Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarium

Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, Against the Apollinarians: A Refutation A fine introduction to our discourse would be the voice of the Lord commanding us to beware of false prophets, who, he says, come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves; by their fruits you shall know them. If, then, the fruit distinguishes both the true sheep and the destroyer of sheep—the one who in gentle guise slips unguarded into the flock's company and brings the hostile mouth hidden beneath the gentle appearance into the open—it is fitting to seek out the fruits, both the good and the worse, by which the guise of deceit is uncovered; for he says, "By their fruits you shall know them." Therefore, in my judgment at least, the good fruit of every teaching is the increase of those being saved in the Church, while the corrupt and poisonous fruit is the dissolution of those who stand firm. If, then, someone by his words increases the flock and extends the vine into every corner of the house and plants it around the master's table, transforming those from the error of the wild olive into new shoots of cultivated olive, and casts the mystical branches into the sweet and fresh stream of teaching, by which the flocks become fruitful, so that Laban's possession is diminished while Jacob's portion flourishes and multiplies with the marked offspring—if someone should display such fruit of teaching (for the fruit, as has been said, is the increase of the truth), he is truly a prophet, prophesying according to the divine purpose by the Spirit.

But if someone should pluck off the vine's branches and lay waste the divine table by uprooting the planting, and should plot against the spiritual watering-place so that the sheep no longer browse among the rods of the patriarch nor multiply the flock by the marked offspring, but are driven away from the nourishing pasture—that is, from the ancestral traditions—and camp outside the fold and are scattered to alien pastures, whenever such is the fruit of the teaching, the wolfish shape hidden under the sheep's skin would become evident. Let us therefore examine what the teaching of Apollinaris the Syrian has produced for us—an increase of the flocks or a decrease, a gathering of the scattered or a dissolution of those who stand together, a advocacy or an overthrow of the ancestral doctrines. If, then, the zeal of the aforementioned man looks toward the better, he is altogether a sheep and not a wolf; but if the opposite—"Beware of the false prophets," says the Lord—let not the mouth that is sharpened for outrage and destruction of the body that draws near, with the teeth of innovation, and that tears apart the sound body of the church of God, escape notice. And so that what is said may not seem to be mere abuse, we shall set forth one of the discourses circulated by him, whose title is this: "Demonstration," he says, "concerning the divine incarnation according to the likeness of man." And perhaps someone who has accurately laid bare the meaning of the title would not need to refute the absurdity of the doctrine through the treatise itself. "Demonstration," he says, "concerning the divine incarnation according to the likeness of man.

But it would be better to set alongside the divine utterances in refutation of this new-fangled coinage of names. "The Word," it says, "became flesh," and "The glory dwelt in our land," and "God was manifested in the flesh," so that through each of the things said we might learn that the divine nature, being always immutable in its essence and unchangeable, comes to be in the changeable and mutable nature, in order that by its own immutability it might heal our inclination toward evil. But this man says that God was not manifested in the flesh—which is the same as saying that the Word did not become flesh, he who in the likeness and form of a man conversed with the life of men through the form of a servant—but he invents in his account some divine flesh-becoming, not knowing what he means by the term, whether the divinity was changed from its simple and uncompounded nature into fleshy resistance, or whether, while the divine essence remained in itself, some other divine flesh-becoming appeared, a boundary between the nature of men and of God, being neither man nor God but somehow partaking of both—which, in that it is a flesh-becoming, is akin to the human, but in that it is divine, is beyond what is human. But surely it cannot be God; for the divine is simple in nature and uncompounded; and from whatever its simplicity is separated, from that its divinity is equally separated. Nor again is it man; for man is said to be that which is constituted of a rational soul and a body; but for that in which the two are not jointly conceived, how will the name of man apply? For we speak of a body of a man and a soul of a man, so long as each of these is contemplated on its own.

The convergence of these two is and is called man. What, then, is the divine incarnation that is neither man nor God, which the title of the Word fabricates? It is not possible to find it from the things examined. "Proof," he says, "concerning the divine incarnation according to the likeness of man." What again does this "according to the likeness of man" indicate? That the divine incarnation is constituted in the same way as the human one. When is this? Is it at the last of the days? And where is the mystery of virginity? For the Lord does not become flesh according to the likeness of man, as the writer of words says, but by divine power and the Holy Spirit, as the Gospel says. But before the ages? And how is that which is likened to that which is not? For man is the last of the things in creation, but the Lord is king before the ages. According to the likeness of what man, then, does that divine incarnation take place in the pre-eternal? According to that of Adam? But he did not yet exist. But according to some other man? And who is this man who is foreseen before Adam, so that the incarnation of God might be likened according to the pattern set forth? For that which is like is altogether like that which is, not that which is not. So that two absurdities appear in his argument: for either the creature is found older than the creator, or the divine incarnation is likened to that which is not; for in the beginning the Godhead was, but Adam was not. Therefore, if the divine nature becomes flesh according to the likeness of man, the divine incarnation is likened to that which is not; but that which is likened to that which is not would certainly not itself exist. But he says that that incarnation came to be in some other way besides the human one.

And what is the likeness of things of different natures? If, then, it is not possible for the divine incarnation to come about according to likeness of man in respect of the pre-eternal, nor in the last of the times, when the economy of the Lord is according to man, according to which God was manifested in the flesh, does the incarnation come about according to likeness of man (for the mystery according to virginity does not admit such a notion), then in vain would he have made this inscription of the word according to both notions. That, then, the inscription is unexamined and rests upon no coherent concept, I think has been sufficiently made clear through what has been said to those who listen with understanding. And it would be time also to set forth for examination the word itself that is indicated by this writing. I will write the first things in my own wording, running through the thought briefly, in those matters where it is without danger to pass over some of the written things unexamined. Only, he says, it was good that the pious faith be considered; for neither did unexamined faith benefit Eve; so that it was fitting that the faith of the Christians also be examined, lest perhaps it escape notice, having fallen in with the notions of the Greeks or the Jews

in opinions. Having prefaced these things at greater length, he brings in his argument, saying that it has been loudly proclaimed among the unbelievers and the heresies that it is impossible for God to become man and to have dealings with passions, which is also introduced among the heresies under the guise of faith, when they say that Christ is a divinely inspired man because of his birth from a woman and because of the passions. Which heresies, then, he knows that say Christ is a divinely inspired man, he himself would know, and anyone who has been instructed in his writings. But we, having visited many places and having conversed earnestly with both those who share the doctrine and those who have stood apart concerning the matters under investigation in the argument, have not yet heard anyone uttering such a pronouncement about the mystery, that Christ was a divinely inspired man. It was fitting, then, for one who intends to correct the mistaken suppositions about the doctrine and to introduce the more pious ones, not to fashion for himself things that do not exist and fight against non-existent things, but to arm himself against what is said by his opponents. For not even the skilled among physicians introduce their art against non-existent diseases, but stand against the disease that has already arisen by means of their science. Either, then, let him show the one who has said that God was not manifested in the flesh, but that Christ is a divinely inspired man, and then we will also accept his argument as not made in vain; or, as long as such a disease is not found, all will agree that it is vain to entangle oneself with things that do not exist. But it is not without reason that he fashions for himself such a necessity of writing.

But so that he might obtain some path and sequence for the construction of his own doctrine, he assumed what was not said as though it had been said, in order that, by appearing to contend against these things through his contrived refutation, he might establish that the divine is mortal. For his whole purpose in this treatise looks to this: that the divinity of the only-begotten Son is mortal, and that the passion was not received by the human nature, but that the impassible and immutable nature was changed to a participation in passion. Whence, to what end his argument looks, those acquainted with his mysteries would know; but the things which the sequence reveals even to the very simple are such as not even the most godless of the Greeks would say. For if the divinity of the only-begotten itself has died, then life and truth and righteousness and goodness and light and power have altogether died with it; for these things, according to various conceptions, the only-begotten God both is and is called. But being simple and indivisible and incomposite, whatever he is called, he is wholly that, not in part this and in part the other, so that, being one, all things are understood in him, and if he is not, all things are described away together with him. If, then, the divine was destroyed by death, all things contemplated together concerning his divinity were destroyed together with death. But indeed Christ is not simply power, but God's power and God's wisdom. When, therefore, these things were extinguished together with the divinity of the Son through death, there was no wisdom of God with the Father, no power, no life, nor any other of the things named for the better—none at all.

For all these things are believed to be of God, and all the things of the Father are believed to be in him—things which exist when the Son exists, but when he does not exist, they certainly do not exist, because it is confessed that all the things of the Father are in him. If, then, the power was extinguished by death, and Christ is the power of God, what power was again called back from non-being, when the power that existed was destroyed by death, and no other was left remaining? For it is confessed even by those who contend against us that the power of the Father is in the Son. If, then, the power is one, and this power, having been dominated by death, passed over into destruction in the time of the economy of the passion, what other power besides him is fashioned, which calls back this power from death? For if they should say that the one died but the other remained immortal, they will no longer confess that the power of the Father is in the Son, and in consequence they will also set aside the Lord's own sayings as not being true, which testify that all things of the Father belong to the Son. For he who has all things of the Father certainly has the Father's immortality in himself; and immortality, as long as it is what it is called, stands unmixed and in no fellowship with death. If, then, they say that the divinity of the Son is mortal, they establish that he does not have the Father's immortality in himself. But he who says that he has the whole Father in himself speaks truly. Therefore he who establishes as mortal this one in whom all the Father's eternity is beheld lies.

Since, then, according to the account of the pious, the power of the Father and of the Son is one (for we see the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son), it is clearly demonstrated that the passible element in his nature receives death, while the element incapable of suffering worked impassibility in the passible element. But let us proceed to what follows in the argument. I will speak again in my own voice, summing up the thought briefly. For he says that to call Christ a divine man is contrary to the apostolic teachings and alien to the councils; and that Paul, Photinus, and Marcellus began this kind of distortion. Then, like a skilled wrestler, as it were grappling with his interlocutor and having found the author of the phrase, he says this: How will you say that the man who came down from heaven is from the earth, he who is testified to be a man and a son of man, and who is proclaimed to be God and the Son of God? Again in these words the argument of the preceding points is the beginning of other absurdities; for in order to show a God who has died, he does not at all admit that anything of the earthly nature is to be contemplated in him, since the suffering that comes with death seems to be altogether akin to the earth. There is not, he says, a man from the earth—the man who came down from heaven. A man, however, even if he has come down from heaven; for the Lord does not deny this designation in the Gospels. How, then, does he preserve consistency in what has been said? If the man is not from the earth, but comes down to us from heaven, how is he who comes down from heaven called a son of man?

For he will certainly grant that, just as on earth we conceive of fathers before sons, so too in the case of the man who came from heaven according to him, since he is called a son of man, he is not named from a father at random, but that he has another man as his father, foreknown in heaven according to the human element. For if he is established by this saying which declares, "No one has ascended into heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man," and for this reason he severs him from kinship with the earthly man, calling him a son of man who came from heaven, he will certainly grant some other such father in heaven to the one who came down to us, so that even in the heavenly life nations of men and peoples and families and all things that exist in this life here are supposed to exist. If, then, the one who came from heaven is a son of man, but the one born of Mary from the seed of David according to the flesh has been named from above a son of man, falsely according to them is he called a son of God, since neither the heavenly nor the earthly is appropriated to the divine. But having gathered to himself the things said to the main point, he concludes the argument in this way: "But if he is both from heaven a son of man and from a woman a son of God, how is he not the same God and man?" But I say that to believe the same one to be both man and God is [the view] of everyone who honors right reason, though not according to the meaning of the author of this account; for neither is the divine earthly nor the heavenly human, as he thinks.

But from above the power of the Most High was overshadowed, that is, was formed, in human nature through the Holy Spirit, and from the undefiled virgin the portion of flesh was united, and thus what was born in her was named Son of the Most High—the divine power appropriating kinship with the Most High, and the flesh appropriating human kinship. But God, he says, is [joined] to the Spirit that was made flesh, and man to the flesh assumed by God. What again is the making-flesh of the Spirit apart from union with our flesh? And from where was man assumed, if not from the first man, whose first generation we heard Moses record as from the earth, not from heaven? For God took dust from the earth and formed man; but we have learned from no one that another constitution of man was composed from heaven. Then he adds to what has been said that the mystery was manifested in the flesh—this our account says well—and that the Word became flesh according to the union, and these are the words of sound speech; for he who says that the Word was united to the flesh says nothing other than the concurrence of the two. But the flesh, he says, is not soulless; for it is said to war against the Spirit and to war against the law of the mind. Excellent is his fairness! He does not mold the flesh for God as soulless. Therefore let us ask whether the flesh was assumed by the divine Word as ensouled, as the writer says; and we say that even the bodies of irrational animals are ensouled.

He who brings human flesh, and that flesh animated, near to the Word joins nothing other than the whole man; for there is no other property of the human soul besides the intellectual nature, since in all other respects we have a community with the irrational animals: the appetitive, the irascible, the desire for food, the power of growth, satiety, sleep, digestion, change, the expulsion of what has become useless—all these are administered equally in us and in the irrational animals through some psychic power. Therefore he who says that the one assumed is a man, and grants that this man is animated, has testified to nothing other than that there is also in him an intellectual power, which is the peculiar property of the human soul—from the very words of the apostle which he set before us. For he who said, The mind of the flesh is enmity against God (for it is not subject to the law of God), speaks clearly of the properties of the power of choice and of thought; for to be obediently or contrariously disposed toward the law is the property of choice, and the very name of "mind" no one could separate from the activity of thinking. And that thinking is the same as understanding, not even one of the utterly infantile would deny. And he who wars against and takes captive—how could he be without the activity of understanding? For the movement of the choice toward evil things is not a proof to the wicked that there is no mind in them, but rather they are outside of good understanding, yet they understand nonetheless.

Since the divinely inspired Word also says that serpent, whom we have been taught from the Scriptures to be the author and inventor of evil, was not devoid of understanding, testifying that he had greater prudence than the others. Therefore, from the very things by which he thinks to establish his own argument, the utterances set before us refute the impiety of his doctrine. For it is not in these passages alone that the apostle sets the flesh against the spirit—that is, the evil inclination against the more refined life—but he also says to the Corinthians, reproaching them for their passion: You are fleshly. Was it then at that time, when the word was spoken to them, that human beings were, according to Apollinarius' threefold division of man, without participation in the activity of the mind? Or were they rather called fleshly by Paul because of their immoderate disposition toward the flesh, receiving the designation from what predominated? And the context of what is written demonstrates this argument: For where there is among you, he says, jealousy and strife, are you not fleshly? But to be jealous and to strive belongs to the activity of the mind. What follows in his treatise contains, as he supposes, a demonstration through more testimonies that man is composed of three parts—of flesh, soul, and mind—which is not far from our own account. For it is the same thing to say that man consists of a rational soul and a body, and, counting the mind separately by itself, to divide it threefold.

the contemplation concerning man; even if the account gives the heretics many handles in this matter. For one could, if he reckoned the intellectual by itself, speak of one boundary of the spirited part and again another of the appetitive. And perhaps someone, enumerating the remaining motions of the soul according to the account, might demonstrate man to be manifold and complex instead of threefold. But let these things be set aside, lest by going through each point in detail we stretch the refutation to immoderation, and let us proceed to what follows in the account. For having established through many arguments that the human composite is three-natured or three-partite, or however one wishes to name it, he mentions certain synodical doctrines, both those collected against Paul of Samosata, which says "the Lord has been deified from heaven," and the one proclaimed at Nicaea, whose statement he quoted word for word as follows: "who came down from heaven and was made flesh and became man." And having said these things as though pre-constructing the argument about to be stated, he thus lays bare the thought of his own will and says, as it were, attaching it to what has been demonstrated, in these words: "Having God as spirit, that is, mind, with soul and body, Christ is reasonably called man from heaven." What do the things said have in common with what precedes? Where did the synod against Samosata dogmatize this? But I pass over the older things of our memory. What such thing did it show in the doctrines at Nicaea?

The faith says of the one who came down from the heavens and was made flesh, so that the flesh is not understood as existing before the descent, but the one made flesh and made man comes second after the descent? This is proclaimed by all in the churches, and this is our account—or rather, the account of the church. Where, then, in what has been said is it, that the Spirit, that is, the mind, having God, Christ with soul and body is called a man from heaven? For whether you examine the account with respect to the bare wording or also with respect to the meaning of what has been said, what was stated will be found in neither. For the wording is as far removed from the wording as, to speak in the manner of the Psalms, the east is from the west; and what common ground does the meaning of what has been said show toward the things made clear through that wording? This one says that Christ, made flesh with human flesh, has within himself God the Spirit, that is, the mind; but the one who commands that Christ not be called a man indwelt by God, having God within himself as one in another, is himself before others establishing this. But the voice of the synod says, the one who came down from heaven. Let the many and simple understand, then, the descent from the heavens to us; for we shall not dispute against such an understanding, even if the mind indicates a loftier meaning, saying that the divine does not descend locally—being everywhere and grasping all things that exist—but signifying the condescension toward the lowliness of our nature. Nevertheless, however one may wish to accept the descent, the account of the synod again says, the one made flesh, and it says this well.

For how could he have more appropriately interpreted the birth from a woman? For he was not, insofar as he is God, himself born from a woman by himself. For the one who existed before creation does not receive his very being by having been born through flesh; but having prepared the way for the entrance of his own power by the Holy Spirit, and needing nothing of material resource for the construction of his own tabernacle, according to what is said concerning Wisdom, "He built for himself a house," having made man out of the dust from the virgin, through which he was united to the human nature. Where, then, does the account say in these things what seems good to Apollinarius, that the spirit, that is the mind, having God, Christ with soul and body, is reasonably called a man from heaven? For if it is permitted him by authority to draw the divine oracles to whatever seems good to him, and, like the interpreters of dreams, to fit whatever meaning he wishes to the letter, let him attach these and such meanings to the divine words; but if the apostle says that old wives' fables and profane innovations must be rejected in every way, it is by no means to be conceded to him to harmonize things that have no fellowship with one another and to glue together things incompatible. And rather he himself, by the very things with which he contends against what has been said, would ally with us for the overthrow of his own doctrine; for he says that Paul also calls the first Adam a living soul, existing with a body, having said this well and in favor of the truth. Is the first man, then, who is mentioned by Paul as becoming a living soul, possessing some bestial and irrational soul? And yet the history testifies to no small intellectual grace in him.

For the animals were brought to him by God, but he was master of the discovery of names, devising what was fitting and suitable for each. But also the disobedience, and the disposition toward what was not right, and the shame over what had been done, and finding a fitting defense for the accusations—all these things become a proof of the activity of the mind. Why then was the intellectual aspect of the soul in Adam passed over in silence by Paul? Or is it clear that by the part the remainder is named together with it, as in "All flesh shall come to you" David signifies the whole human being through the flesh; and Jacob, when he sojourned among the Egyptians with seventy-five souls, is not recorded by the Scripture at that time as without mind or without flesh. But the writer says that the second man is called spiritual from heaven, and he makes this a sign that the man united to God was without mind. And yet the refutation of the absurdity is ready at hand from the very things he has cited. For the one who said "As is the heavenly man, so also are the heavenly ones" keeps far from such a suspicion. For if those who have believed in the one who came from heaven are themselves called heavenly by Paul—those who have, as he says, transferred their citizenship to heaven—and "as is that heavenly man, so also are these heavenly ones," says the apostle, and no one who has received the faith is without mind—then by every necessity this comparison of likeness must become a proof that in him too, in accordance with the likeness of human beings, the mind exists. For "As," he says, "is the heavenly man, so also are the heavenly ones.

So that they will necessarily acknowledge the mind either in all things or in nothing. For just as the peculiarities of the earthy one are observed in those who are from him, so it is entirely necessary, according to the apostle's declaration, that the one who was tempted in all things in our life, in likeness without sin—and the mind is not sin—should be intimately related to our whole nature. For thus the apostolic saying is verified, that we are according to him, if it is acknowledged that he also became according to us, so that from his becoming such as we are, he might make us such as he is. Again, therefore, let us recall the things spoken by him: Inasmuch as Paul also calls the former Adam a soul, being with a body and not without a body, giving the name to the whole, even if it is itself called a soul in itself by the inclusion of the spirit. In saying these things he acknowledges that the three are called by the name of the soul by inclusion, since the meaning of both the body and the spirit is comprehended in the same. But the last, he says, Paul calls a life-giving spirit. Therefore, what he showed in that case—that the name prevailed over the remaining things signified by reason of what was more abundant—this has equal force in the case of the other as well. For if Adam, because he sinned, is called a soul, the man united to God, because he did not commit sin nor was guile found in his mouth, is named wholly spirit. But he does not accept such a meaning; for he says that the former is earthy from the earth, because the body, formed from the dust, became a living soul. Was the mind, which he names spirit, not also cast into the formation of Adam?

In what, then, is his likeness to God? And what is the emanation from the divine inbreathing, unless the mind is believed to be these things? And he says that this one is called from heaven for this reason, because the heavenly Spirit was made flesh. What Scripture says these things? To which of the saints does he refer the statement that the Spirit was made flesh? We did not hear this from the Gospels, we were not taught this from the great voice of the apostle; but the proclamation says that the Word became flesh, and the gospel history says that the Spirit descended in the form of a dove; but no one of those who speak the mysteries by the Spirit has spoken of a making-flesh of the Spirit. Glory dwelt in our land; and Truth sprang up from the earth; and God was manifested in the flesh; and Righteousness looked down from heaven; and many other such things. But the God-inspired Scripture does not know a Spirit being made flesh. And, he says, the man Christ pre-exists, not as though the Spirit, that is God, were another beside him, but as the Lord being a divine Spirit in the human nature of the God-man.

These are the words of the writer, taken word for word. But since, through the weakness of his expository power, the meaning is not very clearly evident in plainness, I will first strip away the darkness of the wording and lay bare the thought contained in it, and then in this way I will set the argument before the examination. He says, "The man Christ pre-exists." He thinks of the man who appeared as existing beforehand with the Word who was in the beginning, as pre-existing before the manifestation, and he elaborates the meaning through what follows. For he says that the Spirit is not other than himself, thereby establishing through this that the very divinity of the Son was from the beginning a man, which is shown more clearly by the argument that follows. For he says that the Lord, in the nature of the man of God, was a divine Spirit. He made the nature of God and man one, and he called the blending of two men by a single name. This, then, is the thought of what has been said: that what was manifested through the flesh from the virgin is pre-conceived before all things not only according to the eternity of the divinity, as we all believe, but also according to the flesh itself. For he adds to what has been said, as testimony to such an assumption, "Before Abraham was, I am"; and John's voice, "He was first of me"; and "One Lord, through whom are all things"; and "He is before all things"; and a certain voice of Zachariah, which, since it is dragged in by force to this purpose, we shall pass over. I, then, if the construction of this absurdity had escaped notice through some veil of thoughts, would rightly have devoted myself to refuting what was hidden; but since it openly cries out its impiety, I do not know what more could come from our words.

If the flesh is before the ages, if before Abraham came to be it belonged to him who is from Mary, then the virgin is older than Nahor; then Mary is even before Adam. But why do I say this? She is, it seems, older even than the constitution of existing things, and more ancient than the ages themselves. For if he was made flesh in the virgin, and the flesh is called Jesus, and it is testified through the apostle that he is before all things, then, it seems, the noble fellow constructs that Mary too is conceived together with the Father's eternity. And I pass over the things that are all too manifest, to which the absurdity of the novel-speaking follows in consequence; for the sharp-witted would see the absurdity from what follows, even if we do not lay bare the shamefulness in the wording. But let us pass over the foul stench of these notions, having noted only this much: that if the flesh is before the ages, the Godhead has not been emptied, the Son did not exist in the form of God, he did not put on the servile person; but what he was by nature, this was manifested now, not humbled. May the Word be propitious to the word—but I am silent about what remains. If the flesh is before all things, then all things are from weakness, not from power; for the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Then if he stops the absurdity only at this point, who would not also understand, from what follows, the things joined to these? For he will certainly conceive together with the one who is with the

since the flesh is before the ages, toil, grief, tears, thirst, sleep, the want that comes with hunger, and what is even more absurd than this. But since a Child was born to us, as the divine voice says, and the Lord was seen by the shepherds in swaddling clothes, as Luke says, and that Jesus advanced in age and wisdom and grace, being perfected, until he came forth to the measure of humanity, walking by the path of nature, what will those say who see the flesh before the ages—by what measure of body was it before the ages? For he passed through every stage of life in the human manner of living. Was that man, who exists before all creation, a child, or an infant, or a youth, or immediately in a perfect body? But if they say a child, they will certainly also add the reason why, when so great an age had passed, he did not arrive at the perfection of age. But if they say perfect, we shall think it right to learn this: how in human generation is he contracted into infantile smallness? Where does he leave the excess of the body? How is the bulk reduced to a small circumference?

Then again, how does he bring the bulk of the body back to its own measure? Is it by taking up again through gradual growth what it had from the beginning, or by adding something else to itself through nourishment? But if they say it is the original, they will in every way prove nourishment to be superfluous; but if they do not deny that the Lord partook of nourishment, what will they say about the flesh left behind above, of which the greater part was reasonably left behind, and only so much of it was taken as the virgin's womb contained? For they will certainly invent some marvel about it too and, by means of these things, compose other doctrines, to which the consequence of the absurdity of their myths will necessarily lead them. But let these things too be set aside. One might reasonably inquire of those who dogmatize that divine enfleshment as before the ages. For if they think the flesh is always around him, and they say that the flesh is God, and all flesh is resistant to touch, and the resistant is material and composite, and the composite is also altogether dissoluble, there is every necessity that through these things he be established as material and composed of different elements and awaiting dissolution by nature. For we know, when he dwelt among men in a human way, of what elements he had the composition of his body: that it was through flesh and bones and blood, in likeness to others, both that body also was from the mark of the nails and from the blood poured out through the spear and from the Lord's saying to those who disbelieved what appeared: Touch me and see and know that a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me having.

If, then, the divine enfleshment, as Apollinarius says, did not have its beginning from the virgin, but was even before Abraham and before all creation, it was altogether of such a kind as it was seen by the disciples, solid and resistant, distinguished by flesh and bones. Therefore these things always were, and there was no descent for him to the lowly, but what was hidden, being divine by nature, was made manifest at the time of the incarnation. What such thing did Arius, or Eunomius, worse than he, devise for the overthrow of the glory of the Only-begotten, as is being constructed for us by Apollinarius through such writing as this? A god in flesh before the ages, bony and hairy and distinguished by skin and sinews and flesh and fat, and composed of various parts and not having in himself the simple and incomposite—the Word who was in the beginning and was with God, who in the last days by fellowship with the lowliness of our nature became flesh out of love for mankind, and for this reason was mingled with man and received in himself our whole nature, so that by the mingling with the divine the human might be deified together, through that firstfruits the whole lump of our nature being sanctified together. But I think it must be passed over

the mistaken understanding of each of the divine testimonies he cited for this purpose; for to examine at length things that are plainly evident from what lies at hand would be superfluous and would prolong the argument. For as testimony that he is always in flesh and blood, he cited the apostolic saying which states that through him we have received redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins through his flesh—which, that it looks to another meaning, I do not think any of those of sound mind would doubt. For who does not know the divine mystery, that the author of our salvation, as a shepherd, goes after the straying sheep? And we human beings are that sheep, we who have been driven away from the rational hundred through sin. And he takes the whole sheep upon his own shoulders; for the straying was not in a part of the sheep, but since the whole had wandered off, the whole is also brought back; not that the fleece is carried while the entrails are left behind, as Apollinarius would have it. And this, having come to be on the shoulders of the shepherd, that is, in the divinity of the Lord, becomes one with him through the assumption. For this reason, wishing to seek out and save what was lost, since he found what was sought, he took up upon himself what was found; for no longer was the sheep moved by its own feet, once it had strayed, but it was carried by the divinity. For this reason the sheep was what appeared, that is, the man, but his footprints were not known, according to what is written. For he who carries the sheep upon himself marked no trace of sin or straying upon human life.

But such traces of God as it was reasonable should be imprinted through the course of his life appeared—namely, teachings and healings and the giving of life to the dead and the other wonders. This sheep, then, the Shepherd took upon himself and became one with it; for this reason he also speaks to the flocks in the voice of the sheep. For how could human weakness have received the impact of a divine voice? But he converses with us in a human way—or, as one might say, in a sheep-like way—saying, My sheep hear my voice. Therefore the Shepherd who took the sheep upon himself and who speaks to us through that sheep is both sheep and Shepherd: in what was taken up, a sheep; in what took it up, a Shepherd. Since, then, the good Shepherd had to lay down his own soul for the sheep, so that through his own death he might destroy death, then our Savior becomes both together in his human nature—both priest and lamb—having wrought death in that which was able to receive a share in the passion. For since death is nothing other than the dissolution of soul and body, he who united himself to both—I mean to the soul and to the body—is separated from neither (for the gifts of God are irrevocable, as the apostle says); but dividing himself to both body and soul, through the soul he opens paradise to the thief, and through the body he halts the activity of corruption; and this is the dissolution of death—that corruption become inactive, having been done away with in the life-giving nature. For what came to pass in these things becomes a common benefaction and grace of our nature.

And so he who is in both natures joins all things that were separated through the resurrection, giving over the body by his authority to the heart of the earth, as it is written, and laying down the soul from himself, saying on the one hand to the Father, Into your hands I commit my spirit, and on the other to the thief, Today you will be with me in paradise, being true in both; for one must not believe that that divine dwelling-place which is called paradise is anywhere else than in the spacious palm of the Father, as the prophet also says, making his word to the Jerusalem above in the person of the Lord, I have painted your walls upon my hands, and you are before me continually. In this way, then, he is also in death and is not mastered by death. For what is composite is divided; but what is incomposite does not admit of dissolution; rather, the incomposite nature remains in the division of the composite, and when the soul departs from the body it is separated from neither. The proof is the activity, as has been said, which worked incorruption in the body and the dwelling in paradise in the soul. Indeed, the simple and incomposite one is not torn apart along with their separation, but rather works the opposite: by his own indivisibility he leads even what has been divided into unity, and the one who said, God raised him from the dead, demonstrates this. For it is not as Lazarus or some other of those who came back to life is brought back to life by another's power, so that it would be pious to think this also in the case of the Lord's resurrection.

But the only-begotten God himself raises up the man who was mingled with him, and having separated the soul from the body and again united both, and in this way the common salvation of the nature comes about; whence he is also named the author of life. For in him who died for us and was raised, the only-begotten God reconciled the world to himself, ransoming us all—as it were captives of war—through the blood of our kindred, all who have shared in his flesh and blood, so that the apostolic saying looks to this, which says that we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins through his flesh. This is our account, which we have understood from the cited words of the apostle, and not as that man [Apollinarius] does. But let the judge carefully examine the more pious view, whether, as we say, the glory dwells economically in our earth, or, as he says, the flesh is not acquired for the benefit of the divinity, but is consubstantial and connatural.

But if Zechariah the prophet is carried by his riddles toward one of these other things, I think there is no need for the argument to examine whether the meaning looks to the Lord or to someone else. For he says: Sword, be roused against my shepherd and against the man who is of my own tribe. We, for our part, think that the word threateningly stirs up the sword against those who have used injustice toward their own kind; but Apollinarius says that the sword is roused against the Lord because of the title "shepherd," not knowing that in many places of Scripture the word names those appointed to rule both shepherds and herdsmen. And again, whatever passages of the Epistle to the Hebrews are dragged in for the same purpose, the absurdity in his arguments is so evident that it is easy for anyone to see, if he partakes even a little of understanding. For since it is written, "In the last days God spoke to us in a Son, who in former times spoke to the fathers in the prophets in many parts and in many ways," this, he says, is a proof that the human nature of the God who appeared to us is pre-eternal; for he says thus, interpreting the apostle, as he supposes, according to the letter: And it is manifest in these things that the man himself who spoke to us the things of the Father is God, the maker of the ages, the brightness of glory, the express image of his substance, inasmuch as being God by his own Spirit and not having in himself another God besides himself, he who through himself, that is, through the flesh, cleansed the world of sins. These things Apollinarius says verbatim, and nothing in what has been said has been misrepresented by us.

If, then, the man who spoke is the maker of the ages, as the chronicler thinks, and the flesh is the radiance and the form of the servant characterizes the substance of God, it no longer seems right to me to fight against what has been said, but rather to lament the insensitivity of those who accept such novel doctrine. The man who spoke to us in a human way through our voice, who spat with his mouth and made clay with his hand, who put his fingers into the ears of the deaf and touched the sick and the dead and rested his weariness in sleep and sitting, and had a sense of tears and distress and grief and hunger and received food and asked for water—this man, in respect of the very fleshly and human element, is thought of before the constitution of existing things, and the nature of the flesh is called God—the composite and solid and resistant nature? Let every ear of the pious be stopped up, and let not the divine and pure doctrines be defiled, insulted by fleshly passions at the hands of those who make the divine merely human. For who does not know that the God who was revealed to us in the flesh, according to the account of pious tradition, was and is without matter and invisible and incomposite and undefined and uncircumscribed, being everywhere and pervading all creation, but according to what appeared he was seen in human circumscription? For it is entirely necessary that every body be encompassed by some surface. That surface, then, is the boundary of the body encompassed within it; and everything encompassed by a boundary is enclosed within some definite quantity; and what is definite cannot be indefinite.

But the prophet says, His greatness has no limit. If, then, the divine nature, as the chronicler says, is flesh, and this is necessarily encompassed by the limit of its manifestation, how does the greatness of God, according to the prophet, proceed to the infinite? Or how is the unbounded understood through the bounded, the infinite through the finite? Rather—what we also said earlier in the preceding remarks—how is strength from death? For if, as he says, the very man who spoke is the maker of the ages, the very one who through himself, that is, through the flesh, as Apollinarius interprets it, makes all things, and the flesh was named weak by the divine voice itself, then the chronicler thinks nothing other than that power and strength and might and all lofty and God-befitting thoughts are offspring of weakness. And this is not yet so dreadful, but the argument, proceeding by examination of what follows, touches upon the blasphemy against the Father himself. For he says that the man is the radiance of the glory of God, and that in the fleshly god, whom he fashioned by making an idol through the vanity of his reasonings, the substance of God is characterized. Just as, therefore, the ray is akin to the sun, and the light shining forth from the torch to the lamp, and the character of a man shows a human substance, so in every way, if what appeared to us was radiated from the glory of the Father and his character of his substance is flesh, then by consequence the nature of the Father is also constructed as fleshly.

For he would not say that the incorporeal is characterized by a body, or that the visible is radiated from the invisible. But such as the glory is, such also, clearly, is the radiance; and such as the character is, such altogether is the substance, so that if this is a body, one must not suppose that that is altogether incorporeal either. But he also mentions the dogma of Nicaea, in which the common council of the fathers proclaimed the homoousion. But no one would call something of a different kind homoousios; rather, homoousion applies altogether to those of whom there is one and the same definition of essence. If, then, the Son is a fleshly god, being in nature that very thing which he is, flesh, according to the pre-eternal name, and he is confessed by the writer himself to be homoousios with the Father, and those things are homoousios with one another which are described by the same definition of essence, then does Apollinarius suppose that the nature of the Father is also in some way human and fleshly, in order to preserve the name of homoousion in both cases? So that one of two things follows: either, calling the Father incorporeal, he will agree that the divinity of the Son is fleshly by their difference of essence, or, confessing the commonality of divinity and essence alike in the Father and the Son, he will strip the nature of divinity of flesh even in the case of the Father. But as though correcting this absurdity, in what precedes he says, interpreting Zechariah's utterance in accordance with what seems right, as speaking in the person of the Father concerning the Son, that the word "of the same tribe" was spoken, which means "of the same nature and homoousios." Whether, then, he has understood this correctly or not is a matter for another

What he constructs, then, is this: The prophetic word, he says, makes clear through these things that he is not consubstantial with God according to the flesh, but according to the spirit united to the flesh. How, then, is his fleshly god united to flesh before the constitution of the world, when the ages were not yet, nor was anything else of creation? But flesh is the very last and most recent of the things that have come to be in creation. To what flesh, then, was he united, when human nature had not yet come into being? But he knows some other flesh besides man. And how does he say that the very man who spoke to us the things of the Father is that God, the maker of the ages? Who will interpret for us the absurdity of these strange riddles? A man before a man comes to be, and flesh older than its own creation, and that which came to be in the last times existing before the ages, and as many other such things as he sets out confusedly in his argument. But let the prose-writer wander astray as seems good to him in the pathless wanderings of his reasonings; but we, having set beside them the apostolic teaching that was mentioned by this very man, for the refutation of his impious suppositions, will run on to what follows in the argument. Who, he says, being in the form of God. He did not say "having a form like God," which is said of him who was made according to the likeness of God, but "being in the very form of God"; for all things of the Father are in the Son. Therefore also the eternal and the unquantified and the immaterial and the incorporeal, so that in all respects the form of the paternal character might be preserved in the Son; and being equal to God. What notion of any difference or variation does equality leave remaining?

How could equality be applied to things that differ in nature? For if the one is fleshly by nature, and the other is pure from flesh, how could anyone bring such a one into equality with one who is not such? He emptied himself, he says, taking the form of a slave. What is the slavish form? Surely the body; for we have heard nothing else besides this from the fathers. Therefore, he who said that he took the form of a slave, and the form is flesh, says that he, being one thing according to the divine form, took the slavish form, which is another thing by nature. But the word "emptied" also clearly shows that this is not always what he appeared to us to be, but that he was in the fullness of divinity, equal to God, unapproachable and inaccessible, and especially uncontainable by the smallness of human nothingness; but he became containable by the perishable nature of the flesh then, when he emptied himself, as the apostle says, and brought down his ineffable glory of divinity to our smallness, so that what he was was great and perfect and incomprehensible, but what he took was of equal measure to our own measure of nature. For in the likeness, he says, of a human being he became, and in form, as clearly not having from the beginning the likeness of such a nature about himself, nor being shaped to any bodily type. For how could a type of shape be impressed upon the incorporeal? But then he comes to be in form, when, being shaped, he puts it around himself. And this is the nature of the body.

Having therefore been found as a man—for he was also a man, even if not a man in every respect, but as a man because of the mystery of the virginity—so that it might become evident through this, that he was not in all respects enslaved to the laws of human nature, but having dwelt in this life in a divine manner and not needing the cooperation that comes from marriage for the fashioning of his own formation, he is found not to be a common man in all respects because of the distinctness of his constitution, but as a man. And thus he humbled himself, becoming a man without change. For if this had been so from the beginning, in what did the humbling consist? But now the Most High humbled himself through his union with the lowliness of our nature. For having been united to the form of the servant, which he took, and having become one with it, he appropriates the sufferings of the servant, and just as it happens also in us through the natural union with the members—that if something happens to the very tip of a nail, the whole body is affected together with the part that suffers, the sensation extending through the whole body—

...of fellow-feeling, so the one united to our nature appropriates our sufferings as his own, as Isaiah says: "He himself took up our infirmities and bore our diseases," having undergone the blow on our behalf, so that by his bruise we might be healed—not that the Godhead was bruised, but the man who through the union was joined to the Godhead, whose nature is capable of receiving a bruise. And these things happen so that through the same paths again the way of evil might be undone. For since through the disobedience of the first man death entered in, for this reason through the obedience of the second man it is driven out. For this reason he becomes obedient even to death, so that through obedience he might heal the transgression that came from disobedience, and through the resurrection from the dead he might destroy the death that entered in together with disobedience. For the resurrection of man from death is the destruction of death. Therefore, he says, God also highly exalted him. This is, as it were, a seal of the preceding thought. For it is clear that the Most High does not need to be exalted, but the lowly is raised to height, now becoming what it was not before; for the human nature, having been united to the Lord, is lifted up together with the Godhead, and what is exalted is that which is raised up from lowliness; and the lowly thing is the form of the servant, which through the exaltation becomes both Christ and Lord.

And since the man according to Christ, following the human sequence, was called by a name in a peculiar sense through the mystic initiation given to the virgin by Gabriel, and the human element, as has been said, was named Jesus, while the divine nature is not comprehended by a name, and the two have become one through the blending—for this reason God is also named from the human element. For at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and the man becomes above every name, which is proper to the divinity that cannot be indicated by any naming signification, so that just as in the lowly the exalted comes to be, so the lowly might receive the exalted attributes. For just as the divinity is named through the man, so what has been lifted up together with the divinity from the lowly becomes above every name; and just as the dishonor of the servile form has its reference to God who was blended with the servant, so also the worship of the divinity offered by all creation comes to be for the one united to the divinity, and thus at the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen. But it seems that he, as it were blushing before himself and ashamed at the absurdity of what has been said, in some way sets aside what he has constructed and wishes to establish the likeness of the Son to men as something subsequently generated. For he says: Behold, of this same Jesus Christ the equality with the Father pre-exists, the likeness to men is subsequently generated.

He seems to change his mind about what has been said, and let him do this only from the heart, turning away from the absurd opinion, and we too will cease from refutations. But by what he does, he seems to lay down the occasions of another absurdity through his fair-mindedness in these matters. And he says thus, according to the text: And what is clearer than these things, to the effect that the one is not with the other—a perfect God with a perfect man? That this argument has not even a single point of contact with what has been set forth before will be evident to all who know how to follow an argument. For how does the equality with the Father, which pre-exists, and the likeness to men, which comes afterward, as he himself says, prove that there is not a perfect man through whom the perfect God became man? For just as if someone, saying that heaven is distant from the earth, were then to say through these things that it is evident that lead is heavier than tin in an equal measure, and were to think the heavenly distance to be a weight—so too no one could say that the deficiency of the humanity, through which God becomes in our nature, is proved from the fact that the Son's likeness to men is acknowledged to be something added afterward.

likeness. But I shall postpone for a little while the demonstration of the impiety and folly of such an assumption, and for now I shall try to set the argument in order, point by point, against what has been written, as far as the obvious faults may be. For he says that a perfect God is not with a perfect man. For the present, here he has left it ambiguous whether he called one of the things mentioned imperfect, and by the obscurity of the meaning the thought looks equally toward either side, and it is not possible to be taught from what we have heard about which one he thinks the imperfection is—whether about God or about man, or whether he thinks it is equally about both. He says that he himself is God in spirit, having the glory of God, and man in body, having borne the inglorious form of men. He said God, he said also man; and it is clear to all that the meaning of these names is not the same, but the account of divinity is one thing, and that of humanity is another. For God is the cause of all good things, always in the same state, neither ever not being nor ever not going to be; but man, in other respects, is disposed in kinship with the nature of irrational animals, being governed through flesh and sense perception in a manner similar to them, but by the addition of mind he is separated from irrational animals, and in this he has what is peculiar to his nature. For no one, in defining man, would define him by flesh and bones and sense organs, nor, if someone mentioned the power of eating and of change, would he indicate what is peculiar to human nature, but the thinking and rational faculty shows the man. It is equal, then, either to interpret the nature through the name or through what peculiarly accompanies the nature.

For the one who said "man" indicated the rational being, and the one who named "rational" demonstrated man through this word. Therefore Apollinarius too, having named "God" and "man," if indeed he included in this word the meanings that are manifested in the Godhead, would not have corrupted the signification of "man" through his interpretation. But if indeed he is called man, the appellation is certainly true and not falsely named; and the truth of the name is demonstrated in this, that the one so named is a rational living being, and reason is certainly from the mind; so that if he is man, he is necessarily also capable of thought; but if he is not capable of thought, neither is he man. But he was man, he says, in body, having worn the inglorious form of men. These things are brought forward by him from his own resources and not from the scriptural teaching; nevertheless, so that even from the very things he says his endeavor might be overturned to the contrary, let us understand the argument in this way. He says, "He wore the inglorious form of men." Let us first consider what is the glory of man, and thus from what follows we shall understand the ingloriousness. Therefore the glory of man—the true glory, at least—is entirely the life according to virtue. For to define the glory or the ingloriousness of men by some good complexion or beauty of flesh, or conversely by deformity of body, would be the mark of the utterly frivolous. If, then, virtue is acknowledged to be the glorious thing among men, vice is certainly the inglorious thing. But indeed Apollinarius says that God assumed the inglorious form of men.

If, then, the inglorious lies in evil, and evil is the shame of choice, and it is the mind that chooses, and the mind is a movement of the intellect, then, looking upon the human ingloriousness in relation to God, he does not separate man from the mind, through which God conversed with human life. And this indeed happens in the divine Scriptures, that for our sake he became sin, that is, he united to himself the sinful soul of man. The Lord, it says, appeared in the form of a slave. Was this slave, whose form the Lord assumed, then complete or maimed? For the defective and mutilated, in respect of the completion of the living being, one would reasonably call maimed. Not a man, it says, but as a man, because he is not of the same essence as man in the most proper sense; if not of the same essence, then certainly of another essence; and for those whose principle of essence is different, neither is the nature common nor the designation. Different is the essence of fire and different that of water, and the names of the two are distinct; but Peter and Paul, since their nature is one, the name of their essence is also common; for each of them is a man. If, then, he was something else in essence and not a man, but was fashioned as a man only up to appearance, and in truth differed in nature, let him say that everything is a kind of semblance and deceptive appearance: false, according to him, is the eating, false the sleep, all the wonders of the healings nonexistent, the cross did not happen, nor the placing in the tomb, nor the resurrection from the passion; but all things appeared by semblance, and according to the account of the writer, nothing of the things that appeared existed.

For if he was not a man, how could the things recorded concerning him have happened? And how could anyone say that he is a man who is alien to human essence? For he was not, he says, consubstantial with man according to the most essential part; but he who removes the most essential part of man—and this is the mind—has shown the remainder to be a beast; and a beast is not a man. Then he says that he humbled himself in the flesh, but was highly exalted by God with the divine exaltation. This again is more senseless than the preceding impieties. He says that one was humbled and another was highly exalted. The flesh, he says, was humbled—although it has no need of being humbled, since it possesses lowliness by nature—and he says that the divinity was highly exalted; and yet the Most High has no need of exaltation. Where, then, was the divinity highly exalted, which is above all things and stands higher than every exaltation? But what is lowly by nature is exalted, even if the writer of this account does not wish it, just as the argument concerning these matters distinguished a little earlier. Again, like those who mutter in their sleep, abandoning the consistency of his own construction, he has made use of our arguments, and whatever one of those who think soundly might say about the doctrine, these things he himself also mixes into his own words. For he distinguishes the one who is glorified and the one who has the glory. For he is glorified, he says, as a man; but he has glory before the world as God, existing before the ages. Up to this point he is fair-minded. But if his statements had been confined to these, perhaps someone might have thought that he had come, by a change of mind, to the more pious of the suppositions.

But now, as though he had gone around this sound understanding in his argument as if it were a turning-post, he runs back again to the course of error, and having used many insults against us and having set our position alongside Jews and Greeks, he once more takes up in his argument the vomit which he had already spewed out in what came before, plastering the pre-eternal flesh onto Christ through the vanity of his words, and saying that the Son, being an incarnate mind, was born of a woman, not becoming flesh in the virgin, but passing through her in passing, as he was before the ages, and that then what appeared was revealed—being a fleshly god, or, as he himself names it, an incarnate mind. Therefore he says that the crucified one is called Lord of glory, and is called Lord of powers by the prophecy, and that he makes those authoritative and lordly utterances: "I say to you," and "I command you," and "I work," and whatever else belongs to the higher signification. What then does the noble fellow do? Where will he place the nipple, the swaddling clothes, the life that flows in and flows out, the gradual growth of the body, sleep, toil, obedience to parents, anguish, grief, the desire for the Passover, the request for water, the partaking of food, the bonds, the blows, the wounds from scourges, the crown of thorns on his head, the clothing in scarlet, the insult with the reed, the gall, the vinegar, the nails, the spear, the linen cloth, the burial, the tomb, the stone? How will he join these to God?

For if his God made flesh, which was seen through Mary, was always this, and what appeared was deity, then deity itself suffers all these things: it nurses, is swaddled, is fed, grows weary, increases, is filled, is emptied, sleeps, grieves, is in distress, groans, feels thirst and hunger, runs to the fig tree, is ignorant of the tree and of the season's fruitfulness, does not know the day and the hour, is struck, is bound, is beaten with rods, receives nails through itself, bleeds, becomes dead, is buried, is laid in a new tomb. Does he then agree that these things are proper and natural to the pre-eternal deity, and that it would not have been reared unless it had nursed, nor would it exist in life at all unless the breath of its power had been sustained by the partaking of food? And how is his God made flesh ignorant of that day and hour? How does he not know the season of figs, that at Passover no fruit suitable for food would be found on the tree? Who is the one who is ignorant? Let him say. Who is the one who grieves? Who is the one constrained in perplexity? Who is the one who cried out that he had been forsaken by God, if the deity of Father and Son is one? And by whom does the forsaking come, which he uttered aloud on the cross? For if deity is what suffers, and the pious agree that the Son is of one deity with the Father, and the one who suffers says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? — how is the deity, being one, divided in the passion, and the one forsakes while the other is forsaken; the one comes into death while the other remains in life; the one is put to death while the other raises up what has been put to death?

For either he will not confess that the deity of the Father and the Son is one, and for this reason he will be shown to be an advocate of Arius; or, if indeed while fighting against Arius he should say it is one, he will certainly not agree with himself either, since he is unable to establish in himself the myth he has fabricated. But of necessity he will testify to these passible and lowlier utterances and dispositions as belonging to the human element, and he will agree that the nature of God remained immutable and impassible even in its communion with human sufferings. And of these things the witness is he who said concerning him that he is glorified as a man, ascending from dishonor, but has the glory before the world as God pre-existing. For the dishonor is altogether the passible nature of the flesh; but the glory is the eternal, impassible, and undefiled power. And so that we may not seem to be slandering in what has been said, I will set forth the very wording of the points examined beforehand by us according to our understanding. For Greeks, he says, and Jews openly disbelieve, not accepting to hear of a God born of a woman. Why then has he now passed over the flesh in the birth? And yet what is begotten of the flesh is altogether flesh, as the Lord says somewhere. But since he wishes the flesh itself that was born to be deity, and to establish that God did not appear in flesh, he says: But God, being incarnate before the ages, afterwards was born through a woman and came to the experience of sufferings and to the necessity of nature. And in saying these things he does not grant him even to be a man; but he subjects him to sufferings as a man, yet does not impart to him human nature. For how is he a man who is said not to be from the earth?

For the Scripture says that the human race came to be from Adam, and that he first sprang from the earth through divine power. For this reason Luke also, when giving the genealogy of the one reputed to be the son of Joseph, says he traces it back to Adam, connecting the beginning of his generation through each of the fathers. Therefore, the one who did not come to be from the race of human beings is certainly something else and not a man. So then, the one who is neither man, because he has nothing of the human race, nor God, because he is not incorporeal—what would that fleshly god of the writer be? Let the disciples and advocates of his deceit say. But, he says, Greeks and Jews would have received it, if we had said that the one born was a divinely inspired man, like Elijah. And which of the Greeks accepted the wonders concerning Elijah as true? That fire, formed in two shapes, the one into the form of a chariot and the other into the shape of horses, moves in a course contrary to its own nature, being borne from above to below; and that Elijah, borne aloft and driving the fire on the fiery chariot, is preserved unharmed in the flame, the fire drawing the fire.

What is the meaning of the horses in relation to the chariot? For if someone were to accept these things in the proper manner, by these very words he will be shown to be ready for the reception of the mystery, seeing in the narrative a certain typological prophecy concerning the Lord's becoming human, prefigured through the events. For just as fire, which by nature tends upward, by divine power becomes earthly, and Elijah, surrounded by heavenly fire, is himself carried up together with it as it runs back again to its natural motion, so too the power of the Most High, being immaterial and formless, having taken hold of the servile form that subsisted through the virgin, led it up to its own height, transforming it into the divine and pure nature. So that one who is stubbornly disinclined toward this would not even accept the miracle-working in the case of Elijah; but one who has first learned in that case the truth sketched in shadow would not be hostilely disposed toward the truth itself. Then he turns his abuse against us who do not accept his fabricated myth, and says: But those who are faithless in the guise of faith are ashamed, just like those Jews, of the God born of a woman and crucified by the Jews. Now who does not know that to use curses against one's opponents is the peculiar mark of those who are weak in the things they are zealous about? But we say this much: that since two pits lie before us—on one side the fall according to Apollinarius, and on the other the fall according to Arius—the shattering is equal for those who fall into either; except that, in a choice of evils, the fracture according to Arius seems lighter.

For both of them drag down the pure nature of the Only-begotten to what is more lowly; but Arius assimilates the Lord of the angels to the incorporeal nature of the angels, declaring that he is diminished equally with the uncreated nature and that both he and they are through creation; but this man so intensifies the absurdity that he determines his nature to be of equal honor with a man who is diminished in comparison with the angels, and to be fleshly. And by as much as the incorporeal nature is better than bodies, by so much is the impiety according to Arius more preferable than the error of Apollinarius. Who, then, in the guise of faith is faithless in interpreting the mystery from the virgin? For I will set before the common view both the faith that is mocked by us by the writer and that man's supposition. For we say that God, being immaterial and formless and incorporeal in essence, by a certain philanthropic economy, at the end of the completion of the whole, when evil had already grown to its utmost, then, for the destruction of sin, is mingled with human nature, like some sun settling into a murky cave and by its light making the darkness disappear by its presence. For taking our filth upon himself, he is not himself defiled by the stain, but cleanses the filth in himself; For the light, it says, shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Just as also happens in the case of healing; for when the cure is brought to the disease, the sickness passes into disappearance, not transferring into the medical art. This is our account.

But he says that God in the beginning was incarnate, and thus in the last days that visible and tangible body which was born, the one increased by human nourishment through little additions, is that which was before all things that exist, which also made men and all creation visible and invisible, which also feels toil and in agony of death accepts trial. I do not know how the wise man, when the heavens and the earth and all the wonders in creation were being established, testifies no toil to the Maker, but when he passes from Judea to Galilee, says that he was in toil; and to the Israelites he turns the rock into pools of waters, but he himself asks to drink from a Samaritan woman; and in forty years he does not grow weary pouring out heavenly food for so many tens of thousands, but he himself runs to the fig tree in hope of food that was not there. Such being the conception of the doctrine on both sides, let the discerning hearer judge for himself who is the unbeliever in the guise of faith.

But, he says, we say that the one who was crucified had nothing divine in his own nature, not even the most essential thing itself, which is spirit. But against such slander the defense from denial is ready at hand. For if Apollinarius thinks that spirit is mind, no Christian says that the man united with God is a half, but that the whole was joined to the divine power. So anyone would wish to call the parts of man by these names, whether mind or spirit or heart; for by Scripture these three are said of the ruling faculty: "Create in me a clean heart, O God"; and "The intelligent man will acquire guidance"; and "No one knows the things of a man except the spirit that is in him." Therefore he was neither without breath nor without mind nor without heart, by the overshadowing of the power of the Most High and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Consequently the reproach would not look to us, as though we say that that man did not have in himself the spirit, which is the mind, but to that very worker of reproach who hurls his own insults at us. For the one who calls the mind spirit, and says that the man according to Christ did not have a mind, is the very one who contrives that the Lord did not have a spirit. But what is the charge brought forward? He says that we do wrong in saying this, that beyond his own nature the man had something else greater, the divinity dwelling in him. But if this is counted among the charges, we do not flee the accusation, being cast out together with the apostle.

For having learned this very thing from him, we believe that he who exists in the form of God according to the intelligible sense becomes in the form of a slave according to what is apparent. But if the divine form is more honorable than the slave's person, the apparent is certainly not of equal honor with the hidden. Therefore what was seen according to the flesh and conversed with men had something in itself more honorable than itself, which the writer of words makes an accusation against the faith. But the apostle also says that in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and he who said "in him" did not signify half of what was indicated, but encompassed the whole subject in the meaning. If, then, the body is human, in which the Godhead dwelt, and the body is not soulless, but the intelligent part is proper to the human soul—for if this were separated, as we have often said, what remains is beast-like—does not our noble opponent then attack not us but the apostle with his insults? Or rather also the great voice of John, which says that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. For he did not signify in a part of us, but all the things understood in the nature he indicated together by the plural expression, and he first distinguished the account of the flesh, and then thus brought it into union. For the Word was in himself and was with God. And what God was, this the Word also was; for he too was God. But when he came to his own and shone in the darkness, then the Word became flesh, becoming flesh in the virgin by his own power. Therefore let him refrain from insulting us, so that he may not include the saints in his outrage through his abuse.

But passing over the things in between, by which he thinks to refute those who do not hold the same opinions as he does concerning the mystery, I shall mention one of the things said in the accusation against us for slander. For he says that we, unless we say that, neither say that he pre-exists his birth on earth, nor that he is before all things, nor that he is kindred to God. But we confess that he pre-exists his earthly birth, since it is not doubted that the flesh is from an earthly composition; but that he is kindred to God—far be it! Let no one among Christians so coin lowly and alien words of the divine majesty as to proclaim the truly existing God kindred to God and not true God. Nor would Eunomius anywhere spare such a phrase concerning the Lord. For he too would say, not accepting the true character of his divinity, that he is kindred to God, inasmuch as those who have received faith in him become fellow-bodies and fellow-partakers of Christ, not being that which the Lord is, but partaking of him and being named together with him who is partaken of; so that the one who charges us with not saying these things, as many as are confessed by the pious, has borne witness to the piety and blamelessness of our account. Then, to establish that the flesh is divinity, he adds these things to what has been said. For who, he says, is holy from birth? As though he had not read the writing concerning Jeremiah, of whom it says, Before I formed you in the womb I sanctified you. For that one is testified by the Scripture to be holy not only from birth, but even before his generation.

But also the one who leaped in his mother's womb, who received with exultation the voice of the greeting of the mother of the Lord, he too would be holy from birth, just as the voice of the angel concerning him declares, saying: And he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. But he also adds this to what has been said: Who is untaught wisdom? But we say that the wisdom from God, which is Christ, is not taught; yet we do not doubt that the portion of our flesh united to the divine wisdom received the good of wisdom by participation, being persuaded by the Gospel which sets it forth thus: that Jesus advanced in stature and wisdom and grace. For just as in the body the gradual increase advances toward the perfection of nature with the cooperation of nourishment, so also in the soul the progress toward the perfection of wisdom is added through discipline to those who pursue it. Who, he says, is he who works the things of God with authority? How does he diminish by infantile arguments the ineffable majesty of the Lord? For to do the things of God with authority is also the mark of men who have been deemed worthy of divine power, such as Elijah was, who by authority released and shut up the rain for men, bringing fire upon his adversaries, cultivating the flour in the jar and making the oil gush forth in the cruse, and by his breath granting life to the lifeless, and whatever else the account preserves concerning him, so that to do any of the wonders from divine power with authority is nothing beyond man, but rather that he himself is the surpassing power.

This indeed has been believed both by us and by all who have received the word in truth. But his division, which he has added to what was said without understanding, since it is not appropriate for us to refute it hastily, we will pass over in the thoughts of those who are knowledgeable. For what does he intend by "dividing the activity according to the flesh, but equating according to the spirit," which he appended to the evangelical voice that says, "My Father is working until now, and I am working"? If anyone has the power to advocate for the foolish, let him establish it by argument and say what he understands when he again appends to what was said something similar, worded as follows: "Which has," he says, "again the equality in power and the division of activity according to the flesh, according to which," he says, "he did not give life to all, but to some whom he willed." For we, having taken up the simple and uncontrived meaning of divine Scripture, understand what was said in this way: when we hear the Lord relating that "the Father raises the dead and gives life" and "the Son gives life to whom he wills," we do not understand from this that some are rejected from the life-giving will. But since we have both heard and believe that all things of the Father belong to the Son, it is clear that we also behold the will of the Father as one of all things in the Son. If, then, the Father's will is in the Son, and the Father, as the apostle says, "wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," then clearly the one who possesses all things of the Father and has the whole Father in himself has wholly in himself, along with the other good things of the Father, also the saving will.

If, then, he does not fall short of the perfect will, it is entirely clear that those whom the Father wills to be made alive, he also makes alive, not being deficient in his philanthropic will, as Apollinarius says—that he willed some, not all, to be made alive. For it is not because of the cause of the Lord's will that some are saved and some perish (otherwise the cause of those who perish would return upon him), but it is because of the choice of those who receive the word that some are saved or perish. But he adds to his arguments that "No one died and rose by authority." And having said this, he brings in the voice of the Gospel: "No one takes my soul from me; I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again." What sort of soul—rational or irrational? I would say this to those who confine an unintelligent soul to God. If they say it is irrational, they will be saying that there is a beast, not a man, in Christ. But if it is rational, what else do they think understanding is besides the word? For the word is not a meaningless sound, but a movement of thought becomes the beginning and foundation of the word. Therefore, in saying "rational soul," he has also confessed it to be thoughtful. But if thought is a movement and activity of the mind, how could the mind act if it were not present, if indeed he would define the Lord's soul as having no share in the mind? So then, if the Lord has a soul, which he both takes and lays down by authority, and a soul not brutish and irrational but of human composition, it is altogether confessed that in having assumed a human soul, it is also thoughtful.

Having said these things—all that he says about the grain that dies and thus sprouts again with more grains—since it is on our side and confirms our argument, I will willingly pass over. For who is the dying grain, and who by the stalk of his own resurrection gathers together in himself a heap of grains? I do not think anyone is so uninitiated in the divine doctrines as not to see the mystery concerning the man in the passion. And the proof of the argument is that we too die with him and are buried with him and are raised with him. For imitation is easy for those who wish it in the case of what is of the same kind, but the likeness of what transcends is impracticable. So that if it is flesh that underwent death, it would be easier for us who live in the flesh to imitate death by death; but if deity has died, how shall we who are in the flesh die together with the deity? Flesh dies together with flesh and is raised together with it; but if deity has suffered this, as Apollinarius wishes, it is fitting to seek other deities which will die together and rise together with the deity. For just as Christ died and rose, so also we, says the apostle. What are we by our own nature? Divine power, or blood and flesh, as the Scripture says? Therefore he who for our sake became according to our measure has shared in flesh and blood for our sake. So then, what we are in essence, that also was he who died for us, whose imitation is set before those of the same kind. And the proof of the impiety of the argument that shows the deity to be mortal is the very thing that happens in us ourselves. For in the common death of human beings, what is it that dies and is corrupted?

Is it not that the flesh is dissolved into the earth, while the mind remains with the soul, not even in the departure of the body being harmed as to its existence? And the proof is that the rich man remembers those above the earth and entreats Abraham concerning those joined to him by kinship. And no one would call this folly, that since he knew his own lot to be unavoidable, he made some provision for those dear to him. If, then, our mind remains even after death impassive and unchangeable, how is it likely that that three-part god of Apollinarius endured fleshly death? How, when he died, or in what way, when he suffered, did he experience the dissolution of death? For to none of all is such a thing unknown, that death is the separation of soul and body from each other; but the soul itself and the understanding—how is it divided from itself, so as also to receive death in itself? If, then, our soul is not capable of receiving death, how does it receive death? Let those who cut Christ into parts tell us. But they are troubled, he says, with the trouble of the unbelievers. Against us

He employs abuse, calling those who attend to the Gospel voice without examination troubled and faithless—the voice that says, If it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. And to these things he adds his own statement, which runs as follows. And they do not remember, he says, that this will is said to be his own—not of a man from the earth, as they suppose, but of God who came down from heaven. What could anyone find to say like this? I do not speak of any of those condemned for heresy; but I do not think even the father of impiety and falsehood himself could find anything among the things said that is more terrible for blasphemy. Does the writer know what he is uttering? God, having come down from heaven, sets aside the will proper to his divinity and does not wish what he wishes to come to fulfillment. Therefore the wills of the Son and the Father are divided. And how could the will be common to both? And how could the identity of nature be shown in the difference of wills? For it is entirely necessary that the will run together with the nature, as the Lord says somewhere: A good tree cannot bear evil fruits, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruits; and the choice would be the fruit of nature, so that a good nature has a good choice, and a bad nature has such a one. If, then, the fruit of the will is different in the Father and the Son, they will confess that the nature of each is necessarily different as well. Why, then, is Arius fought against?

Why do they not desert to Eunomius, who, by dividing the nature of the Father and the Son, cuts the will along with the nature, and for this reason especially establishes the foreignness of the essence, tearing apart the principle of divinity for the subordinate in relation to the preeminent? But let us take up again what was said by him. They do not remember, he says, that this will is said to be his own, not of a man from the earth, as they suppose, but of God who came down from heaven. What will, says the writer, does he mean? Namely, that which the Lord wishes not to happen when he says to the Father, Not my will, but yours be done. Does he understand the contradiction into which his argument has fallen? The passion draws near, and the traitor is about to be at hand with the crowd, and then such a prayer is made. The one praying—is he man or God? If he thinks the one praying is God, he sees in him a weakness equal to that of men. How then is he God who has no good of his own, but needs the assistance of the one above? Then also, how does the divinity condemn its own will? Was what it willed good or evil? For if it was good, why is what it willed not brought to completion? But if evil, what affinity has the divinity with evil? But, as I said, he does not understand, turning the argument to the opposite. For if the voice of the only-begotten God is the one saying, Let not my will be done, but yours, then the argument itself is always turned against itself by some contradiction and nowhere has stability. For he who does not wish his own will to be done wills this very thing altogether—that what he wills not be done.

How, then, will the prayer be brought to its fulfillment, when he says, "This I will, that what I will may not happen"? It will be turned entirely to the opposite of what is sought, and the one who hears such a prayer will be at a loss in either case. For whatever he does, he turns the outcome toward what is not willed by the one praying. Will he do the will of the one praying? But the prayer is that what he wills may not happen. Will he not do what he wills? But the one praying wills that what he does not will may happen to him; so that in every way, taken in every sense, the meaning will be unstable, fighting against itself and overthrown by itself. But for such perplexity in the argument there would be one consolation: the true confession of the mystery, that to be fearful in the face of suffering belongs to human weakness—as the Lord also says, calling the spirit willing but the flesh weak—while to endure the suffering that comes by economy belongs to the divine will and power. Since, then, the human will is one thing and the divine will another, he speaks as from the human being what is suited to the weakness of nature—he who made our sufferings his own; and then he brings in the second utterance, that the lofty and God-befitting will be ratified, contrary to the human will, for the salvation of human beings. For the one who said "not my" indicated the human by the word; and by adding "your" he showed the conjunction of his own Godhead with the Father, of which there is no difference of will because of the communion of nature; for by saying the will of the Father he also indicated the will of the Son. And this is to will that all human beings be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

This could not have happened otherwise, unless death, which obstructs life, had been swallowed up. But the lowly words and the emotion of human cowardice the Lord appropriates as his own, showing that what is ours was truly around him, confirming the nature by the sharing of sufferings. But he was not, says Apollinarius, a man of the earth, as they themselves think, but a God who came down from heaven, the one taken up into union with himself. In these words, the slackness and insignificance of the interpretation produces what follows the written text of the sequence of thought, yet the meaning is not entirely hidden by the confusion of the wording. Not a man's, he says, not of the one from the earth, are those emotional utterances, but a God's who came down from heaven. Up to this point the intent is clear from what has been said, that he is establishing that the divinity is subject to passion. Then he confuses the meaning by the absurdity of the wording. For having said that they are a God's who came down from heaven, he adds "the one taken up into union with himself," as one might say, translating the argument into clearer terms, that it was not a man who spoke, but God uttered his voice through the man who took up into union with himself what appeared. From where, then, was that man taken up? From the earth? He says no. But there is no race of men in the heavens. It remains to say "from nowhere," by which it is established that what appears is appearance and not truth; for what is from nowhere does not exist at all. But from the words he set forth, he says that the man came down from heaven. And yet Mary was on earth, and the cave was on earth, and the manger was of earth.

And how does this man not transport a man from heaven to earth? For while all Scripture confesses the virgin, the birth, the flesh, the swaddling clothes, the breast, the manger, the human form, he abandons all these things and molds in his account another man, rootless and unconnected to our nature. But whatever insults he weaves into his arguments in between, by which he thinks to strengthen the absurdity of his doctrine, by which he might strike at us more vehemently with blasphemies, I think anyone of sound mind ought to overlook, and to entrust the judgment to the hearing of the readers: who are the counterfeiters of the apostolic faith—whether we, who according to Paul's voice knew Christ according to the flesh but now no longer know him so, or he who always, both before the human economy and after it, carries about in his account his own fleshly god. He adds the blasphemy that arose against him from the Jews, that he is called by them a glutton and a wine-drinker, and he says these things are necessary for the man. Who, then, is the man reproached by the Jews for eating and drinking—one who partakes of these things or one who does not? But if he did not partake, it was mere appearance; if he did partake, what was partaken of was earthly; but the heavenly is not nourished by earthly things. O the contradiction of absurdities! How in the same man he is overthrown by opposite falls! Now he says that the one who appeared bodily is better than human nature, and again he shows him inferior even to men, mutilated in respect of the better part.

For the ruling element in us is the mind, of which he says the flesh, in which God was manifested, is devoid; and he clearly establishes this through the arguments that follow, over which, if no one should consider the careful examination of vanities superfluous, we shall run through what has been said in a few words. For again, having drawn up a multitude of insults into his treatise, he brings forward such an argument against us, saying that those who assert that the union of flesh and the assumption of a man are the same thing do wrong. But I, even if what is said should seem rather crude, will not conceal the truth, that neither of the things said is accurately established by our plain manner of speech. For what difference there is between the union of flesh and the assumption of a man, to interpret it thus at first glance is not easy, because union is understood in many ways—in number, in species, in nature, in practices, in teachings, and in the peculiarities and practices that pertain to vice or virtue. What, then, is the union of the flesh, whether it is united to itself or to another, we need those who interpret the statement. And how the assumption of a man comes about—of what sort, and from where, and how, and by whom, and in what manner the assumed one is taken—is equally among the things unknown to us, just as the preceding. For as long as someone does not bring forward the word concerning the mystery, seasoning it with the divine salt of Scripture, we will let the salt of the outside wisdom, which has become foolish, be passed over by the faithful. Which of the evangelists recounted a union of flesh? And which of the apostolic narratives taught the assumption of a man thus according to the letter?

What law, what prophets, what God-inspired word, what decree of a council has handed down to us anything of this sort? From these two terms, then, he assigns one to us, and says the other is his own; but which of these he claims for himself, we remain in doubt up to now. For we either appropriate neither or both, since we find no difference in the one toward the other. For the union is toward something, and the assumption is certainly of something; and each signifies a relation toward another, and the one who assumed is united to what was assumed, and what was united is united through assumption. But he says that we speak of two persons, God and the man assumed by God; but he says that he himself does not hold this way, but asserts that the one who became flesh and exists is not other than the incorporeal one, but the same, according to the likeness of our life in the flesh. Further, through things that are incoherent to us he spins out his nonsense. His fleshly god does not have a simple nature; for no one would observe the simple in the flesh; and what is not simple cannot be uncompounded. But he says that he is one, as each of us also is, from spirit, he says, and soul and body. Now for the first time we have been taught the new form of number, having learned that things divided into three of different kinds are a unit. But let the argument about the spirit that was remolded for him be set aside for now.

But according to the coarser division of man, as most of us have been taught to divide him, confessing that man's constitution consists of a rational soul and a body, how shall we call the two one, when the Apostle clearly sees two men in each individual, where he says, "Even though our outward man is perishing"—meaning the body—"yet the inward man is renewed day by day"—hinting at the soul. And yet, if according to Apollinarius there were three men, he would surely have made two of them invisible and one visible, so that even if in our own example he should confirm his own account by calling the two one, Paul sets him aside by dividing man in a twofold signification. Since, then, through the human being he establishes the argument of his own doctrine, by the overturning of this that too is altogether refuted along with it. What he says is something like this: that just as one man consists of spirit and soul and body. I, then, thought it right first to establish this: of what sort of body, and whence taken, and when formed, and of what kind of soul—whether rational or human or irrational, that is, whether it be of the brute kind—

He thinks that man, and then in this way he inserts the intellectual, which he says is something other than the spirit, calling it mind in our case but god in that one. For if the formation of a heavenly man in likeness to the earthly had first been demonstrated by him, we would have been led on by consequence into the myth, having learned from this new wisdom that the earthly race of men has its constitution from a rational soul and a body, but that there is a kind of race of heavenly men, for whom the soul is irrational, but the body is human, and god is mixed in instead of mind with the union of body and soul, from which Apollinarius thinks the one who appeared on earth consists. But since that has neither been demonstrated nor exists, and the one born through the virgin is rejected as not having shared our nature, I consider it alien and inconsistent to call body what is not body, and soul of man what is not soul. For if one would not confess it to be rational, he will not agree that it is a man's at all. But if these things are not so, what occasion is there for that threefold division of man, of which the two-thirds is man and the third part is god? For, he says, he would not have come to be in the likeness of a man, unless he happened to be, just like a man, mind in flesh. But I cannot say whether that man was without mind, in whom god reconciled the world to himself; but that the one who wrote these things was outside his mind at the time he wrote them, even if I do not say it, what has been written cries out. How does he who is something other than man and altogether without share in our nature come to be in the likeness of a man?

For if the human composite is an intellectual soul and a body, and neither this body nor that soul is in the man he fashions, how does what is alien to our nature receive the likeness of man? But he says he is not a man, but as it were a man, being an incarnate mind. These are the things that persuade me that the writer is out of his mind. How is that which has no share in the nature likened to the nature? And what is that incarnate mind, which is connatural with the flesh and inseparable, always being such? Therefore it is certainly also from such a thing. For flesh would not be begotten flesh unless it came from flesh, as the Lord somewhere says, that what is begotten of the flesh is flesh. [But it comes to be afterward.] What flesh, then, does he put on when he becomes incarnate? The flesh that exists? But it comes to be afterward. The flesh that does not exist? But it is from the same. [The flesh that does not exist?] Therefore he is not called incarnate; for he would not be named after what does not exist. But let us see the inescapable compulsions of his syllogisms, by which he forces us to agree that the only-begotten God is an incarnate mind. If the Lord, he says, is not an incarnate mind, he would be wisdom. O the irresistible premise! To think that the Lord is altogether one of the two, either an incarnate mind or wisdom; for this reason he says that it is that, if it is not this, whenever it is not an incarnate mind—everything that is not an incarnate mind is wisdom. What then is the stone? What is the beetle? What are the rest of the things that appear? For he will certainly give one of the two in their case, either that they are an incarnate mind or that they are wisdom; but surely none of these is either a mind or wisdom.

So the writer's premise has collapsed, and the whole contrivance has dissolved, since the argument has fallen along with the dissolution of its starting point. For it was not shown that these things stand in mutual opposition to one another, such that if one of them were, the other would not be, or conversely, if the one did not exist, the remaining one would necessarily exist. But nothing prevents both from being at the same time, and neither. But let us also see the instability of the premise from its converse. For if it is proposed as true that if he is not an enfleshed mind, he would be wisdom, then what appears from the converse is also true: that if he is wisdom, he is not an enfleshed mind. But indeed everyone who has received the faith agrees that Christ is wisdom; therefore, according to the wise man's premise, it is acknowledged that he is not an enfleshed mind, so that in both respects—by the first argument, the second, and the present one—the writer himself, through the things he contrives to establish what he wants, demonstrates that the Lord is not an enfleshed mind. Such is the premise, and such is the argument constructed through the middle terms. The conclusion is worthy of both. What does he say?

The coming of Christ was not a visitation of God, but the birth of a man. Let all the arrogant laugh at what has been said; but we, judging it timely to weep over the deceit of what has been said and its vanity, decline to refute the argument further, so that we may not seem to be making a joke of it. For who would not reasonably laugh at the incoherent entanglement of the syllogism? I will set out the statement itself, which runs as follows in its sequence: If the Lord is not an incarnate mind, he would be a wisdom enlightening a human mind; and this wisdom is in all men. But if this is so, the coming of Christ was not a visitation of God, but the birth of a man. Now that the Lord is a wisdom surpassing all mind, none of the pious would deny, being led to this by the voices of the holy fathers and apostles. For Paul cries out plainly that wisdom was made for us by God; and that the saving grace has appeared to us, teaching us to deny ungodliness and to await the blessed hope through holiness and righteousness. And we have heard the apostle setting these things forth.

But that the only-begotten God, who is over all and through all and in all, is an incarnate mind—this we have neither heard from any of the saints, nor do we accept that this strange new-fangled phrase should be inserted into the divine utterances, especially when we look to the aim of the new writer, who by this frigid contrivance of his sophism wishes to cast out from the Lord the confession of wisdom, through which we believe every mind is enlightened, and to bring in this irrational new-fangled phrase instead, so that the only-begotten might be named an incarnate mind and not wisdom. For if, he says, the Lord is believed to be wisdom—that wisdom, namely, which comes to be in all who receive the grace—we shall no longer confess the coming of Christ to be a visitation of God, as though wisdom were alien to God. Who would not pity the man for this melancholy? If, he says, we believe him to be wisdom, the presence of Christ will not be a visitation of God—he who was born for us as wisdom from God—but the birth of a man. If he is wisdom? Have you not heard the prophet crying out that the virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son? And that a child was born for us? And that the son has the beginning upon his shoulder, as one strong and mighty, and is father not only of the age that is past but also of the age to come? But let us pass over this dreamlike nonsense, by which he declared that he ought to be called an incarnate mind, neither wisdom enlightening nor the passage through birth into our life. Another of his attempts: If, he says, the Word did not become an incarnate mind, but wisdom.

In this, what has the wise man suffered again, that he distinguishes the mind from wisdom as though they were opposites? Those who accurately divide existing things say that names set in opposition to one another withdraw from each other's presence—as life from death and death again from life, virtue from evil and evil from virtue, and whatever else is spoken of in the same manner. How then does this man, on equal footing with opposites, distinguish wisdom from mind, as though it were impossible for the two to be in the same thing and concerning the same thing? Therefore he says: If he was not an incarnate mind, he was wisdom—as if someone were to say, if it is not health, it is disease. What then is the argument? If he was wisdom, he says, then the Lord did not descend nor empty himself. O irresistible compulsion! How does he establish that the Lord did not descend from showing that he was wisdom? Therefore, if from his being wisdom the descent is set aside, then one who confesses the descent necessarily establishes that he is not wisdom. But indeed the descent is confessed by Apollinarius. Therefore it has been agreed by him that the one who descended is not wisdom. Such are the wise devices of the noble man against the truth.

Then he adds, by way of this incoherent sequence, to this proposition a construction out of things not stated, which runs as follows: "For this reason he was also a man; for man is a mind in flesh, according to Paul." But I beg those who encounter these things not to think that such statements are fabricated by us in some jest for the sake of laughter, as though spoken in the person of Apollinarius; for it is possible to learn even from his own writings that the statement has been brought forward by him in this very wording. According to which Paul, then, is a man said to be an incarnate mind? Let him tell us what other Paul he has in secret; for the servant of Jesus Christ, the called apostle, said nothing of the kind in all his writings. If, then, neither the sequence nor the testimony establishes the statement, from where does this strange doctrinal fabrication have its credibility? Again he adds another thought to what has been said. Since he was, he says, a man and heavenly, this one is earthly. Again I say that Mary has been forgotten, to whom Gabriel brings good tidings, upon whom the Holy Spirit is believed to have come, whom the power of the Most High overshadows, from whom Jesus is born, who has the beginning upon his shoulder—that is, who bears the beginning upon himself. And the beginning is certainly the Word of God, who was in the beginning and is the beginning, as somewhere the word of Scripture says, "I am the beginning." Either, then, let him show that the virgin was not on earth, or let him not fashion a heavenly man, nor frighten the more unlearned, as though they were sinning against the divine nature, in that by accepting the human nature they would not be confessing the divine.

For the birth from a woman has the human element, but the virginity that served the birth showed the element beyond man. So that what was born is a man, but the power for the birth is not from men, but through the Holy Spirit and the power of the Most High. Therefore, according to the true account, he is both man and God—man in what is seen, God in what is understood. But he does not say this, defining the divine in the conclusion by what appears, not by what is understood. But let us proceed in our argument to the next piece of reasoning. If, he says, with God who is a mind, there was also a human mind in Christ. This is the premise. But we counter-propose to what has been said: which of the saints defined the divine as a mind? In which scriptures were we taught that God is the same as a mind, so as to accept what is said—that the man according to Christ is mindless, and God becomes a mind to the mindless? Indeed, one ought also to write down the whole reproach of this piece of reasoning. But I am afraid that we may seem to those who encounter it to be mockers, publishing the writer's disgrace for the sake of laughter. Nevertheless, so that the premise may not remain incomplete, since only the conclusion needs to be added, I will pass over the rubbish in between. If, he says, with God who is a mind, there was also a human mind in Christ—then the work of the incarnation is not accomplished in him. But if the work of the incarnation is not accomplished in the self-moving and unconstrained mind, the work—which is the dissolution of sin—is accomplished in the flesh that is moved by another and activated by the divine mind; and the self-moving mind in us partakes of the dissolution insofar as it appropriates itself to Christ.

Do you see how the conclusions are akin to the proposition? But perhaps we need some sorcerer and gazarene to discern for us the riddles of dreams, so as to say what this novel phrasing of words signifies: the self-moved mind and the other-moved, the flesh that accomplishes the work of dissolution. But let these things too be dismissed, to be mocked by the arrogance of the young; let us proceed to what follows in the argument. If, he says, one person receives more than another, this comes about through practice; but there is no practice in Christ; therefore it is not a human mind. How does he remember the divinely inspired Scripture? What practice of the arts led Bezalel? From where did Solomon get the knowledge of so many things? And Amos, who pricked the sycamore figs, how did he, from being a goatherd, obtain such power in prophecy? And yet none of those mentioned had come down from heaven, who neither was in the beginning nor was equal to God. But let this argument too be silenced, especially because of the aptness of the conclusion set out in accordance with it, which runs word for word as follows: Therefore the human race is not saved through the assumption of a mind and a whole man, but through the taking on of flesh. This is the conclusion; but let those who have practiced the cold subtleties of grammar explain the difference between assumption and taking on, so as to peddle to boys the technical distinction, small as it is, of such parts of speech as are called prepositions. For we consider that the one who has been taken on has been assumed, and we do not doubt that the one who has been assumed has been taken on, having learned such usage of the word from Scripture.

With glory you took me up," says David; and again elsewhere: "David chose his servant and took him up from his father's flocks." So then, the one taken up with glory was also taken up, and the one taken up from the flocks was taken up with glory; for he speaks of the same person in two ways, so that what the one who says the mystery according to the man is administered to the Only-begotten not by an "taking up" but by a "taking up with glory" means, perhaps not even he himself could say. But I, avoiding the need to baptize my argument together with the mud of his incoherent words, let most of his nonsense go, thinking that the very reading of his words as written is a sufficient refutation of the absurdity of what is said, so that even one who eagerly wishes to attack the heresy could not refute its absurdity so much from his own reasonings as the argument itself does; for by the very things with which he constructs the falsehood, in the feebleness of his advocacy, he lays bare the impiety. For if, he says, a perfect God was joined to a perfect man, there would be two. But what is imperfect, then, when compounded with the perfect, is not, according to him, regarded as a duality. Has the noble fellow never seen even children counting on their fingers? He who counts the small together with the greater names the lesser as one and the greater as one, yet says that they are two, if he reckons both together with each other. For every number is a composition of units, signifying in sum the total gathered from them. But if the countable thing, whatever it is, when set alongside the thing counted with it, exceeds in magnitude by its bulk over the lesser, the lesser will nonetheless be one, even if it falls short in size.

When, then, we distinguish two things equal in magnitude in number, we call them two perfect things; but when we count the deficient together with the perfect, we say two in this way too, but the one is deficient and the other perfect. But this great man, according to the science of arithmetic, says that if each of the two is perfectly in accordance with its own nature, the things so spoken of are said to be two; but if the one is deficient and the other perfect, both become one—I do not know how he smears the imperfect together with the exceeding and, through opposites, conceives the union of things incompatible. For perfect is fitted to perfect and imperfect to imperfect rather by similarity; but as for the union of the contrary with the contrary—I mean of the imperfect with the perfect—let the lawgiver of this new arithmetic tell us the manner. But he does not think it fitting for the human mind to conceive thoughts about the only-begotten God, and he states the reason, that the human mind is changeable. Therefore let the same argument not permit the flesh either to be united with God. For not even the writer of the account would deny that it is changeable, since from youth to maturity it changes its ages like garments. Or how was he not changeable who was first carried on his mother's arm, then was among infants, then among youths, and so advancing little by little to perfection, so as to come to the measure of human stature? If, then, the mind is rejected because it is changeable, for the same reason let not the flesh either be permitted by him, and in this way, according to him, the whole Gospel will be shown to be false and the preaching empty and the faith vain.

But if it is not disbelieved that he was manifested in flesh, and in flesh that is changeable, then neither does the mind for the very same reason have to be rejected altogether; but just as, having come to be in flesh, he was not defiled, so neither, having received the mind, was he altered into change. And again I will set out the same argument, setting forth his statement word for word. “The human race, then,” he says, “is not saved through the assumption of a mind and of a whole man, but through the assumption of flesh, to which it is natural to be governed; but it needed an unchangeable mind that does not fall under it through weakness of knowledge, but harmonizes it to itself without compulsion.” Who does not know that what is in need is by nature altogether other than what is without need, and that what is naturally governed differs in the same way, according to the principle of its essence, from what has rule in its nature, just as the nature of irrational animals has been constituted to be in subjection to that of humans, and man has rule over irrational animals not as something acquired but as his own? If, then, it is natural to the flesh to be governed, as Apollinarius says, and the divine is by nature that which rules, how does he who grants these things determine that both are one in nature from the beginning, when it is evident to all that the account of the subject and that of the ruler is different, and that what is naturally led is one thing and again another is that whose nature it is to rule? If, then, the nature of each of these is observed in contrary properties—I mean of the flesh and of the divinity—how are the two natures one?

But how does he fashion some divine and heavenly flesh for the Word, or rather, how does he make the Word itself flesh beforehand, not as one who in the last days, by economy, assumed our form, but as always being this and always remaining in the same state? For the one who says that the flesh is in need of the unchangeable and requires a guide plainly means our flesh, which through the changeableness of its nature fell into sin. But if, as he says, some super-heavenly and divine body is contemplated in relation to the Word, then neither does he in consequence grant it changeableness at all, nor need of one to direct it; and this is not our word but the word of the divine voice, which said that those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick. For in heaven there is no sickness from sin, but we are the ones who have been sickened by sin, who have been weakened by the reception of evil; we, because we turned toward evil, have needed the unchangeable; we, who have wandered from the saving way, have come to be in need of the guide toward the good. So that if the writer of this account testifies these things truly concerning the Lord's flesh—that it is by nature subject to direction and needs an unchangeable guide—he is interpreting nothing other than our own composition by his argument. But if he defines divinity in the flesh, and the divine, as long as it is what it is said to be, does not need another to lead it (for it does not admit turning and alteration toward the worse), then in vain are the things now said by him about the flesh patched together; for if this flesh is something divine, it is clear that it is also unchangeable; but if it is changeable, it is certainly not divine.

Who, then, could set out in order this confused and unstable myth of doctrines, which never stays on the same footing but, like visions in dreams, appears now as one thing and now as another? At one moment he says that the flesh of the Word is divine and co-eternal; again, that it is acquired and taken on afterwards; then, that it is alien to our nature, which is passible and subject to decay; again, that it is in need of one to direct it and is caught up in the passion of turning and change. And for this reason he makes it mindless, so that it may be healed by the divinity, supposing that the mind is, as it were, an obstacle to divine providence over men, and that the mindless is more pleasing to God. Therefore he thinks it more blessed not to have a mind, if indeed, as he himself says, the mindless is received by God. Why, then, do you not correct Solomon, who says, "But the understanding man shall obtain guidance"? For I think no other guidance is meant here by the proverbial riddle than our nature, which was storm-tossed and shipwrecked in evil, being brought by the oversight of the true pilot to the

steered by the harbor of the divine will. If, then, man is saved in unreason, how will the intelligent man obtain governance? And to what would the divine be more properly akin by nature? Toward what does reasoning suppose the divine nature to be more fittingly disposed? Flesh is something gross and resistant, and is akin to the earthy nature, whereas the mind is something intelligent and invisible and without shape. Which of these, then, would be found more proper for being joined to God—the gross and earthy, or the intangible and shapeless? And how is flesh joined to God, as he says, when it partakes of pure virtue without compulsion? For who does not know that virtue is the accomplishment of free choice? But the flesh is an instrument of free choice, lying subject to the impulse of the mind, transferred toward whatever the mover leads it. And free choice is nothing other than a certain mind and a disposition toward something. If, then, he will say that man partakes of pure virtue in whom there is no mind, what would that be which voluntarily receives virtue? Unless perhaps the writer understands the compelled as uncompelled. For whenever, without the mind being joined to the more preferable inclination, the body comes to be outside the activities of vice, what is accomplished will be a work of necessity, not of free choice; but he who chooses the good through the judgment of his reasonings is stronger than all necessity and compulsion, having from within himself the inclination toward the better. How, then, does the writer testify that the uncompelled belongs to that which is without free choice, when no reasoning of its own has guided it toward the good?

For that which is sinless not by choice is certainly not praiseworthy either; otherwise we shall likewise praise those who are prevented from evildoing by chains, whom the chain, not their judgment, keeps away from the working of evils. But, he says, the divinity draws the flesh to itself without compulsion; by "without compulsion," of course, he means "voluntary." How, then, could anyone be brought voluntarily to virtue without possessing a will of his own? For choosing and willing, and the selection of what is advantageous and the rejection of what is harmful—all these belong to the mind; and to be minded is not possible for things devoid of mind. If, then, the flesh is brought into kinship with God without compulsion, it is testified by these words through the writer that the flesh is not without choice, nor does it hold to what is expedient without judgment and without examination; and such a thing no one could call unreason. For how could reason be in the irrational? So that not only is the mind in man, as he agrees by what he says, but it is also above the others. For the voluntary and uncompelled impulse toward the good becomes a testimony of the mind's perfection. And that the appropriation to the better belongs to the mind is most especially shown by what is said next, which runs word for word as follows: "For," he says, "when the pure virtue gives a share to every mind that is subject to it." If, then, he contemplates the purity of virtue in the mind, how does he drive the mind out of that flesh in which he sees the purity? For by the argument one of two things must necessarily fail: either that virtue is something partaken of by the mind, or that the flesh which was brought to virtue without compulsion is without mind.

But as for the things he has added in a random and inconsequent manner, I think it superfluous to examine them, since they are of this sort: "And," he says, "to all who are made like Christ in their intellect and are not unlike him in the flesh"—for what the nausea of the things said means, let those admirers of deceit teach us; but let us proceed to what follows in his argument. "And if," he says, "God was joined to a man, perfect to perfect, there would be two: one a son of God by nature, and one by adoption." I would gladly learn from those who have been instructed in such things, who call the intelligent and perfect man an adopted son—for thus they certainly name the man who does not have intellect—what will they say of the unintelligent man? For the only-begotten God, being in himself complete and perfect, has the title of the true Son, nature confirming the appellation; but the addition of the half-complete man, what name does it have? For if the perfect man is called an adopted son according to Apollinarius, then the half-complete man, insofar as he is a man, will evidently also be called a half-divine son, halving in himself the title of the adopted son; so that, to speak more properly, the former is a perfect adopted son, while the latter falls short by a half or a third, according to the will of those who chop up man with such cuttings. But if it is unfitting for God to have an adopted son, the unfittingness is surely alike both in the case of the perfect and in the case of the imperfect; or rather, the absurdity is even greater in the mutilated one.

For if the fittingness of human nature, when observed in relation to the divine, was considered something shameful and outside the conception befitting God, much more shameful would it be for nature to be seen in a maimed state in relation to him. For it is not because it is not intellect that flesh is therefore akin to the nature of the Father; rather, man—both whole and in part—is separated from the substance of the Father according to the principle of nature, and neither of the things in us, neither the intellect nor the body, is akin by the principle of substance to the nature that transcends them. And even if the myth fashions some heavenly form of flesh around the divine, the one who reasons correctly will no more agree on this account that that flesh is consubstantial with God the Father. But if the flesh is alien to the Father's substance, how could the alien thing be a son? For it is entirely necessary that what truly is from something be in substance that very thing which the begetter is. But the Father is not flesh; nor then would the one from him be altogether flesh; for what is begotten of the Spirit is said to be spirit and not flesh. If, then, the flesh is not from the Father, it is not a son. What, then, will it be called? For whatever name they devise for that heavenly thing fabricated by the myth-maker, this we shall in consequence apply to the flesh taken from men; and whatever they call our flesh, that other will be called by the same name. The earthly thing is not a son, nor then is that other at all. The earthly thing is an adopted son, and so then is that other. Here there is a pair of sons, and there certainly too. There the flesh and the divinity are one son; so also here.

For since all creation stands equally distant from the divine essence, it is equally acknowledged that both the earthly and the heavenly are outside the Father's nature. It remains, then, to believe concerning God whatever accords with the purpose of his love for humanity, as being the more reasonable, and to invent no proper name for it, but to be named after that which overflows and prevails, as happens with the sea. For if someone were to cast a drop of vinegar into the sea, the drop too becomes sea, being changed along with it into the quality of the sea. So the true Son and only-begotten God, the unapproachable light and the very life, wisdom and sanctification and power and every lofty name and thought—these are what he is who was made manifest to humans through flesh. And the flesh, being by its own nature flesh, was changed toward the sea of immortality, as the apostle says, "The mortal was swallowed up by life," and all things that then appeared in the flesh were likewise changed toward the divine and undefiled nature. No weight, no form, no color, no resistance, no softness, no circumscription in respect of quantity, nor anything else of the things then observed remains at all, since the blending with the divine has taken up the lowliness of the fleshly nature into the divine properties. So there is no danger that the account of the Trinity be expanded for us into a quaternity, as Apollinarius says, nor do we enslave the angels to a human, as his myth says against us. For those who submit themselves to the Master do not serve a human, nor are they ashamed to worship him who came to the inhabited world through flesh.

For when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, it says, "And let all his angels worship him." But there is one entrance into the world—the one through birth—and it is not possible in any other way to come to be within the life of human beings except by using this entrance. Therefore the word calls his generation through the flesh an entrance into the world. If, then, all the angels worship him when he enters the world, and the entrance is generation through the flesh, we are not enslaving the Master's own possession to him, but the very nature of the angels does not fail to recognize the dominion that lies above itself; so let him be silent, who adds those vain things to the argument—that we make the things above the things below, enslaving God-bearing angels to a God-bearing man. Further, in addition to these things, he says: "If the one who received God is truly God, there would be many gods, since many receive God." What then do we say to this? That "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself," the great Paul is a sufficient witness. But if the writer supposes that for this reason a multitude of gods is introduced by us into the proclamation, because we confess that God in Christ reconciles the world to himself, as though God also comes to be among human beings, we will answer these things: if there are many virgin mothers, and the initiation of Gabriel is directed to many, and to each one belongs the descent of the Holy Spirit and the presence of the power of the Most High; and if the prophets proclaim the grace concerning many, so as to speak in the plural—

Children were born to us, and sons were given to us, and the virgins will conceive, and the names of all those born is Emmanuel—if all walk upon the waves on foot and by ineffable power feed so many thousands in the wilderness, multiplying by satisfaction the bread that is cultivated in the hands of the disciples; if all raise four-day-dead men from the dust; if all become lambs of God and are sacrificed as Passover for us and nail sin to the cross and destroy the power of death and run up into the heavens before the eyes of the disciples and sit at the right hand of the Father; if all will come to judge the world in righteousness and in the name of all the tongue of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth confesses—then we will grant that there are many gods, if indeed the many are in these distinguishing marks. But if there is one Lord Jesus, through whom are all things, and from him and through him and to him are all things, and the enumeration of such God-befitting names concerns him alone, what danger is there that many gods be molded, when we say that God has been made manifest through an ensouled flesh? For that the visible thing was a man, who is so unacquainted with the gospel teachings as not to know what was said by the Savior himself to the Jews: "But now you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you"? Do you see in what is said what the Word indicated was being killed when he said, "You seek to kill me"? Not the truth, but the man through whom the truth was spoken.

For the one who spoke the truth was not a man, but evidently the one speaking was God, while the man mediated with his own voice to men the thing spoken. Therefore he is also called mediator between God and men, since human nature was not able to mingle with the unmixed fellowship of God, and for this reason needed the voice akin to it and according to nature, through which it is fitting that the power from above be contained. We must leave this too, and turn the discourse to what follows. Nothing, he says, is so united to God as the flesh that was assumed. O his carefully considered declaration! Nothing is so united to God as the flesh—not goodness, not eternity, not incorruptibility, not the dominion over all things, nor any other of the conceptions befitting God, but all these are secondary to the flesh in comparison with God, and to this the union of God and the flesh that was acquired. The writer himself confesses this very thing; for by saying that it was assumed, he indicated its adventitious character. And this too we shall pass over, keeping silent about what follows, as it has its refutation from the very words and is harmless to those who encounter it; for having set forth that nothing else of the things that came to be in God

Thus to be united to the Lord, as the flesh that was assumed is united to him, since he added in his conclusion that things not united in this way are not even so to be worshiped, he sets another crowning point on top: But nothing is so worshipable as the flesh of Christ. These things, since their absurdity is known even to little children, we will pass over in silence together with the folly. For even the little children sitting in the marketplaces and playing would say that, if nothing is so worshipable as the flesh, then the flesh of Christ is more venerable even than the very majesty of the Father and the almighty authority and the rule over all things, and whatever else our nature can utter concerning the divine power—so that, abandoning the worship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we should reverence and worship only the flesh that has been honored by him, and place in it the dominion over all things. Similar to what has been set out before is also the argument that follows: The flesh of the Lord, he says, is worshiped insofar as it is one person and one living being with him. Having mentioned two things, the Lord and the flesh of the Lord, he has made the two one living being. Now he clearly reveals what is indicated in the title of the discourse, in which he promises to teach about the divine incarnation according to the likeness of a man.

For since human life consists in the concurrence of soul with body, arising from the mixture and communion of these things of different kinds, and no one would define our constitution as anything other than a communion of body and soul, the writer, having conceived this same thing also concerning the divine nature, immediately in the title of his treatise promises to teach that the divine is contemplated in flesh according to the likeness of a man, and now in this part of his treatise he clearly establishes that the flesh and the Lord are one person and one living being, as if he were saying that the same Paul is both the hidden and the visible man because of the natural union of the body with the soul. What then is one to proceed to say against these words and to fight against? And how would anyone not accuse us of folly for opposing notions that have been invented beside the point? Therefore let us consider what follows. If nothing, he says, that is made is to be worshiped along with the Lord, as his flesh is. Who will preside as judge over the contest in which Apollinarius strives against Eunomius for the first prize in impiety? Who then will be deemed worthy of the prize for his labors against the truth? Perhaps the victory will be left undecided for both, on account of the evenly matched and equally balanced character of their impiety. For the one, calling the only-begotten God a made thing, does not dispute that he is intellectual and outside the nature of a copy; but this one, having molded him from the beginning as composite from things of different natures, compacted together from flesh and divinity, establishes that he is one living being according to the likeness of human nature. For the worship of the made thing is equal in both cases.

But he says that the intellectual and incorporeal nature was made; while this one adds that there is also a fleshly nature in the creation, and that this is worshipped more than the other created things, so that worship is also extended to other created things—a thing which is admitted even by those who champion the impiety of Eunomius to be impious. Therefore let him have the victory over Eunomius and exult, adorning himself with the crowns of impiety; for by as much as the body is inferior to the soul in human nature, by so much, among those who worship created things, the one who legislates that flesh is to be worshipped is, in the account of impiety, more absurd than those who revere the intellectual creation—and especially if he also says that other created things are worshipped, over which flesh has the greater share in worship by comparison. For, he says, no created thing is so worshipful as the flesh of the Lord. For all things that are comprehended in creation are equally below the divine power, whether incorporeal or with a body. But creation has, in comparison with itself, excess and deficiency, the nature of incorporeal things taking precedence.

beyond the perceptible and corporeal condition. So insofar as Eunomius and Apollinarius think that worship must be given to a creature, they are equally matched in the word of impiety and are evenly disputed; but he who assigns the first place to the flesh beyond the intellectual nature has the greater share in impiety. Let the disciples of deception hear toward whom and about what their teacher's contest is. Let us also look at the next unbreakable chain, to speak in the manner of Apollinarius' own teacher, which, having bound it fast with the indissoluble cords of his syllogisms, he sets before us. If, he says, one thinks that a man is united to God beyond all men and angels. Then one must also examine the thought in these words. But it would be like seeking a soul in a stone and prudence in wood and in the words set forth an indication of some thought—I do not say the better, but at least that which contributes to impiety; rather, from the combination of words the senselessness of what is said would be attested. He will make the angels and men not self-determining, just as the flesh is not self-determining. But the destruction of the self-determining living being is not being self-determining; but nature is not destroyed by the one who made it; therefore man is not united to God. Alas for the necessity! How indissoluble are the braids of the syllogisms! The union with the divine takes away self-determination from men and angels, and the destruction of the self-determining living being is not being self-determining, and if these things are posited, it is demonstrated that man is not united to God. What such thing do the ventriloquists, what do those who speak from the earth and are trained in heart-felt divinations utter?

He takes away free will from humans and angels if the human is united to God. Was not the one who said, "But now you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you," a man? Was not he who displayed all the divine power in himself, acting by authority whatever he wished, mingled with the divine nature? If, then, this did not happen in that one, and that in this one, let the testimony of the Gospel be set aside, and Paul will certainly be convicted of falsehood, and the prophets, and all who foretold the wonders concerning the Lord and who recounted the things that happened afterward. But if this truly happened and God was manifested in the flesh, and the flesh mingled with the divine nature became one with it, then, according to the poetic myth, free will has perished for human nature and the angels have been enslaved, since this happened, having been deprived of the grace of free will. O the irrational novelty of speech! And what a conclusion it is to say: "The destruction of a free creature is not to be free." Does he not then count the servile class among living creatures, because it is not governed freely in life, having been enslaved by the prevailing power? For the writer defines that a living creature exists in free will; and where the sovereign motion of the will is not present, he legislates that this one should not even be thought a living creature. Therefore that Canaan was dead when he was enslaved to his brothers because of his disorder, dead was the servant of Abraham, dead was Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, and in later times dead was Onesimus, dead are all the centurions who serve.

And why do I say these things? All who are subject to the rulers' authorities are dead, in whom the free-willed purpose is hindered. But even those whom Paul legislates to be subject to the governing authorities are altogether dead, even if they are souls, corrupted by the absence of free will and no longer able to be living beings. For this is what the myth of Apollinarius commands, that he may yoke that soulless flesh to the God over all, whether soulless or mindless; for the myth looks to both alike. But the soulless thing is a corpse; and the ensouled thing without understanding is a beast, which this man himself does not escape as absurd, since he takes away the free will from that flesh; for it is proper to irrational animals not to be their own masters, but to be subject to the rule of man. But let these things too be dismissed, and let us turn to what follows in the argument; and I shall state in my own voice the opponent's meaning for the sake of brevity. He says that man consists of three things—spirit, soul, and body—as the apostle also dogmatizes this through the epistle to the Thessalonians, and he adds this part of the hymnody of the three children: "Bless, spirits and souls of the righteous"; then he also says that one must worship the Lord in spirit; and he cites the voice of the gospel, through which we are taught that those who worship God must worship in spirit. Having gone through these things, he adds that there is something besides this: the flesh that wars against the spirit; and this he does not call soulless, so that through this it is shown that the spirit is a third thing besides the soul and the body.

If, then, he says, man is from three, and the Lord is also man, then the Lord is certainly from three: spirit, soul, and body. In order, therefore, that the error of his assumption concerning the divine Scriptures may become clear, we shall briefly examine each of the things said. And first let us scrutinize the apostolic passage. For Paul, according to our account, does not divide man into three parts when he writes those things to the Thessalonians, praying that they be sanctified wholly to the Lord, in body and soul and spirit; but there is a certain philosophy concerning the purpose of this life that is in various ways loftier, not only here but also in what he says to the Corinthians. For there he knows a certain fleshly man, and again another spiritual man, and between the two the soulish man: calling the passionate and material man fleshly, and naming spiritual the one who is not weighed down by the body's drag but has his mind on high, and calling soulish the one who is neither exactly, and has fellowship with each. In saying these things he neither says that the fleshly man is deprived of the activity of the mind or the soul, nor does he show the spiritual man to be a stranger to the entanglement with body and soul, nor does he suppose the soulish man to be either mindless or fleshless, but from what predominates he assigns the names to the purposes.

For he who examines all things and is examined by no one is both incarnate and ensouled and is called spiritual; and he who raged with the passion of the flesh against his father's bed was neither without soul nor separated from understanding; and likewise he who stands in the middle between the praiseworthy and the condemned is in both and has a mind in himself and is clothed with the nature of the flesh. But, as has been said, since the designation applies properly to the visible marks of life, those who are pleasure-loving and fond of delights and eagerly disposed toward contentious rivalries are called fleshly; while those who examine all things, themselves giving no handle for examination to those who wish it because of the height of their conduct, are called spiritual; and he calls "soulful" the one standing between these, who has descended as far as the other has risen above him. Since, then, he wishes the one being perfected through virtue to be attested not only in the lofty life, but even if he should perform some of the bodily things, to look toward God, and even if some of the intermediate things, not even so to fall away from God. (For whether you eat, he says, or drink, or do anything, do all things to the glory of God, so that even through bodily occupations one does not fall away from the aim of divine glory.) For this reason, to the Thessalonians, who were already through all things reckoned toward the better, he grants complete sanctification through the blessing, saying: And may the God of peace sanctify you completely, and may your whole body and soul and spirit, that is, every bodily and soulful and spiritual pursuit, look toward sanctification.

This is our argument. But if Apollinarius says that through this the mind is blessed in a distinct way, and again that the body and the soul are separately distinguished, and that the power of the blessing upon each of these is separate, how is the whole body preserved—the body that falls away entirely and completely in death? How is it whole—the body that is pressed down and shriveled by self-control and made rotten through harsher enslavement? How could one say that poor Lazarus there did not fail of the blessing, teeming as he was with such sores and consumed through his discharges? But, even if it is strange to say, in that body of his, wasted away by sores, the blessing of Paul was complete; for his whole body was preserved together with his soul through his spiritual way of life, because it was not dragged down by the necessities of the flesh from the higher hope into any unseemly thoughts; for the flesh did not provide the soul with distraction, nor was the mind disturbed by bodily passions. And the hymn of the three children, taking up spirits and souls of the righteous into the fellowship of glorification, does not command the souls to praise separately and the spirits of the souls separately, as Apollinarius thinks. For what praise of the soul could be distinct without being fulfilled through the mind? For a soul separated from the mind, as has already been said many times, is a beast, having no share in rational and intelligent activity. What, then, actually separates the mind from our soul, as he says? Let it be granted that it is possible for the praise to God to be fulfilled by the spirits, because he says that the spirits are mind.

But if he thinks the soul is something other than the mind, how will the mindless man praise God? What hymnody from mindlessness will please God? What need would the soul still have of the mind, if for the divine glorification it were sufficient in itself, singing hymns by itself and needing no cooperation of the mind? But we have not learned these things from those who expounded them to us. But since the souls of those released from bodily bonds are equal to the angels, as the Lord says, for this reason the word indicates the equal honor of souls with angels through their conjunction with spirits; for the angels are spirits, according to the prophet who said, "Who makes his angels spirits," with whom the three children and the souls of the righteous deem it worthy to sing hymns. But the Savior, saying that God must be worshiped in spirit, does not indicate the mind by the name of spirit, but that one must not have certain bodily conceptions about the divine. For since the Samaritan woman says to the Lord that God must be worshiped on the mountain, as in a circumscribed place, which is not outside bodily supposition, for this reason the word says to her who has wandered from the truth that God is spirit, that is, incorporeal, and that those who worship him cannot approach the incorporeal bodily, but must fulfill worship in spirit and truth. For he contrasts the corrective utterances with the double ignorances, opposing truth to place, and spirit to bodily suppositions. For this reason Paul also says that he serves the Lord neither in place nor in body, but in spirit, following the truth.

But to say that "the flesh is not subject to the law of God" has from this very fact the refutation of the deceit of their doctrine; for to wage war against, and to take captive, and not to be subject, and all such things, are activities of free choice. But where there is no mind, neither could there be free choice. Therefore, the flesh which Apollinarius calls ensouled and endowed with free choice, this he confesses is not separated from the mind either. But even if only "flesh" is spoken of, it contains within itself the complete account of humanity, so that, with none of the things that complete the nature lacking, what remains could no longer be called a human being. But, he says, the human being is from three things. Let this be granted, even if the argument does not necessarily bring us to assent. But also the Lord, he says, when called a human being, is from three things—spirit and soul and body. We do not for the present contend against this either; for all things that complete our nature, one who says they are also in that human being will not err. But also "heavenly human being"—he says this about the Lord—and "life-giving spirit." And these too we accept; for the meaning is ours, if it be taken as it ought. For he who has been mingled with the heavenly and has transformed the earthly through his mixture with the better, would no longer be called earthly but heavenly; and he who by the life-giving Spirit [and he] works the effect in us is also a life-giving spirit. But let us see to what purpose the writer uses these words.

If, he says, the heavenly man is from all the same things as we who are of dust, so as even to have the spirit equal to those of dust, he is not heavenly but a vessel of the heavenly God. There is much in what has been said that is unclear and hard to detect because of the weakness of interpretation; nevertheless it is easy to uncover the intent. For he says, if that man were deficient in mind, he is heavenly; but if he were complete, no longer heavenly, but he became a vessel of the heavenly God. In these things, which of the statements would one abhor before the other? To think that the divine is hindered by completeness, as if the flesh were more akin than the mind to the union of the Godhead; or to believe that God is heavenly, but that the one who received the heavenly God in himself is not there where God is believed to be, but is elsewhere beside the heavenly one and is named something else besides this? For if, Apollinarius says, he is a vessel of the heavenly God, and God is in heaven above, as Ecclesiastes says—then the one who contained God in himself is heavenly together with what was contained, being properly called heavenly instead of of dust; so that also by what the logographer says, if indeed he understood the consequence of his own words, the doctrine of the truth is clearly established, being strengthened by the wisdom of the enemies. But let us examine what follows. If we, he says, are from three, but he himself from four, he is not a man, but a God-man. Let not the reader of the account laugh at the foolish-seeming and senseless word, but rather groan at the voluntary crippling of those enslaved to this irrationality.

If the whole human nature is saved by the overshadowing of the divine power, God the Word will be called a human-god; and just as the myths, weaving together different natures, produce monstrous creatures, fashioning and naming shapes and names—horse-stags and goat-stags and the like—so too this new myth-maker, following his own teachers of fiction, mocks the divine mystery. And while the apostle cries out plainly that "through a man comes resurrection of the dead"—not of half a man, nor of one having a small part beyond the half, but by the absoluteness of his utterance showing the nature signified by the name to be undiminished—this man, by this shameful word-coinage of his, monstrously fabricates the mystery into a Minotaur for us, providing many occasions to those alien to the faith, through what he has said, for mocking the word of the faith. For it is not possible for one who wishes to make a mockery and laughingstock of the doctrines to be turned away from this absurd composition of words, even if the writer's argument or ours should seem to prevail; for whatever you say from either side, you will not remove from the argument the composition from two natures. For the one who said that the flesh is from above does not thereby establish that it is not even flesh; but the flesh, administered by some ensouled nature and having in itself a life-giving power, as Apollinarius also wishes, properly possesses the designation of man; and the one who assumed it and revealed himself through it is by nature altogether other than it.