De Incarnatione Et Gratia

The Book of Peter the Deacon and of the Others Who Were Sent from the East to Rome by the Greeks in the Matter of the Faith, On the Incarnation and Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to Fulgentius and the Other Bishops of Africa. To the most holy lords, to be named with all veneration, Datianus, Fortunatus, Albanus, Orontius, Colus, Fulgentius, Januarius, and the other bishops, adorned in the confession of Christ, the humble Peter the Deacon, John, Leontius, another John, and the other brothers sent to Rome in the matter of the faith. Chapter One. The Agreement of the Churches in Faith, the Confirmation of the Faithful. We believe it to be useful and very necessary, and especially profitable for the holy Churches of God, to suggest to your holiness those things which, concerning the Incarnation and the divine economy, all the holy Churches of the East defend with us against the heretics (who do not cease to disturb the ancient faith of the Church with depraved and unjust arguments), and humbly to obtain the consent of your blessedness regarding these matters. For we do not believe that your holy and glorious confession dissents in any respect, especially since we do not doubt that the holy Church of God is everywhere animated by one spirit. For not a small, but rather a great joy will fill all the Easterners, if they know that your holiness agrees with them, or rather with the Catholic doctrines, in all things.

Therefore we humbly ask and beseech your Beatitude, that by a diligent examination, discussing those things which are contained below (as befits the truest and most intrepid preachers of Christ), you order your judgment to be opened to us in writing: so that if, with God’s help, our exposition among you (as we do not doubt) should be proven consonant with the catholic faith and apostolic traditions, then, fortified by the authority of so many men and most approved priests, we may be able to block the mouths of those speaking unjustly, and, persevering in the faith of the holy Fathers, we may give thanks to God, who glorified you by the confession of his sanctity, most holy and most worthy of God, lords. Now we ask that you examine those things which follow. CHAPTER II. That in Christ the natures, without confusion, are united in one person. Therefore, according to the tradition of the holy Fathers, we confess our Lord Jesus Christ in two natures united and unconfused, that is, of divinity and humanity, in one person or subsistence.

Nor do we acquiesce to those who, preaching one incarnate nature of the Word of God, shun the faith of the venerable Council of Chalcedon; nor do we admit those who, craftily pronouncing two natures, by no means confess one incarnate nature of the Word of God, deeming this contrary to the profession of two natures—as if one incarnate nature of the Word of God signified anything other than two natures ineffably united; the blessed Cyril, bishop of the city of Alexandria, writing thus in his second letter to Successus, bishop of Diocaesarea: “For if, saying one nature of the Word of God, we had kept silent, not adding ‘incarnate,’ but as it were rejecting the economy, their speech would perhaps be not improbable, as they feign to ask, ‘Where is the perfection in the humanity?’ or ‘How does our substance subsist?’ But since both the perfection which is in the humanity and the manifestation of our essence have been introduced by the phrase ‘incarnate,’ let them now cease placing a reed-stalk under themselves.

CHAPTER III. The Blessed Virgin is properly the Mother of God. We believe that the blessed Virgin Mary is not the Mother of God on account of the dignity of the man who was born from her (whom some impiously do not fear to preach as God by grace and not by nature), but properly and according to truth, that is, the God-bearer, because she truly and properly gave birth to God the Word incarnate, and made man, and essentially or naturally united to flesh. For this reason we also confess in every way the essential or natural union of natures; unlike those who contend that God the Word operated in Christ as in a prophet. These are refuted by the blessed Gregory Nazianzen in his letter to Clidonius, saying: "If anyone says that God the Word operated as in a prophet according to grace, and does not confess that the union was made essentially, let him be empty of the better operation, or rather let him be full of the worse." Nor do we agree with those who attempt to construct a union of natures according to illumination, or love, or affection, or personal or subsistence, or according to authority, or power, or equality of honor. These are anathematized by the blessed Cyril, mentioned a little above, speaking against Nestorius: "If anyone in the one Christ divides the substances after the union, connecting them only by association according to dignity, authority, or power, and not rather by conjunction which is according to natural unity, let him be anathema.

For God the Word is not an empty name, nor a particle of Himself, but by nature God as great as the Father is, equal in all things to the Father, except only that the Father is the Father, and He is the Son; uniting human nature to Himself, He became man. Hence also the holy Fathers proclaim that our Lord Christ is composed by the union of divinity and humanity. Paul of Samosata, refusing to confess this, was condemned by the Council of Antioch, by Malchion, a presbyter of that same Antiochene Church, a man most learned in all respects, and chosen at that time by all the priests who had gathered against that same Paul, who, undertaking the chief contest of the disputation at the aforementioned council, refuted that same heretic among other things, saying: "From simples, indeed, a composite is made, as in Jesus Christ, who from God the Word and a human body, which is from the seed of David, has been made one, subsisting in no division whatsoever, but in unity. But you seem to me, according to this, to be unwilling that a composition should occur, so that the Son of God is not a substance in Him, but wisdom by participation. For you have said this, because wisdom suffers diminution, and therefore cannot be composite: and you do not consider that divine wisdom, just as before it emptied itself, remained undiminished; so also in this emptying which it mercifully undertook, it remained undiminished and unchangeable.

And you also say that wisdom dwelt in him as we dwell in houses, as one in another: but we are not part of the house, nor is the house part of us. Similarly, the blessed Athanasius, in the little book whose title is *That Christ is One*, refuting the vanity of heretics, after having approved their superfluous inquiries concerning the divinity of the Son of God, proceeds thus: "Thus," he says, "they also inquire concerning the incarnation: 'How,' they say, 'is God incarnated? How is He embodied? How is the uncontainable composed into a small body? How is the uncreated united to the created, the uncircumscribed to the circumscribed? Or how is that great, immense, and indivisible one divided into parts? For if that magnitude is contracted into a small place, or that small thing has become great, or a part, and not the whole divinity, is united to the flesh—that is impious to believe.' And they have fallen into error from this, that they say: 'How, and in what manner?' And by this opinion and perfidy, they have also imagined inhabitation for incarnation, and for unity and composition, a human operation, and for the one substance of our Lord Jesus Christ, two subsistences and two persons, and for the holy and ineffable Trinity, a quaternity, dogmatizing indecently and impiously.

Again, blessed Gregory in his sermon on the Son: "But by one chapter of mine," he says, "you ascribe the higher things to the divinity, and to that nature which is proven to be superior to passions and to the body: but you assign the humbler things to the composite, who for your sake emptied himself and was incarnate." Hence, therefore, we most rightly believe that the full and perfect God the Word, even after assuming flesh, suffered no increase or decrease; rather, by his union he conferred ineffable glory upon the assumed nature. CHAPTER IV. No quaternity was made in the Godhead through the mystery of the Incarnation. For this reason, even after the mystery of the Incarnation, the Trinity remained the Trinity, because the same God the Word, even with his own flesh, is one of the Trinity: not that his flesh is of the substance of the Trinity, but because it is the flesh of God the Word, who is one of the Trinity. For he himself entirely, and not another, ascended into heaven who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven (John 3:13). Wherefore we also profess, according to blessed Cyril, that God the Word suffered in the flesh, was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh, and became the firstborn from the dead, according as he is life and the life-giver as God, saying: If anyone does not confess that God the Word suffered in the flesh, was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh, and became the firstborn from the dead, according as he is life and the life-giver as God, let him be anathema.

Likewise, we also know Christ the man as the Word according to that passage of blessed John: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have beheld, and our hands have handled of the Word of life" (John 1:1). For the Word could not be handled by human hands according to the nature of his divinity, unless he became man. There is also, without doubt, that child whom the blessed Virgin bore, whom she wrapped in swaddling clothes, whom she laid in a manger, whom she circumcised on the eighth day, whom Simeon, a just man, embraced in his own arms, whom the evangelists report as subject to his parents (Luke 2:51), whom they testify advanced in age and wisdom, God by nature, through whom all things visible and invisible were made, only-begotten and firstborn, in whom all things consist, according to the apostle Paul (Colossians 1:16). And this very thing the prophet Isaiah also proclaims with clear words, saying: "A child is born to us, and a Son is given to us, whose power is on his shoulder, and he will be called the angel of great counsel, wonderful, counselor, mighty God, ruler, father of the future age, prince of peace" (Isaiah 9:6).

And therefore we believe that we should by no means agree with those who assert that the strong God was united to that child, nor do they believe that the strong God himself is that child, especially since the Psalmist testifies for all time concerning the throne—not of any other, but of the one who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was baptized in the Jordan by John to sanctify the waters—saying: "Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the rod of equity, the rod of your kingdom. You have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore your God has anointed you with the oil of exultation above your fellows." But how could God, whose throne is for ever and ever, be anointed, unless he became man? Chapter 5. God became man, not man became God. According to this saying of the prophet, therefore, God became Christ, but Christ did not become God, as the heretics say, who dare to assert that Christ is God by advancement, not by nature: for God was anointed, because he himself became man; for the one is not God and the other man, but the same is God and the same is man. For he who is the natural son of the virgin is the same who is the natural Son of God. On this account we also believe and confess two nativities of the Word of God: that is, one before the ages from the Father according to divinity, and the other in the last days from the holy virgin according to the flesh; abhorring those who deny the nativity of the Word of God according to the flesh.

They also shrink from confessing the wonderful deeds and the sufferings of one and the same Son of God, which the whole Church of God confesses. Moreover, we accept the four councils according to this sense of our exposition: the Nicene, of three hundred and eighteen bishops; the Constantinopolitan, of one hundred and fifty, who condemned the impious Pneumatomachi; and also the first Ephesian, over which the most blessed Celestine of Rome and Cyril of Alexandria presided; and the holy and venerable council which was celebrated at Chalcedon. We also embrace the letters of the blessed Leo, anathematizing all who think contrary to the dogmas of the Church, together with all the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia and of his disciple Nestorius, and all who think similarly to that same Nestorius; and also all the writings opposed to the twelve chapters of the blessed Cyril, which he published against Nestorius; adding to these Eutyches and Dioscorus with their associates, and all whom the apostolic see has justly and regularly condemned.

CHAPTER VI. What kind of human being was created; and what kind he became with his posterity through sin. After these matters, it is also fitting to declare to Your Beatitude how we think concerning the grace of Christ, by which He rescues us from the power of Satan, according to what has been handed down to us, because in this part as well your authority is very necessary to us. Therefore we believe that Adam was made good and without any assault of the flesh by God, the creator of all things, and was endowed with great freedom, so that he had the ability in his own power to do good, and could admit evil if he wished. And death and immortality were placed, in a certain way, in the freedom of his will. For he was capable of either outcome, so that if he kept the commandment, he would become immortal without experiencing death; but if he despised it, death would immediately follow. Thus, corrupted by the cunning of the serpent, he became a voluntary transgressor of the divine law; and therefore, according to what had been foretold to him, he is condemned to the penalty of death by the just judgment of God, and the whole man—that is, according to body and according to soul—is changed for the worse, and having lost his own freedom, he is subjected to the servitude of sin. From this, there is no human being who is not born bound by the chain of this sin, except the one who was born in a new way of generation to loosen this chain of sin, the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). For what else could or can be born from a slave, except a slave?

Nor indeed, when Adam was free, did he beget children, but after he became a servant of sin. Therefore, just as every human is from him, so every human is a servant of sin through him. Hence the Apostle: "From one," he says, "into all men for condemnation" (Rom. 5:18). And again: "Through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and thus death passed into all men, in whom all have sinned" (Ibid., 12). Therefore, those who say that only death, and not also sin, passed into the human race are utterly mistaken: since the Apostle testifies that both sin and death were brought into the world through him. From this condemnation and death, then, no one at all is freed except by the grace of the Redeemer: who, being Lord, as God, in order to free us from perpetual servitude and the power of the devil and to lead us back to true freedom, became a servant, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:7). Hence it is that He says to the Jews: "Then you will be truly free, if the Son frees you" (John 8:36). For they thought themselves truly free, who served human occupations with the most vain intention. Therefore, so that false freedom might become true freedom—that is, so that human freedom might become Christian freedom—that same freedom needed a liberator, by whose grace it could, turned away from human occupations, think upon and desire those things which pertain to eternal life.

Without this grace, then, a human being can indeed think and desire human things, but cannot think, or will, or desire divine things, the first and principal foundation and, as it were, the base, or the origin of all goods, being to believe in the Lord of glory crucified (1 Cor 2:8). This is certainly not from the freedom of natural will. For it is not flesh and blood, but the heavenly Father who reveals this (Matt 16:17), to whomever he wills, drawing him to true freedom, not by violent necessity, but by instilling sweetness through the Holy Spirit, so that we who believe may at once say that Jesus is Lord (1 Cor 12:3), which no one can say by the freedom of natural will, except in the Holy Spirit. Therefore those who prattle, "It is mine to will to believe, but it is God's grace to help," are mistaken; since even the act of believing itself, which is giving assent to the truth, is given to us by God, as the Apostle testifies saying: "For it has been given to you by Christ, not only that you believe in him, but also that you suffer for him" (Phil 1:29).

CHAPTER VII God makes some believe through his goodness, while he abandons others by a just but hidden judgment. But they say: if God makes the unwilling willing to believe, and yet no one is naturally able (as you claim) to believe or to will any good pertaining to eternal life, why then does he not make all willing? Since there is no partiality in God, especially as it is written of him: "Who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4). For either he wills and is unable, or the divine Scripture lies. But if it is impious to think either of these, it remains that he does not arouse the human will but awaits it from man, so that it is fair that there be reward for the willing and just punishment for the unwilling. If these things are so, as the heretics boast, then the inscrutable and incomprehensible judgments of God have been grasped by them. For if, as they wish, he damns the unwilling and saves the willing, there is nothing further to be sought. And, as far as they are concerned, the divine Scripture deceives, which testifies that the judgments of God are incomprehensible (Rom. 11:33). But we, believing and demonstrating the incomprehensible judgments of God, say that from one mass of perdition some are saved by the goodness and grace of God, while others are abandoned by a just and hidden judgment.

Otherwise let them say, if they can, those who think this contrary to divine justice and goodness: why did He who wishes all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth perform so many miracles in Chorazin and Bethsaida, and willed to perform none of these in Tyre and Sidon, where if they had been performed, as He Himself testifies, they would perhaps have done penance in ashes and sackcloth (Matthew 11:21)? Or why did He forbid the Apostle to announce the word of salvation in Asia and Bithynia (Acts 16:6-7)? But if these things cannot be comprehended, let them return to themselves, and finding themselves to be men, let them cease to ask why He saves others by a gratuitous gift, and abandons others by a just and hidden judgment, who has the power from the same lump to make one vessel for honor, another for dishonor (Romans 9:21): and let them cry out with us, nay rather with the Apostle: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are His judgments, and unsearchable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who first gave to Him, that it might be repaid to Him? Since from Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things. Glory to Him throughout the ages. Amen (Romans 11:33-36). Therefore, he who says: Unless I first will, grace does not come to me, manifestly resists not us, but the Apostle. Which is to say nothing other than to first give to God, so that it may be repaid to Him.

CHAPTER 8 Every movement of good will is from God. But we, following the same apostle, say that every origin of good thoughts, and their consent, and will, is from God and through God and in God, who absolves and corrects the perverse wills of men entangled in earthly deeds by the infusion and inner operation of the Holy Spirit, as it is written: “The will is prepared by the Lord” (Prov. 7:35, according to the LXX). Hence also the blessed Basil, bishop of Caesarea, in the prayer of the sacred altar, which nearly the entire East frequents, among other things says: “Grant, Lord, strength and protection: we ask that you make the evil good, and preserve the good in goodness; for you can do all things, and there is none who contradicts you: for when you wish, you save, and no one resists your will.” Behold how briefly and how distinctly the eminent doctor once put an end to this controversy, teaching through this prayer that evil men become good not by themselves but by God, and that they persevere in goodness itself not by their own virtue but by the help of divine grace. Similarly, the blessed Innocent, bishop of the apostolic see, in his letter to the Council of Milevis says: “All the efforts and all the works and merits of the saints are to be referred to the glory and praise of God: because no one pleases him otherwise than by what he himself has given.

The African councils explain this more diligently and clearly in their letter to Pope Zosimus, repeating and setting forth the pope's own sentence, saying: "But that which you placed in the letters you caused to be sent to all provinces, saying: 'We nevertheless, by the instinct of God (for all good things are to be referred to their author, whence they arise), have referred everything to the conscience of our brothers and fellow bishops'—we understand this saying as meaning that you would, with the drawn sword of truth, as if in passing, cut off those who exalt the freedom of the will against the help of God. For what did you do with such free will as that you referred everything to the conscience of our humility? And yet you saw faithfully and wisely, and said truly and confidently, that it was done by the instinct of God, and this certainly because 'the will is prepared by the Lord' (1 Chr. 29:18), and that He Himself touches the hearts of His children with paternal inspirations so that they may do something good: 'For as many as are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God' (Rom. 8:14); so that we may feel that our free will is not lacking, and yet in every single movement of the human will toward good things, we may not doubt that His grace comes first; that God works in the hearts of men, and in free will itself, in such a way that holy thought, pious counsel, and every movement of good will is from God, because through Him we are able to do something good; without whom we can do nothing.

To these things the most blessed Coelestinus fittingly adds in his letter to the Gauls: "For when," he says, "the presidents of the holy peoples, undertaking the legation entrusted to them, plead before divine clemency, they plead the cause of the human race, and with the whole Church groaning together, they ask and pray that faith be granted to the unbelievers; that idolaters be freed from the errors of their unbelief; that for the Jews, the veil removed from their hearts, the light of truth may appear; that heretics may come to their senses through the perception of the catholic faith; that schismatics may receive the spirit of renewed charity; that remedies of penance be conferred upon the lapsed; and finally, that for catechumens led to the sacraments of regeneration, the court of heavenly mercy be opened. But that these things are not asked of the Lord perfunctorily nor in vain, the effect of the things themselves shows; inasmuch as He deigns to draw many from every kind of error, plucking them from the power of darkness, transferring them into the kingdom of the Son of His love (Col. 1:13), and making from vessels of wrath vessels of mercy (Rom. 9:22-23). This is felt to be so entirely the work of God, that always thanksgiving and confession of praise are rendered to God effecting this, for the illumination or correction of such persons.

Again after a little: "Therefore," he says, "from these ecclesiastical rules and from documents taken from divine authority, we are so strengthened, with the Lord's help, that we profess God to be the author of all good affections and works, and of all endeavors and all virtues by which from the beginning of faith one strives toward God; and we do not doubt that the merits of every man are preceded by His grace, through which it happens that we both begin to will and to do something good. By which help and gift of God, free will is not taken away, but is freed; so that from dark it becomes clear, from crooked straight, from sick healthy, from imprudent provident." Moreover, the same master ends and concludes this very epistle thus, saying: "Because for confessing the grace of God, from whose work and dignity nothing at all is to be subtracted, we believe it sufficiently suffices, whatever the writings of the apostolic see have taught us according to the aforementioned rules, so that we do not at all consider catholic that which appears to be contrary to the prescribed sentences." These things, most holy ones, we have not deemed necessary to suggest as to the ignorant, but we have judged it useful to insert into this little book of our lowliness for refuting the madness of those who flee from these as new dogmas and utterly unheard-of in the Churches.

Nourished by the teachings of all these holy Fathers, we anathematize Pelagius and Caelestius, and also Julian of Eclanum, and those who think similarly to them; especially the books of Faustus, bishop of the Gauls, who was advanced from the monastery of Lérins, which books are undoubtedly written against the doctrine of predestination. In these books, coming not only against the tradition of all these holy Fathers, but also against the tradition of the Apostle himself, he subordinates the aid of grace to human effort, and entirely evacuates the grace of Christ, impiously professing that the ancient saints were saved not by that grace by which we also are saved, according to what the most blessed Apostle Peter teaches (Acts 15), but by the possibility of nature.