Contra haereticos et in sanctam deiparam

Against Heretics, and on the Holy Mother of God. 1. Again with the boldness of the Holy Spirit, breaking the chains of ignorance, I take up the teacher’s throne, not ashamed of my poverty; for being lovers of the poor, you pity me because of the ambition of love. For though I am poor, I reach out to the rich, not assuming the disease of arrogance, but fulfilling the desire of your God-loving soul. For you delight in my words, since I also rejoice in your ways. I am unaware of my poverty and my stammering voice, beholding this beautiful and lovely assembly. For I know that you come together not as judges of my words or spectators of my struggles, but so that as fathers you may support the child. For I speak with my tongue, but you with your heart cry out to God for this: that speech be given to us at the opening of the mouth. For being lovers of children and fond of your offspring, you consider our labors as your own crowns. Therefore I do not hesitate to speak; for the desire for you dissolves my hesitation, and your holy prayer transforms my ignorance into virtuous teaching. But let these things be said in the preface. Today, having girded the loins of truth, and put on the breastplate of righteousness, and shod my feet in the readiness of the Gospel of peace, I begin, having undertaken a struggle against the heretics. I engage in the contests, not joining words with words, nor dissolving the chains of propositions with rhetorical skill, but with the perfectly read voice, I tear apart the cunning problems of the heretics like a spider’s web. This is the apostolic reading:

Oh, the depth of wealth, and wisdom, and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and inscrutable his ways! What do you say, O Paul? The wealth of God lies in depth, and is known in height? Yes, he says, both in depth and in height: in depth on account of humanity, in height on account of divinity. For thus, revealing the economy through the prophet, he said to Ahaz: Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in depth or in height: in depth, on account of the economy, in height, on account of theology. For a deep sign is to be born of a Virgin, and a lofty proclamation is also to be born God from God. Neither, O man, do you comprehend by busying yourself with the height, nor do you find by meddling with the depth. For the births of Christ are venerable: one is according to nature, the other contrary to nature. For contrary to nature he was born of the Virgin in later times, according to nature he was born of the Father before the ages, as the one who begot him knows. And the birth above is without falsehood. For truly God was born from God, truly the God-man was born of the Virgin among men: above, only-begotten from the only one, and below, only-begotten from the only one; and just as in the case of the birth above it is impious to suspect a mother, so also in the case of the Virgin it is blasphemous to suspect a father. The Father begot without flux, the Virgin bore without corruption. For neither did God suffer flux in begetting; for he begot in a manner befitting God; nor did the Virgin suffer corruption in giving birth; for she bore spiritually. Oh, new wonder! Oh, venerable and ineffable mystery! For I dare to say, and in saying I do not err:

That both above a virgin gave birth—for the nature of the Godhead is pure and incorrupt—and below a Virgin bore incorruptibly the incorruptible: "For you will not let your Holy One see corruption." When nature proceeds according to order, then seek what is natural, O man; but when God commands something, then nature denies its own order and does those things which the law of God wills. For example: God commanded the rock in the desert to gush forth water, and it gushed forth, not what it held in its bosom, but what the command deposited there. Just as the rock became a spring at God's nod and bore a torrent of waters, not from an underlying vein, nor by borrowing from a river, but the dry, veinless, and waterless suddenly became the mother of rivers, pouring forth abundantly water which it did not have; so also the unwedded Virgin, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, bore our Lord in the flesh, not moved by the order of nature, but coming to bear by the power of the Most High. For she did not bear by borrowing from the law of nature, but, empowered by the Holy Spirit, she bore in the way that the grace of God willed. "For the Holy Spirit will come upon you," it says, "and the power of the Most High will overshadow you"; therefore the offspring will be called holy, the Son of God. If you wish to know how nature denies its own order in order to serve the will of God contrary to nature, ask Aaron's rod: "Tell me, O dry rod, how did you put forth leaves and fruit in an instant, contrary to nature?

Moses did not set you in the earth, he did not water you with rains, time did not nourish your roots, you did not see summer or spring, you did not enjoy winter or autumn; how then did you give leaves, and flowers, and fruit? And the rod says: I did not serve changes of air or alterations of seasons, but having served the divine word, I trampled upon nature, and gave fruit contrary to nature, so that I might serve the will of the master craftsman both according to nature and contrary to nature. Just as the rod gave fruit contrary to nature, O man, so that Judea might believe, so also the living rod, the royal Virgin, gave birth without the laws of marriage, so that the world might be saved. 2. But if you say, What likeness is there between a rod sprouting and a Virgin giving birth? Learn that the likeness is very much preserved. For the rod was a type of the Virgin; that one was an image, this one is the truth; and the preceding example is this demonstration. For just as that rod gave fruit contrary to nature, so also here the Virgin contrary to nature blossomed the flower of piety. For it says, "A rod will come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower will rise up from it." Is it then in vain that Paul marvels at the wealth of God, that is, the incarnate economy of Christ? Alas for the disbelief of the heretics! Alas for their madness and God-fighting tongue! Paul, the citizen of the heavens, the spectator of paradise, the ardent lover of Christ, the hearer of unspeakable mysteries, sought after the economy and shuddered and grew dizzy; and you, interpreting the divinity, do not shudder? Paul says that the judgments of God are inscrutable; and you investigate the nature of the Father as if it were easily hunted?

Now is the time to call you to account, to turn back in sorrow against what you have spoken so ineffably. How the Virgin gave birth, you do not know, and do you wish to know how God begot? You are ignorant of how the fleshly birth of Christ in the time of Herod took place, and do you dare to interpret and attempt to examine the birth from the Father, which occurred without beginning, without interpretation, reverently, and unspeakably, before all thought and times and ages, without mediation? If Thomas, when he touched the crucified body of Christ, did not remain untaught, even though he was an apostle, what punishments are deserved by those who do not touch the body of Christ with their hand, but with their tongue investigate the eternal nature of his divinity? For Thomas saw and touched a body; but these, though they have not seen the divinity, have investigated it as if they had seen it. Tell me, O terrible and clever rhetorician Eunomius, you who divide the nature of the divinity in three ways, you who again fashion gods smaller than a little, why do you call Christ a creation and not an offspring? Lest, he says, I attach the notion of flux to the uncreated nature of God; for the one who begets must necessarily undergo flux. Therefore, the one who creates must also undergo labor. For the one who creates does not create without toil. If, then, fleeing the notion of flux, you

You refuse to call Father a Father, and you say not to call him Creator, lest you cast upon him the suspicion of toil and sweat. But, they say, we ought not to take the same opinion about God as we have about men. For men, when they create, create with toil and sweat; but God, when he creates, creates without toil, for his nature is uncompounded. Since, then, O wise and learned one, God the Creator creates without toil, can he not generate without flux? But when he creates, God creates without toil, yet when he generates, does he undergo flux like a man? And while he remains impassible as a creator, does he fall into a human passion when generating? I shudder, I am afraid, I tremble at the blasphemous, unbridled, and unrestrained tongue of the heretics, considering that they believe the Virgin gave birth incorruptibly, yet they doubt that God begot without flux. The Virgin’s womb, undefiled, remained unbroken even after giving birth, O man, and did the Father’s nature not escape flux in begetting? But the Virgin remained a virgin even after giving birth, not losing her virginity from the birth; and could the Father not remain the same after begetting, with his substance remaining without flux and unchanged? And where there is bulk of body, harmony of limbs, composition of bones, arrangement of nerves, abundance of veins, bonds of joints, the infant came forth as it knows how, and in the virgin’s womb wove itself mysteriously; but where there is no body, no limb, no joints, no nerves, no bones, no veins, but an intangible, incorporeal, and invisible nature, do you introduce flux and conceive of diminution? And the child came forth from the womb, and the womb remained unbroken.

For he who without seed ensouled for himself a temple in the Virgin, he also preserved the womb unbroken, as God. For the works of God are not slaves to the nature of things, but follow the command of God the Word. Sometimes God creates according to nature, that you may know the good order of nature; sometimes he fashions contrary to nature, that you may learn the power of the one who acts. For not everything happens according to nature, lest nature be deified, nor everything contrary to nature, lest things done contrary to nature be thought a disorder of nature. But God shapes according to nature, and fashions also contrary to nature, that you may learn that nature, holding the rank of a handmaid, moves according to nature and runs contrary to nature, fulfilling the command of God. 3. But tell me, O inquirer, how Christ, coming forth from the unbroken womb, did not destroy the seal of virginity, how from the virginal Adam the virgin Eve came forth. For the Mother of God Mary, not knowing a man, bore a man; the first-formed Adam, not knowing a woman, produced a woman. But that a virgin should give birth, although paradoxical, nevertheless holds to reason, in that belly and womb and a natural passage are prefigured for those who are born; but in the case of Adam everything is foreign. For who saw a human being born from a rib? When did a rib ever contribute fruitfulness? God put Adam to sleep, that he might not be grieved by the removal of the rib, but nevertheless he loosened his bonds; for the sinews are the bonds of nature. And Daniel is witness, saying, "And I saw the vision, and I fell; and the bonds of my loins were dissolved.

A rib secured by the law of nature, interwoven with the bonds of sinews, woven with flesh, united with veins—how was it removed? How was it torn away? How did the rib come out, and Adam remain whole? How? The one who loosed it knows; the one who loosed it also bound it. For if one had bound it and another had loosed it, there would be a question; but if the one who fitted it together loosed it, and the one who formed the rib from earth took away the rib, he alone knows how he loosed it, he who alone understands how he composed the harmony of the limbs. Just as, then, after the removal of the rib Adam remained whole, so also after the emergence of the infant the Virgin remained undefiled. For neither was the harmony of Adam's body harmed when the rib was taken, nor was the seal of her virginity violated when the infant came forth. For just as with us, if someone wishes to loose another's bond, he destroys it and cuts it through inexperience, but the one who bound it looses it effortlessly, for he knows the harmony of what he bound; so also God, who fitted together, who tightened, who fastened the body, knew the connections of the sinews, and how he joined rib to rib, and joint, and limb; and from what he bound together, he knowingly and all-wisely removed the rib, and did not diminish Adam. The only-begotten Son of God formed himself in the Virgin, and neither in forming did he dissolve her virginity, nor in coming forth through the womb did he corrupt the womb. Tell me, then, O wise and learned one, which is easier: for a virgin to give birth and after giving birth to remain a virgin again, or for a rod to be ensouled into a living creature, and from a living creature to become a rod again? How was the rod of Moses transformed into a serpent?

How did the lifeless receive a soul? How did the motionless crawl upon the earth? And how, again, did a rod come from a serpent, recognizing its own nature? For at one time a serpent came from a rod, at another a rod from a serpent. Just as the rod of Moses, O man, was by nature a rod, but by economy a serpent, so also Mary was by nature a virgin, but by economy she became a mother, so that the magi of the Chaldeans might believe, just as, in order that Egypt might be frightened, the rod became a serpent. Therefore, in order that the world might be saved, did you not wish the Virgin to appear? Then, when earthquakes occur, walls are separated and joined together; but when Christ was born, was the womb not opened, and then woven together again? And in earthquakes, walls are separated in such a way as to threaten death, and they are united in such a way that no form or trace of the division appears; but in the case of that incorruptible birth, did you not wish the womb to be dissolved in honor of the one being born, and then to come together and be united and recover the form of virginity by the power of the one effecting it? And do not say to me: Whence did flesh and blood subsist, with no seed underlying? For it is possible to learn from things among us that which is above us. And call to mind, as images of what is said, the pupils of painters, who often paint plants and trees and meadows and rivers, and when they do not have nature cooperating, they force by art, through the blending of colors, to represent images of things. For they make a river, borrowing no stream from rivers; they make a man, borrowing nothing from human nature.

Just as painters depict a man, a spring, and a river through colors, taking nothing from a spring, a river, or a man, in the same way the Holy Spirit in the Virgin constructed a living man not by colors but by will, not borrowing seed from human nature for the formation of the one being molded. God, taking dust from the earth, formed Adam as he wished, for the nature of the divinity is not composite with human hands. The Holy Spirit took no dust, nor did it permit seed to be deposited by natural law, but merely shone forth, and it fixed bones, stretched sinews, and fashioned nose and ears, eyes and tongue, hands and feet, and constituted soul, mind, reason, and speech, even if the children of the heretics do not wish it. For just as those who look into a mirror see an image of themselves rising up from the formless material, an image often laughing and weeping, moving and changing in many ways, imitating the shapes of the living form, so too the Holy Spirit shone in a pure mirror, the spotless body of the Virgin, and created a perfect man not by the law of nature, not by time, not by human seed, but by sight alone, and by a noetic and holy power moved the Virgin to birth pangs, weaving the infant in her ineffably, like a garment, for the salvation of men. So it is with these things. Let us send up glory to the God who became incarnate for us, for the things that have been said, because glory belongs to him and to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, unto the ages of ages. Amen.