Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides (1925) pp. 131-335. Book 2 part 1.
From the Records of the things which were done against me at Ephesus.
Peter, priest of Alexandria and chief of the secretaries says: 'When formerly the reverend Nestorius received consecration to become bishop of the holy church of Constantinople, and a few days were passed by, his homilies which disturbed those who read them were brought by certain men from Constantinople, so / that there arose on that account much disturbance in the holy church. When then the reverend bishop of Alexandria, Cyril, learned this, he wrote one letter and a second unto his reverence, full of counsels and warning; and in reply to these he wrote that he listened not, hardening himself and resisting the things which were written. And withal again, when the reverend bishop, Cyril, learned that letters and books of his homilies had been sent by him to Rome, he also wrote to the pious bishop of the church of Rome, Celestinus, by the hand of the deacon Poseidonius, whom he commanded, [saying], "if thou findest that the books and the homilies and the letters have been delivered, give also these things |132 which have been written by me; but if not, bring them back hither without now delivering them." But when he found that his letter and his homilies had been delivered, necessarily also he delivered [those of Cyril]. And those things which were proper, containing a well-known rule, were written by the pious [and] saintly bishop of the church of Rome, Celestinus. Because then, by the injunction of the godly Emperor, your holy Council has met here, we necessarily inform you that we have in our hands the papers concerning these things, with a view to [doing] whatever is pleasing unto your Piety.'
/ Nestorius. Cyril then is the persecutor and the accuser, while I am the persecuted; but it was the Council which heard and judged my words and the emperor who assembled [it]. If then he 1 was on the bench of judges, what indeed shall I say of the bench of judges? He was the whole tribunal, for everything which he said they all said together, and without doubt it is certain that he in person took the place of a tribunal for them. For if all the judges had been assembled and the accusers had risen in their place and the accused also likewise, all of them would equally have had freedom of speech, instead of his being in everything both accuser and emperor and judge. He did all things with authority, after excluding from authority him 2 who had been charged by the emperor, and he exalted himself; and he assembled all those whom he wanted, both those who were far off and those who were near, and he constituted himself the tribunal. And I was summoned by Cyril who had assembled the Council, even by Cyril who was the chief thereof. Who was judge? Cyril. And who was the accuser? Cyril. Who was bishop of Rome? Cyril. Cyril was everything. Cyril was the bishop of Alexandria and took the place of the holy and saintly bishop of Rome, Celestinus.
/ Who would have believed that these things happened so, if God had not obliged them to tell [them] and to write [them] down and to send [them] unto all the world? For all those |133 who were his [followers] read them and believe not that they happened so, and they doubt even about themselves, since they would rather trust things which happened in dreams than these, if they were thus as they did happen. What need was there for a Council, when this man was everything? That these things then were so you will learn from what happened at Ephesus; for Memnon says that: 'since the period which was fixed in the letters of the pious and most Christian Emperor, sixteen days have passed.' And he, in that he was lord of the Council, made use precisely of [these words]: Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, says: This great and holy Council has been patient enough, waiting for the coming of the godly bishops, who are expected to come.'
Nestorius. Is it not evident even to the unintelligent that he was in everything? By him then, who was busied in everything, I was summoned. And before what tribunal? To what judgement? To what inquiry? Tell me. 'This great and holy Council has been patient enough, having waited ' / sixteen days.' Thou sayest that it has waited enough; and you were not ashamed to have written this as an excellent reason whereby you were constrained not to wait for the bishops who were far off who were constrained to come, and who had been delayed in coming by an important reason and besought you to wait for them----those also who were near and whose coming was by no means unimportant. They were unavoidably delayed these days, if not more, in order that they might rest from their hardship in journeying by road and by ship, both for rest and for needful purposes and for the sake of visiting one another and those who were sick and were in need thereof, and especially because of those persons who were taking the place of those who were absent from the Council, in those things wherein constraint had been laid upon |134 them. Although it were indeed the day which was fixed and [on which] the convocation ought to have taken place, if anything were to happen so that it should be delayed, another additional day would rightly be granted, even as among men there are many causes which come upon them of necessity, so that things are not done in accordance with the strict provisions of the appointed period. But it was not the day of the convocation, but that of the coming; for the day of the convocation had been decreed by the authority of the Count. Thou didst thyself usurp [that authority], in that in thy senseless boldness thou hadst confidence in those who would justify thee perversely. For thou / lovest to persuade and thou art such that thou dost disregard those who are present and dost require those who are far off and dismissest those who are present at the Council and lookest for those who are far off; and thou holdest the Council without those who are far off having arrived. And he held a Council by himself, before the general Council and summoned those who participated not with him, that there might be a Council before the Council of all the bishops. And they testified unto him that he should put no confidence in this Council, to which he summoned me also, even making use of violence, and of such violence and force that it would not be believed, were any one to recount [it]; but it has been revealed by those who have written. Seditious persons indeed filled the city with idle and turbulent men, who were assembled together by Memnon, bishop of Ephesus; and he was at their head and was making them run about armed in the city, in such wise that every one of us fled and hid himself and had resort to caution and saved himself in great fear, as it is also easy to learn from the language of those who were sent. The latter came under the pretence indeed of summoning me unto the Council in order that it might be testified that we were not amongst those who recognized not the Council before the coming of all the bishops; but in reality they came to carry me off by assault and by violence and to spread the rumour about me that 'he has surely perished, / and his mouth has been closed over his blasphemies'; or to deprive me after I had been questioned. |135
Hear now from the language of Juvenalius that these things were said.3
Juvenalius, bishop of Jerusalem, says:3 'But because a crowd of Romans surrounded his house, and since the pious bishops came and said: 'Let none come nigh there'; it is known that with no good conscience did he decline to come unto the holy Council.'
Nestorius. You see of how much tyranny I made use and how far I was liable to accusation, because, for the purpose of rescuing myself from the conspirators who rose up against me, I had need to post soldiers around my house to guard me, that they might not come against me with violence and destroy me! Thou accusest me of posting soldiers around my house: [it was] not that they might do any wrong unto you but that they might hinder you from doing wrong unto me. From the fact that you reproach us with posting soldiers, it is clear that if they had not first been posted around me and been a wall for me, I should have been destroyed by violent men. What indeed would you have called / those who adjured you beforehand that there should not be an unrighteous Council? Were you assembled for the [end] for which you were summoned? You made the Council for yourselves and not for us; you expelled those men from the Council and of yourselves you acted for yourselves just as you wished, and you listened not unto those who called upon you not to hold a Council but to wait for the bishops who had been summoned with you and who were nigh unto coming. Now therefore for what purpose did you summon us after all this violence? Who will hold out and not weep when he remembers the wrongs which were [done] in Ephesus? It is well [that] they were against me and against my life and not for the sake of impiety! For I should not have had need of these words as touching a man who was capable of retribution but only as touching our Saviour Jesus Christ, who is a just judge and for |136 whose sake I have been content even to endure patiently that the whole bodily frame of Christ may not be accused. But now they invent [stories] concerning me, because I have not been able to be silent when I am accused on the subject of the dispensation on our behalf, so that of necessity I am excusing myself and am persuading all men who say: 'he has been the cause of this disturbance and disorder'; and I prove myself sincere, because I have been vexed by him1 and because of those who have written against me. But thou indeed / wast the first to sit in the midst of our judges, and because there were no accusers, in that they were judges, they put up to accuse me Theodotus, bishop of Ancyra in Galatia, and Acacius, bishop of Melitene, who was the interrogator.
Theodotus. But Theodotus first replied that he had indeed had some conversation with me but had not told him 4 the conversation, and the latter asked him not concerning what his speech was, in order that he might judge both conversations as a judge and accept the one and reject the other as having evidently fallen into impiety; but it was enough for him only that [there should be] an accusation.
Theodotus, bishop of Ancyra, says: 'I am grieved indeed for a friend, but verily I value the fear of God more than all love, and consequently it is a necessity for me, although with great sorrow, to speak the truth regarding those things of which there is question; I think not, however, that our own testimony is required, since his opinion has been made known in the letters unto thy Godliness; for those things which he there said are not to be said of God, that is, of the Only-begotten, counting human qualities a degradation unto him, he says also in conversation here that it is not right to say of God that he has been suckled nor that he was born / of a virgin; thus here also he has many times said "I say not that God was two or three months old "'. |137
Nestorius. They have not examined these things as judges, nor further has he spoken as before examiners and judges, but he stood forth as the witness of a judge-accuser.
Theodotus. 'The things indeed which he there rejected as not to be said of God, that is, of the Only-begotten, counting human qualities a dishonour unto him, he says also in conversation here----that it is not right that one should say of God that he has been suckled nor that he was born of a virgin; thus here also he has said that "I say not that God was two or three months old ".'
Nestorius. And he 5 accepted it without examination as a judge-accuser, without asking him anything, either: 'What said he unto thee when he said these things here?' or 'what didst thou say in reply to these things whereinsoever he seemed against thee? Wait; speak before us that we may know in what sense he has rejected these very things, in order that we may not accept without reason an accusation against him while he is far off and pass sentence against him without examination and without inquisition before those who need to learn exactly for what reason he has been condemned. Thus also the accused will not be able to deny and he will have no cause / to accuse me of respect for persons. Therefore, O Theodotus,----thou hast conversed with him----if then thou art accurately acquainted with his opinion, since thou hast questioned him and he has returned answer unto thee, [thou knowest that] he says: "I do not say that God is two or three months old ". Does he say [this] unto thee, as one who says that Christ is not God, that he was two or three months old, or does he confess that Christ is God but was not as God born nor [as God] became two or three months old?' 6
Thou 7 then, [dost thou confess] that God was born of a woman and that he was two or three months old, as though |138 his own ousia were changed into the ousia of a man and he was born and became two or three months old, or [was he as] one who was changed in his likeness and in his schema into the likeness and into the schema of a man by means of the ousia and that Christ is to be conceived in the one ousia of God and not in two ousias; and if in two, [canst thou explain] in what way two [issued] from the owe ousia of God the Word? Or [was he formed] of two distinct and unlike ousias and was he born with both of them? Or was he born one of these and did it become two or three months old, as though it had not existed before it was born and became two or three months old? Or did the ousia exist eternally and not have a beginning in being born and becoming two or three months old, whereas he had not in ousia that / which those who are born have of necessity? Or was he born by adoption of the ousia in the birth of the flesh? For if he 8 had thus been questioned, he would have confessed of necessity what he said before the Eastern bishops, when he was questioned in writing----that the Only-begotten Son of God created and was created, the same but not in the same [ousia]; the Son of God suffered and suffered not, the same but not in the same [ousia]; for [some] of these things are in the nature of the divinity and [others] of them in the nature of the humanity. He suffered all human things in the humanity and all divine things in the divinity; for birth from a woman is human but birth from the Father is without beginning, whereas the former [is] in the beginning, and the one is eternal while the other is temporal.9 Since he 8 was suffocated by the truth, he was not able to dissemble his opinion----he who was constrained by the result of the examination to set these things down in writing; and as is the manner of a dog which, being tied up by force, dissembles its bad habits and, as soon as it has escaped from its leash, flees to its hole with its companions and barks at those who caught hold of it and dares not come out and fight in the open but, remaining within, lays back its cars and puts its tail between its legs, thus also he dared not promise them that he would speak and conquer by reprimanding nor [do] any such |139 thing as those would normally do who were confident in their own cause, I mean [as any one] of them who should take his stand upon the Divine / Scriptures and the traditions and the instructions of the holy fathers, and win the victory.
But hear these things, howbeit not as though I were speaking. He dares not speak openly of what he says nor establish from the Divine Scriptures nor from the fathers what they have spoken nor how they have spoken. Nor again was he constrained to agree to what he had said nor to set it down in writing. But it is right to tell what I consider to be the truth. He 10 was the first to withhold it in order that they 11 might not know all the conversation and all the inquiry which was [held] by us, recounting those things against which they could not say aught. For this reason they wrote them not down, not even in the Records, except only 'it was not right to say of God that he was suckled nor that he was merely born of a virgin'. They made examination [only] as far as was pleasing unto them; but we will indeed speak of these things presently.
After him came Acacius and recounted unto them the conversation which he had with me and which was considered by them [to contain] impossible things. But he recounted his question, accusing me and not by way of reprimand nor sincerely by means of those things wherein he was confident; but they accepted his questions as accusations. And lest / you should suppose that I am creating these things, hear from them their own Records.
The Conversation of Acacius, Bishop of Melitene.
'As soon as I came to the city of Ephesus, I held [a conversation] with this man, who has been mentioned shortly before, and when I knew that he thought not |140 correctly, in every way the weight of the burden was upon me to set him correct and to lead him away from his opinion, and I saw that he confessed with his lips that he was abandoning any such opinion. But when I had delayed ten or twelve days, when again some discussion had been raised between us, I began to speak on behalf of the correct faith and I saw that he held what was contrary to this, and I perceived that he had fallen into two wrongs simultaneously. First indeed [in] his own question which was improper; he imposed on those who returned answer the necessity of either denying entirely that the divinity of the Only-begotten became incarnate or of confessing what is an impiety----that both the divinity of the Father and that of the Holy Spirit were found in body with the Word.'
Nestorius. Some questioned [and] others answered that these things consisted in absurdities and impiety; they confess and agree to the word / for which I have reprimanded them and, after what they have confessed, they will be condemned as impious. Would any one suppose that it was an [act of] oppression, when they have written down these things in their Records and make all the world testify against themselves? For suppose that my question was absurd: thou oughtest not to have accepted it but to have proved the absurdity of the question, in order that, as a result of correcting the question, thou mightest not fall into passing over impiety and absurdity; but, in accepting a question absurd for religion, thou hast therefrom in the next place conic to the impiety of confessing either that God the Word, the Son of God, was not made man or that the Father and the Spirit also were made man; that then to which thou didst agree when thou wast questioned thou oughtest to have made void.12
Yet although, like the other, thou hast not corrected me, let us grant that thou hast not fallen into this absurdity voluntarily or involuntarily: for what reason dost thou not utter this |141 absurd question whereby you wish to condemn me? But thou dost not utter it nor do the judges even require it. And if it is so absurd, how has it been left unconfuted, in such wise as not to be confuted by all your Council? And if you all leave it unconfuted and if there was none among you capable of confuting it, utter [this] absurd question, examine it, although you are judges [only] in schema, and write down this question in schema for those / who have intelligence and are ready to examine your judgement. But on account of your incapacity you remained in darkness, so that you were not even able to see things which were evident. But God rather helped you in your interrogation to write down these things that it might be evident unto all men that the enmity was without cause.
But from what can this be proved? From those things which they have set down in [their] cunning writings, in the judgement without condemnation. From now hear those things wherein they have placed the deposit of the faith of our fathers who were assembled at Nicaca, on two of which we shall rely as on testimonies which will not be declined by him; and we shall make use of them both against them, whether they act by examination, or in the likeness of those who accept them without examination, because they are the judges and they are the judged, like those who account themselves judges in fables and stories.
The faith which was laid down by the fathers at Nicaea.
'We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things which are visible and which are invisible, and in One Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, who was begotten of the Father, / that is, of the essence of the Father . . . ' 13
. . . . and first laying down the names of the two natures which indicate that these are common, without the Sonship |142 or the Lordship being separated and without the natures, in the union of the Sonship, coming into danger of corruption and of confusion.14
Observe then first who reduces and takes away from the deposit which has been laid down by the fathers, but lets not [anyone else] steal aught therefrom. This man 15 [it is] who has made no mention of the beginning and avoided the beginning and made a beginning which they laid not down but in this wise passed over the beginning and wished not to make a beginning therefrom, whereas [it is] I who have established the things which the fathers rightly said, and I said that we would make a beginning from here showing also the cause wherefore they first laid down the names which are common to the divinity and the humanity and then built up thereon the tradition of the Incarnation and of the Sufferings and of the Resurrection, 'first laying down the names of the two natures which indicate that these are common, without the Sonship or the Lordship being separated and without the natures, in the union of the Sonship, coming into danger of corruption and of confusion.' Why then / hast thou passed by these things as superfluous, as things which ought not to be said? Was it because thou didst suppose that it was the same and people ought not to speak thus, but that it was enough for them to begin thence whence thou didst begin and didst make a beginning and correct them? But those [fathers] anathematize those who make additions or diminutions, but they have done improperly and not according to the opinion of the fathers. But he gave a contrary explanation when I said unto |143 him that 'this is the beginning and thence rather ought we to begin whence I have admonished thee'. But he was disputing against me as though in his wisdom he were teaching all men lest through their ignorance they should fall short of this impiety. For what reason then, when thou didst lay down the faith, didst thou also not begin from here whence they began as touching that which was under inquiry? For we were searching how we ought naturally to understand and to speak of these properties of the flesh and of the rational soul and of the properties of God the Word, seeing that [either] they both belonged by nature to God the Word, or to Christ, so that both natures were united by the very union of one prosôpon. But I said and affirmed that the union is in the one prosôpon of the Messiah, and I made known in every way that God the Word was made man and that God the Word was at the same time in the humanity, / in that Christ was made man in it. And for this reason the fathers, in teaching us what Christ is, about whom they used to dispute, laid down first those things which constitute Christ; but thou [actest] in the reverse way, because thou wishest that in the two natures God the Word should be the prosôpon of union. Thou allowest these things [to pass] as superfluous and thou makest a beginning after them, as they do; and thou transferrest from the one unto the other all those things of which Christ is naturally [formed] and said. And since the Christ of the fathers is the opposite of thine, thou hast declined to acknowledge him and thou sayest with me, though thou wishest not, that Christ is in two natures but that God the Word is not in two natures.
But hear [an extract] from what he has written unto me, that you may know that there is nothing just in him but that he is arranging in everything that there may not be a judgement and an examination, which would make known his enmity toward me, which was not on account of the faith.
Diverse are the natures which have come unto a true union; but from them both [there has resulted] one Christ and Son, not because the diversity in the natures has been |144 abolished by reason of the union, but because they have perfected for us rather one Lord and Messiah and Son.16
Not indeed as though the ousia of God the Word who remains eternally as he is and receives neither addition nor diminution, was perfected in a change of natures; / but owing to the concourse of the union of the divinity and of the humanity there came into being one Christ and not God the Word; for he exists eternally. Christ therefore is the prosôpon of the union, whereas God the Word is not of the union but in his own nature, and it is not the same thing to say and to understand [the one for the other]. And for this reason, O admirable man, the fathers also, adhering to the Divine Scriptures, have said 'One Lord Jesus Christ the only-begotten Son', on account of the prosôpon of the union, and then teach what those who are united are, and in whom. Who is he who was born of the Father only-begotten? Our Lord Jesus Christ. 'The only-begotten Son of God, that is, from the ousia of God the Father. God from God and Light of Light, Very God of Very God, born and not made, consubstantial with the Father, by whom all that is in heaven and in earth was [made].' Of whom have you spoken, O fathers? Of something else or him [of] whom you have written before, 'One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God'? Who is this and of whom? Of the Father, 'Very God of Very God, born and not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all was [made], who on account of us men and on account of our salvation came down.1 Who is this? Tell me and him and all men, O fathers. What is he? Another / or the Only-begotten? Him we teach you and none other, who 'on account of us men and on account of our salvation came down and was made flesh of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary, who also was made man'. Thus far, then, that 'He came down, was made flesh and was made |145 man', they have taught us about those things which concern the divinity of Christ: and in 'He was made flesh' about his union with the flesh; but for the rest, about the flesh wherein he was made flesh: 'One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God.' For does not 'of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary' teach us concerning the birth of the flesh? 'One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God.' What is his nature? That which his Mother also was, of whom the passible flesh was born. And 'He suffered and rose on the third day and ascended into heaven and will come to judge the living and the dead'. Who is this? 'One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of the Father.' They call him both things: 'consubstantial with the Father' and 'consubstantial with the mother, one Lord Jesus Christ', [speaking not of] God the Word as in both [ousias] by nature, but of 'one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God'. For the union is in the prosôpon and not in the nature nor in the ousia, but a union indeed of ousias, namely, the ousia of God the Word and the ousia of the flesh; and they were united not in the ousia----for God the Word and the flesh became not one ousia and the two ousias became not flesh----[but] God the Word and the flesh [were so united]. And thou dost confess all these things with me / when thou sayest that the natures of the divinity and of the humanity are diverse and that the two natures remain in their own ousia and that their diversities are not made void by the union of the natures; for the two natures complete one Christ and not one God.
Of what then dost thou accuse me? Speak before all those who read our words. For I say this, and when thou hast spoken and confessed [this], thee too I have praised for what thou hast said, in that in thy discourse thou hast made a distinction between the divinity and the humanity and [hast united] them in the conjunction of one prosôpon; and [I have praised] thy saying that God the Word had not need of a second birth from a woman and that the divinity admits not of sufferings; faithfully hast thou spoken; and these [are the words] of those who are correct in their faith and are opposed to the wrong faith of all the heresies concerning |146 the Lord's nature. Where then have I said that Christ was a mere man or two Christs and that there was not one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, of the union of the two natures one prosôpon? And even unto thee thyself I have said, as brother unto brother, that we should not distinguish the union nor the prosôpon which [results] from the union. Nor again do we begin from God the Word, as from a prosôpon of union, but from him from whom the fathers began, who were wiser than thou and who were excellently acquainted with the Divine Scriptures. And see how / they tear up as from the foundation and destroy all those things which effect a change. For if thou referrest all the properties of the flesh to God the Word, see that, after stealing, as thou hast said, the properties of the natures, thou dost not say those things which the three hundred and eighteen fathers have with one voice and with one mouth and with one conscience rejected: that there was when God the Word was not, that is, [that] when his flesh was not, then God the Word was not; that is, that, before his flesh was born, he was not. In that thou hast said that he made for himself all the properties, so then God the Word was born of things which were not, because his flesh was [formed] of things which were not, unless thou darest to say that the flesh itself has eternally existed and sayest that God the Word was of another hypostasis and another ousia, and not of that of the Father but of that of which the flesh was, and [that] God the Word is changeable and corruptible on account of his flesh which is therein.17 For the fathers anathematize those who predicate these of God the Father.
Now God the Word is not of them both in ousia, nor again is God the Word in flesh, nor is God the Word of two nor is God the Word two natures. / For herein only, in his being co-essential with the Father, is God the Word conceived. For he was made flesh and was revealed in flesh; but if he was made flesh in the flesh, it is evident that [it was] in that flesh which had been made, and he who was made flesh in |147 that which was made made not his own ousia the flesh, so as to make the properties of the nature of the ousia of the flesh his own properties, but with a view to the revelation he carried out all the operations of his prosôpon. For he made use of the likeness and of the prosôpon of a servant, not the ousia nor the nature, in such wise that he was by nature in them both, as being Christ. What therefore has carried him 18 away to find another way and a beginning apart from that which the fathers had made, so that he came to anathematize all those things which had been said by them and of necessity to say all those things which had been anathematized by them? But he first laid down the [words] of the fathers, as though he wished to convince them, and to say 'I have said the same things as they', and then to accuse me as though I spoke not in the same way as they. But after he found that I said the same as they and that I maintained their own [views], he began to lay down laws and to substitute those terms which they had not said, and to introduce them into the faith, persuading [every one] that he ought to embrace the latter instead of the former. For thus it was said of God the Word, when he 19 said that he / existed before the worlds and was born of the Father and was born in flesh of a woman. But where have the fathers said that God the Word was born in flesh of a woman? Require him to state the deposit of the fathers which they have laid down for all men and to which also, thou hast well said, we ought to adhere in words and in faith. If then thou keepest thy promise in deeds, it is right; for he who has not spoken as the fathers have spoken is guilty. Prove then that the fathers have spoken this word, then condemn me with an anathema in the manner of one who has transgressed the books and the deposit of the fathers, although ten thousand times I have excused myself and said that I imagined not otherwise in mine imagination. Or if not, let not alone whosoever has defiled aught that the fathers have said in the terms which have been fixed by them. For those terms which |148 have been fixed by them ought by all means to be observed, although we have often neglected to explain them; for if any one otherwise makes use of them, such as they are, [he ought to do so,] not as with a view to suppression nor as with a view to change nor as with a view to transformation, but that he may preserve therein with me such an opinion as is correct, I mean, that of the fathers.
What then hast thou to prove concerning this? Did I make wrong use of the word which is in the deposit of the fathers and ought I to beg for an explanation? Prove unto me that God the Word was born / in flesh of a woman and then explain how thou understandest that he was born. For if thou presupposest it and if thou explainest what has been laid down by thee, thou art not accepted by those who accept the [words] of the fathers; they are without diminution and for this reason they admit neither addition nor diminution nor change. For he who explains also establishes those things which have been written and surely does not suppress them. And if I have made wrong use of the words of the fathers----I who would have persuaded [every one] by words not to call the holy virgin the mother of God nor would have called Christ God 20 and thou hast been constrained to come against me----prove unto me first that I said these things before certain men who duly examined us and not before those who inclined unto thy side; for thou hast conquered before the latter and thou hast made use of them as though they had neither reason nor soul; and thou hast not presented mine own letter, wherein I disputed against thee, as before men. lest thou shouldest confuse the words of the fathers; but that thou mightest confess one Lord Jesus Christ consubstantial with the Father, none other but one and the same who is one prosôpon of the two natures: of the divinity and of the humanity, Lord and Christ; and this also hast thou confessed. It was not therefore because I confessed not that Christ himself----who is also God, and none other than God the Word, consubstantial / ----is God, but because I confess that he is also |149 man. If it were that this is so and I had not thus confessed, in teaching I should have added that Christ is God and consubstantial with the Father and at the same time also man consubstantial with us. I should not have cursorily passed over the prosôpon of the union and the ousia of the divinity,21 as if I were to begin from the common prosôpon of the divinity and of the humanity as if from one ousia of God the Word, which they both were; but I should have referred to him naturally all the things which concern him and which concern his flesh, since he is both of them by ousia.
Why then dost thou falsely charge the fathers with that which they say not? And why again dost thou persuade those who are unwilling to accept anything apart from the deposit of the fathers to accept thine own rather than that of the fathers? But recollect thyself and read and know and see that they have not said this and that we have not transgressed them as ignorant or as wicked men; but thou findest not that those who have written for thee have said that he who was born of the Father was born in flesh of a woman, if they have mentioned at all the birth from a woman. How then sayest thou, O calumniator, that 'we have found that the holy fathers thought thus and that they thus were confident in calling the holy virgin the mother of God. Thus we say that he both / suffered and rose'? 22 First prove unto us that the fathers called her the mother of God or that God the Word was born in flesh or that he was born at all and at the same time both suffered and died and rose, and explain unto us how they say that God suffered and rose. But if it has surely been fabricated by thee, and thou art calumniating [the fathers], how can anyone without doubt admit the rest of thesethings? Forthou hast made them all doubtful, because thou hast not said those things which the fathers have said but hast changed even the very term. For although thou hast supposed the same thing that they make known and there is no single distinction between 'the Lord and Jesus Christ' and 'God the Word', and though thou |150 makest known the same thing by this term or by that, thou oughtest not to have made changes but to have explained and made clear and to have made use of terms which have been laid down by the fathers. But thou couldest not by those terms prove God the Word passible and mortal, and for this reason thou makest use of this term whereby thou canst carry away those who know not what each one of them signifies.
Thus also we understand 'He died'; for God the Word is immortal indeed in his nature and incorruptible and quick and quickening; but, further, because his body by the grace of God, as Paul has said, has tasted death for every man, it is said that he bore death for us.
By / whom [is this said]? By thee or by the fathers? Speak, deceive not the hearers by means of the fathers, by thy statements that thou agreest with their words and their teaching. Read therefore: where have they said that God the Word suffered? But thou sayest that Divine Scripture has said that God the Word suffered; read and dissemble not. But it exists not for thee to read. For what purpose then dost thou calumniate the fathers? Or why dost thou take the faith of the fathers as a means for deceiving and forestalling those who believe simply and without investigating? Makest thou sport of those who read as men who reflect not? Or correctest thou the faith of the fathers, who have not written what they ought to have written? For thou first layest it down and thou sayest that we ought to agree thereto in words and in faith; but thou adherest not at all thereto and hast not even observed the order of the text nor begun whence the fathers began, and in addition to these things thou hast referred [to God the Word] all those things which have been said by them.23 And thou hast neither feigned to make use of the same terms nor hast thou adhered to their teaching. For |151 'created' and 'made' and 'passible' and 'mortal' and all such things as the fathers repudiate thou hast predicated of the ousia of God the Word, of whom are predicated all those things which belong unto the Father in his own ousia and who exists. For thou maintainest that we should so speak as those men who have not spoken, and then, to be sure, thou explainest / not, even though indeed thou wouldest preclude God the Word from being called passible and mortal, but so as to persuade men to say the things, the saying of which the fathers have refused. Thus we confess one Lord Christ who took his name at birth from the blessed Mary but is indeed man, yea even in the death, yea even in the resurrection, yea even in the ascension, yea even in his coming from Heaven; of all these things thou now strippest him. 'Thus', thou sayest, 'we confess one Christ and Lord', as thou thyself sayest. We shall then confess that which has not been confessed:
Not indeed as though we adore the man with the Word, lest thou shouldest introduce a semblance of separation in that we have said 'with', but we adore him as one and the same, because his body is not alien unto him, with which he also is seated with the Father.24
Either he has said it through the blindness of his intellect or he has been compelled by the necessity of God to fall into that whereat he is vexed in others and into [incurring] the same reprimand.
For he has used the [word] 'with' twice, in that he has said |152 'with him who is seated with the Father'. For the [word] with' is not said of one but [of one] with another, and the one, who is with the other, is seated with the Father; how will he not introduce a semblance of separation? He says 'the body' and 'his own body' and 'seated with him' and causes not the semblance of a separation! By 'one and the same God the Word' he understands also his body; and he understands / the body and again he does not understand the body; and he understands that his body is with him and he does not understand that his body is with him but understands it [to be] alone; and he understands that he is seated with it with the Father and again does not understand that it is seated with the Father, but he understands him [to be] alone. Who could tell his ineffable wisdom? But he has taken it for him, not as though again two sons were sitting but one, owing to the union with his flesh.25
And further thou hast said: 'Thou hast 26 raised the semblance of a cleavage when thou givest to imagine one with another'. But [it is] in the union. Of whom? Of Christ? Then the prosôpon of the union is Christ, but thou sayest that he has taken for him that with which he also was seated with the Father. . . . Thou hast put a prosôpon in it itself; why therefore dost thou make [it] void, as if it had been unrighteously said that it also is seated with him with the Father? Or as if by this [word] 'with' thou hadst been forced to understand that he is so, and it were possible that thou understandest or imaginest correctly, in confessing that not two sons were seated but one owing to the union with his flesh. And thou makest void this [word] 'with', that men may not imagine two. But if that which thou hast said be impious for thee, return again to this chapter which thou hast omitted, for it is its aim. For what hast thou written? Hast thou not clearly disproved [thy statement] that we ought not to write 'with'; and hast thou written that 'He is seated / with it with the Father '? For he who says these things says that two sons are seated, but thou disprovest that men ought |153 not to imagine that two sons are seated. And thus in the deposit which has been laid down thou allowest that which signifies two sons, but thou sayest that we ought not to conceive two sons, but two are of necessity conceived, as it is supposed according to thine own opinion. But it is otherwise deposited and to be said, and two sons are not to be conceived. Of what dost thou accuse me, who say that two are united in one Son, whereby I wished to show the inconfusion of the natures in the union, in making use of the qualities of the natures? I seek not to make as it were two sons nor again the dissolution of the union, but I make use of one prosôpon of union as [formed] of the two ousias, as also Divine Scripture signifies. But by one ousia thou signifiest two ousias. But if I were to say the things which thou sayest, it would appear to thee an impiety. But if thou didst have confidence to read the things, thou didst read them for thyself and not for them[selves], things which cannot be examined in that way, if in piety. Thou hast further shunned also an examination by the whole Council, because thou didst judge that these [views] had no accurate defence. And as I was not [there], / what thou saidest well unto them thou saidest for my sake, and what thou saidest wrongly against thyself [was] thus again also for my sake. For if this word 'with' hinders there being one Son and his being seated with his flesh with the Father, there are not two adorations of one Son because he is adored with it, since he who is seated with that which is alien is adored in one adoration; for there is a union in the natures----and thou also confessest [it] with me----but the distinction of the natures is not made void on account of the union. For it was right for me to say many times those words which have been well said; then thou art astonished, when thou hearest that which is mine in thine: that there was indeed no union which proved not a diversity, as [is shown by] the adoration of 'Him who is seated [at the right hand of the Father]'. But thou takest as the starting-point of thy narrative the Maker of the natures and not the prosôpon of union. Either then avoid saying two natures united without confusion; or confess and say these things, and it will not appear an impossibility unto thee to |154 predicate one in the union and another in that which concerns the ousia, not in that which concerns the union of the prosôpon.
But if we decline the hypostatic union as being either incomprehensible or as unseemly, we fall into predicating two sons: for it is necessary to distinguish and to say of man / alone that he is honoured with the name of son, but also of God the Word alone that he possesses the title and the functions of the sonship naturally. It is not right then to distinguish two sons in one Lord Jesus Christ.
I have said unto thee also in the letter that I do not know [the meaning of] the things which have been said by thee. And thou feignest to be repentant; thou hast not dissembled those things which thou wast fairly prepared to say afterwards. And when thou oughtest to have made answer concerning these things and to write and to persuade and to reprimand the calumniators openly, thou hast risen up against thyself and me and hast neglected the fathers and the Holy Scriptures. Why dost thou wish that there should be an hypostatic union, which makes us neither understand that there is [in the union] the ousia of man nor understand [that he is] man in nature but God the Word in nature, that is, God who is not in nature what he is in his nature through the hypostatic union, wherein there are no distinctions and definitions of the various [elements]. For this reason also this union is a union of those things which have been defined by the word ousia; and if it be void, there is no more a union; but [it is the result] of a union, yet not a union. And if every definition of the natures is made void, how will the union not make void the distinctions of the natures? And if they are conceived neither in nature nor in a union, how hast thou said that he has made / the property of the flesh his own, since thou sayest that [he is] in the one indeed by nature but in the other by union? And it is his to have suffered indeed |155 in nature and to have died, because he has made them his own. How then hast thou sought to establish the hypostatic union? What is this unintelligible hypostatic union? Or how shall we accept it, the unintelligible? Or how hast thou understood it? How is it raised up though incomprehensible? And again, unseemly? Instruct us. But thou art not willing to instruct me. Thou hast supposed to thyself that the judges speak unto thee and persuade thee to instruct us and those who are like us, because we know not; and if not, instruct the whole Council. For neither thou nor the Council are capable of [understanding] the term 'union'. Because I also say 'union', yet thou acceptest not what I say, because I distinguish the union. If I say concerning things which have been united that they are corporeal in ousia and incorporeal in ousia, then [I say that] they are divided from one another: the one indeed as created, but the other as uncreated; the one indeed mortal and the other immortal; and the one eternal with the Father and the other created in the last times, and the one consubstantial with the Father and the other consubstantial with us; for the union makes not void the ousias which have been united in such wise that they are not to be known [apart].
/ Thou sayest unto me 'Thou distinguishest'; but verily thou also [dost likewise]; even in the very words to which thou hast recourse to accuse me, thou sayest as follows: 'Diverse are the natures which have come into a true union; yet from both of them [is formed] one Christ and Son, not as though the diversity of the natures had been removed because of the union.' Dost thou give us to imagine this even concerning the hypostatic union? Or [dost thou not speak] as one who distinguishes, saying that as a result of their diversities the natures which have been united are diverse; and [then] rush headlong into thy profession that thou introducest not a semblance of separation? And what do I mean by 'thou introduces 27 a semblance of separation'? And what do I mean by 'a semblance'? Thou understandest the separation of the natures |156 as expressing the natures and not as a confusion, since there is not in thy mind any semblance of definition of the natures whereby to understand that they were united without confusion, even as the fire was united with the bush and the bush with the fire and they were not confused. Thou therefore showest them without definition and without distinction, whereas I show them defined and distinct from one another. If thou then speakest of the hypostatic union, speak clearly; for I confess to not understanding either then or now; thou needest to instruct me in such wise that I may agree with thee. Or if I accept not thy opinion, say that I accept it not, and if the judges / accept [it] of thee, let them convince me or let them condemn me as one for whom there is no getting rid of his wickedness.
Say therefore [what] the hypostatic union [is]. Dost thou wish to regard a hypostasis as a prosôpon,28 as we speak of one ousia of the divinity and three hypostases and understand prosôpa by hypostases? Thou callest therefore the prosôpic union hypostatic; yet the union was not of the prosôpa but of the natures. For 'diverse are the natures which have come into a true union, yet from both of them [is formed] 'one Christ'. Understandest thou the one prosôpon of Christ rather than the hypostasis of the ousia and of the nature, in the same way as thou speakest of the form of his hypostasis |157 and the union of the natures? But I say that; and I praised thee for having said it and having made a distinction of the natures in the doctrine of the divinity and of the humanity and coherence of these in one prosôpon. For hast thou not said 'diversities without confusion' and 'it remained without diversity whereby it would be separated'. But even if thou dost not concede a diversity and that a diversity of natures, thou dost concede a natural separation without knowing it. But it was not a diversity which became a union, since the things which are therein remain without confusion, as the bush in the fire and the fire in the bush. But it appears not that thou sayest this, and thou dost rebuke me as one who accepts not the hypostatic union. But I am not persuaded of any other / hypostatic union with other natures nor of anything else which is right for the union of diverse natures except one prosôpon, by which and in which both the natures are known, while assigning their properties to the prosôpon. It is well to confess and be conformable to the tradition of the Gospels that the bodily frame is the temple of the divinity of God the Word and that the temple has been united by the supreme adherence of the divinity in such wise as to make over to the one the things which are the other's by the appropriation of the nature of the divinity, but not that he made them [both] his own ousia. What other hypostatic union, then, dost thou wish to teach me, which consists in a supreme and divine and ineffable union? I know not unless [it be that] of one prosôpon where the one is the other and the other the one. And for this reason I proclaim eagerly in every place that the things which are said either about the divinity or about the humanity must be taken not of the nature but of the prosôpon, so that there might be no unreality about the human qualities, [as there would be] if both of them were united in the ousia. For not in all things is he to be called in |158 ousia that which was in the ousia, but all those things which indicate the prosôpon of [the ousia\ And it is known that God the Word is said to have become flesh and the Son of man after the likeness and after the prosôpon of flesh and of man whereof he made use to make himself known unto the world. For all the things which are naturally / called flesh are not to be called also God the Word: as that he should come into being when he was not or was [formed] of that which was not or whatever the flesh is said [to have been] before it came into being, when it came into being and after it came into being, in the changes of growth and corruption, and in short consubstantial with ourselves. Because he is consubstantial with ourselves in everything, the things which are said of the ousia are not said of any thing else except only of this ousia, and he is called consubstantial [with us]; for in [the saying of] the things which are said of the prosôpon and of the likeness of the nature is said that which makes him known, as the prosôpon [makes known] the ousia. But that which exists naturally is not said [of God the Word], because the union took not place according to the ousia and the nature but according to the prosôpon. Thus also the flesh is not to be said [to be] all that God the Word is by nature; for it was not without beginning nor was it unmade nor was it incorporeal nor was it invisible nor was it consubstantial with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, although that which is called Son and Lord and God is also to be called flesh in this manner through the union, because the union came into being as touching the prosôpon of the Son of God, and neither the ousia nor the nature, but by means of the natures; and all things which belong to the prosôpon are its, except the ousia of the prosôpon, not according to the nature but according to the prosôpon.
/ What other hypostatic union, then, dost thou predicate, as if saying that I accept it not, either as incomprehensible or as unseemly, and [that] for this reason I have fallen into speaking of two Christs: the one man who is honoured under the title of Son and then apart [from him] God the Word, who possesses naturally the name and function of sonship? How can he who in the union speaks of one Son, one Christ, |159 one Lord, distinctly speak apart of one Son, God, and one other, and thus of two sons? For again that would not be called a union but each one of the natures [by itself] in its own ousia. For neither is God the Word said to have become flesh in his own ousia but by union with the flesh, nor is the flesh called Son apart from the union with the Son of God. For this reason there is one flesh in them both and one Son in them both. For he whose it is by the union to exist and to be spoken of neither exists nor is spoken of in the definition and the distinction [of each] from one another. As God the Word is by his nature God incorporeal, nevertheless in the union with the flesh he is called flesh, and the flesh which is in its nature bodily frame and in its ousia also bodily frame, is yet God and Son by the union with God the Word the Son of God. There are said to be neither two fleshes nor again two sons: those which are distinct by nature and exist by the union of the natures. Among / men, in fact, many who are sons are [so] called by the distinction and by the division of the natures, those unto every one of whom [sonship] is given only by grace and adoption, as honour is given by the Emperor unto every one of the princes. For that which exists only in its own hypostasis belongs also unto many as by grace. For he exists in his hypostasis and has made it the likeness of his likeness, neither by command nor by honour nor simply by equality of grace, but he has made it his likeness in its natural likeness, in such wise that it is none other than that very [thing] which he has taken for his own prosôpon, so that the one might be the other and the other the one, one and the same in the two ousias, a prosôpon fashioned by the flesh and fashioning the flesh in the likeness of its own sonship in the two natures, and one flesh in the two natures, the one fashioned by the other and the other by the one, the same and the single likeness of the prosôpon.
I know not therefore in what sense thou predicatedst the hypostatic union in such wise that it is incomprehensible or unseemly, in order that I may admit or not admit [it]; and has he for this reason been defined and called solely man by the title or by the honour |160 of a son, and then again apart the Word which is from God, to which belongs naturally sonship and name and title?
But what meanest thou by 'uniquely'? / State clearly the deposit of the faith of the fathers and set down the things which are alike both for me and for every one to say, for thou hast not made clear the meaning which we ought to mean and to state. How sayest thou that the nature of man cannot be understood 'uniquely', especially apart from the ousia of God the Word, which is Son not by nature but by union? But also thou sayest that there are diversities in the natures which have been combined in the union of one Son; but the diversity is not voided through the union of the natures; it is not as though the diversity of the natures were made void because of the union. If then the distinctions of the natures have not been annulled, the nature of the flesh appertains solely to the nature of the humanity. But that which is Son consubstantial with God the Father and with the Holy Spirit uniquely and solely appertains to the divinity; for by the union the flesh is son and God the Word is flesh. And for this reason whoever speaks thus neither predicates two sons nor predicates two fleshes, nor predicates two fleshes in the nature nor yet of the flesh in the one and of the sonship in the other, but makes use of the same in the natural prosôpa of each of them in what is their own, as the fire was in the bush and the bush was fire and the fire bush and each of them was bush and fire and not two bushes nor two fires, since / they were both in the fire and they were both in the bush, not indeed in division but in union. From the two natures there come into being the natural prosôpa. Either then speak not of distinct natures when they remain in the distinctions of the natures and are not made void, or say that they have remained the diversity of the natures, or thou shouldest define them as a distinction of natures in an inseparable union, not indeed as diversities of nature made void by the union. . . 29 |161
For if then thou understandest them uniquely and not in the natures but in their mutual distinction, of what am I guilty who confess the indistinguishable union of the two natures in one prosôpon? And I am addressing my words unto thee as unto one who is in doubt concerning these things. But predicatest thou but one nature of the hypostatic union in such wise that after the union the natures preserve not their properties? And thou correctest the things which were formerly said by thee, but especially thou dost surely declare them void as a result of the examination against me, in wishing to say the contrary of the things which I say, because it has befallen thee to will to inquire into the cause of the distinction not as in sincerity but out of opposition as an enemy. For this [union] is as one that suppresses the natures, and I accept it not. / But out of opposition towards me thou hast occupied [thy mind] with definitions, with furious words, as robbers, that thou mightest conceal thy purpose and might not be discovered; and thou sayest this and that and all things, but thou speakest not of the hypostatic union for the making void of the natures but for the [establishing of] a natural union which [results] from the composition in one nature. As the soul and the body [result] in one nature of the man, so also God the Word is united with the humanity, and this thou callest the hypostatic union. But even then, though the natures were to remain, yet there would come to be a union [resulting] in a nature passible and made and created, for the natural union is a second creation. For those things which have not [a thing] in their nature receive it in their nature by the union of nature; but the things which are united in virtue of a natural union are united with the natural passibility of the other and accept not voluntarily mutual sufferings, as the body and the soul, receiving not in their nature their own mutual properties except by the union of nature, participate in one another and give and receive mutual sufferings by the necessity of nature in such wise that he suffers who would not have suffered of himself. For in the union the soul of itself neither hungers nor thirsts nor is pained by a cut or by a burn or by a blow, nor again is |162 the soulless bodily frame sensible of any of these things; but by the natural / union of diverse natures they suffer passively and participate in these mutual sufferings by the necessity of the union.
If thou thus predicatest the hypostatic union of the nature, thou sayest, as the Arians, that it is natural and not voluntary, because he suffered with a natural passibility. He suffered as a result of the natural union, for the sufferings of the soul are the sufferings of the body in the natural composition. For he who is unmade, who is by his nature uncreated, was not composed that he might suffer as though created and made. For men prove not the one nature of the union by the fact that the soul is in the body and the body in the soul, for it 30 produces not the union in every bodily frame wherein there is a soul so as also to be able always to quicken it, but [it is in the body] by such a composition as has been constructed in one nature by the Maker, both subjected and involuntarily subject unto a natural limitation, both limited and unable to escape. And again they are released or bound by the construction in the union of the nature. If therefore the union of God the Word with the humanity was in one nature, although those natures remained without confusion but in a union of the nature, the Maker and that which was made would be constructed by a change either willingly or unwillingly since they have been so styled and it 31 is made and created. And he who can create everything, that is, God, will be the nature of the union, and it is not the hypostasis of the humanity which is known [to be] animal in nature, as even the body / without the soul is not animal in its own hypostasis, but by the construction of the natural union it is its [property] to be animal. If it is so, it is also through God [the property] of man to be animal, but it is not his [property through] his own hypostasis and his nature, but through the hypostatic union which establishes one nature.
For this purpose he declines to say that the man is man and that he is animal in his hypostasis and in his nature, and that |163 God the Word is God the Word in his hypostasis, in order that he may maintain his nature in the union, and that it may not become animal as a result of the union. For he 32 received as a result of the construction of [all] creation by the Father and by the Son and by the Holy Spirit to become man, but to become the only-begotten Son he received from the union with God the Word, for it belonged not unto his own nature nor did it lie in the natural and hypostatic union. For that which it was his to become by the natural union was not his to become as a result of anything else than of the natural construction, as to become one animal results neither from the bodily frame nor from the soul nor from them both but from the natural construction. This [union] then is corruptible and passible, but the union of the prosôpa of the natures is neither passible nor corruptible as [having taken place] through a voluntary appropriation; and the union was not his involuntarily by condescension or by exaltation, by command or by subjection unto command. And such a conception as this consists neither in the making void / nor in the being made void nor in the extinction of one nature or of the properties of the two natures, but the several qualities in the natural qualities are distinct in purpose and in will, according to the distinction of the natures in the one equality, while there is the same will and purpose in the union of the natures, so that they may both will or not will the same things. 33
And because also the prosôpon of the one is the other's and that of the other the one's, and the one [comes] from the other and the other from the one, the will belongs to each one of them. When he speaks as from his own prosôpon, [he does so] by one prosôpon which appertains to the union of the natures and not to one hypostatis or [one] nature. For the divinity is not limited by the body as each one of the natures which are |164 united in the hypostatis. For they are limited by the nature in that it limits them in their being and they exist not apart from them, as the soul and the body are bound together in their being and exist not apart from themselves]. 34
If therefore thou thus sayest that God the Word and the flesh are united and thou callest this an incomprehensible and unseemly union, I decline not to say clearly: 'Those who say these things are impious, and this opinion comes not from the orthodox.' For if the Son, who is impassible, had come unto the necessity of a passible nature in order that he might sensibly suffer, it would prove that his own ousia was not impassible / but [was] a passible nature, whereof he had been constituted in the hypostatic union and wherein he suffered. For he to whose nature it appertains not to suffer, will not suffer in any way in his hypostasis, if he is impassible; for he who suffers in aught is not impassible in his hypostatis, but is impassible [only] in such manner as all those who, being passible, suffer in nature; they do not suffer in all ways, but in that way whereby it appertains to the nature itself to suffer. Everything suffers not in the same way, neither light nor air nor fire, nor the animals which are in the waters nor the animals which are on the dry land, nor birds nor bodily frames nor souls nor angels nor demons, but they are passible indeed in ousia and in hypostasis. But they suffer according to the disposition of their nature to suffer either of themselves or by another.
But thou sayest neither by confusion nor yet by change of ousia nor by corruption nor yet naturally, so that one hypostatic union takes place. Thou predicatest therefore this voluntary one wherein a union without confusion and without the suffering of the natures in one prosôpon is conceived, and not a natural union. For the prosôpon of a natural union is predicated of the two natures which have been united, as the man is neither body nor soul; for the union of these results in a nature and the prosôpon of the nature. But / God took upon himself the likeness of a servant, and that of none other, for his own prosôpon and for his sonship, as indeed are those who are |165 united in nature. 35 He took the likeness of a servant: and the likeness of the servant was not the ousia of a man, but he who took it made it [his] likeness and his prosôpon. And he became the likeness of men, but he became not the nature of men, although it was the nature of a man which he took; he who took it came to be in the likeness of man, whilst he who took and not that which was taken was found in schema as man; for that which was taken was the ousia and nature of man, whereas he who took was found in schema as man without being the nature of man. For the nature he took not for himself but the likeness, the likeness and schema of man, in all things which indicate the prosôpon: as touching the poverty of the schema, he 36 relates: He condescended unto death, even the death upon the cross whereby he emptied himself, in order to show in nature the humiliation of the likeness of a servant and to endure scorn among men; for they shamefully entreated him, even him who displayed infinite condescension. He made known also the cause wherefore he took the likeness of a servant when He was found in the likeness of men in schema as a man and humiliated himself unto death, even the death upon the cross. But he suffered not these things in his / nature but made use therein of him who suffers naturally in his schema and in his prosôpon in order that he might give him by grace in his prosôpon a name which is more excellent than all names, before which every knee which is in heaven and on the earth and beneath the earth shall bow; and every tongue shall confess him, in order that by his similitude with God and according to the greatness of God he may be conceived as Son who took the likeness of a servant and was in the likeness of a man and was found in schema as a man and humiliated himself unto death, even the death upon the cross, and was exalted in that there was given unto him a name which is more excellent than all names in the schema of the likeness of a servant |166 which was taken with a view to the union. But he was the likeness of a servant not in schema but in ousia, and it was taken for the likeness and for the schema and for the humiliation unto death upon the cross. For this reason it was exalted so as to take a name which is more excellent than all names.
But to understand 'the likeness of a servant as ousia' he appointed Christ for the understanding; for Christ is both of them by nature. For this reason the properties of the two natures befit also one prosôpon, not [that] of the ousia of God the Word. And the prosôpon is not in the ousia, for it is not in the ousia of God the Word, nor is it the prosôpon of the union of the natures which have been united in such wise as to make two ousias befit the one prosôpon / of God the Word, for he is not both of them in ousia. God the Christ is not indeed as it were another apart from God the Word, but he is indicative of the union of the two ousias of God the Word and of man. But God and man----of them is Christ [constituted], as thou also hast said. The diversities of the natures are not destroyed because of the union, but they have rather perfected for us one Lord and Christ and Son, by an ineffable and incomprehensible concurrence of the divinity and of the humanity in the union. Although in the things which thou hast said well, where thou seemest to repent. . . . For the ousia of God the Word was not made perfect by the divinity and by the humanity, because it is not its [property] in virtue of the union to become God the Word, as Christ is [constituted] of the divinity and of the humanity. For the incarnation is indicative of the humanity, for He was made man is all conceived not only of the divinity but also of the incarnation which makes man.
For this reason the Apostle lays down the prosôpon of the union and next the things wherefrom the union results. He says first the likeness of God, which is the similitude of God and next it took the likeness of a servant, not the ousia nor the nature but the schema and the prosôpon, in order that he might participate in the likeness of a servant, and that the |167 likeness of the servant might participate in the likeness of God, so that of / necessity there might be one prosôpon from the two natures. For the likeness is the prosôpon, so that it is the one by ousia and the other by union in respect to the humiliation and to the exaltation. How then dost thou bid us understand these diversities of the natures in the union? For the union has not removed the diversities of the natures, so that we should again understand these diversities anew. For he who took the likeness of a servant is the property solely of the likeness of God, whereas that which was taken concerns uniquely the likeness of the servant; but the one belongs to the other and the other to the one through the union of the prosôpon and not through the ousia, in such wise that, where the one is in ousia, the other is in union, and not another. That which is in ousia the likeness of God is consubstantial with this ousia, in that it is a natural likeness; but by union the likeness of God took the likeness of a servant and the likeness of God, which is naturally God's, became in schema the likeness of a servant. But the likeness of the servant, which is naturally the likeness of a servant and in the union the likeness of God, is not naturally God's, so that we understand severally in nature the several qualities of each one of the natures and the natural distinctions of each single one of the natures; and the [properties] of the union we understand [as belonging] uniquely to the union and not to the ousia. How therefore dost thou bid us not to conceive any of these things apart in view of / the distinctions of the natures, things which thou hast said are not destroyed because of the union? But thou canst neither reply unto me nor convict me of the things whereof thou accusest me; but thou accusest thyself in the things whereof thou wouldest accuse me and thou speakest against thyself.
But you, O just judges, what have you examined of these things? Either concerning the things which we have subjected to inquiry or of the things which we have said and of the things which I have confessed and of the things which I have denied that I have imagined, convict him who has erred or instruct him who is ignorant. For not because of the things |168 that a man denies is he condemned as an heretic, but because of the things that he confesses. Thus Arius, thus Eunomius, thus Macedonius, thus each of the heretics was condemned by the fathers because of the things which they confessed in opposition [to the faith] and discussed and [which] were subjected to scrutiny. What is there of that which I have confessed and discussed against them for which they have condemned me as an heretic? What have you found in my letter that is contrary to the deposit of the fathers? Whether I have said or have not said [it], speak. Thus he 37 has said that all the things which are referred to Christ by the Divine Scripture ought to be referred to God the Word: the birth from a woman, the cross, the death, the burial, the resurrection, the ascension, and the second coming when he shall come again. It was not / from these things that the fathers began. . . . But in regard to these things, I have stated why the fathers have not said them; and for this reason also we ought not to begin from here. I have also stated the argument, for they purposed not to prove that God the Word is passible, mortal, and made, and created, nor that he came into being from things which were not----these [are the doctrines] which those who began from there are constrained to state----but the opposite of the things which Arius said and taught. For this reason they placed the beginning of their teaching in the union of the prosôpon of Christ in order that they might duly accept in order the things appertaining to the divinity and those appertaining to the humanity, so that there comes about neither confusion nor making void of the natures. But they combated against all the heresies and were firmly confirmed in orthodoxy when they answered and spoke these words: 'I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son.'
Examine, I said unto him, how they have placed first 'Lord' and 'Jesus Christ', and 'only-begotten' and 'Son', common names of the divinity and of the humanity, as the foundation, and next build thereon the tradition of the Incarnation and the sufferings and the resurrection, in order that, placing first the names of the two natures which are |169 indicative of the common [properties], the sonship and Lordship might not be separated and the natures in the union of the sonship / might not come into danger of corruption and of confusion. . . 38
How then does it appear unto you, O just judges? Because he has written the opinion which was pleasing unto him, and I also have written my opinion likewise, and further we have chosen you as judges, what think you of these things? What opinion have you of them? Who is just or who is unrighteous? And with what thought have you made examination? Tell us your opinion; write unto us as just judges. Have I lied and transgressed the faith of the fathers, because I have said unto him 39 that they began from here, and not with God the Word, but with one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God? You condemn me as one who has added thereto and you acquit him who has not entirely preserved their faith but has thought that they have made use of these terms fortuitously and without distinction. But I have said that they began from here not fortuitously but by the divine purpose. If I have done impiously therein, show me, and, if not, why do you repudiate as though the argument which I have made unto him were an impiety, [when I said] that they began from here because the [properties] of the divinity and of the humanity are common, as the names indicate, and that they wished to begin with these names / for the sake of complete and lucid instruction, as if the name of Christ existed truly in the two natures, man and God? But if for this reason, then you ought to condemn him also, for he has said that the natures which are combined to come together in union are diverse, but one Christ [is formed] of them both. There |170 resulted not one God the Word from them both, for the diversity of the natures is not removed because of the union. Therefore the two natures belong unto Christ and not unto God the Word. Either therefore condemn my words and his or, in accordance with his, consider me also innocent, since I confess all things. But if not, prove, either you or he, how he confesses that God the Word is in two ousias: of what divinity and humanity has God the Word been perfected by combination? For he has spoken of one Christ who is [formed] of diverse natures, of the divinity and of the humanity, and was perfected ineffably by the combination of the natures. And of what ousias? Of what divinity, of what humanity was God the Word perfected that God the Word should be in two natures? Either you or he, say unto us now also, although you have not said [it] before, say: God the Word is by ousia in them both, as you confess that Christ is in ousia in them both, [formed] from diverse natures. The union has not made void / the diversity of the natures. But you have said that God the Word is diverse natures. For if of one ousia there result two ousias, of the divinity and of the humanity, there has been a separation and not a union; but he says that Christ was in the union and existed in two natures. God the Word became flesh by union and not by ousia; how then does he indicate that the same is one, he who is two in the union and who is the nature? Or are nature and union the same thing, and 'in nature' and 'in union', and prosôpon and ousia? For although the prosôpon exists not without ousia, the ousia and the prosôpon are not the same.
How then have you judged, O wise judges? How then have you considered these [sayings] of the fathers? Do they agree with the Divine Scriptures in the terms and in the signification of the terms and have they made use of these terms zealously and clearly? And from here and from no other point have they been able lucidly to begin their teaching. But if [they began] from where the Holy Spirit guided them, that nothing might be abridged and that nothing might be superfluous and that they might do nothing in vain and by hazard, but everything with examination, [they acted] in such |171 wise that the things which appear in Christ----all the [properties] of God the Word whose nature is impassible and is immortal and eternal, and all the [properties] of the humanity, which are / a nature mortal and passible and created, and those of the union and of the incarnation since the womb and since the incarnation----are referred to one prosôpon, to that common prosôpon of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, whence the fathers began. And so by the distinction of language they have taught us 'The divinity is from God the Father, consubstantial with the Father, light from light, through whom everything was [made] which is on the earth and which is in heaven'. And then the incarnation of God the Word and of the humanity----they have said 'He came down and was made flesh for the sake of us men and for the sake of our salvation'. And then they have said in regard to the things of the flesh, concerning the generation and concerning the formation, that he was made flesh; in teaching they have said 'He was made flesh of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary'; they have made known this union whereby he was made flesh and was made man. For until his incarnation, they taught us everything in terms of God the Word and after he was made flesh they speak of this union which [proceeded] from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, of the birth and the flesh which was made flesh, the sufferings and the death and the resurrection and the ascension and the operations which made known that the body was united unto him as being animate and intelligent in order that we might suppose that the union was without confusion and further without change of ousia and of nature, or mixture or / natural composition, so as to result in the coming into being of one animal, yet in one prosôpon in accordance with the dispensation on our behalf, in such wise as to participate in us through humiliation unto death, even death upon the cross. But we shall participate in him in the name which is more excellent than all names, before which every knee shall bow which is in heaven and in the earth and beneath the earth and which every tongue shall confess. |172
The soul was not without will nor without reflection in the nature of the humanity, nor was the soul without perception as regards the animal perception of its being, as a result of the natural union of the body and of the soul. All the natural things, both active and passive, are in the work of nature and of the unfailing might [of God]. For the union of God the Word with the humanity took place not in nature, in such wise that the intelligence of the humanity was without activity and that it reflected with the intelligence of God the Word, not with the intelligence of the humanity, and that it perceived not in the union of the living soul, but in the union of the divinity, and that it lived [its] life and that it perceived, not by the activity of the perception of the soul but by the might of the divinity; for such a union as this is passible; as the soul naturally gives perception unto the body, so by means of this perception is given unto it the perception of the sufferings of the body, / so that the perception of the sufferings of the body is given by the soul and unto the soul; for it is passible. For this reason the union is in the prosôpon and not in the nature, and we say not 'the union of the prosopa' but 'of the natures'. But [there is only] one prosôpon in the union but in the natures the one and the other, as from the common prosôpon it is known that he took the flesh, the likeness of a servant, for his own prosôpon, and thereby he spoke in teaching and working and acting; and he gave his own likeness to the likeness of a servant and thereby he speaks as by his own prosôpon and by the divinity. For the prosôpon is common, one and the same. The likeness of the servant belongs unto the divinity and the likeness of the divinity unto the humanity. One and the same is the prosôpon but not the ousia. For the ousia of the likeness of God and the ousia of the likeness of the servant remain in their hypostases.
The union of the natures, in fact, was neither without will nor without imagination, as Arius and Apollinarius have said, but [it resulted] in the prosôpon and in the dispensation on our behalf and in the union of his image and of his likeness which is in our nature of soul and body, falling short of nothing except of sin alone. He comported himself [so] |173 not for the sake of the divinity, but that thereby it might make him combat against guilt by fulfilling all the commandments of the law / and the chief observances, in order that he might appear without rebuke in the choice and in the observances of the commandments, and that he who was without sins might be given unto death because of us, the righteous for the impious. What indeed is this defeat? And what is this victory? What is this equality of recompense for the conduct of God and of man? For it is the controller who is united in the hypostasis in such wise that he participates in the life and conduct and is overcome by death; the conduct also and the death and the resurrection are those of one who controls and who is controlled. For either God remains in his nature, as he was in nature, without sin, or those things which constituted the manner of life of Christ took place in deception since God the Word comported himself as a man. They both in fact were attracted and torn apart by one another, by the nature and by the will, and he also was torn apart. For the conduct [of his life] was by command: he was not of a nature unchangeable, unique and without master, which is not torn to and fro according to the will and plan of another; but, if there was in truth human manner of life and conduct, the conduct of God the Word was in nature, and in those [qualities] of the nature wherein he comported himself he indeed abode, in that he accepted the very nature and became changeable and variable. Therefore he comported not himself [after] the conduct of God but of that nature wherein he comported himself.
What then have you found in my letter, wherein I am impious / and [for which] you have condemned me and have regarded this man as one who fears God? First, then, I convicted him as one who lied concerning the fathers and abolished all the first principles of the faith, and of himself made a beginning whence of constraint he made even God the Word passible. Now 'God the Word' and 'Christ' do not indicate the same thing, either in the Divine Scriptures or |174 as he has said, although Christ exists not apart from God the Word. And I have neither instructed him in the custom of the Divine Scriptures nor shown him the things which happen from such and such terms. And I have praised him for the things which he has well said: that he has preserved without confusion the natures and their properties in such wise that God the Word was impassible even in the very union; and he makes his the properties of the flesh. I have proved unto him that they refer not unto his ousia but unto his prosôpon, so that his prosôpon is his own and so that all things indicate his prosôpon. All the things which [constitute] the prosôpon [constitute] not the ousia, for neither does God the Word exist in all the things of the ousia of the flesh, nor again also is the flesh said [to be] in all the things which belong by ousia unto God the Word, but in all the things which indicate the prosôpon and which are [therein], in such wise that the union without confusion is preserved also in the diversity of the natures / and the prosôpon of the union of the natures is undivided. And I have said unto him and have not dissembled that which I have not understood and about which I have disputed, and I have propounded the cause and the doubt which has been born in me, that I might not permit him to say aught of those things which he has formerly said.
For what then have you condemned me? Because I have convicted him of not having adhered to the words of the Fathers and of having, in opposition to their intention, made God the Word passible and created and made, and of having caused him [to issue] from things which existed not, having begun with him and having referred unto him all the properties ----and I taught him all things. For this reason do you deal harshly [with me]? Or because I have convicted him of lying concerning the Fathers, of having said that the Fathers called the holy Virgin the mother of God, without even making mention of the birth itself? For the sake of these things have you treated me as an adversary? Let none show favour unto any man. But if this phrase 40 has been employed in the discussion about the Faith by the Fathers at Nicaea, with [the |175 aid of] whom he combats against me, read it; or if it has been spoken by any other Council of the orthodox. For it is of the heretics, all of whom fight against the divinity of Christ, but it has not been spoken by those who have adhered to the faith of the orthodox. But if it were shown to have been said by a Council of the orthodox, then even I should confess / that I have been condemned as one who was on the opposite side. But if no one has used this phrase, thou hast risen up against them all to introduce into the Faith with boldness a new phrase which has not been accepted. And this it was that I required of thee in order to prove unto thee that it was not laid down by the Fathers; but it is for the Council, which has been assembled for this purpose and for nothing else, to judge whether it shall be laid down or not laid down. For it is not for them to be persuaded by me in any case, but for me to be persuaded of those things which they examine and judge and select for acceptance. For I have called you judges and have made you all judges of a just judgement, but that which justly belongs to the Council have I not given unto one man, who has conducted [his case] with violence and prevailed on the whole Council to adopt the faith which seemed [good] unto him.
What then have you done of those things on account of which you have been assembled? You have not settled what you ought, and you have broken away from the Council and have not waited for those who were absent. Nor have you observed what you ought toward those who were summoned unto the Council; nor have you assembled together as you have been summoned, but the judges have been as the accused wished. Instead of [being] the accused you have made him sit as the judge of [his] adversary. And how shall I call him judge? You have made him sit / at the head of the Council. And what shall I say of those who were present? And of those who were absent and of those who were not yet come? And you have given him authority over all, both over those who were there and over those who were absent, and over those who were alive and over those who were dead. Who of |176 those who have not chanced upon these things in the document which was [addressed] by them unto the Council in Ephesus, would believe them? Could a just judgement proceed from such a Council as this? Yet although I were supposed to say these things, because I have suffered, and not to have examined them with just deliberation, [and though] none were persuaded of my words, I would not indeed seek to have any help from men. For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come, that I may be with Christ, on account of whom he has fought with me. But [I am writing] that men may not be led astray from the right faith because of the name of the 'judgement of the Council'. For this reason have I said these things. I, however, have said less than the things which they have written; yet learn from those who have condemned me that there has not been a judgement and that I have not been condemned in judgement.
I indeed have spoken the [words] of the Fathers and have spoken those of the Divine Scriptures, and I first looked / into the plot which was being [made] against the Faith, and I first stated that it was the confirmation of the faith of the Arians on account of the hypostatic union, which resembled also [that of] the Manichaeans, in that he would have suffered being passible, and again [that of] Apollinarius, who agreed thereto with all his hands. And he 41 was carried away by all the heresies, since he declared it unlawful to predicate the properties of each of the natures in the union and referred them all, even those of the flesh, unto God the Word. And thereby you have thought that the orthodox were easily deceived by the heretics [into supposing] that they have none of those things whereof they ought to make use against them, since you have surrendered your mouths unto them, and you have bound your hands and your feet and have surrendered yourselves unto them. Either you will turn aside from your guilt or you will suffer wrongs without excuse for having, like irreverent persons, caused heresies to prevail against the orthodox. For supposing that he 41 be found [to be] an Arian, he will call you as witnesses against those who were assembled at Nicaea, as |177 though indeed they had openly risen up with audacity against Arius, to say what they ought not, namely, saying that he who is passible and mortal and made is consubstantial with him who is impassible and immortal and the maker of all created things. And supposing that he is a Manichaean, you will bear witness in his favour that, in that he suffered / impassibly, he suffered in schema. For he, who, when he is supposed to be suffering, suffers not, suffers impassibly: for he who was not [man] by nature, has not even died. You have hardly confessed the truth, and you have reprimanded the three hundred and twenty-eight,42 as not having spoken the truth through acceptance of persons. If in addition to this also you insist on saying: 'We do not say that God the Word died in nature, since the divine nature is immortal and impassible, nor in the semblance of the flesh, but in the nature of the flesh, which is passible and mortal, and that which God the Word became was flesh,' a heathen would accept this word, accepting [it] in the change of the likeness. And thou sayest that the Incarnation' took place through the change of the ousia without his own ousia and his likeness being changed: when he suffered in the passible nature, not before he came to be in the ousia. Why then do you not say the same things as we, when it is a question of the doctrine of the Incarnation; but why docs he lead us astray with the birth of a material flesh,3 with which God the Word was formed, and why have unconvincing and incredible fables been fabricated?
And if thou sayest against this, that the Incarnation of him who became flesh and man took place neither through change of ousia nor through change of likeness, but [that] this man who was taken----who was born / of a woman and suffered and died and rose and is ready to come to judge the quick and the dead----was changed into the ousia of God and was no more considered a man, except in name alone, and [if] thou meanest by this that God died and rose, the heathen also, who practises a religion which predicates the change of men unto divinity and therefore propitiates and serves him as God, would stand |178 by thee. How then, sayest thou, is the opinion of heathendom yours? You, who have combated against me on these [points] until now, are deceived, and thereby have you also deceived men. And if thou sayest that the Incarnation of God the Word took place neither by change of ousia nor by change of divinity and the body remained in the ousia without change, but [that] he2 became man with a view to the hypostatic and natural union, Arius also, who mocks at the three hundred and eighteen, would accept this confession: and you accept it and are not scandalized, and you agree with heart and mind3 to Arius who speaks truly when he claims that he became man in the natural hypostasis and was naturally united in hypostasis, suffering naturally by perception the sufferings of the body; him thou darest to call consubstantial, him who is the accepter of sufferings.
And if you decline this, as one who confesses not the soul and the body among the things whereof the Word has been constituted in the natural hypostasis nor [that] he suffered after becoming passible in a passible nature in regard to natural sufferings, he proclaims the / [doctrines] of Arius and Apollinarius. For Anus says: 'What does it serve thee that God should become a passible nature by the hypostatic union of the soul to suffer natural sufferings naturally in his body 'and in his soul?' Does he make him who is suffering all these sufferings consubstantial with an impassible nature? But Apollinarius condemns those who say these things while [otherwise] confessing like those who cleave unto his own faith, and commands them to keep aloof from those who say these things and to become his own partisans and to anathematize all those who dissent from him. If further he also is deposed for confessing neither the intelligence nor the will, for such reason as one who confesses not the Word in the flesh and in the soul and in the intelligence in the natural and complete union, you will not receive him, since he says all the [same] things as Arius. Let it be [granted] that he 43 is united to the soul and to the body and to the intelligence; but if it is an hypostatic and natural union, thou effectest an addition |179 and not a diminution and thou avoidest a diminution of the sufferings of the body in such wise as to make subject unto the sufferings of many sufferings him who is consubstantial with him who is impassible; great is the passibility of those who suppose this. For you give him the things which make [men] passible because of the hypostatic union, since he is united in a natural composition, so as to suffer without his will the sufferings of the body and of the soul and of the intelligence and [since] he is united in ousia and in nature, as the soul in the body endures / of necessity the sufferings of the soul and of the body. But thou makest him impassible. Then there has not been an hypostatic and natural but a voluntary union with the body and with the rational and intelligent soul which are united hypostatically and naturally in the nature of the man. But the union of God the Word with these is neither hypostatic nor natural but voluntary, as consisting in a property of the will and not of the nature. For the things which are united by the natural hypostasis have a natural and not a voluntary quality. For he took the likeness of a servant for his own prosôpon and not for his nature by change either of the ousia, of the ousia in the nature of the humanity, or of the humanity in the nature of the divinity, [so that] it was united and mixed with the human nature either by confusion or by a natural composition and a change of the activity of the nature; for this quality is changeable and variable. But the voluntary [activity] is neither passible nor changeable; it suffers not involuntarily in its natural ousia the sufferings of the soul and of the body. Those which are naturally united suffer indeed in ousia with one another, transmitting their own sufferings naturally and not voluntarily. For although he accepted them as sufferings voluntarily, when, however, he accepted them and suffered them, he suffered them naturally, in that he suffered them by a natural property and by perception.
/ If you say these things thus, you have incited them all and have become heathens in saying that which he 44 has said who said these things with irreverent audacity; they have |180 anathematized him,45 who said these things, and laid upon him punishment without remission and driven him out from the church and even from the inhabited world, as one who defiles the earth whereon he walks. How then do you say these things? But if he says concerning me: 'it is because he divides the natures into sundry parts and separates them and distinguishes them from one another, and not because he says these things clearly but because he distinguishes them into parts one from another and says: "one son of nature and one son of grace," as though there were two natures, and he distinguishes them, saying "I indeed distinguish the nature and I unite the adoration; because of him who is clothed I adore the clothing" ' 46 ----every one would say unto you 'O man, you have drunk mandrakes'.47 If you understand also the Father by the things which have been said by you, how do you say also of him who has not been kept separate even by one word, that he took and was taken and made it his own, and [how] do you call [him] man and God? For all these things belong unto those in whose doctrine the natures are distinguished, and not unto those who say that there is one ousia; for the union destroys not the diversities of the natures; but if the diversities of the natures / remain in the union, they are kept separate by the diversities of the natures, in so far as they are diverse. But how do you say concerning me that I separate the union by distance of space, since I say: |181 'because of him who is clothed I adore the clothing'? For the clothing is not apart from him who is clothed nor he who is clothed apart from the clothing but it is conceived in the same likeness. And for this reason it is not possible to adore him who is clothed apart from the clothing upon him, clothed wherein he is seated with the Father; for he is not seated with him without being clothed in it and that which is seated with him receives also adoration with him. When it is seated with him it is by all means adored not for its [own] sake but for the sake of him who is clothed in it.
By all means therefore we shun those who predicate the Incarnation [apart] from the union, either by a change of likeness which is [the view] of the heathen, or in hallucinations or in a schema without hypostasis [which] suffers impassibly, or in predicating the natural sufferings of God the Word, as being either by hypos tasis in the union or in flesh in the flesh either in an irrational or in a rational soul, and [in asserting] finally that the union resulted in an hypostasis of nature and not in a voluntary prosôpon, in order that we may not make the union of God the Word corruptible and changeable nor call it passible and necessary, but a voluntary union in prosôpon / and not in nature. Either they will renounce my words, admitting that the Incarnation took place in the nature, and will make the union passible and changeable, as Arius, or [they will make it] impassible, as the Fathers. Partisans of which side do you seek to be? It depends on you: [you are] either on the side of the heretics or on the side of the orthodox Fathers, or on the side of those who say: '[He is] neither passible nor corruptible,' or on [that of] those who [say that] the union appertains unto the hypostasis or on [that of] those who [say that it appertains] unto the prosôpon. But I say that the union of God the Word is neither passible nor mortal nor changeable. For these things let him who would anathematize me! I have kept without blemish the faith of the three hundred and eighteen who were assembled at Nicaca, saying that God the Word is unchangeable [and] immortal, that he is continuously |182 that which he is in the eternity of the Father. He was not [formed] of things which existed not nor of any other hypostasis, and there was not when he was not. Eternally [exists] the Father, eternally the Son, eternally the Holy Spirit; but the flesh which was made flesh, which was of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary, exists not eternally, but there was when it was not; and it is of another ousia and of another nature and of another hypostasis, [to wit, of that] of men, and not of the ousia of God the Father----changeable and mortal and passible and corruptible. Not from [being] the ousia / of God the Word was it changed into the ousia of the flesh, but [he had] an ousiôdic flesh and a natural flesh which was not changed from its own ousia. Nor again was he changed in his likeness from the ousia of God into the ousia of the flesh, he was flesh not in schema and in semblance of flesh but in the ousia of the flesh, of the ousia of the flesh; the ousia of the flesh was not changed into the ousia of the divinity and made God; he was made flesh and made man neither by confusion nor by mixture, and he was composed neither in one plain ousia and uniquely after his kind nor according to a natural composition after one kind of animal. Nor further was he naturally united by a natural union in hypostasis, and suffered and was in a natural union, [the natures] participating in the same things for the sake of the natural participation in the sufferings.
For every natural composition, which participates by participation in one passible and changeable nature, and is completed in regard to the natures by the very nature of God the Word, [is completed] not in a natural change but exists voluntarily, in such wise that the union of the natures takes place in his own prosôpon and not in his own nature; yet the natures remain in their properties, and there is one prosôpon without separation and without distinction, having made them its own for the prosôpon. The divinity has obtained a likeness by the ousia of the humanity and the humanity has obtained / a likeness by the ousia of the divinity, so that there is one prosôpon of the union and so that the [properties] of the |183 humanity belong unto God the Word and those of the divinity unto the humanity wherein it was made man [and so that] they were closely united unto one and the same with a view to the dispensation on our behalf, since men were in need of the divinity as for our renewal and for our formation anew and for [the renewal] of the likeness of the image which had been obliterated by us: but [men had need also] of the humanity which was renewed and took its likeness anew; for the humanity was congruous, so as to preserve the order which had existed. For he 48 who was honoured with the honour which he gave him and rendered not unto him his [due] honour for the honour which he received showed that he had lost the honour wherewith he had been honoured. For the one also was honoured as the other;48 and he accepted him not for himself but regarded him as an enemy. When the other 49 was in these [circumstances] he thus preserved himself, making use of the things belonging to the other as if of his own; he truly preserved the image of God and made it his own: that [it is] which is the image and the prosôpon. For this reason there was need both of the divinity to renew and to create and to give unto it[self] the likeness, so that [it might be changed] from its own type to the likeness of a servant; and there was also need of the humanity, so that the likeness of a servant which was taken should become the likeness of God and God the likeness of a servant and that the one should become the other and the other the one / in prosôpon, the one and the other remaining in their natures; and he preserves an obedience without sin because of his supreme obedience, and because of this he was given unto death for the salvation of all the world.
Not indeed as Arius and Apollinarius are those who foolishly say that God the Word in his grace accepted an earthly mode of life and an obedience unto death through his Incarnation. For this reason the Incarnation took place in the nature of man by a natural union, in such wise that the divinity was made man naturally instead of the soul and comported itself and suffered truly by natural perception in |184 order to be given unto death on behalf of all men and in respect of death to accept naturally the passibility of the soul in the union of the natural hypostasis, being torn asunder by force. For this reason, the latter have attributed the Incarnation of God the Word to one nature of man by a natural composition and to an incomplete man where the ousia of God the Word is instead of the things which are lacking from the flesh for the completion of the nature of the man, being commanded and performing the things which are comprised in the things commanded and enduring unwillingly the whole human conduct truly in observances difficult and painful and full of suffering, not doing what he willed through fear of transgressing the command, thirsting and hungering and fearing [with] human fear, willing / [with] a human will. And he is in the body, in all the things of the soul, making it in stature according to the formation and model of the sensibility, understanding, learning, being perfected in flesh in the nature of the soul by the natural and hypostatic union. And they make void the voluntary union in virtue of the prosôpon of the natures, establishing a natural and involuntary property in such wise that God the Word participates in the sufferings of the soul and of the body; the property [of participation] by force and not by will but natural[ly] by hypostasis is a union of the natural hypostasis naturally, so that the nature may become one which suffers.
But one ought to be neither Arian nor Manichaean, [according to] whom the Incarnation took place in schema or in the nature of God the Word and [who] refer all things to him in their doctrine: the manner of life and the sufferings and the death. For the nature of God the Word sinned not nor transgressed the commandment, so that God comported himself and observed all the commandments and died for us as one who was found without sin by reason of his manner of life. Through man [came] death and through man the resurrection. For this reason also it was needful for the whole man, for the purpose of the Incarnation of God the Word, being completed in body and in soul, to comport |185 himself in the nature of men and to observe the obedience and the moral life of human nature. And they long for and honour the name of the Mother of God, since they say that God has died. And, further, as for the Fathers who even unto death have withstood / the heretics who said 'Mother of God', they, however, have in no place indeed made use of these terms nor have they employed them in the documents of the Council. Was it because they knew not? Or because they hated it? Perhaps they had some such word in their thoughts whereby indeed to adhere to the divine teaching; and they heeded not the raving of [their] enemies and gave no opportunity to diminish the divinity by making it passible and mortal. For not he who is in name a theologian is to be called a theologian, but he who is a theologian in fact and in name does not leave alone those who are ready to make him made and created; it is not he who provides matter for blasphemy nor does he admit that God the Word surely came forth from the Virgin Mary, as one who exists and has existed before, and he declines the [doctrine] that he was born a man from her as one who has not existed but has come into being. [Art thou] as one who says that God the Word is in two natures, God and man, and that the man, when he was born, was in the nature of God the Word, or [that] he was changed into another ousia of man; and sayest thou thus that he was born? For indeed [in that case] he would not have been of man, but of God the Word would he have been, and [that] in such wise as to make use of the schema of a man but not of the ousia of a man. |186
[BOOK II. PART I.] 50
Yet some one perhaps will say, 'Thou hast read only the letter; but read / also thy blasphemies which [are found] in thine instructions; for the letter perhaps was written by thee with observance and caution as though it was written unto him,51 whereas thine instructions, which were delivered authoritatively by thee, clearly explain thy purpose. And for this reason even thy letter has not sufficed us, but we have also examined thine instructions in order that we might be accurately instructed in all things concerning thee. Nor even so have we claimed authority for ourselves nor have we behaved boldly, but we have placed before ourselves also the instructions of the Fathers, and we have compared [thine] with them and, having thus made our examination with all accuracy, we have also pronounced sentence, making use of the Fathers against whom thou hast fought. For in that thou hast been summoned and hast not hearkened, we have done all these things rightly; we have condemned thy letter, we have examined thine instructions and we have also studied the instructions of the Fathers as law. What then ought we to have done and have not done? But he,51 since indeed he was present, said and taught the things which he ought to say, whereas thou didst then decline [to come]; but now thou dost blame us, calumniating us. Why dost thou not rather accuse thyself than us? For we judge not things invisible but visible, and, if we have made omissions and if we have acted in ignorance, say now if things are such as they are; and if we were / not justly stirred up against thee, thou oughtest to have said it then and not now.'
But I have much whereof to convict them concerning those many things which they have done and many things also which they have omitted. But I pass this by now, lest any one |187 should say that he is now saying them because of the inadequacy [of his case]. But among those things which they have done against me, I convict them of having not justly condemned me, for they have told lies and have deceived many without having convicted me by examination, but according to what he 52 demanded. Now he demanded that the things should not be duly examined, lest the condemnation should be his, but he persuaded them all as God, as one who knows the secrets which are in the heart, and those who took part with him so presented him in the sight of many as [to seem] one who was the avenger of God, namely Christ, and he permitted me not to speak otherwise. And thereafter he carried every one with him against me, so that they were even unwilling to hear a word of mine, as one who, while declaring utterly void [the doctrine] that Christ is not man, spoke of Christ himself [as] man in ousia but God in equality of honour.53 But he anticipated me and spoke against me as making God himself a man, / as if he conceived of Christ as nothing else whatsoever than God the Word. And of constraint I directed my words against him, [asserting] that he is also man, and I proved it from the Divine Scriptures and from the teachings of the Fathers; and he further made use of this against me, as one who said that Christ is only man, having dissembled whatever I had said and confessed as regards that which one required him to confess and [which] he was unwilling to confess. For I rebuked him not for not having confessed that Christ is God, but because he did not say that Christ was man whole in nature and in moral life and that God the Word became not the nature of man but in the nature and in the manner of life of man, in such wise that God the Word became both of them in nature. And these things I shall prove from the things which were written when he took [extracts] from my teachings and from his teachings----whether they were thus the same as in the beginning or whether out of enmity towards me he has changed them into the opposite----and from the |188 inventions [spread abroad] by the device of the heretics, but in reality [by men] such as Arius. When he speaks against the ousia of God, he refers all the human qualities to the nature of God the Word by the hypostatic union, so that he suffers in natural sensibility all human sufferings.
/ 'From the Book of Nestorius, from the sixteenth chapter, concerning the Faith.' From which book of mine? From which sixteenth chapter? What is it that you sought out, when there was none to argue against you? But this concerns me not much, whether it be clear or whether it be in need of investigation. I desire, however, to persuade you all concerning the things whereby he has deceived many and drawn them away from the Faith, as if indeed there had been an examination touching the Records [of the Council], concerning things whereof they have accused me by anticipation without examination, which they have accepted [as] mine and his without examination. . . .
When Divine Scripture is about to tell of the birth of Christ from the Virgin Mary or [his] death, in no place does it appear that it puts 'God' but either 'Christ' or 'Son' or 'Lord', because these three are indicative of the two natures, now of this and now of that, now of the one and now of the other. For example, when the Book relates unto us the birth from the Virgin, whom docs it say? God sent his Son. It says not that God sent God the Word, but it takes a name which indicates both the natures. Since the Son is man and God, it says that God sent his Son and he was born of a woman; and therein thou seest that the name is put which indicates both the natures. Thou callest [him] Son according to the birth from the blessed Virgin, for the Virgin Mother / of Christ bare the Son of God. But since the Son of God is twofold in natures, she bare not the Son of God but she bare the humanity, which is the Son because of the Son who is united thereto. |189
I demand then of you to reflect accurately on these things; for I pass by the things which they have omitted, and they have clearly not preserved the coherence [of the argument]. And he accuses me of these things as if I were dividing Christ and making [him into] sundry parts, the divinity by itself and the humanity by itself, while making use of [the words] 'honour' and 'the equality of one' in such wise that they tend to bring together in love and not in the ousias things far apart. Thus he accuses me both as touching the divinity and as touching the humanity, [of saying] that God the Word is flesh and man but [that] the humanity is Son, Lord, and God, which has taken place through love and through coherence. This is his principal calumny, so that you, since you are judges concerning this, ought at all times to take heed that, if you find that I have imagined thus----condemn me and I too will condemn myself. And also I will beseech you to accept on tradition my condemnation, which is just, although I should have combated ten thousand times and cite convincing arguments to establish that I make use not of ousia but simply of love, / and that thereby he is called Lord and Christ and Son. But if I have said the contrary, let them prove that the union is [made] from nature and [that] the union belongs to nature. But, so far from a union in nature, I predicate one prosôpon, one equality, one honour, one authority, one lordship; and, in short, [I insert] these things also in virtue of the union of one prosôpon in all those things wherein the prosôpon of the one and of the other exists in nature; for the prosôpon of the natures is not one nature, but it is in nature and is not nature. For the Son of God the Father is by nature consubstantial with the Father and that which the Father is in his nature the Son also is; for that which the prosôpon is in nature, the Son, |190 the Father also is not; for the Son, who is in nature, is not the Father nor is the Father the Son, who is in the nature of the Father and is the Son by nature; for in prosôpon he is something else. But they are not one thing and another but one only in ousia and in nature, without division, without separation, without distinction in all the things which appertain by nature unto the prosôpon; but he is other by the prosôpon. But certainly as regards the unity of the divinity and of the humanity it was not so. In whatsoever the prosôpon is by its nature, in those very things it exists by union as in one prosôpon even in another ousia. For he has taken him for the prosôpon and not for the ousia nor / for the nature in such wise as to become consubstantial with the Father or another son without there being one and the same Son. For the prosôpon of the divinity is the humanity and the prosôpon of the humanity the divinity; for it is the one in nature and the other in the union. Investigate therefore and see what it is that he has written: 'Whoever predicates two natures in the Son and who predicates each, one of them by itself as in the remoteness of the distinction of God by himself and man by itself.' For if I had said merely God and man and not 'two natures, one Christ',