Contra Severianos

Solution to those who say, "If Christ has two natures, then necessarily there are three natures of God and man, and one must speak of as many energies," as Severus asserted. For this wretched Severus, having seized the throne of Antioch, attempted to champion the heresy against Manes, Apollinarius, and Eutyches, stirring up, with all his might, the peace of the Churches. Expelled from Antioch as a seditious man, he fell upon Alexandria like a storm. There, another hurricane blowing against the people, a certain Julian, called bishop of Halicarnassus in Asia, a most zealous defender of the Eutychian evil doctrine, confounded and disturbed everything. For Severus said that Christ is one nature, and accepted the distinction in Christ, while Julian, claiming one nature according to Severus, but abolishing the distinction, these impious men became the cause of all turmoil and disturbance, "not understanding, as the saying goes, either what they say or about what they are asserting." They take as an example of the divine union the human being composed of soul and body, and say: "Therefore you confess three natures." But let the ignorant and uneducated know that we say two natures: not of God and flesh, nor of God and soul, but of God and man. For the nature of a part is not properly the nature of man. For soul and body are parts of man; and the divisions and subdivisions concerning them are parts of the parts; and in Christ, the parts are unmixed: divinity and humanity. Soul and body are not parts of Christ, but parts of the part.

The parts of the parts of man: in the case of the soul, a rational substance and an incorporeal quality having in itself mind, perception, and reason; of these, one is the ruling part, another the spirited part, and another the appetitive part; and of these, one is the conceptual and discursive, the memorative and deliberative, another the desiderative and attractive, and another the defensive, and many others are subdivided under these. But let it be set aside for now to inquire whether these are in the soul as parts or as powers. In the case of the body, again, a division occurs into homogeneous and heterogeneous parts; and of these, further, into head, hands, and feet; and these into bones, flesh, and sinews; and these into the four elements; and these into matter and form. And the children of physicians philosophize much about natural powers, of which they name one the attractive, another the retentive, another the alterative, and another the excretive; and many things also about perception and imagination, and about the vital and organic spirit that holds the animal together, which, they say, is other than the rational spirit. Just as, then, it suffices to represent all these things by saying "flesh" or "body of man," and it suffices, having said "man" or "nature of man," to reveal and represent all the things of which he consists, in which he is also known. But they, not in order to declare him a perfect man, but in order to slander the Lord and alienate him from our nature, and either that he did not assume our nature from the beginning, or that he did not preserve it whole, which he received from us.

Here ends the book of the holy and blessed John Mandar of Damascus, called the Pandect.