Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides (1925) pp.1-86. Book 1, Part 1.
The Book which is called
of Damascus
which was composed by
MY LORD NESTORIUS
2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . apostolic 3 he was known and famous in the labours of . . . .4 that your enthusiasm . . . . and in your fulness . . . . of earthly kings. So you undertook the labour of a long voyage from the East to the West to give light to the souls which were plunged in the darkness of the Egyptian error and intent 5 on the smoke of the blasphemy of Apollinarius; men, however, loved the darkness more than the light, since the eyes of their minds [were dimmed] by personal prejudice 6 . . . . for your pride . . . . only the darkness . . . . comprehended it; but, on the contrary, although .... they became old. They were not convinced; they were convicted of error and exposed. In this firm confidence in the might of your prayers mine Insignificance draws nigh to translate this book from Greek into Syriac; yet at least, the hope of the help of the living God being laid upon my tongue and confirmed in my thoughts, I therefore draw nigh to compose these eight chapters wherein the purpose of the book is made clear.
1. Concerning the aim of the book. The aim, therefore, which has been proposed by the writer for this writing is this: that, because many, thoughtlessly [led astray] by the multitude of men and by the desire of possessions, have fallen without examination into the slough of prejudice through hatred and through attachment to persons,7 from which . . . . not . . . .8 they have been condemned to that woe which was written by the prophet: Woe unto them that call evil good.9 My lord the blessed Nestorius / [set himself] to write this book to be a remedy to heal souls labouring |4 at this stumbling-block and plunged in the depth of impiety. For great, to speak as in truth, was the schism which the devil introduced into the Christian body of the holy Church, such as, if [it were] possible, to deceive even the elect, and for this reason this remedy has necessarily been required [to be] a corrective and a healing of the sickness of their minds. This is the aim of the book.
2. Concerning the utility thereof. I suppose that, before [the beginning of] the text, the spiritual utility of this book has been revealed to the reader from [its] aim. According to the punishment that comes upon the doers of injury who make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent, it gives indeed light to the eyes of the souls by teaching concerning that Christian dispensation which is in truth the more excellent theory concerning the divinity and the humanity. For through this we are both far removed from blasphemy about the divine nature and about the dispensation, and we are brought nigh unto knowledge through his manifold mercies. But, that our discourse may not be prolonged concerning the great assistance which we gain from this book, which succours us .... let us state in a few words the proof that he clears away the thorns .... and causes the seed to sprout in [place of] them.
3.....Much has been written concerning the manner of the union, but not even one of them [that have written about it] in this research makes it clear and establishes it in all truth; for they have delighted to make many distinctions, and there are others who have ventured to fuse [the natures] without examination. But this blessed [Nestorius] has undaunted delivered to us the knowledge thereof which is right.
4. The cause of its title. It is called indeed the Bazaar of Heracleides, for this is evident that it is the bazaar of spiritual knowledge; but it is not evident who Heracleides [was]. This is apposite to the illumination thereof, O reader; namely, Heracleides was a man honoured for his conduct and |5 esteemed for his knowledge, and he dwelled in the neighbourhood of Damascus. Now this man, in consequence of his superiority in these things, was famous even before [his] Majesty for his truthfulness and the justice of his words; who, being superior to all the passions which remove [men] far from the truth, did everything without partiality. It seemed [therefore good] to the writer to entitle the book with the title of this man's name, lest on account of his own name, in that many abhorred it, they should not / be willing to read [it] and be converted to the truth----[a book] which he sets as a judge between him[self] and the impious Cyril, speaking and defending themselves. But the book, nevertheless,. . . . . . . . . .
5.10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 as that of the dispensation and of the truth of the inquiry concerning the faith, and the fourth [kind of literature is that] of history; but this book is placed in the third class, that is of chapters concerning the faith, to be read after these two books which were made by the saint----and I mean Theopaschites and Tragoedia, which were composed by him as a defence against those who blamed him for having wanted a council to be held.
6. Into how many parts it is divided. Now in the first place he composed one dissertation wherein he speaks of all the heresies against the Church and of all the sects that exist concerning the faith of the three hundred and eighteen, arguing valiantly against those who are of greatest repute among them. And in the second part he assails Cyril, putting before [everything else] the inquiry touching the judges and the accusation of Cyril. And the third [contains] his own defence and the comparison of their letters; and with this he finishes the first book. But the second book he divides into two parts: the defence and the refutation of the blame for the things on account of which he was anathematized; and in the second |6 [part he recounts that which took place] from [the time] when he was anathematized until the end of his life.
7. Concerning the literary form of the book. The literary form of the book is .... and drawing inferences . . . .12
8. Under what 13 . . . 12 Now for the most part it is theoretical, because it is teaching us the complete knowledge of the dispensation touching our Lord Christ. With these [words] we will therefore stop our address / and approach the body of the book, requiring of those who come by chance upon what has been written by us that they blame us not as fault-finders, if haply there be [defects] in the composition of our discourse, but [that] they display a ready will and correct what is deficient in us. But if he conceives the reverse about us, for us the prayers of those who labour not with this sickness are sufficient; while the former will prosper in their own affairs, knowing that we have made no innovations at all. The editor is blameless.
[Here follow the titles of §§ 1-93, which are omitted as they are repeated in italics in the text.]
Finished are the titles of the chapters which are [given] in the preceding dissertation. And unto Yah [be] glory! Amen. |7
The beginning of the book, that is, the beginning of the Discourse of the Saint is from here.
THE BOOK OF
AND THE CANON OF ORTHODOXY
/ Preface. Now in my opinion whoever is about to investigate the truth in all seriousness ought not to compose his discourse with preconceived ideas, but should bring forward and explain everything which is opposed to the truth. As those who have a knowledge of gold show the distinction between good gold and that which is poor by a comparison of the one with the other in the sight of those who wish to accept what is alloyed as though it were pure, and even in preference to the pure (for many choose evil instead of good and falsehood instead of truth, in that both are equal to them, and their readiness is the greater to dispute and to defeat one another [in argument] than to establish the truth); so, since different people confess different opinions about Christ and hold fast / only to the name, we ought to set out the fictions of each one of these heresies concerning Christ, in order that the true faith may be known by comparison with [these] heresies, and that we may not be shaken, falling into the one or the other like men who do not see.
1. Wherefore the Heathen do not call Christ God ....
The heathen indeed are not content to name Christ God because of the suffering of the body and the cross and the death, and they consider that the miracles were [accepted] |8 in error. And they are not differentiated in name, because there is indeed no distinction between them, in that all of them are heathen.
2. Wherefore the Jews do not admit that he is Christ.
But the Jews do not confess that he is Christ because of the Cross and the death, in that they look for the advent of 15 Christ in all great glory and dominion.
3. Wherefore the Manichaeans do not admit that Christ is also man by nature, but only God.
The Manichaeans also, and those who have sprung up from them and among them, declare that he is not man but only God / because of the miracles; but as touching his human [qualities], they place them in schema and illusion and not in nature.
4. Wherefore the Paulinians 16 and the Photinians profess that our Lord Christ himself is only a man and that he is not also God.
But the Paulinians say that he is not God but only man because of the birth and death; but they attribute to him miracles as to any of the saints.
5. Wherefore the Arians profess that Christ is neither God whole and without needs, nor yet a man, but half God and half man.
The Arians confess that he is halt God and half man of soulless body and of created divinity; deeming him inferior to men in saying that there is not a soul in him and again deeming him inferior also to God in saying that he is not uncreate and without needs. But because of the incarnation and the birth of a woman and the death they consider that in his human [qualities] he became God, and they confuse his divine with his human [qualities], attributing his incarnation not to [his own] authority, but to an overruling command,17 saying that the union with the flesh resulted in one |9 nature and not / according to the use of the prosôpon of the dispensation on our behalf, but even as the soul and the body are bound [together] in one nature and [the soul] suffers sensibly the sufferings of the body whether it will or not, even though it has not of itself [the means] to accept them in that it has not a body in which to suffer. So also they say that God has only one nature in the body, suffering of necessity, whether he will or not, the sufferings of that nature which he took upon himself, as though he was not of the nature of the Father impassible and without needs. And this they say in order that they may not show him alone to be endowed with authority and command, so that even the command which he accepted is a punishment, and from a punishment which lies in his nature there is no escape; and, while he wished it not, he suffered the sufferings of the body by virtue of the sensibility of the nature: he hungered and thirsted and grew weary and feared and fled and died, and he rose not by his nature but by the authority and the might of the Father; and in short they say that he naturally endured whatsoever appertained to the sensible nature which he assumed.18
6. Which the sects are which agree with the Manichaeans.
. . . . In the midst of these there sprang up heresies, some of the Manichaeans and others of them from the Paulinians.
7. And which those are which agree with the Arians. |10
. . . 19 / 8. And wherein they are far removed from them, and in what again they adhere to them. They are far removed from them ....
9. Wherefore he has not written [the names of] the chiefs of these sects but only their dogmas.
But we wish to decline to [give] the names of their chiefs, so as not to prolong our discussion nor to be found to have omitted any point in the inquiry by first becoming entangled in [questions of] names.
10. What the statements are of those who say that by nature God the Word became flesh without having taken a body.
So they accused the Manichaeans of saying that the body of our Lord Christ was not truly a nature but a fiction and an illusion; but they tolerate miracles for the most part only of God, either as though it were impossible or even as though it were not decent that they should come about through the body.
Sophronius.20 It appertains to the omnipotent and infinite nature to be able to do everything; by its will then all other things are limited while it is not limited by anything, and it, as God, can do what cannot be [done] by any one else. For it cannot be [created] by a nature or a cause greater than itself, by which it possesses [the property] of being / and of not being God. And on account of this they fear to confess that the flesh truly came into being, lest in saying this they assume that God is the flesh 21; they say: How could this be, seeing that we confess that the body is God, for even that which is supposed to be flesh is the nature of God and is the same and nothing else?
11. How water which becomes ice is in its nature ice, |11 becoming that which it was not without receiving it from outside: so they say that God the Word became a body without having taken a body from outside.
As, after running and flowing water is frozen and becomes solid, we say that it is nothing but water which has become solid, so God truly became flesh though he was by his nature God; and he was in everything and he acted as God. And, as touching [the operations of] the flesh, he both did [them] also in truth, and he suffered also as flesh, and he became flesh in the womb, and in that he became [it] he both was born and grew up truly as flesh; and, after he had chosen to become it, he both hungered and thirsted and grew weary and suffered and was crucified truly, seeing that he was truly flesh. For as water, which cannot be broken because it is frozen, can in truth be broken / and truly accepts the suffering of the nature which it has become, so also God who became flesh in truth accepted truly all [the sufferings of] the nature which he became without having been expelled from his [own] nature.
12. As he was revealed in human form to Abraham and Jacob without having taken bodily frame from outside, so also was his incarnation.
As also he was seen of our fathers Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the rest of the saints in truth in visible nature, walking in him who walked and talking in him who talked, and eating and drinking in him who ate [so also was his incarnation]; for nothing is done of God through deception, but everything in truth and in nature; for he is the creator and the creator does nothing in schema and in illusion but in nature and in truth. But those things which were not in the nature of the creator are rightly said to be fiction and illusion, since they cannot be seen in [virtue of] their nature.
13. How they take the [words] 'truly and not in nature', and in how many ways 'truly' is said.
Nestorius. Truly then they say that God became flesh?
Sophronius says: We confess / that he became flesh truly but not by his nature, in that he who became, became [so] |12 in truth, and he is the nature but not in the nature. Indeed the flesh has not always existed, but, as flowing water when frozen has the nature of ice though it is not so in its nature but has become [so], thus also has God truly become flesh, and he is the nature of the flesh and not in his nature, in that he is not it always but he became [so] afterwards. For this is truly the Incarnation, in his nature to become flesh and man and not in illusion nor in schema nor in fiction without hypostasis, which truly would be no incarnation. He therefore who wants to suppose that it came about in fiction flees from the truth.
14. Wherein those who say [this] agree with the Manichaeans and wherein they are supposed to be distinct from them.
Has it then been revealed to thee wherein they are imagined [to be] the same and wherein they are supposed to have differences and abide by the same? And we ought to leave out the things which follow these, in order that we may not vainly suppress the truth in what is confessed.
Nestorius says: I for my part say: Let us not entirely neglect this point, although thou dost wish to run over it as one which is confessed. Since it has been so unscrupulously said as to / be accounted absurd by the hearers, I suppose that it is so also to thee. I will now explain this inquiry to any one who wishes in order that that which surely is supposed may come to explanation; for I do not see in it anything like or akin to anything [else]. For they are quite as far removed from one another as fiction is far from truth and [as] the body of fiction [is] from the body [of truth]. I see many who strongly insist on these [theories] as something [based] on the truth and ancient opinion. And for this reason I wish thee to examine them not cursorily but with all care, in order that the words of the faith may not be [treated] without investigation and lightly, but may be clear and known to all men, as things which are somehow defined by definitions and natural likenesses, and not like things which are represented by their shadows [and] resemble this or that so long as they |13 are figured in the same likeness.22 In what then dost thou say that they say the same thing, in that they are like the Manichaeans even in the things wherein they reprimand them?
Sophronius. Those who say this are not repudiated by them as though they hold our body in contempt, for both of them deny that the body was taken, but because they do not say 'in truth', but that the nature of the flesh is illusion. We see then also their readiness in these things, [in bringing forward] what plea is justly theirs, lest their blasphemies should extend beyond what is right.
/ 15. The refutation of those who say that God the Word became the ousia of the flesh without having taken a body.
Nestorius says: I say therefore generally [in reference to] what they say more [insistently] than those who depend on themselves, in order that they may not suppose that they have been condemned because they had not an advocate nor a helper: for you seem like to me to be fully convinced of what they say, and with many words you are capable of making their words prevail, so as to be able to make also the hearers believe that they are so. So then, constrain thou me also to speak unto them. Take each one of the words that has been spoken by me and thine also, and bid me give an answer to each one of them if I can. But I can, if God wills and gives me that which ought to be said [in order] to instruct according to my own ability. For I indeed am of no worth; but it is for the sake of those who knock and seek at the door of the truth, when it is the truth.
Sophronius. I say that what I have said is a proof of the divine power to be able to become truly flesh, being God. For he who says 'God in truth' attributes to him the [quality] of being able [to do] everything; for everything that he wishes he does. He wished indeed to become flesh and he became flesh, not the schema of the flesh / but the nature of the flesh, that is truly flesh. And thereby did he truly become incarnate, because he was man by nature and not by anything else; |14 and the Trinity was the Trinity without having accepted the addition of another ousia.23 Speak then in answer to these [assertions]: for they appear to use the common words and views in such a way that to dispute against them would be great boldness.
16. Concerning this: that he who has become body in ousia ceases to be God and omnipotent and to be as God.
Nestorius. In truth hast thou spoken, and we ought not to dispute what has been said in truth; for indeed [thou hast said] that God is all-powerful and does all that he wishes. And because of this his ousia became not flesh, for that which becomes flesh in its nature ceases to be able to do everything, in that it is flesh and not God.24 For it appertains to God to be able to effect everything, and not to the flesh; for it cannot do everything that it wishes. But in remaining God he wills not everything nor again does he wish not to become God so as to make himself not to be God. For he is God in that he exists always and can do everything that he wishes, and not in that / he is able to make himself not to be God; for he into whose ousia the nature of the flesh has entered makes himself not to be God, and further cannot do everything that he wishes.
Sophronius. He is not able to wish not to be what he is, but only to be that which he is not. And for this reason he became in truth man, which he was not; that is, he became truly flesh and man, but not in nature. For that which he is, he is in nature; but that which he became, he became it not indeed in nature, but truly he was that which he became.
17. Whether it is assumed by them that God the Word became truly a body in ousia or in illusion. |15
Nestorius. Dost thou attribute 'truly' as in ousia' or 'in illusion and in fiction'?
Sophronius. [Yes,] for both of them can truly be assumed.
18. Concerning this: If God the Word became flesh by nature and remained God as he was, then God the Word was two ousias naturally.
Nestorius. If that which is supposed to be in ousia is [so] ----thou sayest therefore that truly God is in ousia / and that he is according to the flesh----[then] after he became flesh there were two ousias, that in which he was by nature and that in which he became, the one of God and the other of the flesh.
Sophronius. There is not one ousia and another, but the same ousia of God, which became also the ousia of the flesh; and for this reason there is one ousia. Just as when water is running and when it is congealed there are not two ousias of water but one, which exists both in the liquid and in the solid state, although the solid is supposed [to be] the opposite of the running state, so also God: the same is body and without body, but in that he is body he is distinct from that which is without body.
19. Concerning this: that those things which have no distinction in nature and are distinct, are said to be distinct in schema.
Nestorius. I say therefore that they 25 have no distinction in nature; and things which have no distinction in nature and are distinguished are distinct in the prosôpon. But [to be distinguished] by the prosôpon without nature is a schema without hypostasis in another schema.26 Or dost thou say, like the Manichaeans, concerning the flesh and the things of the flesh that [they came about] in fiction and illusion, alleging that the incarnation took place by deception? What then dost thou |16 suppose is true? That we should concede / that the flesh issued naturally from the ousia of God and [that] the two ousias become one, and become that which it is impossible that they should become, that is, that he is not God but flesh, or that he became flesh in illusion?
Sophronius. Things which should properly be received with faith you accept with 'natural logic' and reduce them to impossibilities. Then you deprive us in truth of the Christian faith as heathens or Manichaeans who stumble at the Cross of Christ.
Nestorius. And who are those who like heathens and Manichaeans stumble at the Cross of Christ? Are they not those who accept his humanity as a change of the ousia? For it appertains to the heathen to say that God works by a change in [his] likenesses in any ousia whatsoever and in ... 1 into the nature of which he has been changed; and further they set aside the nature, [even] that which was in the beginning. And the Manichaeans also have taken [these opinions] from them and say that the change of likeness resulted in a schema without hypostasis. And you, in saying that, are following them, and you speak as those who stumble at the Cross of Christ.
20. Concerning this: that those who say that the Incarnation [ lay in] a change of likeness confess that Christ is neither God nor man.
/ You do not confess that he is God in ousia in that you have changed him into the ousia of the flesh, and he is no more a man naturally in that you have made him the ousia of God; and he is not God truly or God by nature, nor yet man truly and man by nature.
21. Concerning this: that he who comes into being by ousia from a preceding hylê is that which he has become and not that which he was before he became [so], as from a woman there came into being a statue of salt.
And it is nothing else than this, that, as a man of wood and stone is not truly called man, being the nature of wood and stone, so also neither is he who has become man from the |17 ousia of God called man by nature, so long as the divine nature subsists.
Sophronius. Then, O admirable man, from stones God can raise up children unto Abraham, and from a human bodily frame a pillar of salt, and from the earth a man; and nothing has prevented God nor yet is anything preventing him from doing that which he wishes, preventing him from becoming flesh.
Nestorius. First, then, investigate that which thou hast said. / Prove this to us, that God wishes it so. For the whole opinion of the world is agreed that God can do everything whatsoever he wishes. But again thou hast made use of proofs to the contrary. For he who becomes man from stone or from earth is the nature of man, in that he truly has become man, and not the nature of stone or of earth; and that which has become a pillar of salt from a human body is only the nature of whatever it has become. For things which are changed from their first ousia possess only that nature into which they have been changed. Therefore, if thou sayest that he became the nature of the flesh from the former hylê of the nature of God, he possesses that ousia which he has become without having been [it]. And it is of no importance that, as I have said, the ousia of man issues from a stone or from earth or from the seed of man, for that which is from a former ousia is changed into the nature which it has become; and if he is not changed, he does not at all become flesh by nature.
Sophronius. Divine Scripture solves for us this problem and does not permit us to be obstinate and to speak arbitrarily. For the staff of Moses, when it became truly a serpent, was a serpent as well as a staff; and the waters of the Nile, which became blood, became the nature of blood as well as of water. The ousia was the same although it was changed and for this reason / the children of Israel used water which had become blood as the nature of the water, and Moses [used] a serpent as a staff, in that it was truly both of them. For God sustains natures as he will. |18
22. Concerning this: that the waters of the Nile, when they were transformed into the ousia of blood, were only that ousia into which they were changed.
Nestorius. Again thou usest proofs like these because, as I suppose, thou art bewildered. There were then two ousias; for the water which was taken by the Hebrews was blood and water and that which was taken by the Egyptians was both in the same way. But if the former was only water and the latter only blood, then they were afterwards changed; for when they were taken, those which were taken were changed and further were something else, namely that which they became. How then is it not seen that that which it became by nature is by all means that which it has become and nothing else?
Sophronius. And behold! we see that Divine Scripture / has said that from the same ousia there are two things by nature, when that which has become man by nature from dust and earth and is man by nature, says: I am dust and ashes, if it be that thou mayest not revile Divine Scripture as though it has said things that are impossible, when it says of him who was man, by nature man, I am dust and ashes.
23. Concerning this: that one ousia, which appears in two ousias, is in the one ousia by nature but in the other in schema only.
Nestorius. If Divine Scripture, in reiterating these things about the nature of man, says [that], and [if] every man is the nature of man and nothing else, then also God the Word, who truly became man in nature, is dust and ashes in nature and is not of the ousia of God but of dust and ashes. If it [were the divine ousia] from which he became [man], it indicates----if indeed every man is this [ousia] 27 by nature while he is not this ousia but the ousia of God----[that] he was not man except in schema, as the Manichaeans say; and the statements also concerning him are in schema, that it may not be revealed to every one what he is; since one ousia, if it be recognized in two ousias, in the one / is ousia but [is] in the other in schema or in falsehood and in illusion. |19
Sophronius. So thou art attributing to God nothing more than that he should be God truly by nature and man by nature. It is the same nature in both of them, except that God is in man. And what is the Incarnation except that he became man by nature in the nature of man and that he spoke to us in our nature and that he endured naturally all the things that are ours, since for this thing indeed he became incarnate. But, further, you lay down that God did [this] by means of an intermediary 28 and the clothing of the schema, and absurdities such as this, in that he likened himself to tragedians and singers who somehow disguise themselves.
24. Concerning this: that he who can be visible by his nature has no need to become anything else in order to be visible in it.
Nestorius. But, O admirable man, it remains to compare the things which have been said by thee, [namely] that he appeared to us in his own nature without an intermediary. For what reason then hast thou said that he became the nature of man while remaining God? For he who appeared in his nature had no need to become another ousia in which to appear. If he appeared in his own, then thou sayest an impossible thing, that he was a mediator for him[self]. / For a mediator is not of one, but God is one, and consequently he cannot be God but the mediator of God.
25. Concerning this: that if, when God appeared to the saints, he appeared in a change of ousia, he therefore became incarnate in many ousias and not in one.
But further be persuaded to consider this: dost thou predicate of God one incarnation or many? What sayest thou of this? Then, since you say that he became the nature of man and was seen by Abraham and Jacob, and by each one of the saints in any schema whatever, in whatever schema he was, he |20 was naturally changed into the nature in which he was seen and in the last days he was changed into the nature of man in order to become incarnate. [Therefore] you predicate many incarnations, if indeed you agree that the Incarnation was to become incarnate in his nature. There are many changes through which he appeared in schema.
Sophronius. One incarnation do we predicate, [affirming] that at that time he truly became incarnate in his nature and appeared not to some men, as to Abraham and to Jacob, but to all men.
26. Concerning this: that if the word incarnation is employed of his appearing to all men and not to certain ones, as to the saints, / in that he appeared not to all men, he has not then indeed become incarnate at all.
Nestorius. [It follows] from this statement that he became not incarnate at all, in that he appeared not to all men, but [only] to those in Palestine. Why then was his incarnation partial and not for all men? Or is this what thou callest the Incarnation, that he became man in nature when he became incarnate for all time and appeared to all men?
27. Concerning what has been said about the Incarnation, in that he appeared in human nature.
If then the Incarnation was truly one and for all men and not for some, both for those who saw him and for those who saw him not, both for those who were [present] and for those of old, and if the Incarnation happened at the same time for all nature, we duly confess that God the Word was not the nature of man; for that is not the nature of man which is not the nature of man but of God. But in the ousia of man [he is] truly man, of the true nature of the true man in which he became incarnate altogether for all and which he made his prosôpon, and he was revealed in the things of men in comporting himself in the nature of man, being God in human nature. As a king in the schema of a soldier comports himself as a soldier and not as a king, / he is clad in the manner of a soldier against whatsoever has |21 need of correction, and it is said that in everything he is [so] clad, in that he has become the schema of one soldier, even that which clothes all the soldiers. So he became incarnate in one man for all men who are of the [same] nature, since he was in their nature, and in it he spoke to all men, as if he spoke in his own nature.
Sophronius. Then, when he was in the nature of man, it is said that he became incarnate; and through it and in it for all men and not rather on his own account, in that he became a man in truth and thereby was associated with a man who was of their very nature. And in truth incarnation took place in that by his own nature he became man and had no need of another nature.
Nestorius. The Incarnation indeed lay not in this, as a king, in using as a king the schema of soldierhood, becomes not a soldier indeed in the manner of a soldier; or perhaps it is] as if one were to say that in name only he becomes a soldier. Thus no more did God become incarnate, being not in human nature, but ....
Sophronius. What meanest thou by 'as a king' and 'as a soldier'?
Nestorius. Just as purple is the clothing of royalty but not of soldierhood and as the clothing of soldiers is the equipment which belongs to soldiers and not to kings, when / therefore a king wishes to put on the clothing, that is the equipment, of soldiers and to lay aside the purple of royalty, though [clothed] in the schema of a soldier of which he has made use without descending from his royal dignity, he then remains in majesty and authority over everything, even in this schema. But when he wishes to condescend and to become one of the soldiers, [wearing] the clothing of one of these soldiers, as if he had become a soldier, and not [that] of royalty, and concealing himself in it and talking with them on equal terms and persuading them without constraining them, he so performs the duties of royalty in the schema of a soldier. Thus also God, when he wished to become incarnate, if he had not |22 come in human nature but had become flesh in his own ousia, would not at all have become incarnate, in that he would have become incarnate for them in his own ousia and not in the nature of men.29
28. Concerning this: that he who by a change of ousia becomes man is of another nature and not of the nature of men.
He indeed who by a change of ousia becomes man is of another nature and not of the nature of men, in that he has another description of nature and not that of men; because he is God by nature, and the ousia of man is something else than the nature of God, as both of them exist by nature: not that he passed from the nature of God to the nature of man nor [that he was] something else than these; / he is by nature in both of them, but the man is only man and God is only God.
Sophronius. And he had not so received the incarnation, but [if it] took place in another human nature and not from the ousia of God, how does the Trinity not accept an addition in [its] nature, since it has accepted the ousia of another? Or how is this God of the nature of men and not of the ousia of God?
29. Concerning this: that, in that he has become man in the ousia of man and has not become man in [his own] ousia, neither in nature nor in prosôpon does he accept any addition.
Nestorius. As a king, who takes the clothes of soldierhood and is [so seen], has not become a double king, and as the king exists not apart from him, in that he is in him, and as, further, he is not revered apart from him in whom he is |23 known and whereby men also have known him and have been rescued; so also God used his own prosôpon to condescend in poverty and shame even unto the death on the Cross for our salvation; and by it he was raised up also to honour and glory and adoration. Wherein he was abased, in that also he was glorified. For the sign of salvation and victory is [a sign] of honour and not of abasement. Nor did he receive any addition of the ousia, because the ousias remain without change. For then there is / an addition in the ousia when it accepts another ousia, an equal ousia.30 But also he received not an addition to the prosôpon, in that he took his own prosôpon and not another, not for distinction but for the union of his own prosôpon and that in which he became incarnate; and also his prosôpon 31 is in him and not in another. For he is clothed in the likeness of a servant, and by it he emptied himself and has clothed it with his prosôpon and has exalted his name above all names. In the prosôpon then of the divinity is he adored and in no other, and in consequence of this the prosôpon is one and the name of the Son [is one].
30. Against those who say not that God was changed into the nature of a man, but that he changed the ousia of man into the ousia of God.32
Now for those who predicate the union in a change there follows in any case an addition in ousia as well as in prosôpon. The ousia indeed, which became flesh out of God the Word, was added to the Trinity, and it is evident that this prosôpon is a part detached and that it is conceived in detachment; or it became the nature of the flesh [emanating] from the ousia of God the Word in detachment, an addition took place .... Whence then is the origin of these things and in what are they distinct? Further, we have already said the same thing. |24 / Let us turn then to another sect which has sprung from these and is distinct from them and at the same time is confounded with them . . . .
Sophronius. They confess then that the body of our Lord is of his own flesh and therein they mock both at those who say that the flesh was in fiction and illusion and also at those who say that it was of the ousia of God the Word, saying . . . .
31. What words those use who say that the nature of the body was changed into the ousia of God the Word.33
He came not to change his unchangeable ousia and to make it the ousia of the flesh but to raise up our miserable and changeable [ousia] to his own unchangeable [ousia] and to make it divine and adorable, not of itself but in the union. And he deems it worthy of the union with his ousia, in order that it may become one ousia and one prosôpon of one ousia; and the smaller has been mixed with and deemed equal to the great and unchangeable divinity. Even as things which are cast into the fire are made equal to the ousia of the fire and become the nature of the fire which has made them what they have become, so also the divine nature has accepted the human nature and has mingled it in its own nature, and has changed it and made it therefore one without distinction in ousia and in prosôpon; / and neither in nature nor in prosôpon has there truly been an addition to the Trinity; and thus the Incarnation also took place and is conceived.
32. In what they are distinct from the Manichaeans and in what they confess [the same] as they.
[Nestorius]. These indeed are distinct from the Manichaeans in that they confess truly that the flesh is of our own nature and that it is not the schema of the flesh but the nature of the flesh. But some of the others who are with them [are distinguished] in that they confess that the flesh is true, not belonging to human nature but being divine and of the nature of the divinity. In this they are distinct and they strive |25 with all their might. And those who suppose that they serve the church confess that the flesh is of our own nature and ousia and so its distinction is known to all men. Generally then they dispute with all:34 with the Manichaeans concerning the [point] that there was an ousia and an ousia in truth; and with the others that it was not of the nature of God but of our fathers; but with the church in that they change the flesh into the ousia of God. Therefore in that they do not allow the flesh to remain in its own ousia, they resemble the Manichaeans by destroying the ousia of the flesh, but diverge from them in that they say that God was altogether in the hylê of the flesh. But in that they immediately change [the flesh] into the ousia of God the Word and are unwilling to / confess that God was with the human body, they agree with the same opinion and feeling when they exclude the ousia of the flesh as if it existed not, insisting either on deifying the ousia of the flesh or, so to say, on making the ousia of God become incarnate in the ousia of the flesh of the divinity.
33. That those who change the nature of man into the divine nature do not say that God became incarnate but that a man was deified.
He then who is not the human ousia of the flesh and is called flesh is so called by homonymy, even as a man of gold or silver or of another ousia of whatsoever material is not man by nature, since he has not the nature of man; and this is not the incarnation of God but the deification of man.
34. Concerning this: that those who change the nature of man into the divine ousia make an addition to the Trinity both in the nature and in the prosôpon.
If therefore the nature of the flesh which has been deified remains in the ousia in which it has been deified, how has the Trinity not accepted an addition in the ousia and in he prosôpon? / For there is nothing of human nature in the Trinity, neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit, |26 but it is alone; and in that which was not with it eternally but which has been [added] to it, it has received an addition. But how could an addition which is [made] to it not be an addition? And this also is another story and a Manichaean fable. But if that which was [added] became not what it was and the nature of men was harmed by the nature of the divinity as by fire, and [if] thereby the Trinity accepted not an addition, no more is this an incarnation, but the extinction of the Incarnation. For anything which results in the extinction of human nature and not in its preservation, is not named an incarnation but [is] as something which exists in relation to that which exists not.
35. Wherein those who change the nature of the body into the ousia of God agree with those who change the ousia of God into the nature of the body.
And herein they agree with those who change the divine ousia into human nature; for that is the same thing, that God becomes the ousia in the nature [of the body] or that he changes the ousia in man into the nature of God.
36. Concerning this: that it is not possible that the nature of God should be changed into bodily frame either by mixture or by change, nor yet that the body should be changed into the ousia of God the Word.
/ He indeed who changes the divine nature into human nature brings about its suppression, and he who changes human nature into the divine nature makes mock of it and makes of it a nature unmade, in declaring a nature [which is] made unmade, which cannot be. For of nothing the maker easily assembles the ousia and makes the ousia which is made by change of that which is made. But it is impossible that [he should make] that which is unmade 35 and that which was not from that which was, as thou sayest; or else surely thou dost deprive it of being ousia. But there are no means whereby the ousia which was should cease to be nor whereby that which was made should become unmade, nor again [are there any means whereby] that which is not should become an eternal |27 nature and be with the eternal; nor again whereby a nature which was not should come into being nor whereby that which is not eternal should become eternal either by a change of nature or by confusion or by mixture; or whereby from the ousia of the eternal [should come into being] that which is not eternally. For either by mixture or by confusion of the two ousias a change of ousia took place [making] for one nature which should result from the mixture of both of them; or one ousia of them was changed into the other. It is not possible that the unmade [should become] made and the eternal temporary and the temporary eternal and that the created [should become] uncreated by nature; that that which is uncreated and which has not come into being and is eternal should thereby become / made and temporary, as if it became part of a nature made and temporary; nor that there should come forth a nature unmade and eternal from a nature made and temporary to become an ousia unmade and eternal; for such things are not possible nor conceivable. For how can anyone conceive that the Maker, seeing that he is in every way other than that which is made, should change into his being the other which has been made? For in that he is the Maker, he is unchangeable; since he works by an unchangeable nature, and when he is not that which he is he works not. In effect either he is what he is by nature, eternally God, and became not another nature while remaining in the ousia of God; or, not being the nature of God, he was made and is not the Maker, which is absurd and impossible.
37. Concerning this: that those also who say that the nature has been changed in part, and not all of it, say [what is] impossible.
Although indeed anyone should grant that in part he changed his nature and in part was not changed, he who makes has in every way the lordship over him who is made and over him who is changed; for there is nothing which is more lordly in its [whole] nature than [in] a part of it, but whatever all of it is the same also / is in its part. Even if then we accept absurdities as well-pleasing, a part being mentioned in speaking of a nature simple and indivisible, not |28 even so does one avoid what is absurd and not eternal For wherein does that which is not the ousia come to be in the ousia? For in so far as he is God he is unchangeable, but when he is not God he does nothing. How then is that said which cannot even be conceived: that God is changed into another ousia or again that another ousia is changed into the ousia of God and becomes that which is the Maker, that is, that what was unmade and was not [became] that which was made and came into being? These [statements] are in fact contradictory. How then do the things which have been said appear to thee? Have both parties been sufficiently treated, those who stand by the statements of those men and [those also] who are of ours? Or is there still something lacking which they ought to establish? Thou oughtest to fill it in, as though thou speakest on their behalf. For if anything touching the faith has been omitted in their statements, we shall lend it our aid with all our might, in order that their discomfiture may be exceeding great, since they are supposed by many to be unshaken and unaltered, although they are not.
Sophronius. I suppose then that the statements of both parties have been well handled and there remains nothing for us [to do], and therefore / indeed I rejoice in an hour of silence, and I beseech thee also to desist; for I have no good or useful objection that can be raised against thee, except one word only which people confidently use in regard to what pleases them.
Nestorius. What [is that]? Speak confidently, undaunted, using manfully and adequately every one of their arguments even as they themselves [do]; for no one who is hesitating in his thoughts can strive manfully.
Sophronius. So must it be in regard to the union even as the bread, when it becomes body, is one and the same body and not two. And one also is that which is conceived as the nature of the body, and further it is no more conceived in its former nature but as itself in that which it has become; wherefore it is not that which it appears [to be] but that |29 which it is conceived [to be]. And consequently also the Apostle decreed a fearful punishment against those who supposed the body of our Lord to be common, when he said thus: If he who has violated the law of Moses dies without pity out of the mouth of two or three [witnesses], how much more is he counted worthy of a severe punishment who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has considered common the blood of his testament, whereby he was sanctified, and has scorned the spirit of grace. This he said / against those who regarded the blood and body of God as the blood and body of man, and who erred in supposing that the body and blood whereby we have been sanctified are common; and the spirit of grace they have scorned in confessing not that the Son of God is consubstantial with God and the Father, but that the body of the Son of God is the body of a man, whose body and blood he has raised to his own ousia and has not let them be upbraided and taunted with a human ousia but has [caused them] to be adored in his own ousia.
38. Concerning this: that the Apostle speaks also against those who consider the blood and body of Christ profane and impure, not as though to imply that it 36 has certainly been changed into the nature of God the Word but as though they refuse to call the blood blood and to call the body body and [because they assert] that they are not able to save us, as the Manichaeans say.
Nestorius. Is this proof, concerning which thou keepest silence, of small importance in thy opinion? They indeed insist much on it, and thou oughtest not to bring it forward negligently. It had indeed escaped my notice in the manner of those who see the mote but not the beam. [Now that] it has been revealed, let us examine it from all sides, [to see] how it is and how / Divine Scripture wishes us to understand [it], so that we incur not blame just and divine.
39. In how many ways the word which in Greek is called koinon is used.
And first, let us speak of the use of the word called koinon in Greek. Now in meaning it refers to [what is] polluted, |30 and [what is] common and to participation. [It refers to] what is polluted, as hel said in the Acts: Never have I eaten that which is impure and polluted 37; but to what is common in whatsoever they----the Apostles----had belonged to them in common; but to participation in the cup of thanksgiving which we bless, is it not a participation, in the blood of Christ? And the bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? And again: He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one; wherefore he was not ashamed to call them brothers, saying: I shall proclaim thy name to my brothers and in the midst of the assembly I shall glorify thee; and again: I shall put my trust in him; and again: Here am I and the children which God has given me .... Since then the children have participated in the flesh and the blood, he also has participated likewise in the same things? Since therefore this term is employed of a man who is impure and polluted and also of that which is common and further of participation, [did he 38 so use] this expression which covers three uses / and does not distinguish against what opinion the apostle meant it, when he laid it down that for this reason men trample underfoot the Son of God? Which of these three [interpretations] is accurate?
Sophronius. [He employed this word] against those who think that he died not for us but was in his own death as all men, and that both living and dead he was an ordinary man and that he possessed nothing more [than ordinary men], for they know not that he is the Son of God and that his blood is the blood of God and not that of a man.
Nestorius. Do you say this, that the body and blood are the ousia of the Son of God, or that the body and blood are of human ousia and have become the nature of the divinity? For, as you say, the flesh is not flesh, because it has been changed by him into the ousia of God the Word by means of a mixture and a union. And it [is what] the blessed Apostle meant when he mocked exceedingly at |31 those who confessed his body and his blood and [yet] supposed it impure.
Sophronius. He said not this against those who by no means confess the body in truth, nor against those who change or corrupt the ousia as by fire or [who suppose] the ousia of the flesh impure through mixture, but against those who confess the flesh and the blood and [yet] think that it is common. /
Nestorius. As it seems to me, the opinion to which thou dost cling is not more in harmony with these, but with those who change the ousia into the nature of flesh and blood without thinking that the ousia of the flesh and blood of our Lord is common, but that it is of God the Word and not of men.
Sophronius. Then one ought not to return answer to these but a reprimand for having used contradictory expressions. But speak of those who supposed that the flesh was of the ousia of God.
40. How one ought to understand: 'He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one.'
Nestorius. Thou art mistaken, for the Apostle said not two contradictory things. For he wished to say that he who sanctifies and he who is sanctified are of one and brothers of one and not of different ousias, and his children as those who are sprung from him. Thus he said: For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of them of one? The blood then whereby we have been sanctified and which has been poured out on our behalf is of one; thereby also are we his brothers, as if of one father, but again also his sons, [as those who] possess one ousia, wherein we are also sons. In God the Word in fact there is not anything whereby he and we should be of one, / or whereby we should be called sons in his likeness, that for this [reason] we should become his brothers, in that we have no reason for such a likeness, as those who are brothers and of one father; nor further that we should become his sons, because we do not participate |32 in the same ousia. So then the blessed Paul said this, accusing those who are not persuaded to admit that the blood of men can sanctify and who suppose that it is impure as being the blood of a man and consequently regard as impure the blood of the covenant whereby we have been sanctified and rescued from death through the true death of a man. And thereby he tells us that we are of one, and thereby he calls us his brothers on account of the nature which is born of our fathers and died for us; for in that he was born he is of our race and we are all of one; but, in that he died on our behalf and has renewed the future state by immortality and incorruptibility, we are his sons; for he is the father of the world to come. Are we not all in consequence of that one body in one? For we all receive from this same one bread, whereby he makes us participate in the same blood and flesh, which are of the same nature, and we participate with him in the resurrection from the dead and in immortality. So we are to him his body just as is the bread; even indeed as the bread is one, / so are we all one body, for we all receive of this one bread.
41. Concerning this: that, if in Christ the ousia of the body was changed into the divinity, we also are changed into the ousia of God the Word; for we are all one bodily frame and one body.
We then also have been changed into his flesh and we are his body, and we are therefore not the body and blood of man, but his own body. The bread indeed is one, wherefore we all are one body, in that we are the body of Christ. You indeed are the body of Christ and members in your parts. Is the bread the body of Christ by a change of ousia? Or are we his body by a change? Or is the body of the Son of God one with God the Word by nature? But if they are one by nature, there is then no more bread nor again is there [any] body. But to those who thought that the body of the Son of God was polluted the Apostle says that |33 they are trampling underfoot the Son of God in rejecting him and denying him, against those who confess that the body is of our own nature and who regard it as polluted, although [they admit] that it was given for the salvation of us all because it was pure and unstained and saved from sins, and that for all our sins he accepted death and became as it were an offering unto God. For if we are not of one, we are naturally not called / his brothers nor his sons, nor are we any more his bread and his bodily frame; but, if all these belong truly to Christ, we are his body and consubstantial with him, in that we are that which is also the ousia of his body. And these things are also known through the words of the dogma of those who are changed now into this and now into that, because they possess not the truth.39
42. Against those who say that the union took place in the ousia of God the Word and that the nature of the divinity effected the transfusion of the nature of humanity.
From these again another sect has arisen who in some things are like them and in others are distinct from them, while they indeed agree with the Arians but also dissent from them; but in another way they are clothed in the prosôpon of the orthodox, whereby again they keep aloof from the one but so fall into the weakness of the first. They confess indeed that the body of our Lord is of the nature of our fathers and therein they are to be likened to those against whom we have spoken a little before; but they are distinct from them in denying the change of the flesh into the ousia of the divinity and in accepting the union without mixture and without confusion. But they incline towards the Arians in saying that the union resulted in one nature, not by change |34 of ousia but by combination and natural composition, as the soul and the body are combined in one nature, and by natural force the soul naturally suffers the sufferings of the body, / and the body the sufferings of the soul. That which each one of them by its nature cannot accept, such as the sufferings and the activity, it has accepted in the natural combination by mixture, by one sensibility. They place the union not in revelation 40 and in use, but by natural force in a passible nature, and they say that the union took place for this [purpose], that they 41 should naturally participate in their activities and in their sufferings. But, further, they are distinct from the Arians in saying that there was an animal body and soul and that God the Word is consubstantial with the Father and that he naturally endured union with the nature, not by command but of his own will in order to accept on our behalf all the sufferings of human nature, not in any other nature but in his own.
The Apollinarians. He has not surely made a pretence of our salvation in schema, either by a change of likeness or by a change of ousia in such a way as not to endure sufferings in his own nature; for this would be [the action] of him who wished not to become incarnate because by nature he became man. But if, since he wished not or since he could not enter where there was an intelligence, he united himself by a natural union to the sensitive and vegetative soul and to the body so as to complete and fulfil the nature of man [and so as, starting] from impassibility and immortality, to suffer natural suffering naturally and to be delivered unto death naturally in the nature of the soul and of the body, from no / nature he became and he is the nature of a man.42 He had not been in a man but he was man truly, in that he was with the nature of man |35 and he was bound to the soul and the body in order to complete [them] and not to dwell [in them]. For he who dwells [in anything] is far removed from that in which he dwells and accepts neither the nature nor the name of that wherein he dwells. Consequently, seeing that he dwelt in all the saints, he is not said to have become incarnate and become man in any one of them, but only when he became truly man for the natural completion of the nature of man by constituting himself the intelligence ruling naturally in the body and the soul, and when he constituted a natural union. And therefore it was united without intelligence that he might not be supposed as it were to have dwelt in man, but to have been united for the completion of the human nature. That then is their [view]. But those who wish rather to adhere to the orthodox attribute to him a body and an intelligent soul and agree to the union in one nature for the completion of the nature. And as the body and the soul and the intelligence are the completion of the nature of man, so also the union of God the Word took place with the body and an intelligent soul for the completion of the nature. He became man in truth, since he had according to nature all [the properties] of a man; he was not the half of a complete [man], that is flesh only, or animal soul, for it is not in this that he became man, / in possessing nothing of man except animal bodily frame and soul without reason, but [in possessing] a rational soul and a rational body and a rational life, and not [all these] without reason. For all that is combined for the completion of nature participates in the same things and in one nature, since it participates both in suffering and in activity.
43. Against those who confess a body endowed with soul and a soul endowed with intelligence but [say that] the union of the divinity resulted in one nature by composition.
Nestorius. According to the former the statements of the latter are well said, that neither the animal soul nor again the bodily frame of the irrational soul are the body of a man; nor consequently is he----neither soul, nor body, nor divinity----a man who has nothing of a man; for the nature of man is not |36 constituted of an animal soul and divinity and body. How then did he become man by the combination of things which make not the nature of a man, unless perhaps he became by fusion another nature apart from our own nature? But nothing like that has taken place in anything nor in all natures which have aforetime existed; and now [forsooth], after all creation has been completed another nature has come into being apart from those which were when it existed not!
/ 44. Concerning this: that if the union of the divinity and the humanity resulted in one nature, that one nature is neither that of God nor that of man, but another nature which is foreign to all natures.
But generally the same things are said [in answer] also to these: that by man we understand and mean him who from the body and the rational and intelligent soul has become the nature of man in the combination of nature, but not him who from divinity and a rational soul and a human body has become man by a combination of natures; for this is impossible. For human nature is definite, and [the things] which he possesses who is man in ousia and in nature ought to be his who comes to be in the nature of man neither more nor less; since the [properties] of the nature are definite. Either then [he became] man in such a way that the union of God the Word with the body and the soul took place not with a view to [forming] one nature but in order to serve for the dispensation on our behalf; or he had the [properties] of another nature apart from that of men and of God, which is an animate body and God the Word, which nature is neither that of a man nor that of God, but a new nature, to which belongs [something] of all our natures.
45. Concerning this: that if the union of God / the Word with the body resulted in one nature, he is not to be conceived apart from the flesh, in that it is [possible] for him to become this in his nature.
God therefore is no more of an impassible but of a passible nature, being conceived as of that which he became by the natural union, while he became anew that which was newly created. |37 If then God the Word, who is consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, has been united in a natural union, and thereby has that which he is, he exists not apart from it, since in it and by it he is united and unites himself, like the body and the soul which are united in one nature of a man, and are not to be conceived apart from their nature----but the body [is] in the soul and the soul in the body together with their sufferings and their operations, the body being natural and [the soul 43] not in a voluntary habitation, [both] mutually receiving and giving in a perceptible manner by natural mixture and fusion for the fusing of the nature.
46. Concerning this: that in the union two natures are not conceived as one nature.
What after all is the nature in this natural union which you predicate? Is it that of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, an impassible nature, immortal, eternal and without needs? Or is it [a nature] mortal and passible and with needs, which came into being yesterday and to-day and which belongs neither to men nor to God nor to any other nature, but is mixed from two natures for the completion of one nature? If then they say / that it is the ousia of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit united by a natural union, this is not a natural union with the flesh but a voluntary, since they are united for the use of the prosôpon and not of the nature; since [those things] which are united in one nature are not united voluntarily but by the power of the Creator, who combines them and brings them to a fusion in such a way that whatever is not of and belongs not to each of them obtains it in virtue of a natural and not a voluntary union, by which it has been united in one nature. By whom then are these united in nature? It is evident that that which has been united has been so [united] by the creator of the nature. If anyone says that anything is united of itself, I do not suppose that it is right; for when the natures are united in the ousias in one nature, it possesses also a certain kind of change of ousia and it is necessary that that nature which has been united should |38 be bound in virtue of an equality of nature and not by the will.44
47. Concerning this: that natures which are united voluntarily are not said to be united naturally, but prosôpically.
The natures indeed which are united voluntarily acquire the union with a view to [forming] not one nature but a voluntary union of the prosôpon of the dispensation. If then they say that the union of the natures resulted in one nature, even though we ourselves should concede to them that it took place voluntarily, / yet, after it took place, the union existed not voluntarily in that the natures have acquired it. And it suffers as being united, whether it will or not, and accepts the sufferings of that nature to which it has been united, since it is defined by it and not by impassibility nor by immortality nor by infinity. For the definition and circumscription of all nature is that in which it has to be. And if it has been united to a nature, it is in that [nature] that it has to be and also [has to be] as that which exists by the nature. And from this it is established that both the Father and the Holy Spirit, who are of the same nature, are of a passible and created nature; for that which the Son has accepted in his nature, the Father also can accept. For it is impossible that he 45 should be able to accept in nature that which he 46 is not capable of accepting. If the Son accepted in virtue of his acceptance of the union of this nature, whereas the former did not accept, how are they of one nature who are opposed to one another in accepting or not accepting? And after a change of nature you are compelled to take the word 'union' according to the interpretation of the Arians,47 that the nature of the Son has been united by the Creator of nature, in the same manner as he who created and made the soul and the body also united them; for the very work of creation also requires that he should unite |39 the soul / and the body in one nature, in that to him also belongs the realization of the creation of each one of them.
48. Concerning this: that a natural union is the work of a second creation.
The union in fact in one nature of natures which have been united is the work of a second creation. That which is not of itself naturally united to each one of them receives this from a second genesis. For indeed to hunger and to thirst and to perceive sensations by the senses belongs not to the body of itself, nor to the soul of itself, but comes to them from a second genesis. So if there had also been a union of nature with the soul and the body for God the Word, in such a way that he received from the union of nature that which he had not in his nature of itself: hunger and thirst and weariness and strife and fear and death, in the one genesis indeed of a second creation [would be found] the first creation both of his ousia and necessarily also [of] the Creator's, if he endured these things not in fiction but naturally. And vainly do you give the name of consubstantial to one from whom you were compelled anew to take it away and were compelled to join either the Arians or Manichaeans in such a way as to admit either that he suffered not naturally any one of these things or only in illusion and in fiction. Or, by granting that in nature naturally, by a passible sensibility, / he accepted sufferings, you evacuate him of impassibility and of immortality, and of being consubstantial with the Father, because he acquired a change of nature, seeing that [the Son] accepts and [the Father] accepts not [these sufferings]. Or if he had not had one change of ousia in his nature, while that of the Father and the Holy Spirit was without needs and accepted neither suffering nor death, he would have been deprived of being God in that he was not in everything of an ousia without needs.
49. Concerning this: that things united by nature endure natural sufferings naturally and not voluntarily.
By diminution indeed the nature without needs and impassible became a passible and needful nature. In the same |40 way as one who by his own will does away with his hand or his foot or his eye no longer possesses them after they have been done away, in that he has truly put them away, so he also who by his own will does away with his immortality and impassibility for the completion of a passible and needful nature no longer has that impassibility and freedom from needs which were formerly his, in that he was made equal to a passible nature until he obtained anew impassibility by command [apart] from nature together with the natural union, since after the resurrection from the dead he has been in a nature which is immortal and impassible, but not in virtue of his own nature which [was his] before he became a mortal man by a natural union; since / he accepted naturally all the properties of nature, he [accepted] also obedience unto death, even death upon the cross and also an uplifting of exaltation above which there is no glory, and the adoption of a name which by grace is above all names, before which every knee in heaven, and on the earth, and beneath the earth bows, for the glory of God the Father to whom he was subjected and fulfilled all obedience. He did not empty himself nor yet was he the similar to the Father nor received he anew the similitude from the Father. For indeed he exalted himself and emptied himself to [the state of] mortal nature and he became that nature, and that which he had in his nature he took by grace. And from a nature unmade he became a nature made and created by addition and diminution of natural power; and the ousia which accepted neither sufferings nor death became mortal and passible, and he died through weakness and through the power of God he became alive, in that he became a weak nature and endured the painful sufferings thereof, being in pain and suffering in consequence of the equality in nature of the soul and of the body, being torn apart and isolated from his nature; under constraint he was torn out of his nature and consequently he was not even corrupted by the parting of the soul from the body. As the body endures the suffering of |41 death and is violently torn apart from any equality [with the soul] and from the natural / union by division, so also God the Word who was united for the completion of the natural union must endure naturally all the natural sufferings of death; therefore also life and death belong in common to those who are united in nature. He then who concedes this concedes also the rest, whether he will or not, even if he says a thousand times that he is impassible in his nature; for he suffered in the nature which he became, whether of flesh or of man or of any thing else that we might mention. And let us not say that his nature does not accept sufferings, except that perhaps, as those who are able to die or not to die are not by their nature immortal, so also might we say of God the Word; for therein is God the Word conceived in his nature and he has nothing more. If thou sayest that his nature is not subject to death, in no way is it subject to natural death; the union took place not for nature but for the use of man according to the dispensation, so that the Incarnation of God the Word, who is impassible and immortal, took place. What then do they say? I ought fully to treat two things: to set out their objections and to resolve them as best I can, since thou hast persuaded me to do both.
Sophronius. They say in fact as follows: how is he called man heavenly and spiritual, if he is neither spiritual nor heavenly? / He who has been united to human nature is God the Word by nature as God; and it is said: As the first man was of the dust of the earth, so also is the Lord from heaven; and: The first man became a living soul and the second man became a quickening spirit. And not apart from the ousia of the body of dust is he called a man of dust nor again without the soul is he called animate, but in consequence of their combination, which results in the nature of man, is he so called apart from the ousia of the heavenly and the spiritual, which has been united by nature to the nature of man. |42
50. Concerning this: that if the second man, the Lord from 'heaven,' is adopted of God the Word, then men are heavenly since they are of the nature of God the Word; for ' as is the heavenly', so also are the heavenly ones '.
Nestorius. Hear then also this, when you read the rest of the book, that as is the heavenly, so also are the heavenly ones, and as we have clothed ourselves in the likeness of one of dust, so also [are we] of dust, because all possess the same nature, and as he is heavenly, so also [are they] heavenly, because they have the same nature as the heavenly; [so] also all of us, who wait to become [so] in this sort. We men are of the ousia of God the Word, since our soul and our body have been combined for the completion of such a nature, and each of us becomes that which God the Word is by nature; / for as is the heavenly, so also are the heavenly ones, and to the extent that they are heavenly men, they are Gods the Words, in that each single one of them is both of God the Word and of the human soul and body, not infinite in his nature, although in each one he exists [in some sense] infinitely except inasmuch as the nature of each single one of them is finite and apart from it his existence cannot be conceived. If you so understand the Lord is from heaven and the second man was a quickening spirit, how do you imagine the rest of it: as we have been clothed in the likeness of him of dust, so shall we be clothed in that of him from heaven? How then have we been clothed in the likeness of him from dust? What do we become? And in what have we been clothed? Have we become heavenly and spiritual men, [formed] of the soul and the body and of God the Word? Or has the spirit without body and without soul been clothed in the likeness of him of dust, [who is] body and soul and who urges us to become the likeness of spiritual beings, that is, spirits without soul and without body, although indeed it is not our affair but [that of our] Maker? If this is according to the truth, how does he urge us to be clothed in the likeness of spiritual man, that is, [of] Christ, as though Christ were without soul |43 and without body? And how then is he man, if he has nothing of man? Or how is Christ called spiritual / man, he who has been constituted the ousia of God the Word to [become] the nature of man, [that is], of soul and body? And we shall come to be without bodily frame and without soul in becoming as he is, having nothing that he has not. But this cannot be so. It follows that those who confess that the nature of God cohered for the completion of human nature say these and such like absurdities, for a passible and created nature is the result of a natural union with a passible and created nature. And therefore they fall either into the opinion of the Arians, who say that by nature God the Word became the nature of a passible and mortal man, in enduring sufferings sensibly, or into the opinion of those who say that he became body and soul in fiction, or into [that of] both of them in inclining now to the one and now to the other side, because they suppose by such inclining to escape from these absurdities.
51 Against those who suppose that Christ was a mere man.
So far the argument has been against these. Let us look then also at the heresies of those who dissent and confess that Christ was only a man, [and see] wherein they are distinct and in what they resemble those above, in order that we may distinguish and demonstrate their heresies, so that we may not, on account of what has been wrongly said, again escape / that which has been fairly said and so that further we may not without distinction accept that which has been wrongly said. For to confess that Christ is man both by nature and in truth appertains unto the truth and is attested by the truth; and therein is there no one who blames them. But in that they shun his divinity, though it exists in truth and in nature, they are to be repudiated, since they suppress the Incarnation of God the Word.
52. Concerning those who confess God the Word only in name.
The Sabellians. Among them indeed are also those who deny that God the Word exists in ousia and who say only |44 that the name 'God the Word' is that command: He spoke and it became. But thus also they predicate the Father and the Holy Spirit in name alone; so in short they agree rather with the Jews than with Christians.
53. Concerning those who say that God the Word exists indeed by nature, but that he has not been united by nature but in schema and that there are two sons.
The Paulinians. But others reprove them, confessing that God the Word is a nature or a hypostasis, as also are the Father and the Holy Spirit. Concerning his incarnation they agree not with the orthodox, but they approach those / who say that Christ was only a man and that he comported himself in subjection to the law as one of the saints, and that by command he observed all the commandments and that by supreme observance he was without sin as a man, and thereby he is more excellent than all men, either because, after having been without sin, he appeared freed from death and rightly accepted immortality which is established for the honour of those who observe the law without sin, or because, having so comported himself in all these things, after he [had] observed all the commandments without fault, he accepted for himself to die for us and, in consequence of that greatness of his obedience, he received the honour and the name of Son by grace. He is not God the Word but he who has so comported himself and observed all the commandments. So they say.
The Paulinians: What purpose indeed could it have served that God the Word also should associate himself with him in operations and should operate with him as though he could not of himself observe the commandments? And what is that which has been preserved without sin? Or what is the victory? It is not a high merit if, being unable to be victorious, he had need of assistance so as with assistance to be victorious, since he [himself] could not do it [otherwise]. For it is not to him that victory comes but to him that assisted him and was invincible. What then is a combat for God? |45 And what is the merit? That he who asks [assistance] of anyone should be the saviour! / For what is he who sees that there is [nothing in common] between him and the prince who comes and finds nothing in him, when it is discovered that the [divine] nature has assisted him? And before whom is he judged, when he who judges and is judged is the judge? Who is it who has accepted the offering for all men, when it is he who accepts and he who is offered? Who is it who propitiates and who is propitiated, when he is in both of them? [Who indeed], unless perhaps they break up one sovereignty into two which are not like one another, and say that the Father was angry and the Son propitiated him when he was enraged, as they have learnt from the fables of the Manichaeans, who have foolishly invented them; or [unless] perhaps the Father manifested his anger in schema against those who erred and appointed a term hypocritically by showing himself angry and able to be propitiated as by the Word?
Now in another way there adhere also to that which the [followers] of Arius imagine [men] who say that God has not been propitiated in any other way than by the death of Christ, who from in the beginning was God and he was God. What urgent need then was there for this foolish invention? For he who was in him did this not by the death of another; further also it is not justice that he who is not of one nature should accept death for another nature for the remission of the debt; nor also has a true remission been shown, but a schema. / And they say that these things have been divided between two sons in such a way that some befit the one and others the other, in order that there may be neither contradictions nor schematisms in all the words that there are. There is one divinity and one lordship and one authority of the Father and the Son, who accept not any such schema. These things and such like they say, insisting on their views, and call Christ and the Son double in prosôpa as well as in |46 hypostases----in like manner as the saints have received the indwelling of God----and they speak also of his image in the same way.
Nestorius. Let us speak then also with every one of those who, decieved and deceivers, deny the incarnation which took place for God the Word. And first let us use against them their very own words. Thou then lay before me their words, those which are persuasive and are of use in persuading many; and combat manfully for them, so that no cause at all for excuse may be granted unto them. Since then there is only one divinity and lordship and authority and knowledge and opinion and power of God the Father and of the Son, by means of whom everything came from the Father and without whom nothing at all which has come into being came into being, for what reason does he apply only to God the Word he became flesh, not he made the flesh but The Word became flesh, even he who was with / God? And said he not of God the Father he who is with the Father? For he became and he made both belong unto him, since they make no division; nor is it [said] that the one is and that the other is not; but perhaps they confess that there are two Words as also two Sons and that the one is the divinity and the other the passibility in that it became flesh.
Sophronius. And what is there absurd in our confessing so? For this is evident; for the Evangelist said this also concerning him: he dwelt among us, that is, concerning the Word, [but] of man this: we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only begotten and: who is full of grace and of truth was not [said] of the only begotten, nor is it any more by nature, for he is full of glory, not by virtue of grace but by virtue of nature and he has no need of any addition.
Nestorius. When then the Father said concerning him This is my Son and again He has given his only begotten Son; and the only begotten who is in the bosom of his Father has |47 himself told us, did it speak of him who was in the bosom of his Father or did it speak of three only begottens, one who was from in the beginning God the Word and another who had the glory as of the only begotten without being / the only begotten, and a third apart from these whom he gave on behalf of the world?
Sophronius. What then? Did he give God the Word, consubstantial with him, who is immortal and impassible, unto death? And do not He who is consubstantial, impassible and immortal and He gave him unto death belie one another? Or is it perhaps so in schema?
Nestorius. Thou wilt confess aloud with us that there are not two Gods the Words or two Sons or two only begottens, but one, and so on with all the rest of them. Investigation is made on both sides similarly and rightly how he became incarnate voluntarily, when he was by his nature immortal and impassible, and how it is said that the Son is dead in nature and in so far as he is not immortal by nature.
Sophronius. But we say these very things to show clearly, although thou dost not wish [it], that thou dost predicate t\vo sons by nature, one impassible and immortal and the other passible and mortal.48
54. Concerning this: that God the Word became incarnate and there were not two Sons but one by an union.
Nestorius. It is not at all true; but if it is right in the first place to speak concerning this, from Divine Scripture itself will we learn that which we confess to one another. Let us see then what the Evangelist / says concerning God the Word. Does he speak of one God the Word or of two Words? In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; everything came into being by him and without him came into being nothing whatsoever that came into being. |48 Concerning whom can these things be said by the Evangelist, except concerning him who is consubstantial [with the Father] and without bodily frame? And this: In him was life and the life was the light of men and the same light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not? Did he say it of another or of the very same? Therefore he called him both the life and the light, which indicate the immortal and quickening ousia, and [he said] it shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not, as if concerning things which had been in death and in darkness. But he is not dead, for he is the life and the light which are not extinguished, and he quickens those who are in death. Concerning what light does John bear witness, that all men should believe through it? Surely it was the light of the truth which gives light unto every man who has come into the world; he was in the world and the world came into being by him and the world knew him not; he came to his own and his own received him not; and but to those who received him he gave authority to become the sons of God, to those who / believe on his name, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God? Did the Evangelist speak of another Word or of God the Word, by whom everything came into being, life and the true light, who came unto his own and his own received him not, who gave authority unto those that received him to become the sons of God, [who] were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh but of God? And, further, whereby gave he to those who received him to become the sons of God? [Was it] to those who were born of the nature of God? [Or to those who] have been changed in nature into the nature of God and have become that which God the Word is in so far as he is born of the Father? Or have they remained in the same nature in which they are and have they become sons of God and have they been born of God by adoption and by acknowledgement? As they have received him as being God, who has become |49 [their] kin-by-adoption, and as they have acknowledged that he is their God who has made everything and who has come unto his own, so also he has made them his kin-by-adoption and has acknowledged them to be the sons of God, as sons who have entered into sonship but who possess not the nature.
55. Concerning this: that God the Word is one by nature and is [so] named and that there are not many who have been [so] named by homonymy.
Those who become sons by adoption and by acknowledgement [become the sons] of him / of whom they are born not by flesh nor by blood but by the will and the love of him who has no bodily frame but has become their body by adoption and by love and by acknowledgement like a father; so also God the Word who has come into his own has given authority unto those who have received him and confessed him and believed in his name; for he has not given to those, who are not born of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of the man, to become the sons of God----for that should have been possessed by them beforehand in their natures----but they were born of God by adoption. Thus therefore he who came into his own and was received gave to those who believed in his name authority to become the sons of God, and he will be their flesh by the taking of the flesh and he will make it [his] by adoption and he will acknowledge it as his body by adoption. Consequently he has said: The Word became flesh; balancing in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and so on. He also adduced the Word became flesh and sojourned among us. As those who have received him have become voluntarily by reception the natural [sons] of God, so also he, in that he received the flesh and sojourned in it, became their flesh by adoption and not by change of ousia. Therefore also he adduced the peculiar property of God, saying And we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of / the |50 Father. He qualifies it not by likeness but as for confirmation, when he says 'full of grace', in calling that which is of the nature of the only begotten grace; for that is the fulness. For that which surely participates [in anything] is not full but is deficient in that of which the nature is altogether it, and he is full of grace and truth; not as one who has been changed but as one who is that which the beloved Son was; according as they have received him and according as they have believed in him, so also have they seen him who was revealed in flesh, [even] him and not another God nor again another Word nor another life nor another light nor again another only begotten, but the very same who was revealed in flesh. And of his fulness have we all received that which was not in us; and of his fulness have we received but not his fulness; for the fulness consists in being deficient in nothing, as God. And consequently the only begotten who is in the bosom of his Father has expounded unto us God whom no one has ever seen; and no one else than he who was in the bosom of his Father came and became flesh and dwelt among us; and he is in the bosom of his Father and with us, in that he is what the Father is, and he has expounded unto us what he is in the bosom of his Father----it being evident that he has not explained the infinity and the incomprehensibility of the ousia. As he knows our nature / he has expounded unto us in our very nature that which none of mankind has ever seen. How then is it possible that we should understand by him one Son and by Christ another Son, who is only such as a man is and who in the equality and the honour of sonship remains in the image of him whom you deny to have been sent and to have moved among us? By a kind of divine indwelling he who was in the likeness of God [so] dwelt, as the Evangelist clearly refers us back from God the Word to God the Word and apart from God the Word shows no other Word nor other only begotten of God, except him [who is] with his flesh. |51
Sophronius.49 But from what has been said understand what the Evangelist says: No man has ever seen God; the only begotten Son who was in the bosom of his Father has expounded [him], speaking of him who has been taken up and sits on the right hand of the Father, who is the Son in the image and glory of the Son, who has been shown unto us, who has come after me, who is mightier than I, on whom the Holy Spirit has come down and has remained in the likeness of a dove, who is the elect of God, the Lamb of God, the Nazarene, the Son of Man; you shall see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. It is not he who in ousia is God the Word, consubstantial with the Father; for no one has ever seen God, but he has been seen. But he spoke not of him but of the Son of Man, who by his grace was in the rank of the image of the Son of God, and thereby he was the Son and the only begotten by good will; in whom dwells all the fulness of the divinity in bodily frame. He is not the fulness, but all the fulness dwells in him in bodily frame as it has dwelt in every single one of the saints. For he who is the Son is not by himself apart nor again is the Father by himself apart, for the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son. And consequently if the incarnation which took place in the ousia is that of the Son of God, it is also that of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, if you say that he is the Son by nature and not by equality and honour; for he has been sent in the prosôpon of the Son of God and is clothed in his prosôpon and everything appertaining unto him is referred unto him, as God is in an angel and in a mediator, for he is the mediator of God and of men, the Man Jesus Christ. And how then has there been one Son and |52 an incarnation of God, unless perhaps it is said that there has been an incarnation of God in every thing whereby God wrought the dispensation for men, and it is said that God has said and God has wrought and God has been seen in those things which have been said or wrought by Moses and by the prophets and by the angels. / Because in fact God by his nature is invisible and incomprehensible, he must have some mediator, through whom to provide these things, while to him are referred those things which are wrought or said by them by the doctrine of providence and of the dispensation and not in the course of nature. How is he who is man by nature God by nature, and not by grace and activity, as God can act at his will in the case of all nature, unless, perhaps, God be everything in him? Some one will say that God and man are acting [alike] and that he is two natures. I turn then to those things on which the whole investigation hangs.
56. Concerning this: that it is not said that God became incarnate also in one of the prophets or saints, nor even that he made use of any of them in his own prosôpon.
Nestorius. Since then, as they say, they adhere to the Divine Scriptures, the statement [of our case] against them causes us no labour. For never has any of the prophets nor of the angels been seen to make use of the prosôpon of God in his own prosôpon; but our Lord Christ said: I and God are one, and whoever sees me has seen God, and that which God has done, that I also do, as he, and as God has life in his hypostasis and gives life to whom he will, I also, even I, give life to whom I will, / and if ye believe not on me, believe at least in my works, because I and God are one? None further of the prophets nor of the angels dared to say these things; but, whatsoever they said or did, [they said] the Lord said, and not 'God or they'; and all that they said or did, [they said] that by their means God said [it]; they also said that God said [it], as the prophets |53 and as the angels. And wherein he took the schema of a man or of fire, it is said that God appeared or that one saw God; and in another place, that God gave the law, and again: by means of the angels the law was given. They are not lies nor further are they contradictory one to another; it is not that he calls the angels God nor again that an angel calls himself God; but, because he appeared by means of the angels, both are truly said, both that God appeared by means of the angels in the fire of a bush and that by means of it God appeared unto him.
57. Concerning this: that according to the Divine Scriptures we have learned to confess Christ God by nature and Man by nature.
Since then he called himself by the two [names], both the Apostles and the Evangelists say also that he exists in the two: [he is] both God by whom everything comes about, and he came into the world, and he made the world, and he was not received by his servants, and to those / who received him and believed in his name he gave authority to become the sons of God, and he became flesh and sojourned among us, he and none other. And since he became [flesh] and sojourned among us, he has drawn to himself the very flesh for [the purpose of] the adoption as for his own prosôpon, which is in both of them, in that on the one hand [there is] the ousia of God, but on the other the flesh by the union and the adoption; in such wise that the flesh, which is flesh by nature, is also Son by the union and the adoption of the prosôpon; although he exists in both of them, yet he is called one Son and one flesh. And consequently the only begotten Son of God and the Son of man, the same [formed] of both of them, is predicated in both of them, because he has made the things of their prosôpa his own prosôpon and is therefore acknowledged as his own prosôpon by the one as by the other; and he speaks with them now by virtue of the divinity and now by virtue of the humanity and now by virtue of both of them; as also the humanity used to speak now by virtue of the ousia of the humanity and now |54 by the prosôpon of the divinity: on this account he both is the Son of God and the Son of man and has so spoken.
58. That as also God the Word is conceived to have become flesh and the flesh is one, and there are not two fleshes, so also the flesh is Son and there are not two Sons.
/ Is it not as if the Word were Son only in so far as he became flesh? Since he took the flesh in his own prosôpon, he became flesh and the flesh was God because of the prosôpon of the Word, in such wise that God the Word is said to be flesh and man, while the flesh is called the Son of God. For until he took the flesh in his own prosôpon and was revealed therein, he was called Son on account of the divinity: in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; everything came into being through him, and without him also nothing whatever came into being. But since he became flesh in taking the flesh, he was named after both of them in both of them, but as though he were one in both of them, not [in both] in nature, but in the one indeed in nature but in the other in prosôpon by adoption as well as by revelation. The Son was revealed in flesh, being similar to his Father: / and my Father are one, he says in a manner demonstrative of his own prosôpon. He who was seen speaks from him who was conceived as from his own prosôpon, as though he were one and possessed the same prosôpon. Through one is the other conceived, and he who is conceived discourses by him who was seen as by the very prosôpon of him who was seen. If you do not believe on me, believe in my works, because I and the Father are one. / And all such things as these which have been said originally of the ousia [are to be said] accordingly also to speak and to understand and to operate in the very same way in the prosôpon as by adoption. For they are not far removed either in operation or in word or in ousia; nor are the things which are to be distinguished the one from the other in the prosôpon distinct in love, for they are conceived of his prosôpon in the love and the will of God in that he took the flesh; and therein he was revealed and therein he taught, and |55 therein and by means thereof he acts as though present and not as though absent. Of his own prosôpon he made use in the flesh, in that he wished that he should become flesh and that the flesh should become himself, so that those who see the flesh [see] also God, as his own body is in the bread and those who see the bread [see] also the body, because he has taken it for his prosôpon. He who is the similitude of God has taken the prosôpon of the flesh, the likeness of a servant, and he has given unto him, unto the likeness of the servant [which is] his likeness, a name which is more excellent than all names, that is 'Son', at which every knee shall bow which is in heaven and in earth, and which is beneath the earth} And consequently there must be two natures, that of the divinity and that of the humanity, that which has emptied itself into the likeness of a servant and the likeness of a servant which has been raised into the name which is above all names. For he who does not remain in his own ousia can neither / be emptied nor diminished nor even raised above all names. Therefore has he said 'the likeness' and 'the name' which it has taken, which indicates a prosôpon as of one; and this same name and prosôpon make the two of them to be understood; and the distinction of nature, one hypostasis and one prosôpon,50 is theirs, the one being known by the other and the other by the one, so that the one is by adoption what the other is by nature and the other is with the one in the body. As a king and a lord, who has taken the prosôpon of a servant as his own prosôpon and gives his prosôpon to the servant and makes known that he is the other and the other he, is content to be abased in the prosôpon of the servant while the servant is revered in the prosôpon of the lord and king, and for this reason, even though I should not have said the one for the other nor the other for the one, it is so with both of them who are one and possess the same prosôpon ----[so] are these things in regard to the two natures which are distinct in ousia but are united by love and in the same prosôpon.
59. Concerning this: that the adoption and the indwelling |56 ought to be accepted as the will of God and that we ought not to avoid a name as though that which is profane were said in consequence of the homonymy.51
For although the humanity of ours bears / as mediator the prosôpon only of God by adoption as well as by the indwelling of the ousia and not only by the indwelling of divinity, yet this indwelling is such as to result in one prosôpon, which is the same for him who is revealed as for him who is to be revealed. For the [words] He is and He dwelt are of necessity to be confessed and interpreted by us according to the will of God. God indeed is in all creatures; for in him we are and thereby is it defined that, although thus he is verily in all, he is said to have dwelt in some men; but in regard to others it is even said that he is not their God. And it is not said that he dwelt in all men in like manner, but according to his love; in some of us it is said that he only dwelt in a composition as in a house, as in the believers, while in others, although he is acting, yet [he acts] not in like manner but to a greater or less degree; in others as in all the apostles and in others as in the prophets and in others as in teachers and in others according to the division of gifts. In this one and in that and in another he dwells, and he acts also in all; and all of them are not equal to all nor like one another, but [all are] according to the love of him who dwells in them. Among them some hold the first place and others of them the second [rank] and in gradually descending order are they attached and joined one to another, in the same way as are the limbs / in the body. But Christ is the head of all and in him are we bound together; but also God is the head of Christ, for whom, as he is for us the head and the prosôpon, is God so also his head and his prosôpon in his incarnation. Therefore we have received |57 from him to become the sons of God, in that he is the only begotten Son; so that his flesh becomes that which also is the Son of God and of the Father so as to become the image of the Father, [being] the Son of the Father whose is the image; because this same is the prosôpon of the Son, it is he and none other which [exists] in the two ousias and is not distinguished.
60. Concerning this: that we should not thus think of the Archetype as also of images or as of angels or as of ambassadors who take the place of him who is absent, but [that we should think] that he has been united to the body by his own nature and by his prosôpon and that he has become incarnate in their making use of the body in its own prosôpon and the body's [making use] of the prosôpon of God the Word.
God is not indeed among the things which are represented in effigy for there things can be said to exist only in the visible shape, by visible shape and by likeness while far distant from the ousia, nor again as angels or ambassadors who take the place of those who send them and are thereby their prosôpa in virtue of service and mere authority, / but he himself has made use of his very [own] nature and his prosôpon in saying that 'I and the Father are one', and he is whatever he is in prosôpon and whatever he is in prosôpon he is, not that he made his likeness in another likeness but in his own likeness, nor in any other likeness like unto the likeness of a servant but in the very natural likeness of the other, so that the one became what the other was and the other that which the one was, both the one and the other remaining.
61. Concerning this: that through the nature of man he received a name which is more excellent than all names.
This in fact is the chief greatness of the nature of humanity: that, since he remains in the nature of humanity, he accepts a name which is more excellent than all names; neither in consequence of moral progress nor in consequence of |58 knowledge and faith, but therein 52 by virtue of his readiness to accept [it] has it come about that it should become his eikôn and his prosôpon in such wise that his prosôpon is also the prosôpon of the other. And he is both God and man, and the likeness of God in condescension and in kenôsis and in schema, [and] the likeness of the flesh as man; and the man is by exaltation what God is, through the name which is above all names. Consequently in the kenôsis he humbled himself unto death, even death / upon the cross, in that he made use of the prosôpon of him who died and was crucified as his own prosôpon, and in his own prosôpon he made use of the things which appertained unto him who died and was crucified and was exalted. And therefore [this] is said as of the one prosôpon of Christ, and the former things and the latter are each thus different, in nature, as the divine nature is different from the nature of man; so that Christ is two natures, the likeness of God and the likeness of a servant, that which has been exalted and that which exalts. If also he is called Christ because of the flesh which has been anointed, there is one prosôpon of the two natures, because also there is only one name which is more excellent than all names, [one for] both of them, if the divine nature is meant; for the names of the natural prosôpa are common in the condescension and in the exaltation.
62. Concerning this: that the dispensation for our sake ought to have taken place by both of them.
And it was congruous with the dispensation which is for our sake that both of them should be taken into the prosôpon; for, because God created the first man in his own image and in his likeness and the prosôpa of God the Maker----of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,----were not revealed to us, so that we might also know the Creator and obtain completely the teaching of the Divine knowledge and receive in completeness a complete idea / of the image of God, he has renewed all creation in Christ and has made known and shown unto us what the Maker is: he who from the beginning was the Word with God was also God the Maker |59 of all; everything came into being through him and without him also nothing whatever came into being.
63. Concerning this: wherefore God the Word built for himself the temple of the body.
Even as it must have been fitting that our renewal also should take place through the Maker of [our] nature, through him who also originally formed us and made us from the earth, he who took the body and made it in his likeness and constituted it in his prosôpon in everything as his own in the honour and glory of God, made use of the nature of the Divinity on the one hand and of the prosôpon of the Son on the other. For the honour of the Father and of the Son is one in such wise that those who honour the Father honour also the Son. He then has taught us that he who has created everything is God and that he created [it] with the Father and the Holy Spirit; for in him he lived, showing the natural union, [to wit] that the Father is [Father] of the Son and that the Father is in the Son and that the Holy Spirit lives in them. And he created the body in a new manner [other] than from a man and a woman, and, since it was an act of creation, he tells of that which is to be created and of him who creates: The Holy Spirit will come and the power of the Most High shall overshadow [thee] / ----denoting the Creator. Therefore he who shall be born shall be called the son of God ----that is the Holy One who is to be created; so that in the creation he calls [him] 'holy' and 'Son', denoting the image and the likeness which the first man received in the Creation and which he kept not. For, as the image of God, he ought to have kept himself for God without spot and without blemish, and that by willing what God wills, since he had the prosôpon of God. For [to have] the prosôpon of God is to will what God wills, whose prosôpon he has.53 Consequently the second man was created by the Holy Spirit and the power |60 of the Most High and he has received from him to be holy and the Son of God.
64. Concerning this: that he 54 has received to become 'Son' from [the moment of] his formation and not by degrees.
[In that he has received the title to be 'holy'] not as the rest of mankind by virtue of obedience in faith and in works, but from [the moment of] coming into being by the creation of the Creator, he has received his prosôpon as something created, in such wise as not originally to be man but at the same time Man-God by the incarnation of God who in him is what God was in the first man. He indeed was the Maker of all, the law-giver, without king, the glory, the honour and the power; he was also the second / man with qualities complete and whole, so that God was his prosôpon while he was in God.
65. Concerning this: how, in that he has not the prosôpon of his being, the prosôpon in the union ought to be understood:55
As God appeared and spoke unto Adam in schema, and as it was none other, so will God be [seen] of all men in the natural schema which has been created, that is, that of the flesh, appearing and speaking in his own image and the image in the Archetype. So that on the one hand God appeared in the image, since he is not visible, on the other hand the image is conceived as representing him who appeared not. For it is not [the fact] that the image is his being, but that on the other hand the very image and prosôpon [are] the humanity of the divinity and the divinity of the humanity. The prosôpon of him who is conceived, who was in the likeness and in the similitude of God took the likeness of a servant and in schema was |61 found as a man in him who appeared. And he who appeared [is considered] as representing him who is conceived as touching the prosôpon and the name which is above all names and honour and glory and adoration. For he gave unto him a name which is more excellent than all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow which is in heaven and on the earth and which is beneath the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus is the Lord [as it is] narrated. /
66. How the flesh is adored in the prosôpon of the Son and how, since it is in nothing worthy of that adoration, it is adored in the prosôpon of God the Word.
Man indeed is known by the human prosôpon, that is, by the schema of the body and by the likeness, but God by the name which is more excellent than all names and by the adoration of all creation and by the confession [of him] as God. For thereby has he taken the likeness of a servant and has given his likeness to the likeness of the servant, that it might be equal with God, and that, as he has accepted it for himself to be his own prosôpon, no one might refuse to him on account of [his] nature the adoration of the Divinity in heaven and on earth' and beneath the earth and [the confession] by every tongue, although by nature it is above all human nature. Who then would refuse him the adoration which belongs to the Lord of all and which belongs to his own prosôpon and his name? And who again refuses to prostrate himself before that before which formerly the Creator of all refused not to prostrate himself? And he prostrated himself to such a degree that his own creation in its nature was not in honour nor in glory but in contempt and in abasement and in all humiliation unto death upon the cross; he humiliated himself unto death, even death upon the cross; there is nothing more scorned than death. It was not wrought / in the same manner as in Adam, to whom he gave his image in all glory and honour; for he subjected everything under his feet. In the same way also he gave to the Second Man his image of glory both in honour and in power. But |62 all these things came to pass in the opposite way; he surely gave the image of God and he surely took the likeness of a servant in prosôpon . . .56
67. Wherefore, in taking the likeness of a servant, he took not that which was honourable but rather that which was contemptible.
And consequently he took the likeness of a servant, a humble likeness, a likeness which had lost the likeness of God, not for honour nor for glory nor for adoration nor again for authority, although indeed he was the Son, but for the obedience which it should observe in the prosôpon of the Son according to the purpose of God; since it had the purpose of the latter and not its own nor anything that it wished, but that which God the Word wished. For this is the likeness of God, to have neither purpose nor will of its own / but that of him whose prosôpon and likeness it has. And therefore the likeness of God took the likeness of a servant, without concealing aught of the humiliation of the likeness of a servant; but all these things it took, in order that the likeness might be in all of them in such wise that it might do so without diminution in its own likeness.
68. Why he took voluntary obedience in the likeness of a servant and did not exhibit a mechanical [obedience] without volition.
Because in fact he took this [likeness] in order to abolish the guilt of the first man and in order to give to his nature the former image which he had lost through his guilt, rightly he took that which had proved itself guilty and had been made captive and had been subjected to servitude, with all the bonds of scorn and contempt. Apart from his own prosôpon there was nothing divine or appertaining to honour or to authority. As a son, as long as he is young, possesses not the authority to inherit or be master of anything, except by obedience, so also the likeness of a servant which he took for his own prosôpon he accepted as the |63 likeness of a servant, not for authority but for obedience, even all that obedience from which especially is born the obedience which is sinless, and he appeared / truly sinless. When then anyone is freed from all the causes from which disobedience comes into being, then obviously and without doubt it appears that he is sinless. For this [cause] also he took a nature which had sinned, lest in taking a nature which was not subject unto sins he should be supposed not to have sinned on account of the nature and not on account of his obedience. But, although he had all those things which appertain unto our nature, anger and concupiscence and thoughts, and although also they increased with the progress and increase of every age [in his life], he stood firm in thoughts of obedience.
69. Wherefore he accepted not obedience in some commandments, as Adam, but accepted all the commandments and not single ones.
Now in all the primary commandments his inclination [was] towards obedience, but not in the others, in order that it might not be supposed that he was able to conquer on account of their easiness; nor again in obedience made he use of those wherein there was attraction in honour and power and glory, but of those which in misery and poverty and contempt and weakness could offend the thoughts of obedience, those also wherein there was no attraction to obedience but rather to remissness and to negligence, / and in nothing was he helped; but for this only was he anxious, to obey God, and he loved that which God willed.
70. Wherefore in the moral life there was no occupation in human affairs on the part of the divinity.
And therefore, while he was poor in everything and was violently drawn away by the opposite, he in nothing deviated from the purpose of God, although indeed Satan made use of all these things to remove him far from the purpose of God. And Satan sought much after this because he saw that none was occupied with him. For also it did not appear |64 that from the beginning he wrought signs nor again that he had authority to teach, but only to obey and to keep all the commandments. As he moved among all men, where all the commandments surrounded him on all sides and showed him the strength of disobedience, he comported himself valiantly in the midst of them all, in that he used nothing special or extraordinary for his support, but he made use, as all men, of those very things which are common so that it should not be supposed that through observance of these things he was preserved from sin and that without them he could not be preserved. Consequently in eating and drinking he observed all the commandments and, in whatsoever there was pain and vexation, he was firm / in his thoughts, because his will was bound to the will of God and there was nothing to draw him away and make him distinct from him. For he was living not for himself but for him whose prosôpon he was, and he kept the prosôpon without blemish and without scar and thereby gave victory to the nature.
71. Wherefore he accepted the baptism of John after he had shown himself sinless.
Because he had fulfilled obedience in every thing, he accepted the baptism of John as [some thing] supreme, after the likeness of all men; and although indeed he had no need, since he was sinless, by reason of the greatness of his obedience he accepted it as one in need. For it belonged to supreme obedience that he should be not as befitted his honour and his glory but as owing obedience to a commander; and, more than this, not only that he should allow him to baptize [him] but also that he should be baptized by him as one who is guilty and requiring to be justified and in need of absolution. For this was universal obedience, to ask for and exact nothing in his own prosôpon but in that of him whose was the prosôpon, and to prepare his will; for the prosôpon was properly his own and he considered his prosôpon as his own prosôpon; and the prosôpon is one.57 |65 Therefore the Father has declared it from on high, saying: / Thou art my beloved Son; in Thee I am well-pleased; and the Holy Spirit came down in the likeness of a dove and remained upon him, and he says not that the Son came down, because it was the Son who possessed his prosôpon and made the things which were his his own prosôpon without becoming distinguished from him. Therefore he is one even in the birth of the flesh. The Holy Spirit shall come and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; therefore also the Holy One who shall be born of thee shall be called the son of God; and he said not at all that the Son should come, because he who has taken him in his prosôpon is no other, but the same as he who has given him the dispensation which is on behalf of all of us, for those reasons which we have said before.
72. Wherefore he made his manner of life with all men and afterwards was led to the wilderness.
Because it was thought that he was more than all an observer of the commandments, on account of his manner of life among all men, and because if in many things he was left alone, [it might have been] easy [to fight] against him, where there was nothing whereby he could be helped, he went forth alone into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, while poor in all the things of the world, even in that which is considered a burden and a distress. And [because of this] removal far from every thing / he attained to the utmost supremacy to which bodily power could be raised, and instead of vehement assaults from the concupiscence of the soul, he was bound by the things of God as though without bodily frame, since he was not busied with his body as though it were his own but [as if he were] apart from it. For this appertains only to the image of God and to him who preserves the image |66 of God, to will the same as God the Father; and because there was nothing else in all that the devil said, he put him to shame as one who stood apart from the will of God. He raised up his very soul unto God, conforming that which was according to his will to the will of God in order that he might be the image only of the Archetype, and not of his being; for the image according to its [own] being is without likeness and its own proper likeness is that of the Archetype, and they are indeed two, but it is one and the same appearance. Since in actions in bodily things he has preserved the likeness of God from all the sufferings of the body, it was preferable to him that the will of God should be done and not that of the flesh; and in actions he made himself a likeness to will that which he wills, that there might be one and the same will in both of them, and one prosôpon without division; the one is the other and the other is the one, while the other and the one remain. As he remained firm in all things, / in temptations of body and soul, in cities and in the wilderness, there was no distinction in his observance and in his obedience.
73. Concerning this: that, when he preached unto us the kingdom of heaven, he received [this] honour, victory 58 without sin.
As then to him who has conquered and been victorious in all things there has been given in return for the honour of his victory authority to preach and to announce the hope of the kingdom of heaven, saying: Be of good cheer; I have conquered the world; now is the judgement of this world, now is the prince of this world condemned, and I, when I shall be raised up from the earth, shall draw all men toward me; and whatsoever the Son is, by fear and the suffering which he has borne he has learnt obedience and has been perfected and has become unto all those who obey him a cause of life in the world to come. And he was sent to teach all men and to work signs and wonders and healings with all other things. Not to delight himself in and be zealous for obedience, but |67 with a view to the faith of those who were being taught, he made use of all these things with a view to the obedience of the disciples; for until the time of his victory he was striving to make firm in God the image which had been given unto him. But because he stablished his own image in all temptations perfectly and without failing / and without falling short in anything, he comported himself on our behalf, being zealous to rescue us captives from the violence of the tyrant and to draw us towards him and to make all of us the sons of his own kingdom, the associates and the heirs and the sons of God. For the defeat of the tyrant was being [accomplished] without pity, when he threw him down openly from his primacy and, after he had thrown him down, he took from him also his might; and when he had taken it from him, his own victory sufficed him not, but it must henceforth be also ours for which sake he strove; and those who are obedient unto him he then brings unto him voluntarily and not by force, and those who come he persuades of their own will to part from him 59 and not of their own will to become his . . . .60 disciples----and what shall I say? enemy? well then, of the enemy.
74. Concerning this: that, after the victory and after it was said of him: 'He is my Son', he began other hard battles on our behalf.
Therefore, after his victory in every thing and [after] it was said from heaven: This is my beloved Son, he again began other battles . . . .60 the supremacy and the teaching and the working of miracles with authority. Further he comported himself with sublime obedience / in our things, that is, in things human and weak, in such wise that he possessed not any authority or superiority; he was persecuted and beaten and fearful [with] the fear that terrifies all men; and he had not as the birds and as the beasts a place to lay his head. He went from place to place and was bruised and constrained in every way, for the sake of our obedience. He was not constrained by any one, but he fulfilled [everything] |68 and taught with all zeal, and he endured all temptations for the sake of instruction; and from wheresoever he was driven out, he was driven toward those to whom his gospel was not yet preached, so that that for which he was zealous was accomplished by the zeal of his enemies, who foresaw not the issue of their work but who looked to hinder him by opposition and works full of contempt and scorn and fear unto death. And after his victory and after the choice of God that this is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased, after he had received the authority of the Gospel, after it was revealed that by his authority he was working the divine works, after he had said I and my Father are one, he was with all this weakness and contempt in human things, whose burden he could not endure / by reason of their weight but which on the contrary were a grief unto him and a negation of grace. And so then there were many things also which hindered him from preaching the Gospel; and hence also there arose, [claiming to speak] on behalf of God, accusers of him as one who was a cause of disobedience,61 and they brought him into contempt and weakness.
75. Concerning this: that he made use of supreme obedience itself as of a supreme honour so that Christ became also truly man and rejected it not as contemptible.
For for all men contempt which comes after honour is accounted contemptible; but for Christ, who was in the flesh, it is the contrary. And he possessed as a supreme honour obedience unto death, even death upon the cross, and he showed unto Satan and unto every principality and unto every authority that the cause of honour is rather obedience abounding and not disobedience unto God, whereby Satan suffered, when he was equal in nature and in honour but endured not the obedience of men, in that he was judging honour and contempt by the distinction between his own nature and |69 [that] of men and thought that this obedience was not due unto God. On account of this love of glory he cast down Adam also into suffering in persuading him not / to obey God. And Adam chose not to show gratitude [unto God] nor to be obedient in any thing; but, because he was made like unto his own image, when he was forbidden to eat of one tree, he suffered in that which was not worthy to be called a suffering and acted against the commandment of God and regarded God as jealous. On account of all these things God made the second Adam worthy of all this honour for having practised all obedience; he granted him an honour above which there was nothing, even as there was nothing surpassing [his] obedience; he accounted himself as nothing, except to become conformed to the will of God, to become as God willed that he should become.
76. Wherefore he wrought the incarnation through his own prosôpon so that he also became incarnate.
Consequently also God became incarnate in the man through his own prosôpon and made his prosôpon his own prosôpon. And there is no condescension comparable unto this, that the prosôpon of the man should become his own and that he should give him his prosôpon. And therefore he made use of his prosôpon, in that he took it for him[self]; but he took it in order to make it not honourable but contemptible, that he might show to whoever wished to serve [God] that all / greatness grows great by condescension and not in exalting itself, [that] in that he took the likeness of a servant, he has been found in schema as a man. The likeness of this servant served him altogether as he wished; but he wished [it to be] according to what appertained to the nature, not only that he should obey his own prosôpon for himself,'so that there might be no doubt concerning him, that he is the Son of God, but also that he might comport himself on our behalf and die for our salvation: on our behalf, then, not as though we were just or good----for therein there would have been an attraction for anyone to die for those who are so----but for the unjust: for |70 hardly would anyone die for the impious, but for the good someone perhaps would dare to die. Because then he condescended in everything inscrutably with an incomparable condescension, there was further demonstrated one purpose, one will, one intelligence, indistinguishable and indivisible as in one. So also in manliness and in authority and in ordering of life and in judgement, as in all things, he was associated with God indivisibly as if each thing were in one by the distinguishing and by the choice of them both, so that he possessed nothing human of his own in human things, but the will of God became his own will, when he was made firm in the actions and sufferings of the nature. Thus also, in things divine, nothing is his own apart from the human humiliation; but, while remaining God in all things, [he is] that which the man was by his nature in sufferings, even in impassibility. In the same way as he made use of the likeness of a servant in the kenosis, so in exaltation he participated in the likeness of God, since he is in them both, in the likeness of the servant and in the likeness of God, and possesses the same prosôpon of humiliation and of exaltation.62
77. Concerning this: that the incarnation has been for the education of the whole nature of rational beings.
For this reason it was necessary that the incarnation of God the Word should take place for the whole nature of rational beings, that we might learn to participate in his grace, in virtue of which, in that he was lacking in nothing, he wrought everything and abhorred not to do aught, even what is contemptible, and moreover that he might make man participate in his image, in such wise that every man who is beneath him might not make use of the likeness for pride but for participation in the likeness, and that he might do everything according to his might in the sight of God. |71
78. Concerning this: that Satan, in jealousy 63 towards man, wrought everything with a view to misleading.
/ Because then Satan for opposition made use of that which was given unto him by God and because he had fallen away from the purpose of God, he made use of the image of God not as a model and an example befitting God but, through jealousy towards man, for misleading away from God, and he deceived man and made him fall from his image, since he observed not the will of God, and he raised him up as an enemy and an adversary against God that thereby he might reprimand God as unjust for showing toward man a good purpose such as this----reprimanding him in that he took vengeance on man for his shame and punished him with such punishment as was right for what he had done towards him. Satan, in fact, because he acted in anger and without reflection, forgot that God acts in contrary wise to that which he wishes.
79. Concerning this: that God has shown the height of his bounty and has laid bare the height of the wickedness of Satan.
For by death God wrought not the destruction of man but his consolation and his succour that he might not sin nor any more consent to the counsels of the evil one which lead to destruction; for also it was not [an occasion] to slander God but for the increase of his grace. He who accounted man worthy of such honour, when he was nothing, reprimanded the tyrant for his cunning in planning the overthrow of man, / and he shows that he in no wise plans his overthrow but to preserve him by his grace and to care for him, in order that he may be restored again to that which he was. For Satan hoped that after all this love of God towards man, if again he should make him transgress the commandment of God, God would be angered by all means to destroy him and that he would have no cause to turn and be healed. But against those who have sinned and have been accounted worthy of salvation and yet have continued in the same sins, |72 as though they had not hitherto been liberated from the former punishment, wrath without remission is stirred up without there being therefore any cause for salvation. Satan then first meditated of himself the things which he planned for the destruction of man and he persuaded himself and he condemned man to vengeance without leaving him any cause for pardon. And, since he 64 was envenomed by his 65 anger and his jealousy, he 64 understood not by himself the grace of God, and as a result, being so [placed] ..., he destroyed not Satan himself, who was the deceiver, but endured his wickedness; and by reason of this also God is long-suffering as touching men who sin and act impiously against him, as though it were another who deceives them; and he is long-suffering as touching men's being void of understanding and as touching / the boundless wickedness of the devil against them, of him whose whole motive was to mislead all and set all against God, that all our race may be blotted out by him, without any one remaining unto it to become an intercessor for it. And because Satan showed all this supreme wickedness, though he had not any cause of wickedness, even amid all this wickedness the grace of God appeared, and he showed his ineffable grace in doing his good works universally unto all men. Because of the height of his condescension to him who has been altogether sinful, he came in contempt and in scorn and in lowliness and he was not ashamed of the scorn for the sake of the advantage. And by means of his own prosôpon he became the prosôpon of the other and that of God in fulfilling all that appertains unto God, that is, the instruction of an instructive condescension. For the supreme condescension consisting in a humanity, which seeks not its own but the things of God, has taken place for the teaching of humiliation. And he was united in one purpose, so that there was not the least room for Satan to introduce disobedience;66 and because there remained |73 only death to be [endured] for defeat and victory, he endured this also after every thing so as to have won the victory even over it, utterly annihilating it. And two things he wrought / thereby: he defeated Satan and he took away from him all hope of disobedience.
80. Concerning this: that when Christ conquered, his victory sufficed him not, but he was also pleased to be oppressed for us that he might obtain the exaction [of ransom] for the oppression which was for us.
And since many are brought low by the fear of death, he endured unto death and gave a just compensation for us in that he exchanged for our death the death which came unjustly upon him.67 Therefore, after he had observed all the commandments in such wise as to be exempt from death and to receive the choice of victory for us, he yet took upon himself this manner of life for the instruction of those who were deceived and he died on our behalf as on the behalf of the deceived. And he brought death into the arena,68 since it was necessary that it should be abolished; for he hesitated not that his own being should be cast down in death since he had the hope of its abolition. So also therefore he suffered in advance other trials, but not so as to die unjustly without exacting [the ransom]. In this very hope he obtained also obedience and immeasurable love, not that he might obtain victory for himself but that he might secure the exaction of our own [ransom] and conquer not only for himself but also for all men. In the same way as the defeat / of Adam caused the defeat of all men, so also the victory of the former made all victorious.
81. Concerning this: that God has shown to all by very deeds, that there is no acceptance of persons as touching humanity, in that it has suffered in all things. |74
And through these two all rational powers have learnt that there is no acceptance of persons with God, but the love of a just judge. For that reason humanity has conquered and Satan has been defeated. And God has magnified his victory and given unto him an honour which is more excellent than all names; and so all rational powers together have wondered even at his victory, kneeling and adoring the very name which has been given, which has been justly given unto him, and every tongue confesses the just dispensation which has taken place on behalf of all, whereby he has made peace and concord to reign over the earth, even he who in all his actions brings them nigh [unto himself] by persuasion and not by force.
82. Wherefore he accepted for himself to become incarnate. Now God indeed perfected the dispensation, nor came it about by means of any other lest, when he fell into such contempt and weakness, his commandment should be considered worthy of scorn and further lest jealousy should straightway be aroused against man. But he received in his being him / who could endure every thing, and he raised up as witnesses of the humiliation of his humanity angels who should strengthen him, that none might say that it was suffering without suffering, since he strengthened it that it might not suffer, and therefore it had no reason not to obey. For everything whatsoever could without doubt be conceived or said concerning him and what he knew that people said concerning him----though they could not say it either because they feared or because they were obedient----that he did that he might leave no single cause of doubt; for they were not convinced of this mystery, but it was hidden even from principalities and authorities and from all powers and it was revealed unto them as a matter of knowledge and all of them confessed, after this explanation, the design which has done away with all designs and conquered them. And he has shown that his incarnation was a universal dispensation for all those who have been accounted equal with him in one |75 purpose and in one persuasion, to stand against the enemy of them all, whom he has driven out and whose authority he has suppressed, so that there is no more place for his deception and for his jealousy.
83 For what cause, when he defeated and convicted Satan, who is the enemy of all, he did not destroy him but allowed him again to act.69
/ And he continues to deceive that it may be made manifest for his own condemnation and that of those who are persuaded by him, though he has no more such strength for his deception; and for the sake of the victory of those who are not persuaded by him; for none will be crowned unless he strives lawfully. Therefore after the victory and after the bringing to nought of death Christ has remained [sharing] in the [same] state of life----a state of life which was brought to nought in Christ----in order that those who are in Christ might comport themselves after the likeness of Christ, not only by the grace of the Resurrection but also by the works and manner of life of each one of them; for the former is universal but the latter individual. And, that it might not be thought that the construction of the nature of Christ was unique and distinct, that it was constructed to be without sin and for that reason conquered, he brought it about that he should be conquered by many myriads, in our own nature in the state of life in which Christ [conquered], by those who keep the exact commandments in such wise that according to the law they comport themselves in the body almost after a manner of life without bodily frame; and in times of distress and afflictions and in all frailty they endure the provocations and the excitements of nature together with violent assaults from without. And thus they have conquered in all things, so that the increase of the defeat of Satan |76 becomes an increase [in the observance] of the commandments, while the latter thought that the fall of men would become much easier by an identical manner of life.
/ 84. For what reason Satan attained unto all this exaltation so as to rise up openly against God and make himself equal with God.
And therefore, as he ran to and fro, his defeat became great; and then in consequence of this he increases his wickedness and reveals it and displays an unbounded audacity in rising up openly against God and making himself comparable with God and likening himself unto his incarnation, deceiving not through anything else nor by anything else than by his own prosôpon and by a sublime deception. And because Christ had done away with the deception as touching their gods and their incantations, the former also did away with the things of the latter by deceiving. He put under his own prosôpon all things appertaining to gods and sects and incantations and other such things, of which he is the controller, for the sake of making himself great, so that he alone might be considered God. For he makes use of man as an instrument which he has drawn away and led up to boundless evil, making man even to participate in the privation of Divine knowledge, as enemies are wont to act; and of necessity and out of rage he does these things which shall be utterly undone and abolished together with all his primacy. And when it has come to an end and he has nothing else to do, it will remain / for him to pour forth all his wickedness and to be revealed to all as having fought against his Creator, in return for having made him and having given him such might and having allowed him to make use of his might, and having endured him when he fought with all these things. [But] God gathers together all those who would blot out and bring to nought his tyranny. For he has then no device which can be devised against the elect of God, since all things have been in all things fulfilled, both his deception and his evasion of the commandments, and he has been conquered in every thing, in secret and openly, |77 both as to his persuasiveness and as to all his force of which he has made use in the weakening and humiliation of the body. And he acted also in regard to the saints in like manner as he acted in regard to Christ, in order by all means to cast them into cruel distresses, but they were not conquered thereby. But in that he ceased not of himself after he was conquered by Christ nor again after he was defeated by the saints, Christ brought his primacy to an end by the death which unjustly came upon him, and it was utterly brought to nought by the death of the saints, which by audacity and improperly he brought upon them. And [God] made him submit to a just judgement for the sake of us whom unjustly he distressed and with whom he combated for our destruction, and because of all his devices and his deceptions and every kind of his ingratitude and his arrogance and his tyranny in opposition to God and to his saints. For all the time / of the long-suffering of God was given for repentance and that he might come to himself and know his folly and his boldness in things impossible.
85. What thoughts Satan thought against God, Though he was able to afflict him passibly and to win him over to the exaction of the ransom, he did this not, but let him make use of his anger as he willed; for long-suffering toward those who are envenomed by wickedness works an increase of their wickedness, so that, when they see it and are accurately convinced of it, they do the opposite to those who see it not; for there is no repressing the increase of what is wicked in those who carry out their wishes in opposition to God; for either they think concerning the long-suffering of God that, because he is unable to cast them down into sufferings, in that they possess an immortal nature, he will on this account be long-suffering with them, and for this reason they do those things which are contrary to God, or else, although they grant that he is able to do everything, they do those things which are contrary to his will, because, when he wishes it, he will of his long-suffering cause them to change from their wickedness. Since he wills this, they rise up against his will, doing this or |78 that which is contrary / to what he wills. They do not ask to have redemption by him on account of their enmity and their infinite boldness, but they embitter him exceedingly so that he destroys them, in that they ask neither to be under God nor to live. And we shall see [Satan] condemned by a condemnation apart from men in a just judgement, when he shall have neither defence nor [counter-]accusation. For God let him do everything that he willed in such wise that there is not any cause at all to rescue him; for he destroyed him not indeed in a single moment by caprice nor further did he let him go without condemnation. Since in fact God left him no single cause of deliverance, for this he prepared himself to be by all means beyond repression; as one then who is the prey of jealousy and ambition, he desists not from his jealousy till the object of his jealousy [is attained] according to his will, and he is an example to all who are ungrateful. For him and all those who after his likeness have fallen into this sickness God judges justly and examines them and condemns them in the sight of all; and they are hated by common consent, and in him [men] see all ingratitude and all boldness and arrogance and all wiles and all falsehood and all impiety which springs up and grows great and is brought to fulness, so that it cannot even receive any increase.
86. Concerning this: that at the time of condemnation Satan will be hated by all / and even by his own, in so much as he has been unto them a cause of punishment.70
For this reason all this time of long-suffering has been given unto him, and it is given unto him until the day of judgement to do whatever he will, lest there should be left unto him any cause for being able to do anything in it; but a time of long-suffering and of authority has been given unto him; and after that he will be fully judged and distinguished from the righteous together with all those who have participated with him in tyranny; by them also will he be hated and accused as having been the cause of their condemnation. As in purity of love, in word and in deeds each will love God as good and |79 just, as wise and as mighty, and as the Maker and as God, and, since they will obtain an example of just judgement without respect of persons, of the good and of the wicked, all classes of rational beings will duly learn the examination of the arguments for good and for evil, and for what reason God allows each man to choose it according to his will, and lets those who choose the good endure evils and is long-suffering toward those who have chosen the opposite thereof and who fight against his will, that they may do whatsoever they choose. And in this wise / the administration of this world is carried on: thus will it be administered by God until the end.
87. The Consummation.
And after this, seeing that everything has been well [done], we shall be in the joy of the world to come, having no cause [to fear] deprivation thereof nor that we shall have further need of instruction.
88. Concerning this: that it was needful that there should be a union of two natures, and that it was not right that it should take place otherwise.
For these reasons, then, and for similar causes, the incarnation of God took place justly: true God by nature and true man by nature. For there would not have been any [union] of these, if one of these natures had been left out. If God became not incarnate, and if he became not [incarnate] in a man [formed] of the nature of men, [it is] in fact as if it took place in deception and the truth [would be] what the words of Satan would have been, that Christ surely rejected as contemptible his [physical] formation after his image. Therefore there would have been no teaching of humility and of obedience and of condescension: that he, who when he had not taken the likeness of a servant was the similitude and the likeness of God, should be found in the likeness as a man. But there would rather be a justification of the words of Satan, who had contemned [him], because / he had seen him inferior in his nature to the image and the likeness of the honour of God. And as for all the angels, though they were |80 convinced of him as of God and were not able to dare to speak against him, this reason forced them not to blame Satan in anything [but to treat him] as one who had been cast down into sufferings which were not right for him, for the sake of the boundless honour of human nature, though he was blamed for this that he ought to have obeyed any commandment whatsoever of God. And since there was this suffering in their soul, they served him for the sake of him who commanded them, though not with a good will.
89. Concerning this: that, even if he were in the schema of a man but not in the nature of a man, the doctrine of an incarnation would not become established.
Although a man were to grant that he became incarnate, yet [in placing the Incarnation] in the schema of a man but not in the nature of a man, he would predicate the same repudiation of human nature.
90. Concerning this: that, even if he were to change his own nature into the nature of a man, the doctrine of the Incarnation would not have been established.
And even if he changed his own ousia for the ousia of a man, it seems that he would have surely repudiated the nature of a man, since he would have been in his own ousia and not in the ousia of man; for this ousia is his, not of the earth but of the nature of God the Word, and therefore / God the Word appears to have grown in wisdom in a human manner of life, so as to remain without sin as one who is a man while he is God the Word by his own ousia. Thus also he comported himself as a man though he was not man by nature but God the Word; both when he had combated and conquered the adversary and when he suffered, he who was impassible by his nature suffered, and similarly also in these other things. And even if we say that he took a man and that he changed the nature of the man into his own ousia, did he not set aside the victory of the things which are rejected, which constitute man? And for this reason he changed the nature of the flesh which was rejected for him, lest God should be abased in his |81 being in the nature of a man; and in this way neither were his manner of life and sufferings and death those of a man, nor again were they for the sake of men. And so it was no more through the death of God, nay rather, if God had been condemned to death, if he had willed to avoid it he would have set it aside without his own death rather than through a schema of death. But. since he was God and immortal, in his prosôpon which was not guilty he accepted death, that is, [accepted] the mortal and changeable [prosôpon], [so] that he was able to fight against defeat through the commandments and the observances, so that victory might fall to his image and to his likeness, that it might / be the same who accepted death as defeat and to whom [God] gave immortality as a release from guilt, in that he was preserved without stain in his own image. And as he condemned him when guilty, so also when he conquered he exalted the name which is above all names; and he obtained it not by commandments and through ordinances but by victory in his own right not to be taken away from him, just as a son, who was formerly under authority, on growing up and becoming adult, has authority to become a son, although he was already such as a son is.
91. Concerning this: that, even if any one were to grant that the union was by natural composition, or by mixture, or by confusion, or by intermingling of the natures, the doctrine of an incarnation would not have been established.
On account of this very thing, even if any one were to grant that God the Word accepted humanity in his own nature, either by mixture, or by confusion, or by participation of ousia, and sets at nought this nature of man, he shows that this human nature is to be rejected and that it could not be preserved without sin, since his nature conquered not ,but he who came into being from both of them; and he shows that Satan, since he was incapable, was defeated, and [that] in having defeated at the beginning man who sinned, he defeated him who could not be without sin because he was not of the sinless nature of |82 God the Word / but of the nature of sinful man. And Satan appeared to speak with man in judgement but was surely defeated by God, of whose nature it is to be defeated of nothing. And both of these [theories] are absurd, in that he commanded Satan and man to do impossibilities. But if the things which were commanded had been possible to do and had not been observed, justly would Satan have been condemned; for, when he could obey, he obeyed not but rose up against God by means of the schema of a man and slandered God before man as jealous, and man before God as ungrateful; and he is the enemy of all and has received a just judgement and has been openly convicted. He has in fact been conquered by Christ through his humanity and by the saints, for openly he rose up and still is risen up against God, and he has shown that, if he had not been able to deceive the first man, he afterward would have fought against God openly and not in the schema of this man or that, and although he could do nothing, he had it in his intention to do whatever he desired like the Lord, as one who was in everything able to act and to persuade and to fight. And he was able to destroy him in that moment, since he was worthy of destruction. But others would not have learnt / that wickedness is powerful and extinguishes itself, unless they had by all means known that they received subjection [to God] as a grace and from this subjection obtained grace not to show themselves bold against God and thereby themselves also to be parted from God with the former. How then would he have made the Incarnation a stumbling-block by mixture, or by confusion, or by natural participation, so that he might not be supposed [to be] God nor even man, but one who is of them both and is neither simple nor undivided? So therefore he is [combined] with humanity, as a judge in a judgement and in a true trial, possessing it in his own prosôpon and [having it] obedient unto himself in everything. And it is not he who combats and is judged, but to the extent of appropriation he has |83 brought it 71 nigh unto his own image and not to the nature of the invincible and impassible ousia of the divinity. For Satan had no commission from God to make him 72 disobedient to him, but to convince God that his own man was disobedient to him. He, who in everything accepted obedience with a good intention, exalted his honour in his own image to show that he is a just judge.
92. Concerning this: that, even if one were to grant one nature by natural composition, either with flesh without soul or [in flesh] animated by an animal / soul or by a rational soul according to a natural union, the doctrine of an incarnation would not have been established.
But in this way neither those who say, as the Arians, that the flesh was united to God by a natural composition and that it suffered by natural sufferings, nor again those who say that the union took place with the rational soul and the flesh in such wise that it suffered by a natural sensibility the sufferings of the body and of the unreasonable and irrational soul, establish in truth the doctrine of the incarnation. Do they not say this, that by a deception Satan was conquered by him who had been conquered, and that the latter conquered not by his own might but had need of a champion, that is of God who created him, who fought either openly or in secret? For in that Satan, having held no contest with God, was conquered by God, he conquered by having shown unto all that the love of God toward man was unjust and that the exaltation of humanity resulted as it were in the scorn of all and the subjection and the prostration of all supremacy and all authority. Now if he sought to do that for man, he could do it even without this deception and cunning, for that which he says he also does. Nor further indeed hid he himself when he made use of this schema; for he who seeks to hide himself, so long as it escapes him not that, if discovered, he will surely be confuted, is himself / his own accuser. So they are |84 constrained to say the contrary of what they seek to say, so that they accuse God and make excuse for the evil one, and they put forth all [their] might in vain and reason contrary to the incarnation of God.73
93. Concerning this: that things which are composed in one nature [are so] either that they may be supreme or that they may be under supremacy and especially wider the soul, which is supreme in the composite nature, if God the Word is naturally composed.
Those things indeed which are composed and brought to fullness to [form] a nature [are so] either that they may be constituted chief and in control or that they may be under a chief and a controller. If then, because the rational soul is in need of being controlled, it is in need of participation in God the Word that he may be controller either of the body or of the rational or of the animal soul, then by him 74 he 75 obtained the victory, if it is fair to call victory that of another nature which is distinct and unlike and unequal to men, its companions. It seems that he acts in schema and forcibly subjects all to him[self] and brings [them] under his authority by force like God, so that he4 who was defeated by his very own choice could not escape owing to his defeat nor observe the commandments in his own nature, except by God the Word who is the conqueror for all time. It is not, in fact, / wonderful and worthy of praise that God the Word became in the body and observed all the observances of the soul and of the body. For |85 if he had not remained in his nature above the nature of the body or of the soul or of the intelligence, he would surely have been required [to do so], since the rational soul also sufficed to observe the commandments; but if the latter had not sufficed and for this reason there had been need of the incarnation of God the Word that for all he might support the sufferings of the body and of the soul and of the intelligence in a natural union which would have united the nature, he would have suffered as the body, as the soul [and] as the intelligence in the mixture. But since he was not conquered as one of them, it appears that he was outside their nature and therefore was not caught by those things whereby each one of them was caught. Together with this [there is] another absurdity which they predicate in limiting God himself by the necessity of nature and ascribing, as the Manichaeans, to hylê such might that it drags after it by authority and its own force whosoever receives it, and that he suffers in all ways the actual bodily sufferings [namely] whatever God the Word suffered when he condescended to the body and supported these bodily sufferings in his own nature when he was scourged by hunger and thirst, by the natural bonds of the body, though in his own nature he was exempt from these things; he desired and he was angered / and was fearful and was suffering, and suffered naturally all these sufferings of the body and the soul, because he was composed of [one] nature. For he, who is composed of [one] nature, of necessity adheres in the nature to all the nature's own properties, whether of a man or of God or of any other nature to which he is naturally united and combined. And however one would be willing to say that he is in nothing distinct from me, yet those who are composed of [one] nature support of necessity that nature's own proper qualities which are naturally and not voluntarily theirs. But that God ihe Word is so voluntarily and not by force: I have authority over my life, that I should lay it down and I have authority to take it again. Therefore the words of the Divine Scriptures befit not Christ in any other manner than this; but as we have |86 examined and found, all refer not to the union of the nature but to the natural and hypostatic prosôpon.76
[A selection of the footnotes has been transcribed]
1. 1 Viz. the Syriac Translator: this title is added by Bedjan.
2. 2 These lines are only fragmentarily preserved.
3. 3 Nau conjectures: [dans sa carriere] apostolique.
4. 4 Nau conjectures: dans les travaux de l'esprit; see crit. n., p. 398.
6. 6 Literally: 'by the precedence of the parsopha (= πρόσωπον) '.
8. 8 There is a lacuna here in the text.
11. 3 Several lines are here missing.
12. 1 There is a lacuna here in the text.
15. 1 Literally: 'expect to accept'.
16. 2 Viz. the followers of Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch in a. d. 260, condemned at the Council of Antioch, a. d. 268 (or 269). Among them, the semi-Arian Photinus was condemned in 351.
17. 4 This passage illustrates Nestorius' use of the phrase 'natural union', and explains his refusal to use that phrase to describe the relation of the two natures in Christ. A natural union comes into being where elements are combined into a whole by some external force. (This is the meaning of 'in virtue of a command'.) But the incarnation of the Word was not imposed on him from without; it was due to his own free choice, and his godhead remained a free co-operator throughout. See below, pp. 36-43, 84-86, 161, 179, 300-1, 303-4, 314.
18. 1 Nestorius' argument seems to be as follows: to speak of the Incarnation as a 'natural union' implies that union with the manhood was imposed on Christ's godhead from without, so that the godhead was imprisoned in the manhood like a criminal in gaol. This involves two impossible positions, (1) the denial of the freedom of Christ's godhead (hence the language about 'punishment'), and (a) the ascription of passibility to his godhead.
19. 1 Marginal Gloss. There was not an answer to the seventh question in the original, nor was there even a place for it.
20. 2 Sophronius. In the text Sofronyos; in the margin Sofrinos. Sophronius was a common name in the time of Nestorius; but he seems here to be simply a rhetorical figure devised by Nestorius to enable him to cast his argument in the form of a dialogue. He is used indifferently to represent any heresy. Nan (in loc.) suggests a Nestorian Bishop of Telia and a Nestorian layman of that name as possible references. Cp. Bedjan, op. cit., pp. ix, x. Cp. p. 378.
22. 1 This passage is translated in Bethune-Baker, Nestorius and his Teaching, p. 45, and referred to on p. 78 of that work.
23. 1 The importance of this point is discussed by Loofs in Nestorius and his place in the History of Christian Doctrine, pp. 126 sqq.; see also below , pp. 22-26.
24. 2 The non-possession of body or flesh (the two words seem to be interchangeable) is for Nestorius a distinctive characteristic of godhead, while the possession of body or flesh is essential to manhood. This antithesis was, of course, common to him and to his opponents, but he seems to have developed his doctrine by the strictly logical working out of such principles. They seem to be the leaven which leavens the whole lump of his thought. Cp. pp. 22, n. 2, 48.
25. 1 i. e. running water and water frozen.
26. 2 This must surely mean: 'is a change from one schema to another schema while the hypostasis remains unchanged.' The word schema seems to mean the form or appearance of a thing at any given moment, e.g. water has one schema when running and another when frozen. But prosôpon, whatever it is, must be a permanent element in the being of a thing, without which, or if it were other than it is, the thing would not be what it is. Might it be that the prosôpon is the unity of the successive schemata of a thing?
27. 2 I.e. an ousia of dust and ashes.
28. 2 Nestorius is here accused of Nestorianism, His reply is a somewhat ambiguous reference to Scripture, after which he confines himself to attacking Sophronius' position, leaving till later the task of making clear his own views. Cp. p. 47, n. 3.
29. 2 See p. 15, n. 2. Nestorius is here developing further the argument on p. 15. He has there denied that the Incarnation means merely the taking of the schema of humanity by God the Word; he now shows that it involves the taking of that schema and more. But the most important point seems to be the establishing of the fact that ousias are mutually exclusive. Henceforward this must be assumed as one of the presuppositions of Nestorius' thought. If Godhead and manhood are to be united neither of them can be the basis of the union. They must be united in some tertium quid. Cp. pp. 14, n. 2, 48, 298.
30. 1 Nau points out that the emphasis is on the otherness, not on the equality, of the added ousia. The Syriac phrase is equivalent to the Greek ισουσία.
31. 3 Nau suggests, probably rightly, that the human prosôpon is here meant.
32. 4 This heading refers to the sect mentioned at the beginning of p. 24, and should probably be transposed to the top of that page.
33. 1 Nestorius seems here to be dealing with the position afterwards held by Eutyches.
34. 1 Altering the punctuation of the Syriac text, which puts the stop after 'Manichaeans'.
35. 3 V reads: 'that which is made from that which is unmade '.
38. 6 Viz. the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
39. 3 §§ 37-41. Nestorius' argument seems to be: In whatever sense the bread becomes the Body of Christ, in that same sense we become the Body of Christ by participating in the Sacrament. Since we can only participate in a human body, the Body of Christ must have been (and be) human.
In view of the charge commonly brought against Nestorianism that it destroys the universal significance for all men of the Incarnation of Christ, it is interesting to find that he defends his own view as alone safeguarding this significance.
40. 1 The Syriac text reads 'revelation ', for which Nau suggests 'will'; but in view of later passages this seems unnecessary. Cp. e.g. pp. 60-69, 200 n. 1.
41. 2 Sc. God the Word and the Man Christ.
42. 5 If the text of this passage is right, the last words 'from no nature' must be the apodosis to the conditional clause beginning ' But if, since he wished....' The sense must be that out of something which, being incomplete, is no real nature the human nature was made by the addition of the Logos.
43. 1 The word 'soul' seems to have dropped out of the Syriac text.
44. 1 This seems to mean: If the divine nature is found in Christ in a natural union, it can only be so in virtue of having been reduced to the level of human nature. If it were remaining itself and freely co-operating of its own will, the union would be another kind of union.
47. 4 Literally: 'for you the word "union" necessarily takes the meaning of the Arians.'
48. 3 See p. 19, n. 2. Sophronius again accuses Nestorius of Nestorianism, and this time he defends himself against the charges by directly denying what is alleged against him. See especially pp. 49-50.
49. 1 Sophronius here seems to identify himself with Nestorius' point of view, but to deduce from it that he must go on to conclude that God was in Christ in the same way as in the saints. He is thus used to represent an accusation commonly brought against Nestorius by the orthodox, which Nestorius proceeds to rebut.
50. 2 This presumably means that each nature has its own hypostasis and prosôpon, (So Nau.)
51. 1 In this section Nestorius shows clearly that he is aware that in using words like 'adoption' and 'indwelling' he is in danger of being taken to teach psilanthropism, from which he is careful to distinguish his own doctrine.
53. 4 If this were a definition of what it is to have the prosôpon of God, it would lay Nestorius open to the charge of being a Nestorian. But that it is not is made clear by p. 62, ll. 14-16. This sentence therefore merely states that willing the same things as God is implied in having the prosôpon of God. Cp. pp. 70, 163.
55. 5 In this section Nestorius develops the idea that the Incarnation took place for the purpose of revelation, an idea very prominent in his thought. Cp. p. 34, n. 1, and references there. The section is also an important one for the determination of the meaning of prosôpon.
56. 1 Only isolated words and letters have been preserved in the next five lines of the Syriac text.
57. 2 Bethune-Baker discusses the references of the pronouns in this passage in Nestorius and his Teaching, p. 126.
58. 1 From the next section it is clear that the victory was that of the Temptation.
60. 2 There is here a short lacuna in the text.
61. 4 This passage is obscure, but possibly refers to such charges as casting out devils through Beelzebub; threatening the Temple; and blasphemy. Cp. Mark iii. 22; xiv. 56-64.
62. 3 At the end of his work Nestorius claims that the Church finally approved a doctrine which was what he had always taught: cp. p. 378. It is in passages such as this that his orthodox intention is most clear. Though he never speaks totidem verbis of one persona or one u9po/stasij in Christ, he seems to be asserting what that terminology was meant to express. Cp. further pp. 246-9, 312-5.
63. 1 Nestorius apparently follows the legend that when the angels were ordered to serve the later creation, man, some of them fell into jealousy and became his enemies. Nau refers to the version in the seventh century Nestorian Patriarch George, in Chabot. Synodes Nestoriens (Notices et Extraits xxxvii. 495).
66. 6 Nestorius here seems to teach that the union in the Incarnation was so close as to exclude the possibility of sin. Cp. p. 63.
67. 1 Literally: 'he changed our death into the death which . . . .' Nestorius' theology of the Atonement is somewhat obscure. He seems here to teach in accordance with the line of thought which looks on the death of Christ as a ransom paid to the devil. Cp. p. 173. But see pp. 45 (propitiation), 63-3, 183, 205, 212 ff. (renewing of fallen human nature), 66-7 (conquest of Satan). And cp. pp. 75, n. 1, 84, n. 2.
68. 2 Literally: ' into the midst'.
69. 1 Three points of importance in Nestorius' theology of the Atonement seem here to emerge: (i) the universality of God's grace in atonement, (ii) the need of its individual appropriation by men, and (iii) the reality of Christ's moral struggle as man.
70. 1 This and the next two sections show clearly Nestorius' thought on the problem of reconciling God's omnipotence with the existence of evil.
73. 2 Cp. p. 73, n. 1. Here we seem to find that although Nestorius looks on the death of Christ as ransoming mankind from the devil, yet he rejects certain ways of explaining that theory of the Atonement. Is it not possible that he is denying such a doctrine as is found extant in Gregory the Great (Moralia xxxii. 12-xxxiii. 6), where the devil is cheated through ignorance of the Crucified being divine and therefore immortal? Nestorius argues that the Cross must be a real moral victory by the Man, not an unexpected triumph by a concealed deus ex machina. Such a triumph would really mean the defeat of mankind. The individual humanity of Christ might have been exalted, but the devil's fetters would be rivetted on the rest of mankind. It is interesting that according to the traditional account of Nestorius' teaching he is himself open to precisely this charge.
76. 1 This must surely mean that in considering each passage of Scripture we have to ask to which of the two natures in Christ it is appropriate; then the passage is to be referred to the prosôpon which belongs to that nature and hypo-stasis. Each passage thus refers to a ' natural and hypostatic prosôpon '. (Cp. pp. 54, 316 sqq.) The two 'natural and hypostatic prosôpa' then somehow combine to form the one prosôpon of the union.
Professor Bethune-Baker's interpretation of this passage in Nestorius and his Teaching, p. 99, seems to require an unjustified identification of prosôpon in Nestorius with 'person' in the modern sense of the word, and does not seem to be borne out by Nestorius' usage and argument in other passages.
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