the Father; not one from the Father, another from the Mother; but one and the same Christ, God and man, the same uncreated and created, the same unchangeable and impassible, the same changed and suffering, the same both equal to and less than the Father, the same begotten of the Father before the ages, the same born in time of a Mother, perfect God, perfect man. In God supreme divinity, in the man full humanity. Full humanity, I say: for it possesses at once both soul and flesh, but flesh that is true, ours, derived from a mother, and a soul endowed with intellect, strong in mind and reason. There is therefore in Christ the Word, a soul, and flesh;

but this whole is one Christ, one Son of God, and one our Saviour and Redeemer. Yet one, not by some corruptible confusion of divinity and humanity, but by a certain entire and singular unity of person. For that conjunction did not convert and change the one into the other (which is the error proper to the Arians), but rather joined both into one in such a way that, while the singularity of one and the same person ever remains in Christ, the property of each nature also abides forever; so that, namely, God never begins to be a body, nor does the body at any time cease to be a body. This too is demonstrated by the example of the human condition.

For not only in the present, but also in the future, every human being will consist of soul and body, yet the body will never be turned into soul nor the soul into body; but, since each human being will live without end, in each human being the difference of both substances will of necessity remain without end. So too in Christ the proper character of each substance must be retained, each its own forever, yet with the unity of person preserved.

But since we often name the 'person,' and say that God became man through a person, we must greatly beware lest we seem to say this: that God the Word took upon himself the things that are ours only by an imitation of action, and that whatever there is of human living, he performed as though shadowed forth, not as a true man; just as is wont to happen in theatres, where one man suddenly counterfeits several persons, of whom he himself is none. For whenever some imitation of another's action is undertaken, the offices or works of others are so performed that yet those who act are not themselves those whom they act. For (to use, by way of example, instances from the secular world and from the Manichaeans), when a tragic actor counterfeits a priest or a king, he is not a priest or a king.

For when the act ceases, the person which he had assumed also ceases together with it. Far be from us this wicked and impious mockery. Let that madness belong to the Manichaeans, who, being preachers of phantasm, say that the Son of God, God, did not exist as the person of a man in substance, but only feigned it by a certain make-believe act and manner of living. But the Catholic faith says that the Word of God became man in such a way that he took up what is ours not deceitfully and in shadow, but truly and expressly, and that he imitated what was human not as something foreign, but rather bore it as his own; and that altogether what he did, that also he was. Just as we ourselves too, in what we speak, perceive, live, and subsist, do not imitate human beings, but are human beings.

For neither Peter nor John—to name these especially—were human beings by imitating, but by subsisting. Nor did Paul feign an apostle, or pretend to be Paul; but he was an apostle, and subsisted as Paul. So too God the Word, by assuming and having flesh, by speaking, doing, and suffering through flesh—yet without any corruption of his own nature—deigned wholly to bring this about: that he did not imitate or feign a perfect man, but presented one; that he was not seen or supposed to be a true man, but was one and subsisted as one.

Therefore, just as the soul, joined to the flesh yet not turned into flesh, does not imitate a human being, but is a human being—and a human being not by pretence, but by substance—so also the Word, God, without any conversion of himself, by uniting himself to the man, not by confounding, not by imitating, became man, but by subsisting. Let there be cast away therefore, utterly and from the very root, every notion of that person which is assumed by feigning imitation, where one is always something other than what is feigned, where he who acts is never the one whom he acts. For far be it that God the Word should be believed to have assumed the person of a man in this deceitful way;

but rather in such a way that, while his own unchangeable substance remained, and by taking up in himself the nature of a perfect man, he himself existed as flesh, he himself as man, he himself as the person of a man—not feigned, but true; not imitative, but substantive; not, in short, one that would cease together with the action, but one that would altogether abide in substance. This unity of person in Christ, therefore, was in no way compacted and perfected after the Virgin's childbearing, but in the Virgin's very womb. For we must most vehemently beware to confess Christ not only as one, but also as always one;

because it is an intolerable blasphemy if, even though you now grant that he is one, you nevertheless contend that at some time he was not one but two—namely, one after the time of his baptism, but two during the time of his nativity. This immense sacrilege we shall assuredly be able to avoid in no other way than by confessing the man to have been united to God—but by a unity of person—not from his ascension, or resurrection, or baptism, but already in the mother, already in the womb, already in short in the very virginal conception: for which unity of person, indifferently and interchangeably, both the things proper to God are attributed to the man, and the things proper to the flesh are ascribed to God.

For from this it comes that it is written by divine inspiration that the Son of Man came down from heaven, and that the Lord of majesty was crucified on earth. From this also it comes that, the flesh of the Lord having been made, the flesh of the Lord having been created, the very Word of God is said to have been made, the very Wisdom of God to have been filled, knowledge to have been created; just as, in the foreknowledge, his hands and his feet are reported to have been pierced. Through this unity of person, I say, that too was accomplished by the reckoning of a like mystery: that, the flesh of the Word being born of an undefiled mother, God the Word himself is most catholically believed, and most impiously denied, to be born of the Virgin. Since these things are so, far be it that anyone should attempt to defraud holy Mary of the privileges of divine grace and of her special glory.

For by a certain singular gift of our Lord and God, who is also her Son, she is most truly and most blessedly to be confessed Theotokos (God-bearer); but not in the manner of Theotokos which a certain impious heresy supposes, which asserts that she is to be called Mother of God by mere appellation, because, namely, she bore as man him who afterwards was made God; just as we say the mother of a presbyter, or the mother of a bishop, not by bearing a presbyter or a bishop, but by giving birth to a man who afterwards was made a presbyter or a bishop.

Not in this way, I say, is holy Mary Theotokos, but rather for this reason: that, as was said above, already in her consecrated womb that sacrosanct mystery was wrought, whereby, on account of a certain singular and unique unity of person, just as the Word in the flesh is flesh, so the man in God is God. But now let us, for the sake of renewing the memory, repeat more briefly and tightly the things briefly said above concerning the aforementioned heresies and concerning the Catholic faith; so that, namely, repeated they may be understood more fully, and inculcated more firmly they may be held. Anathema therefore to Photinus, who does not receive the fullness of the Trinity, and preaches Christ to be merely a solitary man.

Anathema to Apollinaris, who asserts in Christ the corruption of a converted divinity, and takes away the property of a perfect humanity. Anathema to Nestorius, who denies that God was born of the Virgin, who asserts two Christs, and, with the faith of the Trinity hissed off, introduces to us a quaternity. But blessed is the Catholic Church, which venerates one God in the fullness of the Trinity, and likewise the equality of the Trinity in one Divinity; so that neither the singularity of substance confounds the property of the persons, nor again the distinction of the Trinity separates the unity of the Godhead.

Blessed, I say, is the Church, which believes in Christ two true and perfect substances, but one person of Christ, so that neither the distinction of natures divides the unity of person, nor again the unity of person confounds the difference of substances. Blessed, I say, is the Church, which, in order to confess that Christ ever is and was one, confesses the man to have been united to God not after his birth, but already in his mother's very womb. Blessed, I say, is the Church, which understands God to have been made man not by a conversion of nature, but by the reckoning of person—and a person not feigned and transient, but substantive and abiding.

Blessed, I say, is the Church, which proclaims that this unity of person has such great force that on account of it, by a wondrous and ineffable mystery, it ascribes both the divine to the man and the human to God. For on account of it, it does not deny that the man, according to his Godhead, came down from heaven, and it believes that God, according to his manhood, was made on earth, suffered, and was crucified. On account of it, finally, it confesses both the man to be the Son of God and God to be the Son of the Virgin. Blessed therefore and venerable, blessed and sacrosanct, and altogether to be compared to that heavenly praise of the angels, is the confession which glorifies one Lord God with a threefold sanctification. For on this very account, above all, it proclaims the unity of Christ, lest it should exceed the mystery of the Trinity.

Let these things be said in a digression, to be more fully treated and explained another time, if it shall please God. Now let us return to our subject. We were saying then, in the foregoing, that in the Church of God there is the temptation of the people and the error of the teacher, and the temptation is the greater in proportion as he who errs is the more learned. This we taught first by the authority of Scripture, then by ecclesiastical examples, namely by the recollection of those who, though they had for some while been held of sound faith, yet at the last either fell away into an alien sect, or themselves founded their own heresy. A great matter indeed, both useful for learning and necessary for recollection; which we ought again and again to illustrate and inculcate by masses of examples;

so that all true Catholics may know that they ought to receive teachers together with the Church, not to desert the faith together with the teachers of the Church. But I judge thus: that, although we are able to bring forward many in this kind of temptation, there is almost no one who can be compared to the temptation of Origen; in whom there existed so many things illustrious, so singular, so wonderful, that anyone might easily judge that credence was to be given at the outset to all his assertions. For if a man's life makes authority, great was his industry, great his chastity, his patience, his endurance. If his lineage or his erudition, what was nobler than he, who, as they say, was rather often afflicted.

Nor indeed were these the only things in him that were afterward all to be a temptation, but there was also so great a force of genius, so profound, so keen, so refined, that he surpassed almost all by far and away; so great a magnificence of doctrine and of all erudition, that there were few branches of divine, and perhaps almost none of human philosophy, which he did not thoroughly master: in which knowledge, when the Greek studies yielded, the Hebrew also were laboriously acquired. But why should I make mention of his eloquence, whose discourse was so pleasant, so milky, so sweet, that to me there seemed to flow from his very mouth not so much words as a kind of honey? What things difficult of persuasion did he not clarify by the powers of argument; what things hard in the doing did he not make to seem as though most easy?

But perhaps he wove his assertions together only by the linkings of arguments? Nay rather, plainly there was never any of the teachers who employed more examples from the divine law. But, I suppose, he wrote little? No mortal wrote more; so that to me it seems that not only have all his works not been read through, but that they cannot even be found: and that nothing might be lacking to him as instruments of knowledge, even a fullness of years overflowed for him. But perhaps he was little successful with his disciples? Who was ever more successful? Surely innumerable teachers, innumerable priests, confessors, and martyrs came forth from his bosom. And now indeed, how great was the admiration of him among all, how great the glory, how great the favour, who could fully relate?

Who that was somewhat religious did not fly to him from the uttermost parts of the world? What Christian did not venerate him almost as a prophet, what philosopher did not venerate him as a master? And how reverend he was not only to private station, but even to the empire itself, the histories declare, which record that he was summoned by the mother of him who was the first of the Roman emperors to be a Christian, by reason of the authority of Christian teaching. Concerning his incredible knowledge, if anyone does not accept the Christian testimony from us who report it, let him at least, from the philosophers who testify, receive the gentile confession.

For that impious Porphyry says that he, when almost a boy, was stirred by the fame of him and went to Alexandria, and there saw him already an old man, but plainly such and so great a one as had founded the citadel of all knowledge. The day would fail me sooner than I should touch, even in the least part, upon those things which were illustrious in that man: all which, however, pertained not only to the glory of Religion, but also to the magnitude of the temptation. For how rare a one would easily lay aside a man of such genius, such doctrine, such grace, and not rather use that saying, that he would prefer to err with Origen than to think the truth with others? And what more?

The matter came to this pass: that the temptation of so great a person, so great a teacher, so great a prophet—a temptation not merely human, but, as the outcome showed, exceedingly dangerous—drew very many away from the integrity of the faith. Wherefore this Origen, so great and such a one, while he abuses the grace of God too insolently, while he indulges his own genius too much and believes too readily in himself, while he sets little store by the ancient simplicity of the Christian Religion, while he presumes to be wiser than all, while, despising the ecclesiastical traditions and the teachings of the ancients, he interprets certain chapters of the Scriptures after a new fashion, deserved that of him too should be said to the Church of God: 'If a prophet rise up in the midst of thee.' And a little after, it says: 'Thou shalt not hear the words of that prophet.' And again:

'Because,' it says, 'the Lord your God is testing you, whether you love him or not.' Truly it was not only a temptation, but even a great temptation, to lead the Church—a Church devoted to him and depending upon him through admiration of his genius, knowledge, eloquence, manner of life, and grace, suspecting nothing concerning him, fearing nothing—suddenly, by little and little and gradually, from the old Religion into a new profanity. But someone will say that Origen's books have been corrupted. I do not resist; nay rather, I even prefer it. For this has been both handed down and written by certain men, not only Catholics, but even heretics. But this is what we must now attend to: that even if it was not himself, yet the books published under his name are of great temptation: