Ad Theophilum adversus Apollinaristas

Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, to Theophilus, Against the Apollinarists To brother and fellow minister Theophilus, Gregory. Not only of worldly wisdom is the great city of the Alexandrians rich, but also of true wisdom the springs have long flowed among you. Therefore it seems to me fitting that, from those in whom the power for good is more abundant, the alliance for the truth concerning the mystery should come. For the lofty Gospel says somewhere that to whom much has been given, from that one more will be demanded. So you would be just to set against the falsely named knowledge of those who are always devising something new against the truth all the power that accrues to you and your church from divine grace, by which the harmony according to God is cut, the great and venerable name of Christians is silenced, the church is divided into human appellations, and—most terrible of all—men rejoice in being named after those who lead them into error. If, then, it were possible for the prophetic prayer to be fulfilled and for the sinners and the lawless to vanish from the earth, so that they did not exist, such a thing would be preferable to all. But since the words of the lawless prevail, having power against the truth in the energy of the adversary, it would be acceptable at least to diminish the evils and to prevent the increase of worse things as it proceeds further.

What then am I saying? Those who champion the doctrines of Apollinarius attempt to strengthen their own positions by means of the accusation against us, constructing the Word as fleshly and the Son of Man as creator of the ages and the Son’s divinity as mortal. For they allege that some in the catholic church advocate two sons in the doctrine—one by nature, and another by adoption who came later (I do not know from whom they have heard such a thing or against what person they are contending; for I have not yet known the one who uttered these things). But since they set forth this hypothesis against us and, by appearing to be entangled in this absurdity, strengthen their own opinions, it would be well for your perfection in Christ, as the Holy Spirit may bring to your mind, to cut off the occasions of those seeking occasions against us and to persuade those who slanderously impute these things to the church of God that such a doctrine neither exists among Christians nor will be proclaimed. For it is not because the maker of the ages appeared on earth at the end of the days and associated with men that two sons are counted in the church—one the maker of the ages and another who at the end of the ages was manifested through flesh to human life.

If someone were to take the incarnational manifestation of the only-begotten Son of God through flesh as the construction of a different Son, that person, having counted all the theophanies that occurred to the saints both before the revelation in the flesh of the only-begotten Son of God and those that occurred afterward again to those worthy, would, according to the number of divine manifestations, construct a multitude of Sons. And for him there would be one Son who gave oracles to Abraham, another who appeared to Isaac, another who fought alongside Jacob, and another who appeared to Moses in various manifestations—in fire, in darkness, in a pillar of cloud, in the vision face to face, in the rear parts. Another Son again would be the one who arrayed himself in battle alongside the successor of Moses, and the one who gave oracles to Job through the whirlwind, and the one who appeared to Isaiah upon the high throne, and the one described in human form by the word of Ezekiel, and after these the one who flashed in light upon Paul, and before this the one who appeared on the mountain to those around Peter in a higher glory. But if this is absurd and utterly impious—to divide the varied theophanies of the only-begotten into a number of Sons—then it is equally absurd to make the manifestation through flesh a basis for the construction of a different Son. For we think that, according to the measure of each recipient’s capacity to receive the divine manifestation, the vision of the transcendent nature has always occurred—greater and more befitting God for those able to reach the height, lesser and more lowly for those incapable of the greater.

For this reason he does not appear in the incarnational economy through flesh to the life of men in the same way as in the earlier theophanies, but because all, as the prophet says, turned aside and became worthless, and there was no one, as it is written, able to understand and investigate the height of the divinity, for this reason the only-begotten Son, appearing to the more fleshly generation, becomes flesh, having contracted himself according to the smallness of the recipient, or rather, as scripture says, having emptied himself, so that the nature might receive as much as it can contain. For that that generation was condemned beyond the earlier ones we have clearly learned from the voice of the Lord, in which he declared them more intolerable than Sodomites and Ninevites, and the Lord determined that that generation would condemn the queen of the south at the resurrection. If, then, all were able, like Moses, to enter into the darkness in which Moses saw the unseen things, or like the exalted Paul to be raised above three heavens and in paradise to be taught the unspeakable things about matters beyond reason, or like the zealous Elijah to be lifted up with fire to the ethereal region and not be weighed down by the drag of the body, or like Ezekiel and Isaiah to see on the throne of glory the one raised upon the Cherubim or glorified by the Seraphim, there would certainly have been no need at all of the manifestation of our God through flesh, if all were such.

Since, as the Lord says, that generation was wicked and adulterous (wicked because, as the Gospel says, the whole world then lay in wickedness, and adulterous because it had fallen away from the good bridegroom and mingled with the one who commits adultery against souls through vice), for this reason the true physician, who heals those who are ill, applied the treatment to the sick one in the manner that the disease required, in a way sharing the weakness of our nature's illness and becoming flesh, which in its own nature has weakness consubstantially united with it, as the divine voice teaches: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." If, then, the divine, having come to be in the human, and the immortal in the mortal, and the powerful in the weak, and the unchangeable and imperishable in the changeable and perishable, had allowed the mortal to remain with the mortal, or the perishable with corruption, and the rest with the others in the same way, one might reasonably have contemplated a duality in the Son of God, counting each of the opposite aspects separately on its own. But if the mortal, having come to be in the immortal, became immortality, and likewise the perishable changed into imperishability, and all the rest were similarly transformed into the impassible and divine, what argument remains for those who split the one into a dual distinction? For the Word, both before the flesh and after the incarnational economy, was and is Word; and God, both before the form of a servant and after it, is God; and the true light, both before shining in the darkness and after that, is true light.

If, therefore, every concept befitting God is seen to be unchangeable and immutable in every respect concerning the only-begotten, and he is always the same, ever in the same relation to himself, how can anyone compel us to call his manifestation through flesh a duality of sons, as though there were one pre-eternal son and another son born through flesh to God? For we have both learned and believed from the mystery that the human nature was saved by being united with the Word; but we have neither learned nor are we led by any logical consequence to conceive of a fleshly son of God considered separately in himself. For he did not, having become sin and curse for us, as the apostle says, and having taken upon himself our weaknesses, according to the voice of Isaiah, leave sin and curse and weakness incurable; but the mortal was swallowed up by life, the one crucified from weakness lived from power, the curse was transformed into blessing, and everything weak and perishable in our nature, when mingled with the divinity, became what the divinity is. Whence, then, could anyone conceive of a duality of sons, as though compelled by some necessity through the economy in the flesh to such a supposition? For he who is always in the Father and always has the Father in himself and is united with him, as he was before, so he is and will be, and another son besides that one neither was, nor came to be, nor will be.

The firstfruits of human nature that were assumed, by the omnipotent divinity (to use an image, as one might say), like a drop of vinegar mingled with an infinite sea, exist in the divinity, but not in their own particular properties. For in that case the duality of sons would be consistently implied, if in the ineffable divinity of the Son some heterogeneous nature were recognized by distinctive marks, so that one part were weak or small or perishable or temporary, and the other powerful and great and imperishable and eternal. But since all things that are contemplated together with the mortal have been transformed into the properties of the divinity, no difference is apprehended in any respect (for whatever one sees of the Son is divinity, wisdom, power, sanctification, impassibility), how could the one be divided into a dual signification, when no difference divides the number? For the divinity raised up the lowly; it granted to what was named in human terms the name that is above every name; it made the subject and slave lord and king, as Peter says that God made him Lord and Christ (for by Christ we understand king). And because of the precise unity of the assumed flesh and the assuming divinity, the names are interchanged, so that the human is named by the divine and the divine by the human. Hence also the crucified one is called by Paul the Lord of glory, and the one worshipped by all creation, both heavenly and earthly and subterranean, is named Jesus.

Through these things, the true and indivisible union is interpreted, from the fact that the ineffable glory of the divinity is signified by the appellation of Jesus, when every flesh confesses and every tongue declares that Lord Jesus Christ, and when the one who received the sufferings of the cross and was pierced with the nails and transfixed by the spear is called Lord of glory by Paul. If, therefore, the human element is not shown in the peculiarities of its nature but is Lord of glory, no one would dare to speak of two Lords of glory, having learned that there is one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things. Whence, then, do those who put forward a plausible pretext for accusation against us as a means of constructing their own opinions invoke a duality of sons? Such, then, are our words in defense; but we seek from your perfection in Christ a greater and more perfect alliance for the truth, so that those who strengthen their own opinions through censure of us might have no handle for accusation against the church.