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ALL THE WORKS OF MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR * Volume One: SMALL THEOLOGICAL AND POLEMICAL WORKS * Volume One: SMALL THEOLOGICAL AND POLEMICAL WORKS * TO MARINUS THE MOST HOLY PRIEST

Having set before yourself the goal of sending to God the all-praised friendship, O God-honored Father, you complete the course toward it in good order. By reason, indeed, you circumscribe the nature of beings toward the generation of virtue, and by the intellect, toward the establishment of unerring union (knowledge), you set limits to the motion of every age and time; by these things the longing for God enters in more warmly; and you extend the motion of your longing along with the boundless, and by the incomprehensibility of the object of longing you make your desire incomprehensible; the end of which is God himself, becoming the fulfillment of longing for those who are worthy, as a self-subsistent enjoyment of good things; of which the word knows only experience as comprehension, as being clearly beyond thought—union, since it falls under no intellectual form in any way whatsoever. For this reason, your life has become the person of the word, and the word the nature of life, portraying truly the new man according to Christ, bearing in an imitable way the image and likeness of God the Creator; which one must now understand as truth and goodness—the one being the end of contemplation, the other of action; and the one the adversary of falsehood, the other of wickedness.

From this point, for you, the grasp of the divine doctrines has been joined to the successful practice of the virtues, and, held together both by the abundance of knowledge and by the power of demonstration; according to which, the matter that has been inaccurately treated by certain people concerning *

Having discerned and set aside the wills that were proposed, and those who say that will and volition, and counsel, and choice and opinion, and authority and glory and prudence, are the same as one another, differing from one another only in their names; and that there will be one will of God and of the saints; and who on this account maintain and insist that Christ has one will of choice—you were not satisfied with yourself for the confirmation of what had been rightly judged, because of your innate poverty of spirit, but you deemed me worthy, who have been raised in ignorance, to be taken as a fellow-voter for the things you have rightly known. This I have come to do, even if it be rash, conquered by the reward of obedience. And I will make the treatment of each of these in order brief, and as it were definitive, not engraving words of my own—for how could I, who am poor in these things?—but gathering what others have labored over concerning these things, so that we may know how these differ from one another in both—I mean in name and in reality. CONCERNING NATURAL WILL, THAT IS, VOLITION For natural will, that is, volition, is a power of the one who exists according to nature, desiring, and holding together all the properties that belong essentially to nature. For by this the essence, held together naturally, desires to be and to live and to be moved according to sense and intellect, striving after its own natural and complete being.

For the nature is volitional of itself, and of all things that naturally contribute to its constitution; by the principle of its being, according to which it exists and has come to be, it is attached in a desiring manner. Therefore others, defining this natural [principle], say that will is a rational and living desire; but choice is a deliberative desire of things within our power. Will, then, is not choice; since will is a simple desire, rational and living, whereas choice is a concurrence of desire and counsel and judgment. For we first desire, then deliberate; and having deliberated, we judge; and having judged, we choose the better shown by the judgment in preference to the worse. And the one depends only on natural things, while the other depends only on things within our power and able to come about through us. Choice, then, is not will. CONCERNING VOLITION But neither is choice volition. For volition is an imaginative desire of things within our power and not within our power, that is, one formed by the mind alone. But imaginative desire belongs to the intellectual faculty alone, without the deliberative principle of things within our power; or it is a certain natural will. But choice is a deliberative desire of practical things within our power. The account of the definition alone was sufficient to show the difference between these things and to put an end to the contentiousness of those who dispute superfluously and who, I know not how to say it reverently, clearly contradict what has been well understood. But since those who love inquiry somehow desire to stand upon the matters sought through more [arguments], we shall speak in another way as well. Those who have distinguished these matters say: Not to all to whom choosing belongs does willing also belong in every case.

We say that to wish is to be healthy and to be rich and to be made immortal; but we do not say that to choose is to be rich and to be healthy and to be made immortal, since wishing applies both to things possible and to things impossible, whereas choosing applies only to things possible and able to come about through us. And again, wishing is of the end, whereas choosing is of the things that lead to the end. They say, then, that the end is the object of wish—for example, health—while the things leading to the end are the object of deliberation—for example, the place of health. They say, then, that the same proportion which the object of wish has to the object of deliberation, wishing has to choosing, since we choose only those things which we think are able to come about through us.

But we also wish for things that are not able to come about through us. It has been shown, then, that choosing is not even wishing; and it will be shown again that it is neither deliberation nor counsel.

CONCERNING COUNSEL, THAT IS, DELIBERATION. They say that counsel, that is, deliberation, is a seeking desire concerning some one of the things that are to be done and are up to us. And the object of choice is that which has been judged from counsel. It is clear from this, then, that deliberation concerns things still being sought, whereas choosing concerns things already decided beforehand. And this is clear not only from the definition but also from the etymology. For the object of choice is one thing chosen before another. But no one decides beforehand without deliberating, nor chooses without judging. Choosing, then, is not counsel, that is, deliberation.

Concerning choice. They say that choice is a deliberative desire for things that are up to us and actionable. For choice is something mixed and compounded of many things, being composed of desire and deliberation and judgment. For choice is neither of these considered by itself: it is neither desire alone by itself, nor deliberation, nor judgment, but a compound of these, just as the human being according to us is composite of soul and body. For then it becomes choice, and a thing chosen, when the thing decided upon by deliberation, about which the choice is, takes on desire. Necessarily, then, choice concerns these things after judgment, the things about which deliberation is before judgment. For we choose those things about which we deliberate.

Concerning what things we deliberate. We deliberate about things that are up to us and are able to come about through us, and that have an unclear outcome. Now "up to us" has been stated because we deliberate only about actionable things. For these are up to us; for it is not about self-subsistent wisdom. Nor is it about God, nor about things that come about by necessity and always in the same way—for example, the circular motion of the times—nor about things that do not always exist but always come about in the same way, such as the rising and setting of the sun; nor about things that come about by nature but not always in the same way, but for the most part—for example, about a sixty-year-old growing gray, or a twenty-year-old growing a beard; nor about things that come about by nature but at different times in different ways, indefinitely—for example, about rains and droughts and hail. For these reasons, then, "up to us" has been stated; and "able to come about through us"—

Since we do not deliberate about all human beings, nor about every matter; but neither about all things that are up to us and come about through us; but it must be added, also, that they have an unclear outcome. For if it is evident and agreed upon, we no longer deliberate about it, even if it is up to us and comes about through us. And it has been shown that deliberation concerns not the end, but the things that lead to the end. For we do not deliberate about becoming rich, but about how and by what means we shall become rich. And to speak briefly, we deliberate only about those things whose action is equally possible; and that is equally possible which we are able to do, and also its opposite. But if we were able to do only one of the opposites, this was agreed upon as beyond doubt, and the opposite was impossible. For example, when bread and stone are set before us, no one deliberates which one he will make his food, since the one is agreed upon and the other is clearly impossible. These things, then, we choose—the equally possible things, about which we also deliberate.

CONCERNING OPINION. But neither is choice opinion, even if the many casually think so; but it is of opinion—if indeed they say that opinion is an inward desire of the things that are up to us, from which comes choice; or a disposition toward the things that are up to us, desired after deliberation. For desire, once disposed toward the things judged by counsel, has become opinion; after which, or more properly, from which comes choice. Therefore opinion stands in the relation of habit to activity, as opinion does to choice.

CONCERNING AUTHORITY. But neither is choice authority. For choice, as I have often said, is a deliberative desire of the things that are up to us to do; but authority is lawful mastery over the things that are up to us to do; or unhindered mastery of the use of the things that are up to us; or an unenslaved desire of the things that are up to us. Authority and choice are therefore not the same; since we choose by authority, but we do not have authority by choice; and the one merely selects, while the other uses the things that are up to us, and the things that depend on the things that are up to us—that is, choice and judgment and counsel. For by authority we deliberate, and judge, and choose, and set ourselves in motion, and use the things that are up to us.

CONCERNING BELIEF. But neither is choice a kind of belief. For belief is twofold: rational and irrational; but choice is changeable. Now they say that irrational belief is a simple and ready knowledge; as when someone puts forward another's belief, not knowing its cause—for example, saying that the soul is immortal, yet not giving a demonstrative cause of its immortality. But rational belief they say is knowledge, established by the completion of the mind.

as when someone, having reasoned something out, also gives its cause in a scientific manner. For understanding is that which proceeds through and operates discursively, beginning from a premise and going as far as the conclusion. For example, someone sets out to show that the soul is immortal, and says: Since the soul is self-moving; but what is self-moving is ever-moving; but what is ever-moving is immortal; therefore the soul is immortal. Or again: Since the soul is simple; but what is simple is indissoluble; but what is indissoluble is immortal; therefore the soul is immortal. For it is proper to understanding to traverse a certain road leading to the knowledge of the matter; and it travels from premises through syllogisms to conclusions, and produces rational opinion. And again, opinion is not only of things up to us, but also of things not up to us; but choice is only of things up to us; and we call opinion true and false, but we do not call choice true and false, but good and bad; and opinion is of universals, but choice is of particulars; for choice is concerned with things to be done, and these are particulars. Through more arguments, as I think, it has become clear that choice is not opinion. For if opinion, being constituted by the completion of understanding, is knowledge, but choice is a deliberative desire of things to be done that are up to us, choice is not the same as opinion.

CONCERNING FRONEMA, THAT IS, FRONESIS. But neither is fronema, that is, phronesis, the same as proairesis. For they say that phronesis is a contemplative desire for rational and cognitive learning, or a habit opposed to folly and to hypernoia; whereas proairesis, as the account has variously delivered it, is a deliberative desire for the things that are up to us. And they say that phronesis comes about in this manner: for example, they call the first movement of the intellect noesis;

and the noesis concerning something they call ennoia; and this, having persisted and impressed the soul toward the object of thought, is addressed as enthymesis; and the enthymesis, having remained in the same state and having tested itself, is named phronesis; and phronesis, having been widened, produces dialogismos—called by those skilled in these matters the internal word (endiathetos logos); which, they say in outlining it, is the most complete movement of the soul occurring in the dialogistic faculty, without any vocal utterance; from which, they say, the spoken word (prophorikos logos) proceeds.

And again they say that fronema is the knowledge of the thing thought, arising from phronesis in the phronetic faculty. For they speak of phronesis, and phroneton, and phronetikon, and fronema. And phronesis is the relation; phroneton is the object thought; phronetikon is that which thinks; and fronema is the knowledge of the thing thought that comes to be in the phronetic faculty from phronesis. If, then, this is so, but proairesis is not so, then proairesis is not fronema. It has been shown, then, as I think, clearly, that the things proposed are not the same as one another, according to those who think so.

But if they should claim that all these are altogether the same as one another, because desire—that is, the desiring power of nature—is predicated equally of all as a genus, let them say that all the species too are the same as one another—land animals, birds, and water creatures—because "animal" is predicated equally of all as a more general genus; then the ordering of the whole will be gone for them, since it is not the substance of different things but only the manifestation of bare names. THAT... THERE WILL NOT BE AFTER THE RESURRECTION IN THE WILL OF THE SAINTS TOWARD ONE ANOTHER... GOD. Therefore proairesis, having taken to itself the impulse and use in matters that are up to us, is for us the end of the rational movement according to desire. For what is rational by nature, having a natural power—the rational desire, which they also call the will of the intelligent soul—desires and reasons; and having reasoned, it wills. For they say that will is not the simply natural will but the qualified will—that is, the will concerning something; and willing, it seeks; and seeking, it considers; and considering, it deliberates; and deliberating, it judges; and judging, it chooses; and choosing, it impulses; and impelling, it uses; and using, it ceases from the desiring movement toward that thing. For no one uses without first having impelled; and no one impels without choosing; and no one chooses without judging; and no one judges without deliberating; and no one deliberates without considering; and no one considers without seeking; and no one seeks without willing; and no one wills without reasoning; and no one reasons without desiring; and no one desires rationally without being rational by nature.

Man, then, being by nature a rational living being, is desiring, and reasoning, and willing, and seeking, and inquiring, and deliberating, and choosing, and impelled, and capable of use.

But if, along with the rest, man is by nature a choosing living being; and choice belongs to things that are up to us and can come to be through us, and that have an unclear end; and the principle of the virtues is also up to us, being a law operative in the natural powers; and the mode of the same powers when misused brings in the passions contrary to nature—then everyone who is by nature capable of choice is also receptive and discerning of opposites. And if he is discerning of opposites, he is certainly also capable of choice; and if he is capable of choice, since the movement toward both sides lies under his control, he is not established as by nature immutable. Therefore, since deliberation and judgment and choice are among doubtful matters, as being up to us, whenever the doubtful matters are not present—the self-subsistent truth having been shown forth clearly to all—there is no choice, since it is moved through intermediate matters that are up to us; for neither is there judgment, making a separation of opposites, of which we make the better choice before the worse. But if at that time, according to the law of nature that now prevails, there is no choice, all ambiguity of beings having departed, there will be only an active noetic desire, in those who are thus desiring according to nature; it has ineffably laid hold of the mystical enjoyment of the natural object of desire alone, toward which it had its movement through the things enumerated; whose satiety is the endless intensification of the desire itself of those who enjoy it.

Each will partake supernaturally to the extent that he desired, and there will be an immediate commingling with the very object of natural desire. But if each will partake of the desired object to the extent that he desired, then by the principle of nature the will of all will be shown to be one, but by the manner of movement it is different. And if by the manner according to movement the will of all men is not one, then never will the will of God and of those who are saved become one in every manner, as some have supposed; even if the object willed is one and the same for God and for the saints—namely, the salvation of those who are saved—existing as a divine purpose, foreknown as the end of all the ages. Concerning this, there will be a coming-together in will, both of the saved with one another and with God who saves; God having gone forth universally in all things and individually in each particular, filling all things with the measure of grace, and being filled in all things, as it were members, by those united to him according to the proportion of the faith in each. For if the will of God is by nature saving, and the will of men is by nature being saved, the same thing could never be both that which saves by nature and that which is saved by nature; even if one purpose belongs to both—the salvation of all things—having been set forth by God and chosen beforehand by the saints. But if the divine will and the human will are to be the same and one in number, as those who say so maintain, then since God by his will brought all the ages into being, the choir of the saints will be a creator by that same will, whether natural or deliberative; and simply put, by that will by which they are naturally identified with the divine—which is absurd, and, as I think, the work of a mind wandering alone.

For until all are creators, or only apostles, or only prophets; and these again, either only Peter, or only Moses; and there are not one but many mansions with God and the Father for the saints; and the human will moved by imitation toward the good will according to nature would be the same in natural quality and quantity—which is impossible (for how could what is by nature participable be the same as what is by nature capable of participation?)—it is impossible that there be one judgment in every way of God and of the choir of the saints; even if, as I said, the object willed is one for both, namely the salvation of all things, concerning which is the union of wills. But, as it seems, not knowing what absurdities arise for them from what they say, they recklessly allow their own thought to be carried toward things it should not. For if will, understood or spoken of in any way, is not without relation, and does not have a genus predicated of it, it is a quality, but not of things in themselves, as evidently contemplated in another. And if will is among things contemplated in another, it is altogether an accident; and if an accident, it will be characteristic either of essence or of hypostasis (for there is nothing between these contemplated in itself, either partaking of neither or composed of both); and if of essence, they will predicate one nature of God and the saints, all having through the one will suffered a contraction into one essence. For what is predicated generally and equally of certain things is declarative of the essence under which they are classed. But if of hypostasis, there will be one hypostasis of all, both of God and of the saints, all having been fused together into the same. For what is predicated specifically of something according to

having grown into a hypostasis, is contemplated indistinguishably in others, it confounds all things with one another, and makes the principle of how each one is entirely undiscernible. THAT NO ONE WILL CAN BE SPOKEN OF IN THE CASE OF CHRIST, WHETHER NATURAL OR PROAERETIC...

Therefore, if their argument has been weakened in these matters, it would never be able to prevail even when passing on to our Lord and God and Savior of all, Christ, and constructing one will, however it is spoken of, in him. For if they should say that this will of Christ is natural, they will be shown straightway to be sick with the Manichaean fantasy, in that they champion one nature of Christ that neither exists nor will ever come to be, indicated by a corresponding will; and they will be caught at the same time emulating the madness of Arius and the consubstantiation of Apollinaris, in that they alienate Christ in his essence from God the Father and from the immaculate Mother. For the natural will characterizes a nature; and no argument will contradict this. And if it characterizes a nature, it is clear that those who say this proclaim Christ to be a nature. But if Christ is a nature, he is neither God by nature nor truly man by nature; since the Father is not truly Christ by nature, nor is the mother truly Christ by nature. But if Christ is God by nature, insofar as he is Christ by nature, the one who says this is a polytheist, championing another nature of the Father as God—since Christ is not by nature—and another nature of Christ as God—since he is by nature Christ; and the end of such monstrous talk for them will be condemnation to polytheism.

But if it is a matter of choice, which they call opinion-based, it will either be wholly according to nature, having the manner of the use of the things done in Christ's case, consonant in all respects with the principle of nature; and thus Christ will be shown to be not impassible but merely self-controlled in relation to passions, according to them; and good by progress, whatever it is by nature. For such is the choice according to nature of the things done by the one choosing, making the better choice before the worse; or it will be contrary to nature, and will show the manner of the use of the things done in his case to have become destructive of the principle of nature. For such is the choice contrary to nature, of the things done by the one choosing, making the worse choice before the better. For when the judgment of the one choosing concerning the things done in his case has been set right or has erred in deliberation, of which choice is, as it were, the vote, either the principle according to nature subsists for him through good use, or the manner contrary to nature subsists alongside through misuse; the one being the messenger of the choice according to nature, the other of the choice contrary to nature.

And if Christ's choice is according to nature, we shall not only again accuse them on the same grounds, as boldly fabricating another nature of Christ's divinity intermediate between Godhead and creation, but we shall also laugh at them as babbling fools, since by nature they make Christ, according to Nestorius, as a mere man receptive of things opposed by choice. But if it is contrary to nature, I pass over in silence the blasphemy, lest I be secretly defiled in tongue by the refutations against them. For in saying that there is a choice-based will in Christ, they have altogether shown that Christ's hypostasis is by nature moved and is able to move contrary to nature. For such, as I said before, is choice; but if it is characteristic of Christ's hypostasis, then by this very will they have separated him from the Father and the Spirit as of different will and different mind. For what is contemplated individually in the Son according to hypostasis is wholly unshared according to hypostasis with the Father and the Spirit. Therefore, as many of the holy Fathers as made mention of choice in the humanity according to Christ, [meant] the appetitive power of nature essentially—and to say the same, the natural will—or

They indicated our own choice, existing in the incarnate God by appropriation.

This is what your servant and disciple especially considered in the questions on the difficulties of Holy Scripture set out to my most holy lord and teacher Thalassius, when I said "choice"; knowing that if the Maker of men has become man for us, he has plainly also set right for us the immutability of choice, as the creator of immutability: on the one hand, the things of our punishment, through experience itself, receiving passions essentially by authority; on the other hand, the things of dishonor, receiving them in a humane way by appropriation. Of these, he has made the appropriation a cause of the freely chosen impassibility for our race, and the experience he has granted as a faithful pledge of the natural incorruption that follows. For the human element of God has not been moved by choice as we are, having been made by counsel and judgment the discernment of things opposed, lest it be thought naturally mutable by choice; but having received its being at once with its union to God the Word, it had an undeviating, or rather a stable, motion of natural desire, that is, of will; or, to speak more properly, it had an immovable stability in him, wholly deified in the purest essence by God the Word. This he naturally stamped and moved as his own and natural to his soul, and without imagination fulfilled the great mystery of the economy for us, in no way diminishing anything natural of the assumption, except sin; of which no principle has ever been sown in any of existing things.

Since, then, the difference of the names has become clear to us through the definition that has been precisely fitted to each, let us not be disturbed when we hear those who use the names indiscriminately for the confusion of the things understood; since in things, not in names, is the truth for us; and let us not think that the same is not the same; but believing piously, let us confess Christ truly perfect God and truly perfect man, the same being in reality principally according to truth, and not called this by a mere empty name; and for this reason let us proclaim that he has two natures, of which he himself is the hypostasis, since he is not without flesh; and two natural wills, according to the Fathers, since he is not without soul and mind, let us boldly affirm that he has; and let us not dare to coin a new phrase, for which we have no paternal authority as a refuge. For to say that there is one natural will of Christ, or one of choice, is feared not only because of the absurdity that has been shown, by those who have been zealous to be pious, but also because no one of the saints has ever appeared to say this; knowing truly that choice belongs to those who are able to be moved toward both, I mean the good and the evil; which, in the case of Christ, the truly substance and source of good things, even to conceive, let alone to say, is most full of all impiety. And concerning these things, this much. But concerning the one energy set forth in the seventh chapter of the Difficulties of the great Gregory, the account is clear. For describing the future state of the saints that will be in the age to come, I said that there is one energy of God and of the saints, the deifying of all the saints, of the hoped-for blessedness.

Of God it exists according to essence, but of the saints it has come to be according to grace. Or rather, I have added "of God alone," since the deification of the saints according to grace is the effect of the divine energy alone, whose power we do not have implanted in our nature. And of those things whose power we do not have, we do not have the action either, since it is the completion of a natural power. Action, then, follows power, and power follows essence; for action is from power, and power is from essence and in essence. These three things, then, as they say, are connected to one another: the one able, power, and the able. And they call the one able the essence; power, that by which we have the movement of being able; and the able, that which is naturally disposed to come to be among us according to power. But if it is naturally disposed to come to be among us, we have it according to a natural power. Deification, however, is not among the things naturally disposed to come to be among us according to power, since it is not among the things that are up to us; for no principle of things above nature exists in nature. Therefore deification is not an action of our power, since we do not have its power by nature; but it is of the divine power alone, not being a recompense of righteous works for the saints, but a demonstration of the abundance of the one who made them, who by position made the lovers of good things to be what he himself will be shown to be by nature, according to the principles he himself knows; so that he may be both perfectly known and remain wholly incomprehensible. He did not, then, abolish the natural activity of those who will experience this, whose activity he has caused to cease from producing, and he has revealed only the enjoyment of good things, which is passive.

But I have pointed out that the supersubstantial power alone is the effective cause of deification, having come to be by grace for those who have been deified. And let no one suspect that in these things one single activity of Christ is proclaimed. For we do not proclaim Christ as a man who has been deified, but as God who has become fully human, and who has made manifest the infinite, infinitely and beyond-infinitely transcendent power of his own ineffable divinity through an active flesh, by nature rationally ensouled; the same one is wholly God and truly man; the same one is perfect and most complete in both natures; and he possesses without deficiency everything that is naturally proper to both, except sin, of which there is no account. For the essential principles of the natures of which he himself was the hypostasis, he naturally received as his own. But if he received the essential principles of the natures of which he himself was the hypostasis, then he reasonably also had the natural, ensouled activity of the flesh, whose essential principles are sown in its nature. And if as man he had a natural activity, whose principle was constitutive of his nature, then clearly as God he also had a natural activity, whose principle was declarative of his supersubstantial divinity. For being perfect God and perfect man, the same one, in accordance with each of the natures of which he was the hypostasis, naturally acted without being divided. But if in accordance with each of the natures of which he was the hypostasis he naturally acted without being divided, it is clear that together with the natures of which he was the hypostasis, he also had their essential and constitutive activities, of which he himself was the union; acting in a manner proper to himself, and by the things he did being attested as the truth of those from which, in which, and which he was. One, therefore, is Christ out of two natures: divinity and humanity.

the only-begotten Word and Son and Lord of glory; in those things by which he is known, and by which he is truly believed to exist; having two natural and generic motions, that is, activities, of which the particular effects were the operations; both proceeding from him and perfected by him, without division of the things from which he existed, and without any confusion whatsoever. For he does not admit division or confusion, who is never subject to changes, and who provides to all things that exist both their being and their manner of being, their permanence and their constitution.

Let these things be said briefly, holy Father, for the sake of your command, so that you may have, if they bring anything useful, how to drive away the loquacity of the word-lovers, which has taken license from the difficulty of the times. And do not overlook your servant who is poor, but enrich him with the divine Spirit, giving in return for his obedience your powerful prayers; and do not cease to commend him to Christ, the great God and Maker of all things, who is worshipped by all creation, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, forever. Amen.

SCHOLIA 1. By reason, the nature of beings is circumscribed toward the generation of virtue, by way of procession; which is the complete denial of nature in virtue. And by intellect, the motion of every age and time is bounded, toward the establishment of unerring union, by way of ascent; which is the transcendence of those things in which nature exists—I mean place and time, in which is the subsistence of beings. But the restoration by grace toward the One from whom all things are and through whom and to whom, as the end of all things, comes about by way of assumption; which is a passion of the one assumed, but an activity of the one assuming. 2. Person, that is, subsistence; nature, that is, substance. For substance is the principle according to the image; but the life according to the likeness is subsistence, from both of which virtue is completed. For they say that virtue is the subsistence of wisdom, and wisdom is the substance of virtue. Therefore the unerring manifestation of wisdom is the manner of the conduct of contemplatives; and the foundation of virtue is the principle of the contemplation of practical things. And the most unerring character of both is the unwavering intent toward the truly existing One.

3. That man is not by nature immutable; and how. 4. That the will is characteristic either of essence or of hypostasis; and there is no middle between these, nor anything common and composite from both, nor anything partaking of neither. 5. That in Christ, "choice" signifies the natural will; that is, the appetitive power of nature.

6. Consider the mystery of the economy.

7. On the passage, "For in him we live and move and are"; that is, concerning essence, and power, and activity.

8. Concerning deification. And may you too, Nile, hear these things and think what the teachers of the truth think.

To Marinus the most holy presbyter, from the treatise On Activities and Wills, chapter 50: That Severus wickedly says that the hypostasis is the same as the nature, in order that by the one nature he may ratify the confusion, and may escape refutation, saying that he has understood the nature to be the hypostasis; and again may introduce division, championing the union from a hypostasis; and may seem to escape notice by saying that he accepts the hypostases instead of natures. And again, when accused of the non-existence of the natures through the bare difference, he may find a refuge of defense, the bare difference in natural quality. And that just as Nestorius, saying the union was bare, introduced a real division; so also Severus, saying the difference of natures was bare, effects a real confusion.

But Severus, hard pressed by these arguments and unable to endure the test of the truth, again, as is his custom, puts forward falsehood as his ally, asserting that in the economy the hypostasis is the same as the nature, and that the difference in natural quality is the same as the real and natural difference, on the ground that every quality is natural and is also called a thing; so that, if he is caught and detected by the refutations, he might clearly, through the one composite nature, while championing the fantasy of Manes, the confusion of Apollinarius, and the Eutychian collapse of the united things into one substance after the union, changing his colors like a chameleon, alter his own voice and claim that he meant the nature by hypostasis. But if again, saying that the union came about from hypostases, that is, persons, he is shown to hold the division of Ebion, of Paul of Samosata, and of Nestorius, and to be teaching the operation of the Word by grace as in a prophet, he would again have falsehood ready as his advocate, declaring that he had spoken of hypostases instead of natures. And if again he is justly accused, on the basis of the mere difference, of dogmatizing the non-existence of the united things, he would find as a refuge for his defense the difference in natural quality, saying that after the union there is in Christ a difference of natural qualities, but not of natures, that is, of substances—through the phrase that dissolves confusion, that is, the difference—the crafty sophist all the more tightening the confusion, since opposites, according to the law of nature, do not produce dissolution but consolidation, contrary to the definition and law of nature.

And having become such in the matter of difference, leading his hearers into error, he is shown to be exactly what Nestorius was concerning union. For that man, naming the union by mere appellation alone, introduced the division of the things in actuality; and this man, championing a mere difference after the union, holds in thought that the existence of the differing things is [a difference], but in actuality he adds confusion of them. For if Nestorius had not thought the union to be mere, he would have said that the one composite hypostasis of Christ was accomplished from the union of the natures; and this man, if he did not preach a mere difference, would not have refused to say that in Christ after the union there is the indivisible and undivided quality of the differing things, knowing that with every difference quantity is certainly introduced, and with every quantity the number that indicates it is joined. For it is impossible either for difference to be without quantity, or for quantity to be discerned apart from the number that indicates it.

And the one, knowing only the quantity of natures in Christ but not knowing the singularity of the hypostasis according to composition from the natures, makes as a cover for the division of the natures through and through the bare appellation of union; while the other, championing the singularity according to nature alone instead of according to hypostasis, but not knowing the quantity according to nature, makes as a cover for the confusion of the natures the bare difference in natural quality. And the one, championing the union of the natures in quality of will alone, denies the one hypostasis, not enduring to say that the conjunction of things according to essence has truly come to be. For authority and worth, and such a will as these, which Nestorius said constituted the union, are clearly motions of will, but not of nature. And the other, speaking of the bare difference in natural quality alone after the union, plainly makes a destruction of the united things, repudiating the difference according to the essence of the united things themselves in natural otherness. And to speak briefly about these things: the one contrived the union of qualities of will into the division of things by nature; the other, on the contrary, devised the difference of natural qualities into the confusion of things. Truly a wicked pair of lawless men, madly raging to tear apart the truth of right doctrines by opposite means. For the one, introducing a union of qualities of will, effects the division of the natures that were in no way united according to him;

But the other, saying that there is only a difference of natural qualities after the union, likewise introduces the confused alteration of the natures that were in no way united according to him—not knowing what they are even saying. For it was necessary, if indeed they had determined to be consistent with themselves, that Nestorius, who says that the union came about from qualities of will, should not divide the natures whose union he did not altogether advocate in the first place; but that he should recognize the difference, after the union, of those natures whose union he asserts. And that Severus, who introduces a difference of natural qualities after the union, should not confuse the natures whose union we do not permit him to speak of, as long as he is ignorant of their difference after the union. For the difference of things united is contemplated after the union, even if Nestorius rages; and the union of things differing after the union, even if Severus arrays himself against it and makes a great advocacy on behalf of falsehood.

If, then, according to Nestorius, the union was of wills of choice alone, let him also state the difference of these after the union, abandoning the division of things that were in no way united; and let him combine with the difference of wills of choice also the variation of the judgment, according to which it is not the difference according to nature that is naturally shown, but the difference according to hypostasis, making remission and intensification of goodness in the difference of wills of choice; and he has made a sinner of the man who is deified by him through progress, as not having in every way and respect the same will of choice as God. For the difference of wills of choice produces the variation of judgment, as I said.

But the variation of the judgment introduces a diminution of goodness; and whoever is still controlled by it in any way has not yet become perfectly sinless in judgment. Therefore Nestorius, not accepting the one according to hypostasis from the concurrence of the natures, also dissolved the union of the gnomic wills, not finding it possible to say what precisely is the one thing demonstrated from the union of the gnomic wills. For he cannot speak of an identity of goodness, since the difference of the gnomic wills is clearly evident after the union, which presents to view their otherness in intensification and remission. For of whatever things there is a concurrence, of these it is entirely necessary to speak also of the difference. And in vain was the account of sameness of will devised by him, even if it is suitable for demonstrating the division of the persons. For sameness of will is a union of wills that preserves the difference of those united according to it, if indeed it is without confusion, since the division of the persons who will is also contemplated together with them.... The Fathers, saying two wills in Christ, meant the natural laws, not the judgments. From the same treatise, chapter 51: That the Fathers, saying two wills in Christ, meant the natural laws, not the judgments.

But let no one hold the argument accountable, since it forbids the duality of gnomic wills, finding almost all the illustrious teachers saying two wills; nor again let him, in the manner of Severus, rush the pious mind over to one will on this account, lest he make evil the successor of evil—I mean the confusion that follows division. For the divinely inspired Fathers did not speak of a quantity of gnomic wills in Christ, but of natural ones, rightly calling the essential and natural laws and principles of the united natures "wills." For they wisely called the natural [will] of the rationally ensouled flesh—not the gnomic will of some particular man, which they understood as an appetite moved by acts of thought, possessing the power of natural striving toward what is—a will, naturally moved and shaped by the Word for the fulfillment of the economy; without which it is impossible for human nature to be. For a natural will is the appetitive power of what exists by nature, and the cohesive [principle] of all the properties that belong essentially to nature; according to which there has always been implanted in the naturally willing [faculty] the being-naturally-disposed-to-will; and the being-naturally-disposed-to-will is not the same as to will; as neither is the being-naturally-disposed

To speak, and to speak. For the capacity to speak is by nature always present, but one does not always speak; since the one belongs to essence, being connected by the principle of nature, while the other belongs to counsel, being shaped by the speaker's judgment. So that it is of nature to be always naturally able to speak, but of hypostasis, how one speaks; just as also to be naturally able to will and to will. But if to be naturally able to will and to will are not the same (for the one, as I said, is of essence, while the other belongs to the counsel of the one who wills), then the incarnate Word had the natural capacity to will as a man, being moved and shaped by His own divine will. For His willing, says the great Gregory, is in no way opposed to God, having been wholly deified. And if it was deified, it was deified obviously by the connatural union with the deifier; but the deifier and the deified are certainly two, not one and the same by nature. Since the deifier and the deified are among things relative; and things relative are by nature always introduced together with one another, and the one is conceived together with the other. Therefore, as one who is naturally so by nature, the Savior also wills the shrinking from death and signals it in a fleshly way along with the other passions as a man, showing the whole economy to be pure of all fantasy, and redeeming the nature of the passions themselves which were condemned because of sin. And again He displays the impulse, having put death to death in the flesh; so that He might show in Himself both what is naturally so by nature as a man being saved, and might display as God the ineffable and great counsel of the Father, being fulfilled bodily. For He did not become man primarily in order to suffer, but in order to save. Therefore He says: Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.

Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done; showing at once, by the contraction, the impulse of the human will, in its connatural union with the divine, according to the interweaving of the natural principle with the manner of the economy, being formed and coming to be—since the incarnation is a clear proof of nature and economy; I mean of the natural principle of the united realities, and of the manner of union according to hypostasis—the one being confirmed, the other innovating the natures, without change and without confusion. But he does not ask that the same thing, in the same respect, be both abolished and brought into activity, which is absurd; since the will of the Son is by nature the will of the Father. The Savior therefore had a natural will as man, formed by his own divine will, not opposed to it; for nothing natural is wholly opposed to God, whenever it is not also a matter of inclination; where also a personal distinction is observed, if indeed it be according to nature; since one must blame the Maker for the fault, if he has made for himself what is by nature in conflict.

But how has the Word, having become incarnate, truly become man, being destitute of that which most of all characterizes nature as rational? For that which is deprived of the appetitive movement according to desire would also be devoid of every vital power. And that which does not have vital power by nature would clearly not have any soul at all, without which not even flesh could ever subsist. Therefore he made the economy a phantom by a mere shaping of flesh; but the Word, having been incarnate, has fulfilled it not by the nature of flesh, ensouled intelligently and rationally according to hypostasis, not having a natural will as man, according to Severus.

For if by nature and in truth he was imperfect as man, he has not become perfect in truth as man, nor has he become man at all. For what existence belongs to an imperfect nature, of which there is not even a principle? Therefore Severus' aim, and that of those around him, was through some natural deficiency altogether to expel the ineffable nature assumed in union, and to ratify the pollution of Manes' fantasy, of Apollinaris' confusion, and of Eutyches' consubstantiation. For I remember, while I was staying on the island of Crete, that certain false bishops of Severus' party disputed with me; having heard that for this reason we do not confess two energies in Christ according to Leo's Tome, because of the wills that follow them, by which a duality of persons is necessarily introduced; but nor again do we say there is one, since it cannot be seen as simple; but we say that one will, and every divine and human energy, proceeds from one and the same God the Word incarnate, according to Severus. Against whom one might indignantly bring that part of the prophecy: Woe, woe, flee from the north; be saved to Zion, you who dwell in the daughter of Babylon. For the north is truly Severus' thought, having become a murky place and deprived of the dwelling of the divine light; and the daughter of Babylon is the confused teaching of false doctrines, wickedly born from the worst habit that came to him, which those who have turned away from the light of knowledge inhabit, and who do not wish to be saved to Zion, I mean the Church, through conversion. For at once the argument of Severus, being tortured, is defeated in both theology and economy.

For if, according to him, wills naturally follow upon activities, and persons are introduced along with wills, as things caused follow upon causes—not to mention what the proof of this is—then every person, evidently, according to him, has a will, and with this will an appropriate activity will certainly be introduced as well. For the principle of relation, having an indissoluble relation, makes an equal reciprocal conversion of the correlatives in consequence.

Therefore, since what is said simply is multivalent: if the wills introduced by reciprocal conversion along with persons are natural, then the blessed Monad, according to Severus, will be a Trinity of natures. But if they are gnomic, it will certainly be at variance with itself, not agreeing with its wills, as a Trinity of persons; or certainly, if there is one will of the superessential Trinity, the Godhead will be single-personed, with three names. And again, if, according to Severus's proposition, a will certainly follows upon activity, and a person is introduced along with the will, then when the activity is necessarily abolished, the will that follows upon it is abolished together with it, and the person introduced along with the will. But if will belongs to activity, and person is abolished together with will, then according to Severus Christ will be without hypostasis—because, with the will that is abolished together with the activity, the person introduced along with the will has been abolished together with it. And again, if, according to him, wills certainly follow upon activities, and persons are introduced along with wills; but he says that every divine and human activity proceeds from one and the same God the Word made flesh—

And every will, according to him (evidently both divine and human), as following upon activities together with the persons introduced in equal number with them, will certainly be brought forth together from one and the same incarnate Word; and no argument will contradict this. Therefore, by the removal of natural activities, Christ will be, according to Severus, without substance; and by the cancellation of the one will, again without will and without hypostasis; and by the entire production of divine and human activity, he will be many-willed and many-personed; or, to speak more authoritatively, infinitely-willed and infinitely-personed. For he who has spoken of every activity has made a declaration of quantity that is numberless. Therefore, by the reversal of Severus's proposition, the account of theology has collapsed for him, since he introduces an Arian polytheism, a Sabellian atheism, and a nature of divinity warring against itself in the Greek manner; and by the proposition, the account of the economy has been clearly corrupted for him, since he proclaims the one Christ to be without substance, without will, and without hypostasis; and again the same to be infinitely-willed and infinitely-personed. What could be more impious than this?

Do you see where the canon of Severus leads those who are persuaded by it? For every such argument is established in this way, not having truth as its invincible foundation. But saying "one will of Christ," O excellent sir, how and of what sort do you say this is? If indeed as natural to Christ, you have alienated him by nature from the Father and from the Mother, since he is united in essence to neither. For Christ is by nature neither of the two; and how will you escape this, saying it, the danger of polytheism? But if it is gnomic, it will be characteristic of his hypostasis alone. For the gnomic is distinctive of a person; and he will be shown clearly to be of different will from the Father and the Spirit, according to you, and to be fighting against them. But if it is of his divinity alone, the divinity will be passible, being abandoned contrary to nature to eating and drinking. But if it is of his humanity alone, it will not be naturally active. For how, if indeed it is human? And the display of miracles will be shown clearly to be monstrous. But if it is common by nature to both, how will the will be common, whose nature is different? But if as of a composite whole, in addition to the novel myth and fiction. For what composition of will is there? Again you have alienated him from the Father, having characterized the only composite hypostasis by a composite will. Thus, then, the word comes and uproots every plant which the Father did not plant; since it is not natural to cultivate a foreign field.

But, as it seems, Severus abolished the natural will of the humanity according to Christ, not knowing that the most authoritative and first property of every rational nature especially is its motion according to desire; looking to this, the Fathers brightly confessed the difference of natural, but not of gnomic, wills in Christ. For they would never have spoken of a difference of gnomic wills in Christ, lest they proclaim him double-minded and double-willed and, so to speak, at war with himself in the conflict of his reasonings; and for this reason they proclaim him two-faced—those who know that this difference of gnomic wills alone came to be in life: both the entrance of sin and our separation from God. For evil is established in nothing else except only in the difference of our will according to judgment from the divine will; and opposed to this altogether, a quantity is introduced together with it, and the number that indicates it, showing our antipathy of the gnomic will toward God.

One purpose—that of impiety—belongs to both Nestorius and Severus, even if their manner is different. For the one, on account of confusion, avoiding the union according to hypostasis, makes the essential difference a personal division; while the other, on account of division, not speaking of the essential difference, works the union according to hypostasis into a natural confusion. Yet one ought neither to confess confusion in Christ nor division, but union of those who differ in essence, and difference of those united according to hypostasis, so that both the principle of the essences and the manner of the union may be piously proclaimed. Both of these, having broken them apart—the one ratifying only the union of gnomic qualities, the other only the natural difference after the union—both fell away from the truth of the realities: the one daringly condemning the mystery to division, the other to confusion.

To George, the most holy presbyter and abbot, who asked by letter concerning the mystery according to Christ. Having winged your own mind with divine desire, and having traversed the word with zeal through matter and the things concerning it, O God-honored Father, you possess an insatiable reading of the sacred Scriptures, and of the care concerning them through diligent attention, if ever anyone else, the untiring power. For that which is beyond sense knows no satiety; nor indeed does that which is beyond thought know any circumscription whatsoever. For the one stands by nature above all flux and emanation; and the other surpasses every form and figure; and it makes the manifestation of the hidden thing, as is fitting; and of the undefined

This provides the comprehension of it that is possible, and as much as is sufficient for the seizure of the mind, and the grasp of the Holy Spirit. For up to this point, and for this reason, stands the loving-kindness of the condescension on behalf of man through manifestation, working divinely by grace those who ascend together with him in purpose, and by the emptying of the Word receiving the fullness according to it, in the completion of the working of the commandments; according to which, having been led to perfection of prudence and courage, you press down what appears with self-control, and you fatten what is hidden with righteousness; so that in the former you might display the death of Jesus, wholly destroying all sin, and in the latter you might show forth life, projecting all virtue in a manner beyond the world; from which, having accomplished sacred action and contemplation, you received salvation as a sacred end; in order to impart this also to others and to make it known, you chose, in imitation of God, to employ precious syllables toward me, the unworthy, who am lowly and unknown; and first, to make me wise in word and to instruct me, and besides also to sanctify me through the grace that dwells in you, being distributed to all everywhere; for it is uncircumscribed, as having the uncaused Word as its cause.

Then also to lead sufficiently to the knowledge of the new mystery of the God-fashioning in man of the God Word who was made flesh for us and became perfectly man—by your wanting to learn through questioning, not the leading point; for you are in the comprehension of all good things—but to bring one forward to a more perfect initiation, that which has not yet received the lesser. And having marveled at your pious manner, I set forth the account according to my ability, saying that the human nature in the Savior is not one thing by nature and another thing in us, but the same in essence and without variation, since it was taken from our nature, according to the ineffable assumption from the virginal, all-pure, and undefiled blood of the God-bearer; united to these as to seed, the Word became flesh, not departing from being God in essence; and He became perfect man according to us, except for sin alone. For because of this we often strive and struggle against God in our will, as having acquired the inclination to it on both sides; but He, being by nature free from all sin, as not a mere man but God become man, had nothing contrary; but He preserved our nature undefiled and in every way truly unblemished; as He also said: Now the ruler of this world comes and finds nothing in me—that is, in those things by which we, falsifying our nature, show the opposition of the will; on account of which Christ is also said to be unsubject to what is according to us, until He sets us free from it by the power of His becoming man.

Confirming its truth, he did everything for our sake and acted willingly on our behalf, never at all falsifying either our essence or any of its irreproachable natural properties—even though he deified this essence together with all those properties, made it all God-working like iron heated to glowing, since through the union he wholly interpenetrated it to the utmost; and he became one with it without confusion, being the same and one hypostasis. Hence his human element differs from ours, not by reason of nature, but by reason of the novel manner of its generation: it is the same in essence, but not the same in respect of seedlessness, since it was not merely a man's, but truly belonged to him who for our sake became man. Just as his willing is properly natural, as with us, yet is shaped divinely, beyond us. For it is clear that seedlessness and seeding do not divide nature; the division concerns the same nature, just as unbegottenness and begetting do.

Since, perhaps, if the Word as man had a difference from our nature because of the absence of seed, he will certainly have one also in relation to the essence of the Father, because of the

birth. For unbegottenness and generation are not the same. We too shall have relation to the old Adam and to Eve, who came into being without seed: the one a formed thing of the one who formed him, the other a part cut from the formed thing. But indeed the Son is the same as the Father through divinity, for he is God and consubstantial; just as we too are akin and consubstantial with Adam and Eve, and with God himself who for our sake became flesh, through humanity. For just as unbegottenness and begottenness are not the essence of God (for who would say so?), so neither are seed and seedlessness the nature of humanity in any respect. Therefore the great theologian Gregory gives no indication that the human element in the Savior is one thing by nature and that which is ours another, even if some have thought so, when he says: "We would have said that the word is formed, as it were, from the human being—not the one understood in the Savior (for his willing is in no way opposed to God, being wholly deified), but the one that is ours, since the human will does not altogether follow the divine, but for the most part resists and struggles against it." For it is properly his and is said to be his, not as though he were another or from another apart from our essence and nature, but as having come to be through him and in him according to the same one hypostasis, and not done by itself apart from him or through itself, as in our case. Whence also, innovating a seed proper to himself, he had the Word himself, who was introduced in the manner of his generation, as having at once both natural existence and divine subsistence allotted in him, so that what is ours might be confirmed and what is beyond us might be believed.

For it is necessary in all things both to preserve the union brought about by the very God the Word who was made flesh and perfectly became man for our sake, and to preserve the nature he assumed together with its natural properties—without which there is no nature at all, but only an empty fantasy—and to keep the union: the one preserved in natural otherness, and the other again recognized in hypostatic identity; and thus wisely and at the same time piously to show forth the whole account of the economy as both unconfused and undivided.

Proclaiming him orthodoxly, you will have him proclaiming in return according to the promise, and granting the enjoyment of his own gifts—here, as it were, through hope, and there through experience. Pray that I too may share in this, holy Father, bringing me through your mediation to the one who calls and saves, and granting as a reward of the mutual compassion of those of the same race, to be glorified with him and in him; to whom be the glory and the might, with the all-holy Father and his life-giving Spirit, unto the ages of ages. Amen.

TO THOSE WHO SAY THAT ONE MUST SPEAK OF ONE ENERGY OF CHRIST... To those who say that one must speak of one energy of Christ by predominance, because his divine energy, being more active, thus predominates over the human, one must reply as follows.

First, you too confess two energies: one predominating—I mean the divine—and one being dominated—clearly the human. And this is a matter of things in relation to something. But things in relation to something invariably introduce along with themselves the things that are distinguished in opposition to them. Secondly, if you speak of the energy by predominance, as though the human energy were abolished because it has been dominated, you introduce a diminution into them. For that which predominates is itself also altogether among the things that are acted upon; for it too is dominated by what is dominated. For even if it is lesser, it is nonetheless altogether dominated—just as gold predominates over the silver mixed with it, say, or the bronze, yet is itself also dominated, even if less so, evidently in proportion to the quantity that has been mixed in.

TO THOSE WHO SAY THAT JUST AS OF AN INSTRUMENT AND THE ONE MOVING IT THERE IS ONE ENERGY, SO ALSO...

To those who say that just as of an instrument and the one moving it there is one energy, so also of divinity and humanity there is one energy. If you say the instrument is natural, then according to you the Word will be contemporaneous with the flesh, or the flesh co-eternal with the Word; for everything that uses a natural instrument has this as contemporaneous with itself, just as the body has the soul; and it will be time for us to say that the divine nature is a creature, or that the body is uncreated. But if you say the instrument is artificial, you introduce it as soulless, and separately distinguished and divided, and not always being moved, but only when it seems good to the craftsman to take it in his hands and work; and for the rest you will be shown to be of one mind with the demented Nestorius, who divides and separates the two natures of Christ our God that came together into one hypostasis and one person; or disciples of the impious Apollinarius, who says the body of Christ is soulless and mindless.

TO THOSE WHO SAY THAT THERE IS ONE COMPOSITE ENERGY OF CHRIST. To those who say that there is one composite energy of Christ. A composite energy is altogether of a composite nature. But every composite nature has its generation contemporaneous and involuntary; for it is created, and circumscribed by place and its own world; and it is comprehensive of many individuals. It is time, then, for you who say there is one composite energy of Christ also to say there is a composite nature of Christ, of which it is also definitive, having its parts contemporaneous, and the coming-together of these involuntary and compelled, and created and circumscribed by its own world and place.

Henceforth also a multitude of Christs, against whom this charge is brought. CONCERNING "FATHER, IF IT IS POSSIBLE, LET THIS CUP PASS FROM ME." Concerning "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me." If the phrase "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me," which carries the appearance of shrinking, you take it as from the man—not the man understood in the case of the Savior (for his willing was in nothing opposed to God, being wholly deified), but the man as understood in our case, "since the human will does not in every way follow God, but for the most part resists and struggles against him," as the divine Gregory says—then what do you think the rest of the prayer, namely "Not what I will, but your will be strong," is? Is it a shrinking, or courage? An extreme yielding, or a separation? But that it is not a falling back, nor cowardice, but rather a complete union and yielding, no one of those who have understanding will deny.

And if it is a complete union and yielding, from whose [will] do you accept this? From the man as understood in our case, or from the man understood in the case of the Savior? But if from the man as in our case, then the teacher's word has erred in declaring about him: "Since the human will does not in every way follow the divine will, but for the most part resists and struggles against it." For if it follows, it does not resist; and if it resists, it does not follow. For by the one the other, as being opposed, is destroyed and

He withdraws. But if you take the words "Not what I will, but your will be done" as referring not to the man according to us but to the man understood in the case of the Savior, you have confessed the utmost concord of the human will with his divine and paternal will; and you have set forth two wills and energies of the double nature, being natural; since in neither is there any opposition whatsoever, even if there is a natural difference in all things of which and in which he was, and which he was by nature, the same. But if, driven by these reasonings, he proceeds to say that "Not what I will" belongs neither to the man according to us nor to the man understood in the case of the Savior, but is borne negatively upon the unoriginate divinity of the Only-begotten, then the "what he wills" privately apart from the Father separates him; and consequently you bring, by necessity, the thing willed—which is the passing of the cup—upon the unoriginate divinity itself. For even if you say that the negation has the removal of the "what he wills" privately, yet it is not the setting aside of the thing willed; for it is not possible to place the negation upon both—both the "what the Only-begotten wills" privately apart from the Father, and the thing willed. Since certainly the will of the common Father and Son will be a removal of the thing willed by God, that is, of our salvation. For this is by nature willed by him. But if it is not possible to place the negation upon both, it is clear that if you bring it upon the "what he wills" privately, in order to make the positing of the common will, you will not remove the thing willed, that is, the passing of the cup.

But you will bring this against the common and unoriginate Godhead, to which you have also referred the "willing" negatively. But if this is abominable even to conceive, then surely here the denial—that is, "Not what I will"—wholly setting aside the opposition, presents the natural union of the human will of the Savior with his divine and paternal will; since the Word was made substance of the whole nature of the whole man, and deified the whole by his making it substance. Whence, as having become for us according to us, he spoke in a manner befitting man to God and the Father: "Not my will, but yours prevail"—inasmuch as he, who is by nature God, also as man had a will, namely the fulfillment of the paternal will. Therefore in both respects—both from the things of which, and in which, and of which he was a hypostasis—he was recognized as being by nature willing and active for our salvation: on the one hand, as consenting to this with the Father and the Spirit; on the other, as having become obedient to the Father through this unto death, even death on a cross; and as having wrought the great mystery of the economy toward us through the flesh.

SCHOLION: Those who say that the phrase "Not what I will" is to be taken negatively of the unoriginate Godhead of the Only-Begotten—signifying, as they themselves say, that he does not will anything of his own beside the Father—are compelled also to refer the thing willed, which is the setting aside of the cup, to that same unoriginate Godhead. And because it is not possible to apply the negation to both—both to the Only-Begotten's willing something of his own beside the Father and to the thing willed—they must by all means refer it only to the willing something of his own, and not to the thing willed, which is the setting aside of the cup, that is, our salvation. What could be more absurd than this? For it follows that God wills to pass by what is by nature willed by him. Since where "Not what I will" applies, there also certainly applies "Let this cup pass from me."

DOGMATIC TOME SENT TO CYPRUS TO MARINUS THE DEACON: I was not so struck with admiration by the orderly decency of your great piety as I marveled at the manly courage of your exceedingly great zeal, all-holy servant of God, and of his...

All-wise initiate and mystagogue of the mysteries. For by the sacred conjunction of both, you obtained perfection in all good things: by that one, having become wholly in the whole entirely in God through the fulfillment of his divine commandments, you are reckoned to be wholly, through the extreme excess of poverty, in the things that are according to me—in the material disposition of the soul, wallowing in the ichor of impure passions; and at the same time procuring for yourself from this the security according to reason. For nothing is stronger for the fixing and preservation of good things than voluntary poverty. For it has been established as an unbreakable foundation of the divine buildings in the soul, and has become for all others besides, by whom the good is earnestly pursued, a cause of salvation—by leading, from the demonstration of active deeds rather than from didactic address, to greatness of virtue through a lofty condescension, those who wisely direct themselves toward you both in mind and in life alike. And according to this zeal, I say, having the whole fervor of the Spirit and having acquired in the earth of the heart the fire which the Word, who by nature loves the good and loves mankind, came to cast into it, consuming all our wicked habit and motion—you set aflame those who, from deceit and folly, are mad after matter and mad after trifles, in base deeds and counterfeit words, refuting their rottenness and vanity by the projection of the blessed torch that burns unquenchably in you according to divine knowledge and virtue; and you warm those who have been thoroughly frozen by the fixing of this very precipitous and lightless projection, with the radiant beams of the divine words.

Both utterly driving away and dissolving the night, and transferring the extreme contraction to extreme courage and power; and again you illumine from the eternal mountains—I mean the immaterial ones, which have surpassed every knowledge and power of all the senses—with the paternal words and doctrines, those who desire the light; and by the taste according to wisdom, you lead them through experience, and piously bring them to a whole transformation, [those] who have already been well and clearly imaged through hope as that very thing which is by nature the object of longing. For nothing so images the work of the divine priesthood according to you as the zeal mixed with reverence according to God and unyielding, and the innate reason in us that both holds this together and kindles it, preparing us to do and wisely steering those things which the first by nature commands, toward our ascent into him and perfect restoration through holy works and good doctrines; and [nothing so images] the avoidance and turning away from those things which make us fail of this sacred ascent. And what else violently dissolves this and, as it were, walls it off—I mean the journey toward the Word—except his fearful betrayal by those now growing upon those who walk the royal road of the divine and paternal doctrines, and who know no deviation of any of those wretchedly borne on either side into the pits of confusion and the ravines of division?

of those who wish to know in any way whatsoever, by the grace of the all-holy Spirit who wisely guides and leads by the hand, to the face-to-face perfect knowledge and initiation of the great God and Savior of all things, Christ himself—those who press on through prayers by sincere and orthodox faith. For it is a betrayal, the alteration of his pious glory and of the glory concerning him, selling him off by the adoption of the confession and teaching of the heterodox, to the destruction of his all-holy flesh that comes from us—or rather, to the overturning of the whole economy; and it is a betrayal heavier than the first, which took place when the Word was with us in the flesh, by as much as both the knowledge of his divinity and the truth of the humanity according to him have become manifestly more perfect in all things, encompassing the ends of the inhabited world by the loud voice of the holy Fathers who proclaim it. For since it is firmly confessed by all everywhere, and orthodoxly believed, according to their guidance—I mean, of those judged by God—

of the teachers, as the one of the holy and consubstantial Trinity, the only-begotten Son, being perfect God by nature, has become perfect man by will, having truly taken flesh consubstantial with us from the holy Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin, animated with reason and intellect, and having united it to himself hypostatically, properly and inseparably, and he is one with it as he was also before; except that he is not without composition in his hypostasis, even if he is simple in nature, inasmuch as he remained God and consubstantial with the Father; and again he is double as having become flesh; so that by the duality of nature he might be akin in essence to the extremes, and might preserve the natural difference of his own parts from one another; and by the singularity of his person, having the perfect identity in the parts, he possesses also the personal difference in relation to the extremes, as one and only; and by the unerring natural and essential immutability toward them (I mean the extremes), he might be perfect in each; the same being both God and man together. Those who impiously dogmatize the diminution of the properties that belong to him by nature introduce him as imperfect and as having suffered the fall of things according to nature. For if he does not preserve the property of each nature without deficiency, apart from sin alone, according to the divine Fathers, of those from which and in which the incarnate Word properly is even after the union, he is an imperfect God; if indeed he is at all a man having acquired a diminution of natural properties.

It is not right, therefore, on the pretext of a union that supposedly harms nothing but only binds things together into one hypostasis, to corrupt their existence by abolishing the natural will and the essential energy. For if, as a whole is composed of parts, we melt down and fuse the two essential wills and the equal number of natural energies by composition into one will and one energy, such a thing will be shown to be mythical and entirely foreign and alien to the communion with the Father and with us; since neither does he have a composite will or energy by nature, nor again do we. For there is no composition of things that exist in a subject, because they are not contemplated as having any existence at all in themselves, apart from the underlying essence. For in addition to being ungracious and utterly detestable, it would also mean admitting that, on account of the natural kinship to both, he is divided and cut in half, as it were, above and below by distinction—and this despite the indivisible union according to hypostasis. Or again, if we preserve inviolate the natural will and the essentially inherent energy of the divine nature of the incarnate Word, but abolish and set aside these things from the human essence that is his, then we thereby harm the supernatural union, which would have nothing to bind it to one hypostasis, since the flesh endowed with a rational and intellectual soul—that is, the essence and nature that is ours—would not exist at all perfectly and be preserved in the Word. For where and what nature is it that has suffered the fall of its natural properties?

If, then, the Lord was lacking in these, or in any one of these natural properties according to the flesh, he was not flesh at all, nor man. For either those who say these things must show a man who by nature exists outside these properties, or a man at all; or, if indeed he is in no way at all such, it is clear that the Word who became incarnate did not become man, being deprived by nature of these or of any one of them. For how, and by what account, when the nature has no deficiency of such things? But something altogether strange to our essence and unknown exists; and either it was consubstantial with him from the beginning, and having come down from above it came down together with him, and that thing has clearly become what is said; and what then is the descent to us, since we have in no way come together through the holy flesh that was not taken from us and was united to him in hypostasis? Or the whole thing is a fantasy, and only a shape deceiving the senses, but not the substance of flesh, as not being a firstfruits of our race, uniting the mixture by grace, and releasing from all the divisive things of which the transgression of the old Adam became the cause; through which death also was condemned upon the nature. Why, then, do they begrudge us our complete salvation and confession? Why do they stretch out against us these supposedly inescapable syllogisms, and say that wills follow energies, and that opposition again follows these, from which they also introduce those who will the opposite?

But let me pass over the task of correcting their treatises. From where, and how, do they contrive such things? I wished only to ask and to learn that, having done such things themselves and having carried out the new exposition, they did this involuntarily—and who is the one who applied the force? Then, after the deed, since it did not exist at all before, did they later acquire the will of what was done—from where, and from whom did it come? And who is the one who compelled them to have the will of what was done, so that it was done even against their will, and what was done was accepted even against their wish? And again, how, if the incarnate Word himself did not will and act naturally as a man according to nature, did he willingly accept hunger and thirst, and pain, and toil, and sleep, and all the rest, willing them? For it was not as Word alone that he willed or acted these things according to nature, having his nature with the Father and the Spirit, both beyond being and beyond limit—even if again he "gave to nature, with authority as God, the opportunity to act according to its own laws, whenever he wished," as the divine and great Gregory, the teacher of the Nysseans, says. For if he willed these things only as God and not as man, then either the divine body was by nature divine, or, its essence being changed, it became flesh by a falling away from its own divinity; or else the flesh according to him was entirely without reason and irrational; or if it was ensouled with reason, the flesh according to him was not ensouled with reason, but was entirely soulless and irrational; or if it was ensouled with reason, it also possessed a natural will. For everything that is rational by nature is also by nature altogether volitional.

And if he had a natural will as a man, he would altogether will by essence those things which he himself, as God by nature, implanted naturally when he created them for their constitution. For he did not come to falsify the nature which he himself as God and Word had made, but he came to deify entirely the nature which he himself, willing it for himself, by the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Spirit, united in the same and one hypostasis, together with all the things that belong to it naturally, and apart from sin.

Therefore as God by nature he willed the divine and paternal things according to nature. For he was a co-willer with his own Begetter; and as a man by nature, the same one again willed the human things according to nature, keeping the economy wholly free from every fantasy, in no way opposing the will of the Father. For nothing of the natural things, just as not even nature itself at all, could ever oppose the cause of nature; but neither does the judgment, nor all that belongs to judgment, whenever it inclines to the principle of nature. For even if someone should perhaps say that something of the natural things opposes God, the blame belongs to him rather than to nature, since he has naturally implanted war in beings, for the sake of their faction and battle against him and against one another. For that nothing natural is opposed to God is clear from the fact that these things were created by him according to generation, and that they have no accusation to make on behalf of the substantial constitution of these things in us; but quite the contrary, that they clearly undergo the accusations because of their deviation. For according to this, we become in judgment wholly of every evil, like the archevil serpent; but according to that, we are by nature a creature of God and an honored creation.

For this reason, according to the divine Fathers, we make no diminution at all either of natural wills or of energies, just as neither of the natures themselves, in the case of the one and the same God the Word made flesh; orthodoxly believing the same one to be perfect in all things, both God and man together, from the fact that he perfectly has naturally, and wills and acts, both the divine and the human things; and that he properly has both a divine and a human essence, will, and energy; so that by a deficiency in either of the natural properties, we may not unseemly dogmatize a diminution—or rather a complete existence—of either of the natures from which and in which he exists.

For that he had a human will by nature, just as also a divine one by essence, the Word himself plainly demonstrates through the death-petition made by him for our sake in a manner befitting man, according to the economy, when he said: Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; in order to show the weakness of his own flesh; and that the flesh was not known to those who saw it by fantasy, stealing away the perception; but in truth he was properly man, the natural will bearing witness to this, whose petition was according to the economy. And that again he had been wholly deified, inclining to the divine will itself, always moved and formed by it and according to it, is clear from the fact that he perfectly made only the judgment of the Father's will, according to which as a man he said: Not my will, but yours be done.

Giving himself to us as a type and example in this also, for the rejection of our own will, for the perfect fulfillment of the divine will, even if for this reason we should look upon death hanging over us. For if, not having become man by nature and possessing a natural, that is, human, will, he was not bending this will by economy and driving it toward union with the Father's will when he said to the Father himself, "Not my will, but yours be done"—it is clear that as God by nature he said this; and from this, then, he showed himself to possess a will not the same and equal to the Father's, but different and by nature distinct; and submitting this will, he asked that only the Father's be done. And if he possessed a natural will other than the Father's, it is clear that he also had a substance that was different. "For of one substance there is also one will," according to the most wise Cyril. But if the natural will is different, the nature is altogether and in every way different. Of two things, then, one: either as man he had a natural will, and for our sake by economy he declined it, willing death, and again he rushed against it through perfect assent to the Father's will; or, not having a natural will as man, as God by nature he suffered the passions of the body into his own substance, which was naturally shrinking from death and possessed another natural will according to substance in relation to the Father; and this he sought and entreated by prayer not to happen. And what God, fearing death according to the nature of the flesh, and for this reason asking that the cup pass by, and possessing another natural will besides the Father's?

Setting aside, then, this absurdity of our souls, let us hold fast to the pious confession of the Fathers. And when he says, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me," as the great Athanasius says in his discourse On the Incarnation and the Trinity—"Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak"—we understand that he shows two wills here: the one human, which belongs to the flesh, and the one divine. For the human will, on account of the weakness of the flesh, shrinks from the passion, while his divine will is willing. In this same way the great theologian Gregory also clearly teaches in his second discourse On the Son, saying: "For his willing was in no way contrary, being wholly deified." So he had a human will, according to this divine teacher, yet in no way contrary to God, because it was not in any respect a deliberative will, but was properly natural, being always shaped by his essential divinity and moved toward the fulfillment of the economy, and wholly and entirely deified through its inclination and connaturality toward the Father, and divine by union, properly speaking, but not by nature, and truly becoming and being called so—in no way departing from what is according to nature by the fact of being deified.

To the one who has been wholly deified, then, the Teacher, having set forth the union of the human will that is according to him with his divine and paternal will, completely drove away all opposition and those who will contrary things from the mystery according to Christ. And by saying, "For the will of that one," demonstrating both the innate motion of the human will that is according to him and the essential and natural difference from his divine and paternal will, he wholly removed confusion together with fantasy. For knowing that the principle of the economy wages war against this and the division held in equal honor with it in impiety, this divine Father and the holy teachers of the Catholic Church who are according to him proclaimed with a great voice both the difference and the union in accordance with each of these: the one, preserved in the natural principle really and perfectly; the other again, saved in the economic manner firmly and hypotatically, for the assurance of the things that exist essentially in the one and only Christ God according to union without separation, and of all the natural properties that belong to them. For just as all proclaimed another and another nature—I mean divine and human—and a double nature in the same and one, so too they loudly proclaimed to all another and another will—I mean divine and human—and two wills; and another and another energy, divine and human; and again a double energy, that is, two. For in this way they also clearly declared the significance of the essences in number. For the same one appears as man, and being God by nature, willing economically to pass by the cup.

And he was shaping what is ours even up to this point, as Cyril the wise taught us, in order that he might drive away every constriction of death from our nature, and sharpen and stir it manfully toward the impulse against death itself, I mean. He appears again as God, though he is man in essence, willing to fulfill the economy in a paternal manner and to work out the salvation of us all; and he is shown also as man, being God by nature, acting in a human way and voluntarily accepting the experience of sufferings for our sake; and he is shown again as God, and being man according to nature, acting in a divine way and naturally bringing forth the divine signs; from which he was recognized as being the same both God and man together, possessing wills and energies naturally equal in number to the essences from which and in which he existed, for the confirmation of the perfect existence of the things that he was in the proper sense. But if anyone, in contradiction for the rejection of these things, brings forward in his argument the theandric energy of Dionysius the theologian and that which is akin to it of the most wise Cyril and demonstrated through both, let him know that he gathers no strength for himself from this against the pious confession. For the theandric energy, expressed by the teacher in a fitting phrase, signifies in a periphrastic manner, clearly, the double energy of the double nature. For he proclaimed plainly a divine and a human, that is, a human, energy through the conjunction in the expression; but not simply so; wherefore he did not name it by number either, even if, signifying the union of the natural energies in a singular manner, he taught this.

This union does not destroy the natural difference between them, just as the inseparable union of their essences does not destroy that difference either; since, according to those who say, "If he had one activity, and that a theandric one"—if the incarnate Word had possessed this as one natural activity, how will the one activity according to nature be divided between two? And by what reasoning will the one activity establish and distinguish the different essences in the same respect, making each to have essential immutability in relation to things of the same kind, and again essential difference in relation to things of a different kind? And I pass over saying that he has fallen away from the natural kinship with the Father and with us, since neither entirely of that one nor of us do they possess the innate and essential activity, if they hold a theandric one. But if again they say it is hypostatic, this is in addition to the new doctrine—for who is it that says there exists a hypostatic activity? And in this way such an argument shows him to be alien from the Father in activity, if indeed he has a hypostatic and not a natural activity alongside the Father. For by hypostatic properties the Word plainly possesses his difference in relation to him. And the "one activity, kindred and demonstrated through both," again according to the celebrated Cyril, is not said to the abolition of the essential difference of the natural activities—of those from which and in which the one and only Christ, God, exists—but is spoken by the teacher to establish their extreme union. And he seems in some way, through other utterances, to be imitating the God-bearing Dionysius. For in order that he might not seem to be God naked, nor again a mere man—

neither as God acting bodilessly on his own, nor as man doing things according to his own will on his own; but as God made flesh and perfectly become man for our sake, the same one acting divinely and humanly at once, as the Savior is found to be active not only by word and by commands befitting God, in raising the dead and healing every disease and every sickness, but he was eager to take his holy flesh as a kind of co-worker especially for this; doing this as God by his all-powerful command, and again giving life by the touch of his holy flesh united to him in hypostasis, in order to show that this too is able to give life through his essential activity, of which the touch, the voice, and all such things are properly a part. Then, as he showed the natural activities of his own, of Christ God composed of both, perfectly preserved—that of his divinity through the all-powerful command, and that of his humanity through the touch—he presented them as wholly united by their mutual coalescence and interpenetration; so that one activity is shown because of the union of the Word himself and his all-holy flesh; not a natural one, not a hypostatic one—for the teacher has said no such thing—but one akin to the parts; through which, as has been said, he was shown both by all-powerful command and by the touch of a hand.

It has therefore been shown from the sacred teaching of the wise man that the difference of the natural energies, just as also of the natures themselves to which they belong, is declared to be preserved even after the union; and again he defines the union itself: the one, in saying "all-working command and touch"; the other, in saying "one and consubstantial"—by which he magnificently dismisses every confusion and division of the mystery according to Christ. But those who do not take it in this way, but understand the consubstantial energy of the Word and the flesh as one, dogmatize the consubstantiation of Eutyches and Apollinaris. It is necessary, therefore, in all things both to preserve the account (logos) unimpaired and to keep the manner of the economy uncorrupted, so that the evil pair—I mean division and confusion—may have no entrance against the truth.

According to this, then, and the other singular sayings of the holy Fathers, if such should be found, one must take the pious meaning; and in no way should we receive them as contradicting the dual sayings of the holy Fathers, knowing that these are strong for the difference against confusion, and those for the union against division.

...are safe; but let us gladly welcome both these and those with soul and mouth, and confess them orthodoxly; and through the voices that seem somehow opposed in pronunciation, let us wisely turn back the thoughts that are equally opposed to themselves and to one another and to the truth; and let us manfully drive them from our court, that is, from the catholic and apostolic Church of God; and let us not at all grant them any passage whatsoever against the orthodox faith, to those who craftily devise to remove the fathers' boundaries like robbers, by casting away any of the pious weapons and doctrines, through which their overthrow and destruction naturally comes about.

But it is also necessary to know this, that in the case of natures and natural energies, we find the holy Fathers using singular expressions alongside the dual ones; as, "the one nature of God the Word incarnate," and, "the theandric energy," and the one "kindred and shown forth through both"; but in the case of natural wills, as far as I know, it is not possible at all to find any singular expression, but only dual meanings in pronouns and number. How then, and by what reasoning—even if we were to accept examining it thoroughly—ought one to say one or two wills in Christ God, when the legislation and teaching of the Fathers enjoins us to confess and honor two natural wills in him, just as also the natures themselves and their natural energies, to the point of knowing the difference?

Having said these things to your God-honored holiness by way of digression, I beseech you to grant me both forgiveness and correction for them, whether they were spoken improperly or not understood well, with the kindly, fatherly affection and imitation of compassion; and to commend me to Christ God, who is glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages. Amen. SCHOLIA 1. It is absurd, he says, that the one will be divided (for natural kinship forces this) and that half be given to the one and the rest to the other nature; and thus to alienate the Christ of God and from us, as though we did not have a composite will. 2. That the Fathers dogmatized the difference and the union against confusion and the division of equal honor with it.

3. Nilus. It is hypostatic, but in our case it is the irrational [will], through which God became man, in order to restore man; having freed from this those who through fear of death were all their life subject to slavery; that is, those who, fearing pain, procured pleasure, the mother of pain; the origin of corruption; the forerunner and matchmaker of death.

An Equal of a Letter That Was Sent to the Most Holy Bishop, Lord Nicander, by Maximus, Who Is Among the Saints, Concerning the Two Energies in Christ. You yourself, God-honored and all-blessed Father, having in a manner befitting your name, together with manliness, the most sacred victory over all the enemies who war against the holy catholic and apostolic Church of God, whether secretly or openly, and having already received from Him, in accordance with your hopes, the ever-blooming and, by the graces and energies of the Spirit, unfading crown for it, and having acquired, as it were in your hands, the blessed enjoyment of the object of natural longing through your perfect inclination toward Him—and from this clearly, if anyone else, delighting in the Lord Himself, how at any time and in what manner you deign to bring this to the weak and cowardly one, who has not at all been taught until now to move the practical powers of the mind, or the thoughts of the soul as though they were certain fingers of the hands, into the battle-line of God and His holy war, and His war on His behalf, and by this to rout bravely those who exalt themselves against the Lord Almighty by words and doctrines, and to drive them out of the good land, which is our Lord and God Himself, and the orthodox faith that is the same as Him—the truly firm foundation and support of pious doctrines, and the ever-flowing fruitfulness and nature of the virtues. But you have done this in a Christ-imitating way.

so that, having manifestly shown toward me—who by disposition stood apart from him and dwelt deliberately, as it were, in a far country of evil habit, and by my activity fed the passions of dishonor like swine—his goodness-loving self-emptying, and having displayed the power of your inherent divine achievements by the greatness of your condescension, you might rouse me to desire for this and sharpen me unswervingly toward a certain holy and blessed zeal, having to the best of my ability cast off the burden of the sluggishness and negligence that weighs me down far more than all others; and having marveled, blessed one, at your wise stewardship and providence concerning me, the poor wretch, I earnestly entreated with tears our Lord and God that the preservation of you, the good and noble shepherd and father, in many years and more divine virtues might be granted to me and to all—although I am exceedingly a sinner—so that, having you especially now, both the declaration of the truth by nature and truly, the truth according to the outcome of events clearly confirmed; and the affliction, such as has never at all occurred since the foundation of the world, nor ever will occur, has seized all people everywhere because of their sins; you, strengthening and invigorating with the all-powerful staff of God-persuaded prayers, and guiding well and enlightening with the all-sacred pipe of God-wise teaching, and settling us through action in a place of green pasture of the ever-living habit of the virtues; and feeding us through knowledge beside the water of rest of the ever-flowing provision of the sacred streams in the doctrines;

and into a fortified place and a lofty fold, the catholic Church, and the Lord who by his own life-giving blood fitted her together according to his will, safely preserving her, that we might be freed from the assault of the adversaries; those who, having seized the opportune moment of the universal turmoil and confusion, devise schemes to confound the great and ineffable mystery of the all-saving economy of Christ God, which as it were circumscribes all ages and times, and those in ages and in time by nature; such as the holy flesh, animated rationally and intelligently from us, taken up by him according to the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, and united to him in one and the same hypostasis, which after the union does not have the properties that belong to it by nature, save only sin—because it was not even of nature; or rather, of the Word himself who was made flesh and became man for our sake, not perfectly preserving the things that essentially characterize our nature in our case; but either he transformed these into his own divine nature, and by this showed a deficiency in his own divinity, as needing some addition for perfection according to essence; or he caused them to pass altogether into non-existence, as not very good, and obliterated the work of his own creation by not making them according to some reason and wisdom, and uniting them to himself according to hypostasis; since how is that which came to be by reason and wisdom not preserved in the very reason and wisdom itself, unbrokenly through union? or how, being preserved

And after the union, is it not confessed? And for what reason, so that through the confession that the God by nature has become man, he might be believed in truth? Or perhaps did he not even from the beginning take upon himself the things that naturally belong to the nature together with the nature? But either he took a certain soulless and irrational flesh, and in no way from us, or not consubstantial with us, or he did not even take it, but brought it down from above and from the beginning as consubstantial with himself, and united it to himself; and he made the economy concerning us and toward us a mere appearance, approaching us in human form, but not conversing with human nature, in order that he might restore the whole race from the ancient transgression, and free it from the condemnation that came through it.

For these things, and more than these, are held by those who do not entirely in Christ God confess, as the holy Fathers do orthodoxly, that the natural properties are saved in Christ God, apart from sin, just as the natures themselves are; and after the union. For neither do we behold the divine and uncreated nature as nonexistent and without will or without operation; nor indeed do we recognize the created and human essence according to us as nonexistent and without will or without operation.

And if we know that none of these things is devoid of natural existence—I mean natural will and energy—and from these, that is, from the divine nature and the human nature, and in these and from these, the one and only Christ and Son is truly a hypostasis, how could it be that, if indeed he is by nature properly God and by nature properly man, the same one did not also have a divine will and energy by nature properly, and a human will and energy by nature properly, being deficient in neither of these according to nature—through which, validating the names by the realities and again confirming the realities by these, he was plainly recognized as the same one, having and willing and acting both divine and human things naturally, and from this being believed to be that from which, and in which, and what he was? Since, when natural will and essential energy are abolished, both the divine and the human essence are abolished—of him who is from these and these and preserves them according to one hypostasis—how will he be God or man? And how will he be shown to be this or that according to essence, if he does not preserve the property of each nature without deficiency, apart from all sin? For to depart from things according to nature, even if it has come to be outside of essence, has no existence at all, since it has not even natural motion. "For that which has no motion at all," as the great saint Dionysius, taught of God, says, "neither is, nor is anything; nor is there any position of it at all.

For this reason, we who confess the natures of Christ God—I mean the divine and the human that is according to us—must by all means, for the firm assurance of their existence and for the truth of our confession concerning them, equally honor their natural wills, equal in number, and confess their essential energies, equal in number; and we must not diminish or utterly deny any of them on the pretext, ostensibly, of the divine union according to hypostasis; knowing that the union according to hypostasis harms none of the natural properties, just as it does not harm the natures themselves, even if it brings them into one through itself according to the one hypostasis, in no way removing them from being two by natural principle. Just as, therefore, I say, it unites again the natural properties themselves through their mutual connaturality, and does not permit either to be contemplated in any way apart from the other, or outside the communion of the one with the other, according to the memorable Pope Leo of the Romans, it does not utterly obscure their essential and natural difference, but perfectly preserves it; for by preserving it is preserved, and by maintaining it is maintained. For a union of things is clearly a union up to that point, as long as their natural difference is preserved; since when this ceases, that union also certainly ceases, having been completely destroyed by confusion.

Of this union, then—I mean the union—since it does no injury to the things themselves nor to their difference, but only by its calling aptly unifies the things that are according to it, the things that are by nature different are always and in every way preserved in it without diminution and perfectly, having suffered no deviation whatsoever or confusion—not in their essences, not in their wills, not in their activities, nor in any other natural property. How, then, do some put this forward as a cloak for their own—I do not know how to say it euphemistically—vainglory, and say that the incarnate Word is by nature without will and without activity in what is according to us, that is, in the human [nature], on the grounds that the essence taken from us in him was properly soulless and irrational? For that which is without activity is plainly also unmoved and soulless; and that which has no rational will is clearly irrational and mindless. And if the incarnate Word existed by nature in what is according to us without these things, how will it be believed that he also became man? How, rather, will he not be shown to have been changed in his divine nature and to have fallen unwillingly under the passions of the flesh according to it? For by the removal of natural properties, both Arius and Apollinarius made their assault against him. For the one, dogmatizing him as soulless, and the other as irrational—which is without activity and without will—blasphemed him as a creature and a product in himself. For each said that the Only-Begotten was passible by nature of divinity, but not by nature of flesh; and Apollinarius, still lavishing more in impiety, also declared that the change into flesh was complete, according to a falling away and turning of his divinity.

It is necessary, therefore, that we who are pious reject such a confession and strengthen the teaching of the holy Fathers, and confess, in accordance with them, two natural wills and essential energies in the same and one [Christ]. For if we were to say that there is one will and one energy in him, we would clearly be dogmatizing that he is either not by nature also a man but only God, or by nature only a man and not God, or neither man nor God. For example, if we were to say that the will is natural, it is either wholly divine or human; and if divine, the Word naturally wills divine things by it, showing himself to be by nature God only and of one will with his own Begetter, and not a man; for it is not in the nature of things that the human be characterized by the naturally divine, just as neither is the divine in essence known by the human in essence. And this same conclusion will follow if we say that the will is natural and human. But if it is hypostatic, it will be characteristic of his own hypostasis alone; and by it he would never have communion with the Father and with us, for he is distinguished and separated from the extremes by hypostasis. The same things may again be said concerning the energies.

But not for this reason—God forbid—do we deny the unitary statements of the God-bearing Fathers concerning them, I mean the energies: both the "theandric energy" of the aforementioned holy Dionysius the God-seer, and the "one and kindred energy shown forth through both" of the wise Cyril. For these were piously proclaimed by them because of the union and the complete coalescence of the natural energies with one another; just as the dual statements were, because of their essential and natural difference. For the theandric is a comprehension of the divine and human energy together. For the teacher, having devised a fitting term that embraces each, as I said, in its utterance, and having uttered it in a unitary way, indicated the double energy of the double nature periphrastically. For since he had said earlier, "not doing divine things as God, because he was not God naked; but doing divine things by nature—for he was God by nature—yet through flesh united to him in person; not human things as a man, because he was not a mere man; but

having acted naturally in human matters—for he was by nature a man—but by divine authority, not driven to act by any necessity or force according to our nature, he combined both the divine and the manly energy of the same one according to nature, so that neither was apart from the other, but they were known in each other and through each other connaturally, because of the indissoluble union; and having comprehended both in a single expression, he proclaimed it periphrastically. So that by "having acted" both divine and human things might be stated—even if not according to God, nor yet according to man; because he was not, as I said, bare God, nor mere man; nevertheless, that he truly acted, he might confirm the essential difference of the natural energies; and by comprehending these, and expressing them summarily in fitting speech through the theandric energy, he might teach their indivisible union.

And the saying of the wise Cyril also, "one and kindred energy shown through both," holds to the greatest thought of this great Father. For he too, through it, teaches the connatural union and unity of the natural energies. For this all-praised man, wishing to show that the flesh is God, and the essential energy according to it has become divine by its union with God the Word in nature, and that he worked things beyond man, not departing from that which he was by nature—just as the Word himself, by his assumption of it, voluntarily became man for us, working things according to man—declares that he heals and gives life not by an all-working command alone, as if he were not God bare;

but rather that he hastened to take his holy flesh as a kind of co-worker, especially for this purpose, and to give life and to heal through it, both by its touch and by its voice, so that he might show that this flesh is able to give life, because it had come to be united with him, and that he who by nature gives life to all things is not one thing and the flesh in the strict sense another. Therefore he demonstrates one energy, and one that is akin, of himself and of it—I mean of the holy flesh—through both: one by union, and again akin by the parts, as being the same in the all-working command and in the touch of the holy flesh. For through both the Word, as God, clearly demonstrated this, showing by the fact that he gives life also through it that it too has become wholly life-giving, just as fire burning through iron makes the iron burning by its union with it, so that from then on the burning belongs not only to the fire by nature but also to the iron itself because of the union. And again, the divine energy of the Word in the miracles belongs not to him alone by nature but also to his holy flesh because of the union with him in subsistence. For he took it as his co-worker in divine works, as the teacher says, just as the soul does its own body, for the fulfillment of its own works. This one and akin energy, then, demonstrated through both, reveals the union of the natural energies.

This heterogeneity and duality of theirs, just as also the theandric activity, properly signifies through itself, by its reference to both parts, that the one and only incarnate Word was known from the things of which and in which he consists; and that it belongs to both, as having been demonstrated through both—both through the all-working command and through the touch of the holy flesh.

But one must not be entirely estranged by the term "kindred"; for the holy Fathers have used "kindred" both of things of the same essence and of things of different essence. And a witness is the Theologian, the great Gregory, speaking thus about the soul in his Funeral Oration for his brother Caesarius: "And a little later, receiving also the kindred flesh, with which she philosophized together with him on the things from there." Here the teacher has called the flesh kindred to the soul because of the union, not because of nature. And again, in the Oration "On the Lights," teaching about the only-begotten Son, he says: "And he who is testified to by the kindred Spirit." Now he has spoken of "kindred" because of nature, not because of the union. But Cyril himself, the wise, also in the case of things divided in essence and hypostasis, takes "kindred" without scruple; and he says the following, commenting on John the evangelist, concerning the healing that comes through the divine baptism: "Since the things indicated have a certain kindred relation to both. For with the Spirit he sanctifies the spirit of the man; and with the water, in turn, the body." But what, and of what sort, is the kinship of the Holy Spirit and of water, in essence or hypostasis, to our spirit and body? Even if especially it accrues to us according to grace, and to the parts of which we are composed, because of the sacred regeneration.

But again, the monadic number itself, as is clear to all, is received by the saints in each of the fallen kinds, both among those of the same essence and among those of different essence, as signifying unity, or obviously as they intend, as in "One from both, and through one, both," and "One hypostasis and one nature of God the Word incarnate," and "For even if the combined whole is one, it is not by nature, but by conjunction." And again in the case of those of the same essence, as in "And it was, and it was, but it was one. Light and light, and light, but one light." And "One God, and one nature, the highest," says Gregory the Theologian. Therefore one must not understand the monadic utterances of the saints, or those akin to them spoken because of unity, as being said to overturn the dual or heterogeneous utterances spoken by them because of difference, nor again those as being against these. For he who takes them in this way, and does not equally and properly welcome both, fitting the one to unity and the other to natural difference, falls, in all likelihood, entirely into division or confusion—or rather, to speak more properly, he wraps himself in it and thrusts himself away from the true communion and confession of the holy Fathers. For even if the flesh has become one with the Word in hypostasis, and by the union has been enriched with his activity, yet in no way has it fallen from being creator by essence, nor has it suffered any deviation of its natural and blameless passions. And if this is truly so, as indeed it is, it plainly possessed both its nature itself and its natural activity toward the Word as different. The incarnate Word himself had it as a man:

For this was his by nature. For since he partook of blood and flesh like us, the same one had two natural energies as also two natures—the divine and Paternal, and the human according to us—through which he was believed to be both God and man. For of whatever things he had the natural energies, of these clearly also the natures. For as God, through both voice and the touch of his holy flesh, he was shown by nature to heal and give life; so again the same one, being also man, was known substantially through the same touch and hand—girding himself with a towel and washing the feet of the disciples; and breaking the loaves and distributing them; and dipping the morsel into the dish; and again through his voice disclosing the grief that was present: My soul is deeply grieved, even to death. And, Now my soul is troubled. And, So you could not watch with me one hour. And as many such things, in no way setting aside what is naturally inherent in each of the two natures, of those from which and in which he consists, but by natural energies confirming the natures.

But that it may also be shown through Cyril the wise that the flesh did not have one energy toward the Word by nature, just as neither one nature, even if it has become akin to him by being deified through the union, let us hear what he sets forth, interpreting the Gospel according to Matthew, in the second book of his Confession. "For this reason," he says, "he works in the Spirit of God. For in truth, it is not a natural energy of the flesh and a power of humanity that paralyzes Satan and puts Beelzebul to shame; otherwise let someone come forward, if he wishes, and teach you what prevents those who wish from setting before themselves the authority over unclean spirits. Behold, if this is what the flesh works by nature—for we are all in the flesh, and the principle of humanity is one for all—but it is neither a work of the flesh specifically nor of humanity to prevail over spirits, since not all prevail; rather, the accomplishment is seen to be of energy through the Spirit." Therefore the Father has spoken truly, insofar as flesh and man are understood, that the strength against demons was the work of the Spirit, and not of the flesh, that is, of humanity. For the body of the Lord is confessedly holy and has all power against every disease; but it was and is holy, not because it is understood simply as flesh, existing in its own principles alone, but insofar as it is a temple of the God the Word who dwells in it, sanctifying his own flesh through his own Spirit.

So that, as this divine man says, in truth it is not a natural energy of the flesh, nor a power of humanity, that paralyzes Satan; nor does the nature of the flesh accomplish this; since indeed all men, being in the flesh and one according to the principle of humanity, had they chosen to act, would also have had power against spirits. These things, then, he has clearly taught and set forth, and has become the interpreter of his own words, namely that by indwelling—which is to be united according to one hypostasis—but not by being flesh, existing in its own principles alone, it is holy and life-giving, having power against every disease. Let us therefore also keep, according to the guidance of the saints, the principle of difference unimpaired, preserving the natures themselves and the properties that belong to them by essence even after the union; and the mode of the economy entirely indivisible, preserving in a unified way the extreme coalescence of the united; and let us drive out all our division and confusion. But if we do not thus piously receive and understand the utterances spoken in a unitary way by the saints—the Theandric and the One and the kindred—according to the principle of union, but instead suppose this to be either natural or again hypostatic, we shall necessarily dogmatize that Christ is one nature, partaking altogether of neither of the things from which he was composed, because Christ does not exist according to nature. For nature would never commune with nature according to nature; but it is unpartaken, entirely different in essence from every other; this will be concluded for us when they say the energy is natural.

But if again we call it hypostatic, we shall separate him from the Father and the Spirit in respect of energy. For the Son would never share with the Father and the Spirit any characteristic mark of his own hypostasis. By no means, therefore, let us be willing to confess the energy of the incarnate Word himself, who became perfectly man, as natural or hypostatic. For none of the holy Fathers from his divine condescension to us until now has handed down that one should confess a natural or hypostatic energy in him; nor, as far as I know, has anyone expressly done so, except only Cyril the inspired—which we accept wholeheartedly, although it is his alone, for the sake of the union. How, then, is it not fitting also gladly to accept the twofold expressions of nearly all the holy Fathers, and of him again as well, on account of the natural difference—lest by the summoning and acceptance of this one and only phrase of his, we bring about the rejection of him and of the other saints and the invalidation of their words; as though no one else among them, but only Cyril, had been entrusted with the pious exactness of the proclamation—and this not in his other words, which make clear the difference, but only in the one and kindred energy.

Besides, how can some say that there is simply one energy in Christ God? For it must belong either to his parts or wholly to him as a whole. But if it belongs to the parts, it will be divided, being cut, as it were, toward both; and suffering this, it will be wholly dissolved, and it will dissolve together the things united in it. But if it belongs to the whole, it will be receptive of opposites, being mortal and immortal, created and uncreated, circumscribed and uncircumscribed. And if this is so, Christ had his own energy as a state and a privation, and as not being; through which, as one who acts in accordance with it naturally, he is receptive of opposites at the same time—but not in one respect and another; and what is more impious than this? The same can be said also concerning the will. But how, then, did the Word, according to the wise Cyril, take his own flesh as a fellow-worker, when it did not have its natural energy? For that which does not have energy or natural motion is wholly dead and lifeless; and for what reason did he accept the dead thing for cooperation? For the inactive thing is abolished by complete immobility. And how did he show that it was able to give life, as the same Cyril again taught, through its natural movements—such as touch, voice, walking—when these were not of it, or in it according to essence? For if they were of it according to essence, the flesh certainly had a natural energy; for the movement of the hands and feet, and the voice in utterance, are of its essential energy. But if these were not of it according to nature, the Savior did not show that it was able to give life.

These things, a few out of many, having been taught by you and by the God-wise saints who are among you, I have dared, because of your most sacred command, to trace out through this modest letter, and to venture upon things beyond my strength, being small and of little worth; having neither a mind well-aimed for conception, nor a word well-turned for clarity, nor a character well-ordered for the exposition of better things; but rather being sheltered by the grace of the all-good God through your mediation, and by him who covers the multitude of my sins. And I beseech with tears, prostrating myself before your honored footsteps as though present, since the Holy Spirit has appointed you bishops and saviors of souls, do not grow weary of making a kindly correction in the things I have written inexactly; so that from this they may show themselves rather mediators of God than imitators of themselves; possessing not only as a lot his illumination and mercy upon all, but also bestowing them by worthiness; to whom I also entreat that my weakness, poor and destitute, be commended, for the sake of being sheltered from the flame, both visible and invisible, which devours all things because of my sins; and for the sake of resting and being guarded continually in the dew of his all-holy and orthodox faith, and of sacred virtue. Amen.

SCHOLION 1. See, the difficulty has been resolved for you. For God, having come forth with the assumption, said the one and the one from the two opposites, the great one says, because of the union according to hypostasis; but he did not accept the one as a nature.

To the holy Fathers who dwell as sojourners in this Christ-loving island of the Sicilians, to the abbots and monks and orthodox peoples, Maximus, humble and sinful, an unworthy servant.

"Great peace have they who love your law, and there is no stumbling block for them," said David, the father of God, speaking to God; by this making it known to all, and declaring it to those who aspire to salvation, that they, cleaving by nature to the final object of desire with the most divine love in the highest degree, should joyfully pursue the good of peace for themselves and for all, if possible, without dissolution, removing every stumbling block from all things, through their pious and utmost concord toward one another. For this reason it has been earnestly desired by me also, your servant, to set down eagerly in writing what I previously composed by word of mouth, for the assurance and full conviction of your most holy selves, having by my defense set aside every suspicion concerning my humility that has arisen among you from others. "For I do not endure," as Gregory the Theologian says, "that any of those who carefully observe all our affairs, whether they stand well or otherwise, should be wounded in me; for it is good, when one is neither sinning nor suspected, as far as is possible and as reason permits, not to place an obstacle or stumbling block before the many; since we know how inexorable and most heavy is the punishment from the truthful one even for those who cause one of the little ones to stumble.

I therefore inform your most holy selves that never at any time have I held the supposition of the opposing and contrary doctrines, according to the suggestion of those who abuse me. For I have neither confessed nor written at all, in their sense, one and two, that is three, wills and energies in the same and one Christ our God. For the one is overturned by the other, having no fixed ground of natural reasonings, so that the doctrine is also without witness to the truth, that is, to the holy Fathers. For if one, how also two? And if two, how also one? And with whom, according to it, is the incarnate Word co-working, that is, consubstantial?

For if they say with the Father, from this they introduce a double divine energy—if indeed it is not for the abolition of the two natural energies of the same, I mean the divine and the human, that they acknowledge the third energy fabricated by them. For if not for abolition, it is clear that they maintain two divine energies of the same—natural and hypostatic. But if two, certainly different; and from this their own supposition is polytheistic, since the divine energy in Father and Son is known by them in otherness and not in natural identity. And not only polytheistic is their opinion, but indeed also atheistic, since they contrive that the Son has no divine energy at all, inasmuch as they confound nature and hypostasis with each other, together with the properties of each; and they know the same as Sabellius, in that they describe the Son as sharing with the Father in each—I mean nature and hypostasis—which is foreign to the catholic Church.

so as not to say that the Father is by nature passible and incarnate, or rather made man, in his co-operation with the Son, both in miracles and in sufferings alike. If indeed they say that the Son works nothing other than the miracles and the sufferings, according to the third activity which, as has been said, is fabricated by them; by which they also prescribe that the only-begotten Word shares with the Father, in addition to the divine activity according to nature. But if, being pressed by these difficulties, they define that the Son shares this third activity not with the unoriginate Father but with the undefiled mother, here too they grant him two created, that is, human, activities—again a natural one and a hypostatic one—evidently alienating him, in each of the two, from God and the Father, and being carried along with the division of Arius, according to the perfect estrangement, in their view, of the Only-begotten from the Father in both activities. Whereas indeed they show us to be wonder-workers, but not only passible by nature—if indeed by the third activity according to them, or as they like to call it, by the activity of the whole, that is, of the hypostasis, they say that Christ preserves his kinship with us; according to which, voluntarily accepting not only the experience of sufferings but also displaying the power of miracles, they reasonably recognize him as this, which is impossible. For it is not possible for the same and one activity, or will, or nature altogether, to be divine and human in the same respect; or uncreated and created; or unoriginate and begun; or composite and incomposite.

so that the Son, by the same one relation to each—I mean the Father and the Mother—might preserve the kinship and immutability by nature; or else he performs both sets of things according to the same [relation], I mean both the divine things by nature and the human things. For not even those who fashion goat-stags could conceive of this.

But if it is impossible for the same activity, or will, or nature to be at once divine and human in the same nature; or for him to share in each—I mean the Father and the Mother—according to the same one [relation], or for the Son to perform both, the divine and the human; but rather, more fittingly, as has been said: by the divine [nature] the divine things, and by the human nature that is his own the human things—yet with communion and connaturality with the other, and not dividedly—then the third activity according to them is also nameless, as having no existence, being confirmed by no divine word, and not at all by the Father. And what, they say, do we grant to the whole, if we do not give the one activity to the whole as to one, because of the union? But those who bring these things forward have not understood even what they say. For thinking that the whole is something other than its own proper parts, from which and in which it consists, they insist somehow—not by demonstration but by assertion—that something other than what exists by nature in the parts must be attributed to the whole as whole; I mean, the one activity. Let them first show, then, that the whole has each [activity] beyond the existence of its own parts; and then in this way let them assign to it, as whole, another activity besides the essential activities that exist in the parts.

If they do not attribute to the whole, beyond those of the parts, another existence according to nature, then clearly neither [do they attribute] another activity according to nature. For Christ is both according to nature; for the same one is God by nature and man; he has according to nature the things proper to each nature—I mean the divine will and activity, and the human will and activity—but not one only, to the destruction of the two activities according to nature; nor yet another besides the two according to nature, that is, three activities and wills. Each one, then, just as each substance, so also each essential will and activity, we assign according to nature to the same and only Christ. For even if, observing the difference of the parts of the same, we fittingly ascribe to his divinity the divine things and to his humanity the human things; and conversely, because of the union, we attach to the one the things proper to each nature by exchange—whence we say that God is passible as regards sin, and flesh, "taken up and become what the anointing [anointed]," and, I dare to say, "consubstantial with God," according to the theologian Gregory; "neither did he do the divine things as God"—for [he did them] through the flesh, which was ensouled with a rational soul and united to him in hypostasis—but not by bare divinity, as formerly; "nor the human things as man"—by boundless power, not by necessity liable to account. For the passion of the incarnate Word was not a payment, as with us, but a self-emptying on our behalf. Nevertheless, as to the same whole and one and only Christ according to nature, we ascribe all the things of the natures of which he is, apart from sin alone; wherefore the same is both passible and impassible, uncreated and created.

We confess [him] to be circumscribed and uncircumscribed; earthly and heavenly; visible and intelligible; containable and uncontainable by nature. But if, being circumscribed again by these things, they say that the result of the two activities of the same [Christ] according to nature—that is, the divine sign wrought by God the Savior for others, (for humans)—such as the resurrection, or the ascension, or the cleansing, or any of such miraculous works, is one and the same activity, not even so is their argument easy to carry. For we know not one, but many and countless divine signs of the Savior, concerning which the most theological John says, "If they were written one by one, I suppose that not even the world itself could contain the books that would be written." Then, moreover, in the case of things that come to be externally, we recognize the substantial existence altogether neither in the case of any other of existing things—let alone must we speak of God the Word himself, who for our sake was incarnated above all existing things—but by the natural properties by which he is characterized in himself; and to say this is the same as natural wills and activities. Or in this way, one would also define the craftsman as a woodworking living being, but not rational, nor mortal, recognizing his nature perhaps from the chair or the bench, but not from the properties that substantially constitute it—which even to conceive is ignorant. Whence we recognize the same one as truly God and man by nature from nowhere else than from the innate properties that characterize him divinely and at the same time humanly: both the divine, as I said, will and activity, and the human will and activity of the same one.

By these things, and through these things, he seals what he was and what he has become: working wonders beyond us as God willingly; suffering for us, the same one willingly as man; as being nothing other than [what he is] from the things out of which, in which, and which he is, known—as though something bastard and border-line, that is, a third result, according to the example of mules; as the myth-making of the empty-worded heretics tells monstrous tales, having fallen away from the pious proclamation of the holy Fathers. But he is truly and properly those things out of which he is, and truly and properly he is in those things in which he is. For from divinity and humanity, and in divinity and humanity by nature existing, Christ is God by nature and man; and nothing else at all.

And how, they say, does the wise Cyril declare that one should think a certain middle rank of the sayings about Christ, writing thus to Acacius: "For some of the sayings are most especially God-befitting; others again are man-befitting; and others have a certain middle rank. And what will this ever contribute to their own supposition?" For not from change, or loss of the extremes—I mean the divinity of Christ and his humanity—or of the divine and human will and energy of the same, does the teacher hand down to us in these things some other middle, that is, border-line result, sharing in neither nature of those from which it is; or again, an energy that is composite according to them, or that he has—but [he hands down] that these things are properly the things out of which he is; yet these things are not named in a divided way; but together, and in the same, each of them, as Christ is one and only.

And he himself bears witness about these things, making his defense on behalf of the Eastern bishops, and writing to Acacius thus: "But the brothers at Antioch divide the united things in no way at all; they maintain only that the sayings concerning the Lord are to be divided, and that some of them befit his divinity, and others again his humanity. For he is the same God and man. And they say that there are also others made common in some way, and as it were looking to both—I mean divinity and humanity. For example, what do I mean? Some of the sayings are most God-befitting, others again are in this way man-befitting; and others hold a certain middle rank, showing the Son of God to be God and man at once and in the same." The teacher has therefore shown us that there is a middle rank of sayings, signifying that Christ is not something other than the things from which, in which, and what he is, as some have supposed; but that the same one is by nature both God and man.

And he brings forward the divinely inspired Scriptures as proof of these things, speaking as follows. "When he says to Philip, 'Have I been with you so long a time, and you have not known me, Philip? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? He who has seen me has seen the Father'; and, 'I and the Father are one'—we affirm that this voice is most fitting for God. But when he rebukes the crowds of the Jews, saying, 'If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham; but now you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you; this Abraham did not do'—we say that such things were spoken in a manner fitting for a man. Except that the things fitting for God, and indeed the things fitting for man, belong to the one Son. And we affirm that those voices are intermediate, for instance when the blessed Paul writes, 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.' And again: 'One God the Father, from whom are all things and we from him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him.' And again: 'Whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever, amen.' For behold, behold, the one who named Christ Jesus says that he is the same yesterday and today and forever; and that all things came to be through him; and he calls the one according to the flesh from the Jews God over all; and indeed blessed forever, amen. Do not, then, divide in these matters the voices concerning the Lord. For they have at once the fitting for God and the human; rather, apply them as to one Son, that is, to God the Word made flesh.

By these words of the Spirit, the Teacher has also demonstrated to us the middle voices themselves, signifying nothing else at all in the case of Christ than what is at once God-befitting and human; whence he enjoins that they must be applied to him indivisibly, as to the same one who is both God and by nature man; and nothing else at all, as I said.

And indeed, they say, he himself also confesses one activity in Christ. For thus, interpreting the holy evangelist John, he sets out: "And indeed, when he raised up the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, saying, 'Girl, arise,' he took hold of her hand, as it is written; giving life as God by the all-working command, and giving life again also through the touch of his own flesh; showing one and kindred activity through both." But this makes the Teacher's meaning very plainly clear: that he does not define one activity of both the essences from which the one and only Christ exists, as some might suspect; since he himself declares against Hermias, saying: "For things that have obtained the same nature act in the same way; but for those whose principle of how they are is different, the principle of their activity in all things would not be the same. For things that are of the same activity have been confessed to be also of the same essence." There is therefore a necessity of one of two things: either to introduce the Teacher fighting against himself, or, while ascribing the same nature, to ascribe also the same activity in Christ, as indeed he does; but not to set forth the natures as different, coming to the same thing with each other by the unvaryingness of activity.

For things that belong to the same activity have also been acknowledged to belong to the same essence," he says. But if each of the two is unfitting—both to be inconsistently disposed toward itself, and not to preach that the natures of which Christ consists are distinct in him—it is clear that he does not hand down one activity of both essences, that is, of Christ who is composed of them; by saying, "showing one and kindred activity through both"—but he presents the supersubstantial Word, who is God by nature and became incarnate, as bringing forth his life-giving and divine activity by nature both incorporeally and through a body. For in saying "kindred," he signified nothing else than the same life-giving activity manifested in the miracles through both—the all-working command and the touch of his holy flesh—just as fire, both burning immaterially and through matter, displays the same burning power in either case. Therefore the Teacher says these things not to abolish the human activity of the Savior; for by mentioning the touch of flesh, he clearly signified the human, since touch is a clear proof of human activity. But neither did he hand down another besides the two natural ones; rather, he declared the activity that is life-giving by nature, as has been said, through both—command and touch—proceeding from one and the same God the Word.

But if, having been encompassed by these pious proclamations of the Fathers, they bring forward the letter of Heraclianus to Achillius, according to which they suggest that one nature in addition to the two, and one movement, be spoken of in Christ as of a whole, let them themselves interpret this. For the letter reads as follows: "One is the whole nature and movement of the Lord according to itself; but two are those according to reference. One is the movement and nature of the parts according to appropriation; but two are those according to themselves. And when I say 'movement,' I wish 'activity' and 'passion' to be signified." It is necessary, therefore, for those who attack these things as a fortification of their own doctrines, to make clear in argument: what is this one nature and movement of the whole Lord, and how it is spoken of, and by which of the approved Fathers it is attested; and what are the two according to reference. And what is the one nature and movement of the parts according to appropriation likewise; and what are the two according to themselves—that is, these three pairs of natures and movements of the same one. And who has handed down that the same one movement signifies both—I mean activity and passion; and how, if both are according to them, the Son is not divided from the Father in every movement of his, as being naturally passible in every respect—if indeed the movement of God and Savior does not in some way or other signify both activity and passion together. For the Divine is by nature impassible, and unchangeable, and simple; or rather, it is exalted above all simplicity. And how again do they not, by the three pairs of movements, introduce twelve activities and passions, if indeed movement signifies both according to them?

And which of the saints, by reference or by appropriation, championed the natures in Christ God? Let them first demonstrate this from the Fathers' judgment, and then in this way their own assumption of doctrines will be confirmed for them from that source. But if they are unable, let them desist from these things and, with us alone who have been piously judged, let them align themselves with the God-bearing Fathers of the catholic Church and the five holy ecumenical councils, confessing the same one and only Lord and God Jesus Christ, perfect by nature in God in all things and perfect by nature in man in all things, except for sin alone; and let them not, by abolishing what is perfect by nature in all things in both, do away with his divine or his human will and activity, knowing that the supersubstantial Word neither diminished nor altered nor in any way at all obliterated either what he was without beginning and without cause, or what he became afterward through a cause—that is, our salvation—but rather wholly and perfectly, apart from sin alone, in himself and through himself, in all things and in all respects he preserved them, being these things properly, as I said, according to natural existence; whence also being by nature willing and active, the same one and only and single Lord our God, according to each of his natures, from which and in which he consists, is our salvation. Since God, being by nature authoritative, and of the authority over all things

the Creator, has not become a man without mind, or devoid of the natural life that is ours, of those who have received their being by creation from Him; but He has shown Himself to be a man intelligent, that is, by nature willing and truly active, He who is by nature the only God; taking up the whole of me together with what is mine, in order that He might grant salvation to the whole of me; having dissolved the whole condemnation of sin, since what is not assumed is also incurable; and what has been united to God, this is also saved, as says the one surnamed of theology.

But since by these pious teachings of the holy Fathers, which set aside the irrational insistence of those who yoke themselves with alien doctrines, they spring upon us from another quarter, making an assault with our own writings against us—or rather, a snatching away of the more simple-minded—bringing forward a document, namely the one to Marinus, as they say, the elder, which we wrote, and the letter to Pyrrhus, it is necessary to say a few things about these too, fully assuring your holiness in all things: that we have written to Marinus the elder in various ways about various scriptural chapters; yet in no way whatsoever have we spoken in this fashion about the opposing and contrary doctrines—I mean the one energy and the two, that is, the three energies or wills which they fabricate for the same one Christ—as though we were establishing these in Him, making them equal to those, or to any other whatsoever. "For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor," says the vessel of election.