At the time of His conception it was said: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” At the time of His birth we read that Emmanuel was born. We read how the angels sang the glory of God, how they announced to the shepherds that the Son of God was born, and how the magi sought Bethlehem from the East and worshipped Him whose birth they had learned from the new star. Yet the child was truly wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, and truly carried in His mother’s lap when the magi worshipped Him with the gifts they offered. As the voice of the gospel sets forth, He was sprung of human substance and of the condition of our nature, and so the confession of the Catholic Church believes Him to be. So also thereafter we read that this same Lord Jesus Christ both as God fulfilled the things that are human and as man performed the things that are divine, so that the whole Christian confession celebrates this same One as truly existing in both. So He came to His passion in such a way that He was crucified both true God and true man. Hanging on the cross, the man-God, true God, opened to the thief the courts of paradise and shook all the elements. God, true man, died and was buried; man, true God, raised Himself after three days. As man-God He stood before His disciples when the doors were shut; as God-man He showed His disciples His hands and feet, His flesh and bones. God, true man, was seen by His disciples for forty days; man, true God, was taken up into heaven, and as God He is promised to come again from thence. So the Son of man was seen standing at the right hand of God, as the blessed martyr Stephen testifies. So the preaching of blessed Paul shows Him established in the heavenly places, when he says: “In whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” And so from thence God, the Son of man, sitting on the clouds of heaven, shall truly come to judge the quick and the dead.

By all these testimonies it is most plainly declared that in both natures, from which and in which He was conceived, born, nourished, lived His life in the world and was raised to heaven, one and the same Lord Jesus Christ abides. He could not abide one and the same in both, truly God-man and man-God, unless each nature in which He so abides truly abode. And so, the same natures truly abiding, from which and in which one and the same exists true man-God and true God-man, He Himself abides for ever the same, true man-God and true God-man.

9. They add this further. As man consists of two things, that is, of soul and body, and each of these has a different nature, as no one doubts, the usage of speech nevertheless names the whole in the singular, embracing both at once, so as to say “human nature”, not “human natures”. In the same way, they say, in the mystery of Christ the power and the union of Godhead and manhood either must be, or at least can be, called one nature. They do not consider why a nature which consists of two (principally of soul and body) is called one, and human. The reason is that the soul cannot at its beginning exist anywhere but in the body, nor can the body subsist without the soul. Things which are to each other the cause of existing may therefore rightly, though loosely, be called one nature, since each furnishes the other the cause by which human nature subsists from the two together; the property of both, however, is kept intact. By the custom of human speech the whole of anything may often be understood from a part. When we say “so many souls” we mean bodies as well, and when we say “all flesh” we include the natures of souls in the same designation. We know well enough that we speak of one thing for two, to signify both, in such a way that we are in no way ignorant that they are two, and that they subsist in their own substances, however closely they are bound together by union. For the Godhead without the manhood continues to be what Godhead is; and the manhood, even without its divine assumption, continues to be in its own nature, in which God established it. And so even without their union they can remain in their own properties. If, then, a union of them has come about, it is necessary, for the preservation of the fullness of the sacrament and the perfection of the mystery, to confess that these same natures so subsist by that union under one and the same Person, undivided and inseparable, that they continue to be what they are.

In this mystery too, when there is no need to meet an attack, we often simply put one thing for both. We say “the Son of man”, and “Why seek ye to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth?”; and again the apostle says: “But after that the kindness and humanity of God our Saviour appeared”; and elsewhere: “Who is over all, God blessed for ever.” When He is called God only, is the man denied? When manhood is named, is the Godhead removed from it? When He is called Son of man, is He not also, by consequence, taken to be Son of God? When the Word of God is named, is not the flesh which the Word became understood with it? When flesh and body are spoken of, is not the Godhead also shown beyond doubt? It is one thing when, by a customary shorthand of speech, we often speak of some one part of a thing and yet without doubt confess the whole that it is. It is another when the boldness of human rashness breaks out, which names some part in such a way as to labour to deny what is the whole. Then those who contend for the truth must convict, even concerning the whole, the men who take up one part and despise the other.

How do they not see, warned even by their own words, that when they speak in any way of human nature, while keeping the distinction of body and soul, they nonetheless declare in any way that human nature is one? When the divine nature unites itself to this, then even by their own account there are two, namely the human and the divine together. It can therefore neither be one nor be called one, since there are two. For a union is of two, not the abolition of either; indeed it cannot even be called a union except of two. Otherwise, duality being taken away, what is left can neither be called nor be a union, but only a oneness.

10. Who can now bear their disdain for using the word “natures”? There is surely nothing that cannot have its own substance, and no substance that is not called a nature. Take away the nature of any substance, and beyond doubt you take away the substance also; and when the substance is taken away, the thing itself, whatever it is, is taken away with it. They disdain, I say, the word “natures”, when God Himself did not disdain to be called by the word “nature” by His preachers. So the blessed apostle Peter spoke in his epistle, preaching the mystery of Christ the Lord: “That by these,” he says, “ye might be partakers of the divine nature.” And what of this, that they themselves, in speaking of one nature in the Lord Jesus Christ, are shown to affirm the word “nature” all the same? May one speak of one nature, and yet not be allowed to speak of two or more natures of other things? Who would not laugh at this, and scorn it as childish raving? For when they say that there was “one nature incarnate”, wishing in this way to show a single nature, they by no means escape signifying two. When it is said that the one nature of the Godhead was incarnate, then, all ambiguity set aside, one nature will be the one which was incarnate, and another the one by which it is said to be incarnate. The nature of the Godhead which was incarnate will not be the same as the nature of the flesh. Since it is said to be “incarnate”, the nature of the Godhead was not incarnate by itself; it is known to be incarnate by the nature of flesh, just as the nature of flesh did not of itself become exalted with Godhead. For the Godhead came forth incarnate from nowhere but the womb of the Virgin mother, and the flesh was united to the Godhead nowhere but in that same womb, when the Holy Spirit came upon her and the power of the Highest overshadowed her.

11. We certainly say of one and the same Lord of ours what He said and did according to God, and what according to man. We may even say: “This He said or did as God-man, and this He said and did as man-God.” I ask, then, whether, when we say that something was said and done according to the man, or that the God-man did or said something, the man in Him is true or false. If false, then the Manichaeans, Apollinaris, the Marcionites and plagues of that kind have reason to exult, which have denied the truth of the body in Christ the Lord or called it a mere seeming; to pass over for now other heresies still more pernicious that this teaching contains. But whenever we name Christ as man in any way, a true man is to be understood there, as it is plain that the Catholic faith holds. If so, then the true substance of human nature is there, and the property of the human condition truly exists, so that He subsists, without any hesitation, a true man. For He could not otherwise be a true man, unless He subsisted substantially true in the property of His nature. There is no reason, then, why they should seem to affirm that He is true if He is not, or why they should strive to deny that what is true is true. If they do not deny it, then He abides by nature in the property of His substance, since otherwise He could not be true. Let them seek, then, how they may escape the pits of their own madness which surround them. Either let them openly confess themselves to be among those who attack the true body of Christ, or let them not dare to deny that it is true, since in no other way could it be true. In the same way, when we call the same One God, or declare that He speaks or acts according to God, this could not otherwise be true, unless we confess that true Godhead is there, and the nature of the Godhead abiding in the property of its substance. It is plain, therefore, that both these things are true in the one Lord Jesus Christ. And that both could not be true except by the natures abiding in their own property, no sense of a human mind that has any reason at all will doubt in the least.

12. These two, I say, are united for ever by an ineffable and indissoluble union in one and the same Lord Jesus Christ, and in His one and same Person, by which from both natures He is one and the same. So the whole man is God and the whole God is man. And these same natures, from which or in which one and the same is both God-man and man-God, are not confused and do not fail. Both of them, united, so make up one and the same God-man and man-God that they do not lose their property at all, and by it they bring it about that from both one and the same can be God-man and man-God. If, which God forbid, the property of either of them were withdrawn from Him, either God would not be man or man could not be God. And so we come to the point to which their purpose forces us to come. If the property of one thing is taken away, then with them Christ will be a half: not one, not whole, and therefore not true; and it follows that He is false. For the fall tends in every way to this, if anything is taken away by nature from those things from which or in which Christ is one and whole, and for that reason true. For in order to be true He must be whole, and in order to be whole He must be one and the same, with both natures abiding in Him without ambiguity, from which or in which one and the same continues.

They rave that we ignorant men assert two Christs, because we say that the property of each substance or nature abides for ever in Christ. Their great blindness is rather to be lamented, by which they do not see that two Christs cannot be put forward by means of the things of which the whole Christ consists, and without either of whose substances He could not be shown whole. It is they rather who confess that they build up a Christ who is not whole, when in that same sacrament they try to take away something of the things of which He wholly consists. So it is rather we who call Him one, since we confess Him whole; and they, by removing a part of the things from which He exists whole and one, have Him no more one than whole, and as they do not have Him whole, so they do not have Him true either. Therefore, when they throw up at us “two-natures”, those two without which the one, whole and true Christ in no way subsists, let them open the eyes of their heart and see that it is “one-nature” which is more justly charged against them, by which Christ is shown with them to be not whole, and so neither one nor true.

13. Is it not so that, though man consists of soul and body, whose natures are without doubt two, yet by a natural union there is one person and one man? We say more. The authority of divine Scripture certainly often speaks of an inner man and an outer, and yet there are not therefore two men in one, but there is one person and one man. “Inner” and “outer” are therefore said to signify qualities, not to point to two persons. How much more is this so in that ineffable, indivisible union which can never be dissolved. The property of each nature is kept safe, the natures of which this mystery undoubtedly consists and without which it plainly cannot consist; and just as the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same, so Christ is whole, so one, so true. Indeed He is not one if He is not whole: if a part is taken away from the things by which He is proved whole, He will appear a half, and not whole. And He is not one, just as He is not whole; and as He is not whole, so He is not true; and if He is not true, Christ is convicted, on their showing, of being false.

14. Holy Scripture testifies that this mystery began in this way from the first moment of the blessed conception, when it says: “Wisdom hath builded her house”. It rests on the firmness of the sevenfold Spirit, and supplies the nourishment of Christ’s incarnation, through which “we are made partakers of the divine nature”. The sacraments of the body and blood of Christ which we receive are certainly a divine thing, and because of this, through them too “we are made partakers of the divine nature”; and yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease to be. And certainly an image and likeness of the body and blood of Christ are celebrated in the performance of the mysteries. It is therefore shown to us plainly enough that we are to hold, concerning Christ the Lord Himself, what we confess, celebrate and receive in His image. As the elements pass into this, that is, into the divine substance, by the working of the Holy Spirit, and yet remain in the property of their own nature, so they show that the principal mystery itself, whose efficacy and power they truly represent to us, remains one Christ, because whole and true, the things of which He consists abiding properly.

15. “But the apostle,” they say, “said of the Jews: ‘Had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of majesty.’ See,” they say, “the Lord of majesty was crucified.” We plainly say this, and we hold it, while keeping the impassibility of the Godhead safe; for the Godhead always remains impassible, without any ambiguity. As Christ is read to be the Lord of majesty, so He is assuredly read also to be the Son of man. So the Lord of majesty is the Son of man, and God is man; and the Son of man is God of majesty, and man is God; and whatever belongs to the Godhead the Son of man has, and whatever belongs to the manhood the Lord of majesty has. Let us hear blessed Peter saying: “Christ therefore having suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves all with the same faith.” He said that He suffered in the flesh, not in the Godhead. Yet the Godhead makes wholly its own whatever the flesh suffered, just as the Son of man also has as wholly His own whatever is God’s. And under the one Person, one and the same is rightly said to suffer whatever He suffers as God-man. He suffers not by weakness and a condition capable of suffering, but by His dignity He makes the injury of the passion His own: a sharer in it by the union, but suffering with it without being passible. So also one and the same works mighty works, whatever He works as man-God.

The human soul is subject to the passions of the body. It is either soothed by their pleasures or affected by their adversities, and by suffering along with the flesh it feels whatever is inflicted on the flesh’s condition. Yet it is not the soul in itself, that which is the soul’s substance, that is wounded by any wound or touched by any blows and afflictions. Hence it is said: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.” How then could it be that the Godhead should be subject to things to which the soul is known not to be subject? As has been said, the Godhead is passible not by any capacity for suffering, nor by torment, nor by affliction, nor by wounding. It is by that condescension by which it took man and united him to itself that it makes its own whatever is man’s, since it gives to man whatever is God’s; and yet it remains wholly untouched by any capacity for suffering.

16. This rule of the Catholic faith and of orthodox doctrine we have received from all the fathers and teachers of the Catholic Church, as their sayings testify, though it would take very long to rehearse them. It flows from the divine springs and has been handed down even to us, and we have given here a brief taste of it in summary. Let your Charity, then, together with the apostolic see, hold it with one mind, preach it constantly and defend it wisely. And let it drive out all the blasphemies that come forth against it, which strive to bring in “strifes of words”, as the apostle says, rather than to receive the truth that saves all. So, saying the same thing with one heart and one mouth, we may believe what we have received from our forefathers and, the Lord granting it, hand it on to those who come after us, to be confessed. The testimonies of Catholic teachers set out below bear witness that our faith, by God’s favour, continues one with theirs.

Testimonies of the ancients to the two natures in Christ

17. Of Ignatius, bishop and martyr of Antioch, from the Epistle to the Ephesians. There is one physician, fleshly and spiritual, made and not made, God in man, in death life eternal, both of Mary and of God, first passible and then impassible, our Lord Jesus Christ.

And a little after. Come together, he says, each one of you, all in common, by grace, by name, in one faith and in one Jesus Christ, who according to the flesh is of the race of David, Son of man and Son of God.

18. Of Eustathius, bishop of Antioch and confessor, against the Arians. Wherefore the man of Christ received openly fitting powers, and the governance of nations and peoples and mixed multitudes, and dominion over all things, he who “increased in wisdom and stature and grace”, as the letter of the gospel teaches in detail.

Of the same, against them. And again, when it is said, “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands”: in introducing Him so, he declares the power of the man, and how, taking the sceptre of eternal dominion, he had the judgment of all committed to him.

Of the same, against them. For if “in Christ,” he says, “dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead”, that which is dwelt in is another thing. And if they differ from one another by nature, then neither the suffering of death, nor desire of food, nor longing for drink, nor sleep, nor sorrow, nor weariness, nor the shedding of tears, nor any other change whatever may rightly coexist with the fulness of the Godhead, since it is by nature unchangeable. These things are properly to be applied to the man, who consists of soul and body. For it is fitting to show from these human and blameless movements themselves that God put on the whole man, not in fantasy and seeming, but in very truth, taking him perfectly to Himself.

Against the same. Wherefore one thing will be mortal, and another besides it immortal. Consistently with this, writing the same epistle to Timothy, and looking to the God-bearing man, he proclaimed: “Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel.”

And a little after. But the God-bearing man, who of his own will resolved to endure the suffering of death for the good of men, received the palm and, if one may so speak, the honour and power of the contest, and so received a glory which he had in no way had before.

19. Of Hippolytus, bishop and martyr, of the metropolis of the Arabians, in the Memorial of Heresies. He, coming forth into the world, appeared God and man. It is easy to understand Him as man, when He hungers and is wearied and toils and thirsts and fears and flees, prays, is sorrowful and sleeps on a pillow, refuses the cup of suffering, sweats in His agony and is strengthened by an angel; when He is betrayed by Judas and suffers insult, is despised by Caiaphas and by Herod, scourged by Pilate and mocked by the soldiers, nailed to the tree by the Jews; when crying to the Father He commends His spirit, and bowing His head gives up the spirit, has His side pierced with a spear, is wrapped in linen and laid in the tomb, and is raised by the Father on the third day. And again it is clear to see His Godhead, when He is praised by angels and beheld by the shepherds, awaited by Simeon and borne witness to by Anna, sought by the magi and pointed out by a star; when at the marriage He makes wine of water, rebukes the sea stirred up by the violence of the winds and walks on the sea; when He makes the man born blind to see, raises Lazarus four days dead, does many mighty works, and gives His disciples power.

Of the same. You have seen that it tells how according to the flesh He is of David, but according to the spirit of God. It is proved, therefore, that the same is both God and man.

20. Of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in the books against the Arians. Some, then, or rather very many, before becoming disciples, have in their insolence come forward to teach, “understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm”. The eyes of their mind are blinded; they have not an understanding that sees God, as Jacob had, nor a pure heart that sees God. They ascribe to the Godhead of the Word the things written on account of the manhood of our Saviour, which He put on for us, and His lowly works and humble words; and they err and make the less learned and the weak err, so that they think meanly of the Lord. We are obliged, therefore, as Jude writes in his epistle, to set out which words befit the Godhead of the Word, and which are to be understood of the man, according to the Saviour. In a purse, gold solidi and silver lying together both bear the image of one emperor and the inscription of his name, but the money-changer who keeps them knows the excellence of the gold beyond the worth of the baser silver. So, though in one Scripture it is written both of the Godhead of the Son and of the body from Mary which He put on for us, we know each of them apart, as wise disciples of one who is truly a master. Whatever words and works, therefore, are lowly, understand them as written of the body of the Son; and whatever writings are glorious, of the Godhead of the Word.

Of the same, against the same. “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made him Jesus Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.” Showing the crucified Lord’s man, then, the apostles said, as though pointing with the finger: “This Jesus, whom ye crucified, God hath made both Lord and Christ.” Most certainly, then, the Lord’s man was “created the beginning,” it says, “of the ways”, of the works written beforehand for our good; the beginning of the ways, the beginning of all the saints, who are called “the way”. He who was made, and was crucified, is both Lord and Christ.

Of the same. The dead body of Jesus, then, which was taken down from the tree, and laid in the sepulchre and buried by Joseph of Arimathea, the Word raised, saying: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He who quickens all the dead will quicken also the man Jesus Christ from Mary, whom He assumed. For if, while on the cross, He raised the dead bodies of the saints already spoken of, much more could God the Word, who ever lives, raise the body which He put on; as Paul says: “For the word of God is quick, and powerful.”

Of the same. For as light is not harmed in a dark place, so neither can life suffer anything in visiting mortal nature. For the Godhead of the Word is unchangeable and immutable, as the Lord says of Himself in the prophecy: “Behold, behold, for I am, and I change not.”

Of the same, from the Letter to Epictetus. But our salvation is no fantasy, nor is it of the body only: salvation has truly been wrought for the whole man, soul and body. What is from Mary according to the divine Scriptures was therefore human by nature, and it was true, since it was what is ours; for Mary is our sister, since we are all from Adam.

21. Of Eusebius, bishop in Palestine, surnamed Pamphili, from the Exposition of the Seventeenth Psalm. “He bowed the heavens also, and came down.” Ascending in the man whom He assumed, whom the passage here names “cherub”, He flew away with him, making His ascent with the divine spirits that attended Him, who are themselves also called “the wings of the wind”.

Of the same, from the seventh book of the Preparation for the Gospel. Not only the nation of the Jews, but the whole human race as well, sank into every kind of wickedness and into accursed idolatry itself, and it intimates that it would be brought under in no other way than if, as was ordained for the coming of God the Word as man, a human vessel alone were taken from a virgin who knew not marriage. What the benefit of this is, it is now time to say. Since “by man death entered into the world”, as the apostle says, it was needful that by that same man the victory against death should be won, so that the body of death should show forth a body of life.

And again of the same. But if you hear Him swearing “by His Holy One” and Father, hear Him swearing by God the Word, who existed before all ages, His holy and only-begotten Son, whom the various sayings we set out before have called God. By Him God His Father swears, as One who will glorify for an endless age His beloved, him who is of the seed of David. This also came to pass when the Word incarnate assumed him who is of the seed of David, and deifies him. For which reason He also calls him son, saying: “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.” And again: “I will make him my firstborn.”

22. Of Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, on the Lord’s Nativity. Christ was twofold: man in what was seen, God in what was not seen. He ate truly as man, and as we do; for He had a passibility of the flesh like ours.

Of the same, to Cledonius. The natures are two, God and man, as soul and body are two; but the sons are not two, nor the gods. For neither are there two men here, though Paul called in this way both what is within man and what is without. And if one must speak shortly, the things of which the Saviour is made are one thing and another, since the invisible and timeless is not the same as the visible, which is under time. But He is not one person and another; God forbid. For both are one, joined together by the blending.

Of the same. Let not men deceive, he says, nor be deceived, by receiving “the Lord’s man” (as they themselves call Him, when He is rather our Lord and God) without a mind. Nor do we separate the man from the Godhead: we teach one and the same, who was at first not man, but God and the only-begotten Son, before the ages unmixed with body and with all that belongs to body, but who at the end took man to Himself as well.

23. Of Basil, bishop of Caesarea, from the book against Eunomius. Whoever considers even a little the intent of the apostle’s words sees that he does not hand down to us a way of discoursing on the Godhead, but sets out words of the dispensation: “God,” he says, “hath made this Jesus, whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ.” By the pointing word he shows plainly to all His manhood, and what is seen.

Of the same, from the sermon on Thanksgiving. Wherefore, by weeping over His friend, He showed Himself to share the common human nature, and freed us from excess on either side, that we should neither be broken down by our sufferings nor bear sorrow without feeling.

24. Of Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, against Eunomius. “Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted.” Who, then, was exalted, the lowly or the lofty? And what is lowly but what is human? And what else is lofty but the Godhead? But God has no need to be exalted, since He is lofty. The apostle therefore says that the manhood was exalted; and it was exalted in being made both Lord and Christ. By the word “made”, then, the apostle does not signify the being of the Lord before the ages, but the passing of the lowly into exaltation, which was brought about by the right hand of God. For by this word too he declares the mystery of godliness. He who said “by the right hand of God exalted” most certainly revealed the ineffable dispensation of the mystery: that the right hand of God, the maker of all things that are, which is the Lord, “by whom all things were made, and without whom was not anything made”, itself raised the man united to itself, through the union, to its own height.

Of the same, against the same. It is not human nature, he says, that raises Lazarus, nor the impassible substance that weeps for him in the tomb: the tears are properly the man’s, while the life is truly the Life’s. It is not human poverty that feeds the thousands, nor the almighty substance that runs to the fig tree. Who is it that was weary from the journey? And who is it that without labour established the whole world by a word? What is the brightness of glory, and what is it that was pierced with nails? What form is struck with the palms of the hand in the passion, and what is glorified from everlasting?

25. Of Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium, from the book in which he expounds “My Father is greater than I”. “Let not your heart be troubled,” he says, “neither let it be afraid”, because I am to be delivered to the Jews; for this is not a thing against my will, but a suffering freely chosen. “I go away, and come again unto you.” “I go away” and “I come” are both said as man; but as God I am inseparably with you. As man I go away by death; as man I come again by resurrection. “If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I go unto my Father: for my Father is greater than I.” For He is greater than the one who goes to Him, not than the one who is in Him. As God, I am in the Father; but as man, I go to the Father. The Father, then, is greater than the one who now goes to Him, not than the one who is in Him. And to put it shortly, He is both greater and equal: greater than the one who asks, “How many loaves have ye?”, equal to the one who fills the whole people from five loaves; greater than the one who asks, “Where have ye laid Lazarus?”, equal to the one who raises Lazarus by a word.

Of the same, in another sermon, expounding the words: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life.” He says this: Whose, then, are the sufferings? The flesh’s. If you give the suffering to the flesh, give it the lowly words as well; and to Him to whom you ascribe the miracles, commit the words that are above us. For God, the worker of miracles, rightly speaks lofty things worthy of His works, but the temple that suffered fitly speaks lowly things that match its sufferings.

Of the same, against the Arians. Distinguish now, then, he says, the natures of God and of man. For man was not made from God by falling away, nor God from man by advancement: I speak of God and man. When you have given the sufferings to the flesh and the miracles to God, you will of necessity, even against your will, give the lowly words to the man from Mary, and the lofty words befitting God to the Word, which “was in the beginning”. For this is why He speaks lofty words in some places: that by the lofty He may show the majesty of the indwelling Word, and by the lowly make known the weakness of the lowly flesh. Hence, calling Himself in one place equal to the Father, and in another the Father greater, He does not contradict Himself, but shows that He is both God and man: God from the lofty sayings, man from the lowly. And if you wish to know how the Father is greater, He said it from the flesh, and not from the person of the Godhead.

Of the same. Do not, he says, apply the sufferings of the flesh to the impassible Word. For I am God and man, O heretic: God, as the miracles declare; man, as the sufferings bear witness. Since, then, I am God and man, tell me, who suffered? If God suffered, you have spoken blasphemy. But if the flesh suffered, why do you not apply the suffering to the flesh, to which you also attribute the fear? For while the one suffers, the other does not fear; and when the man is crucified, God is not troubled.

26. Of Antiochus, bishop of Ptolemais. Come now, he says, you who are of the flock of the heretics: why do you confound the gospel? Why do you tempt God and man? When you hear of Christ something lowly and poor and ordinary and servile, and then something worthy of God and lofty and reaching to heaven, render to this one what is his, and to that one what is his.

Of the same, on the feast of the Nativity. “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” You have Him who is of God; receive him who is of Mary. Do not deny the one, and do not confound the other. You have the Son of God, you have the son of Mary; you have the Lord, you have the servant; you have the creator, you have the interpreter; you have the eternal, you have the temporal; you have Him from heaven, you have him from Bethlehem; you have the heavenly, you have the earthly. Whatever is glorious, cast it upward; whatever is lowly, join it to this one.

Of the same. “Mary brought forth an infant”: this was of the man. “A star rose from above”: this was of God. “The infant was nourished with milk”: this is of Him who is as we are. “The magi do homage to Him who is born”: this is of Him who is before the ages. He is laid in a cave: this is of His mercy.

Of the same. “A lamp,” he says: I understand by it the man from Mary. A lamp, because he was taken from the earth and fashioned of mere clay; a lamp, the man who has God for his fire. When you consider God in the man, and see this one from the earth and that one from the heavens; when you see this one from Mary and that one from the Father, and both joined inseparably in one, understand that “our God is a consuming fire.”

Of the same, speaking against the Jews at Easter. You care greatly, to be sure, about the sayings of the prophets. Why, then, do you hide the saying of Daniel, which says: “A stone was cut out without hands, and became a great mountain”? Does it not seem to you that Mary is the mountain, Christ the stone cut out without hands: a stone cut out without hands, a man born without embraces? But lest in reproving you I should give by my words any suspicion of blasphemy: I do not speak of a mere man, beloved, but of the man through whom salvation was won; the man whom the prophets preached; the man who shows you the beginning of the heavenly life; the man of whom all the prophecies are full; the man, indeed, who said of himself: “Why seek ye to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth?”

And elsewhere. When you see, he says, Him who is from Mary, search out Him who is hidden within.

27. Of Severian, bishop of Gabala, against Novatus. God the Father begot the only-begotten God the Word, and the womb of the Virgin, new and a stranger to such things, brought Him forth. Hear the evangelist saying: “Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Jesus”: He who is to be born of your body. But let no one find fault with the saying, as though of one who speaks of God apart and of the flesh apart. Let us follow the sense, and let us not divide the worship.

28. Of Athanasius, bishop, from the Letter to Epictetus. To say that He was turned into flesh is to hold that the Word Himself was changed. And who will bear with us any longer if we say only such things as these? For you have gone further into impiety than every heresy.

29. Of Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, from the Letter to Cledonius. “The Word was made flesh” seems to me, then, to stand on a level with what is said, that He was “made sin”. It does not mean that the Lord was changed into it, for how could He be? It means that in taking it upon Himself He “took our sins, and bare our infirmities”.

Of the same, from the same letter. For if He is not said to have been turned into a curse and into sin, when He is said to have been “made” these, neither may you say that He was turned into flesh; for that is a great blasphemy.

30. Of Ambrose, bishop of Milan. But some say that it is written, “The Word was made flesh.” What is written I do not deny; but look at what is said. For he goes on: “and dwelt among us”. That is: that Word which took flesh, this dwelt among us; that is, dwelt in human flesh. Do you marvel, then, at what is written, “The Word was made flesh”, the flesh being taken by God the Word, when of sin also, which He had not, it is said, “who was made sin”? He was not made sin by nature and by working, but so that He might crucify our sin in His own flesh. Let them therefore refrain from saying that the nature of the Word was turned into the nature of flesh; for that which assumed is one thing, and that which was assumed is another.

31. Of John, bishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel according to John. Wherefore, when you hear that “the Word was made flesh”, be not troubled nor cast down. For the substance did not pass into flesh (that is the height of impiety), but, remaining what it is, it took the form of a servant.

Of the same, a little after. Hear the evangelist, he says; for he adds, “and dwelt among us”, saying this alone for now, so that you may suspect nothing unfitting in his saying “was made”. For he did not speak of a change of that unchangeable nature, but of an indwelling and an abiding. And that which dwells is not the same as the dwelling-place: one thing dwells in another, or else there will be no dwelling.

32. Of Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, against the Arians. God the Word, he says, bears the same image as He who begot Him. For He is the image of the divine substance. But the man, who is truly His temple, is not the same as the builder of the temple, since he springs from a different stock.

Again of the same, a little after. But wishing to bring in the majesty of power, he here called the very body that was put to death “the Son”, laying on it the name of exaltation, fittingly, that is, because of the God who dwells in it.

And a little after. I think, he says, that no one, however madly and furiously he raved, ever said that the fulness of the Godhead suffered the loss of death. So they are frenzied and rave and are mad and out of their senses and have gone out of their minds, who presume to apply suffering to God the Word.

And a little after. For if “in Christ,” he says, “dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead”, then first of all that which dwells is one thing, and that which is dwelt in is another. And if the natures differ from one another, then neither the suffering of death, nor the desire of food, nor the longing for drink, nor sleep, nor sorrow, nor weariness, nor the flowing of tears, nor any other change whatever may rightly coexist with the fulness of the Godhead, since it is by nature unchangeable. These things are to be applied separately to the man, who consists of soul and body.

Of the same. For neither is it lawful to say that the Word died, and God, who raised up His own temple on the third day. And if, then, he who was born the firstborn from the dead is the one who was wrapped round by death, let him be the one who has the pre-eminence in all things, who received the powers he had won. In short, the temple of the Word, rising from the tomb on the third day, came in that very body to His own apostles and said these words to them: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” For it was the temple that received this power from without, and not God, who built the temple in its surpassing beauty.

33. Of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in the books against the heretics. Whatever words and works, then, are lowly, understand them as written of the body of Jesus; and whatever writings are glorious, of the Godhead of the Word. When He hungers after fasting, it is the body’s suffering; but when from five loaves He feeds five thousand men besides women and children, and twelve baskets of fragments remain, it is the work of the Godhead of the Word. When He sleeps on a pillow in the ship, it is the work of bodily rest; when, walking on the sea, He rebukes the waves and the winds, “Peace, be still”, presently He hears from those in the ship, who confessed it with an oath: “Of a truth thou art the Son of God.” When He weeps standing at the tomb of Lazarus, and, as He is about to come to His passion, says, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death”, and is in anguish, He says that the spirit is ready, by the Godhead, for the whole dispensation, but that the flesh is weak; and it is the weakness of the flesh to be sorrowful and sad. When He says with command, “Lazarus, come forth”, and the dead man, four days dead, rose alive, a thing never done from the beginning of the world, it is a sign of the Godhead.

Of the same, on the Incarnation. When the evangelist says, “The Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified”, he means that His flesh was not yet glorified. For the Lord of glory is not glorified; but the flesh of the Lord received this glory, ascending with Him into heaven. For this reason the Holy Spirit of adoption was not yet among men, because the firstfruits taken from us had not yet ascended into heaven. Whatever, therefore, Scripture says, that the Son received and that the Son was glorified, it says on account of His manhood, not on account of His Godhead.

Of the same, in the same book. “Wherefore,” it says, “God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name”, and what follows. This it says of the temple, which is His body. For it is not the lofty that is exalted, but the flesh of the lofty that is exalted; and to the flesh of the lofty He gave the name which is above every name. It was not the Word of God who received it by grace, so as to be called God; His flesh was deified with Him.

Of the same. For as light is not harmed in a dark place, so neither can the life suffer anything by nature; as the Lord says of Himself in the prophecy: “Behold, for I am, and I change not.”

34. Of Basil, bishop of Caesarea, on Thanksgiving. As, then, the Lord took hunger upon Him, when perhaps the food in His body had been used up, and was wearied, His muscles and sinews strained by the journey, not because His Godhead was overcome by labour, but because His body underwent the nature of the suffering that follows from it; so also He shed tears, allowing what naturally befalls the flesh to happen to it. This happens when the hollows of the brain are filled with the vapour of grief, and the burden of moisture goes out as through certain channels, that is, the openings of the eyes.

35. Of Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, against Eunomius. He accuses those who assign the suffering to the human nature, for he wishes to make the Godhead itself altogether subject to suffering. For since there are two opinions, and no doubt about it, whether the Godhead came to be in suffering … the accusation of the one becomes in every way the defence of the other that remains. If, then, they accuse those who look for the suffering in the manhood, they will without doubt praise those who say that the Godhead of the Son is passible. But the defence thus built for their doctrine is an absurdity. For if, by their account, the Godhead of the Son suffers, while that of the Father is kept in all impassibility, then the impassible nature is foreign to that which underwent suffering. He who says that the Godhead suffered, and not the temple of the Godhead, is therefore of another mind.

36. Of Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, from the Letter to Nectarius. And this is not only cruel, but that is the most savage thing of all: that he asserts that the Only-begotten Himself, God, the judge of all that exists, the beginning of life, the destroyer of death, is mortal, and underwent suffering in His own Godhead; and that in that three days’ death of the body the Godhead also died together with the body, and so was raised again from the dead by the Father.

37. Of Ambrose, bishop of Milan. Why, he says, do you apply the weaknesses of the flesh to the Godhead, and the weakness of the human body to the divine nature? “Now is my soul sorrowful”: it is not Wisdom that says this. For Wisdom remained unchangeable, though clothed round with the garment of the flesh.

And again elsewhere. But there are some who have gone so far in impiety as to think that the Godhead of the Lord was circumcised, and that it was not the flesh that was on the tree, but that divine substance, the creator of all things.

38. Of Damasus, bishop of Rome, against the Arians, with the sentence of anathema. If anyone says that in the passion of the cross it was the Son of God, God, who bore the pain, and not the flesh with the soul, in which He had put on the form of a servant, which He took to Himself, as the Scripture says, let him be anathema.

39. Of Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium, in the book in which he expounds “My Father is greater than I”. And not to draw out my discourse at length, I ask you shortly, heretic: did He suffer who was born of God before the ages, or Jesus, who was born of David in the last times? If the Godhead suffered, you have spoken blasphemy. But if the man suffered, as the truth has it, why do you not apply the suffering to the man?

Of the same, in the sermon on the Son of God. When Peter had said that “God hath made him both Lord and Christ”, he added, “this Jesus, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead.” It was the temple that died, not the Godhead; and He who raised it is the Word, the Power, who says in the gospel: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” If, then, he says that “God hath made him both Lord and Christ”, he speaks of the flesh that died and was raised from the dead, not of the Godhead of the Son.

40. Of Severian, bishop of Gabala. In the same way, he says, He feared according to the soul, was sad and was sorrowful. For “My soul,” He says, “is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death”; and “He began to be sorrowful and very heavy.” These were not passions of sin, but passions that belong to nature. So the Saviour, to show that those words did not befit the Truth but suited the flesh, says to His disciples about the very time of the passion: “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: watch, that ye enter not into temptation.” And explaining whose the passions are, He says: “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” He shows in all things, therefore, both the true dignity of the Godhead and the dispensation of the flesh.

41. Of Antiochus, bishop of Ptolemais, in the sermon against the heretics. Do not confound the natures, and you will not be dazed about the dispensation. Hold fast to God, and give to God what befits Him; receive the man, and give to the man what befits him. He hungered, who is as you are; He fed the multitude, who is beyond you. He thirsted, who was born today; He walked on the sea, who shone forth before all time.

42. Of John, bishop of Constantinople, on the Cross. When you hear of Christ, do not think of God alone, nor of the incarnate dispensation alone, but of both: both of God the Word and of the incarnate dispensation. I know Christ hungering, and I know Christ feeding five thousand, besides women and children, from five loaves and two fishes. I know Christ thirsting, and I know Christ turning water into wine. I know Christ walking on the waters, and I know Christ sleeping in the ship. I know Christ dying, and I know Christ raising the dead. I know Christ standing before Pilate, and I know Christ sitting with the Father. I know Christ stoned by the Jews, and I know Christ worshipped by angels. The one he refers to the Godhead, and the other to the manhood. For this is why both are said: I know Christ born of Mary, and I know Christ begotten before the ages.