Exposition of the Faith 1 part 7/15

God, therefore, is both Maker and Provider, and His creative power and His sustaining power and His providential power are His good will;

for whatsoever the Lord willed, He did, and no one has resisted His will.

He willed that all things should come to be, and they came to be;

He wills that the world should subsist, and it subsists, and all things that He wills come to pass.

That He exercises providence, and that He does so well, one would most rightly perceive thus:

God alone is by nature good and wise;

as good, then, He exercises providence (for he who exercises no providence is not good;

for even men and the irrational animals naturally care for their own offspring, and he who does not provide is blamed); and as wise He cares for existing things in the best way.

We ought therefore, giving heed to these things, to marvel at all, to praise all, and to accept without scrutiny all the works of providence, even though to most people they seem unjust, because the providence of God is unknown and incomprehensible.

And I say 'all'—meaning the things not in our power;

for the things in our power belong not to providence, but to our own free will.

Of the things of providence, some are by good pleasure, and some by permission;

by good pleasure are all those things which are indisputably good, while by permission there are many kinds.

For He often permits even the righteous to fall into misfortunes, that He may show forth to others the virtue hidden in him, as in the case of Job.

At another time He permits some strange thing to be done, that through the seemingly strange deed something great and wonderful may be accomplished, as the salvation of mankind through the cross.

In another way He permits a holy man to suffer evils, lest he fall from a right conscience, or lest, on account of the power and grace given him, he fall into arrogance, as in the case of Paul.

One is forsaken for a time for the correction of another, that the others, beholding what befalls him, may be instructed, as in the case of Lazarus and the rich man;

for naturally, when we see some suffering, we are made humble.

One is forsaken also for another's glory, not on account of his own or his parents' sins, as the man blind from birth was for the glory of the Son of Man.

Again, one is permitted to suffer for another's emulation, that, when the glory of the sufferer is magnified, suffering may become free of dread to others, in hope of the glory to come and in desire of the good things to come, as in the case of the martyrs.

One is permitted at times even to fall into a shameful deed, for the correction of another worse passion; for instance, there is someone exalted over his virtues and achievements, and God permits him to fall into fornication, so that through the fall, coming to a sense of his own weakness, he may be humbled and, drawing near, confess to the Lord.

And one must know that the choice of things to be done is in our power, but the outcome—of good deeds it is of God's cooperation, who justly cooperates with those who choose the good with a right conscience according to His foreknowledge; while of evil deeds it is of God's abandonment, who again, according to His foreknowledge, justly abandons them.

And of abandonment there are two kinds;

for there is an abandonment that is dispensational and disciplinary, and there is an abandonment that is complete and despairing.

Dispensational and disciplinary is that which comes about for the correction, salvation, and glory of the sufferer, or also for the emulation and imitation of others, or even for the glory of God;

but the complete abandonment is when, after God has done everything for a man's salvation, the man remains, of his own purpose, insensible and incurable—or rather incurable;

then he is given over to complete perdition, as Judas was.

May God spare us and deliver us from such abandonment.

And one must know that the ways of God's providence are many, and can neither be expressed in words nor comprehended by the mind.

We must know that all the gloomy visitations are brought upon those who receive them with thanksgiving for their salvation, and

they altogether become occasions of benefit.

One must know that God antecedently wills that all be saved and attain His kingdom;

for He did not form us to punish us, but, as being good, that we might share in His goodness.

But He wills that sinners be justly punished.

The first, then, is called the antecedent will and good pleasure, which is from Himself; the second is called the consequent will and permission, which arises from our own cause.

The dispensational and disciplinary is unto salvation; the despairing is unto complete punishment, as we have said.

But these things are with regard to the things not in our power.

Of the things in our power, the good He antecedently wills and is well pleased with, but the evil and truly wicked He wills neither antecedently nor consequently.

But He yields to free will;

for that which is done by force is neither rational nor virtue.

And God exercises providence over all creation, and through all creation He confers benefit and disciplines, and often even through the demons themselves, as in the case of Job and of the swine.

On foreknowledge and predestination. One must know that God foreknows all things, but does not predestine all things;

for He foreknows also the things in our power, but does not predestine them;

for He neither wills wickedness to come to be, nor compels virtue.

So that predestination is the work of the divine foreknowing command.

And He predestines the things not in our power according to His foreknowledge;

for already, according to His foreknowledge, God has decided all things beforehand according to His goodness and His justice.

And one must know that virtue was given by God in our nature, and He Himself is the beginning and cause of all good, and apart from His cooperation and help it is impossible for us to will or do any good.

But it is in our power either to abide in virtue and follow God who calls us to it, or to depart from virtue—which is to come to be in wickedness and to follow the devil who calls us to it without compulsion;

for wickedness is nothing else than the withdrawal of the good, just as darkness too is the withdrawal of light.

Abiding, then, in that which is according to nature, we are in virtue; but deviating from that which is according to nature, we come to that which is contrary to nature and come to be in wickedness.

Repentance is the return from that which is contrary to nature to that which is according to nature, and from the devil to God, through ascesis and toils.

This man, then, the Creator fashioned male, imparting to him His own divine grace, and through this making him to be in communion with Himself;

wherefore he also gave the naming of the animals, in prophetic fashion, as of slaves given to him, exercising lordship.

For having been made rational and intellectual and free, after the image of God, he was fittingly entrusted with the rule over earthly things by the common Creator and Master of all.

But God, who foreknows, knowing that he would fall into transgression and be subject to corruption, made out of him the female, a helper for him corresponding to him—a helper for the continuance of the race by generation through succession after the transgression.

For the first formation is called coming-into-being (genesis), and not generation (gennesis);

for coming-into-being is the first formation from God, but generation is the succession from one another by way of the death-sentence on account of the transgression.

Him He placed in paradise, both the spiritual and the sensible;

for in the sensible paradise, dwelling bodily on earth, he yet conversed in soul with the angels, cultivating divine thoughts and being nourished by them, naked in his simplicity and artless life, led up to the Creator alone through the creatures, and delighting and rejoicing in the contemplation of Him.

Since, then, He had naturally adorned him with free will, He gives him a law not to taste of the tree of knowledge.

Concerning which tree we have spoken sufficiently, according to our ability, in the chapter on paradise.

This commandment He gave him with a promise, that, if he kept it—preserving the dignity of the soul by giving the victory to reason, acknowledging his Creator and keeping His ordinance—he would share in everlasting blessedness and live forever, becoming superior to death.

But if he should subject the soul to the body and prefer the body's

…pleasures, ignoring his own honor and likening himself to the senseless beasts, casting off the yoke of his Maker and disregarding His divine ordinance, he would be liable to death, and would be subjected to corruption and toil, dragging out a wretched life.

For it was not profitable that he, being still untried and untested, should attain incorruption, lest he fall into conceit and into the condemnation of the devil.

For that one (the devil), on account of his incorruptibility, after his fall by deliberate choice, had an unrepentant and unchangeable fixity in evil, just as, on the other hand, the angels too, after their choice of virtue by deliberate will, have through grace an immovable establishment in the good.

It was needful, therefore, that man should first be tested and, perfected by experience through the keeping of the commandment, should thus receive incorruption as the prize of virtue;

for being set midway between God and matter, he was destined, through the keeping of the commandment—after the release from his natural relation to existing things, being united to God—to receive by habit an immovable fixity in the good; but through the transgression, being moved rather toward matter, and having drawn his mind away from its Cause (I mean God), to make himself akin to corruption, and to become passible instead of impassible and mortal instead of immortal, and to need conjugal union and fluid generation, and in the craving for life to cling to pleasant things as though they sustained it, and fearlessly to hate those who would deprive him of these, and to transfer his desire from God to matter, and his anger from the true enemy of his salvation to his own kind.

By the envy of the devil, then, man was overcome;

for that envious and good-hating demon, himself brought low through his pride, could not bear that we should attain the things above; whence the liar, by the hope of godhead, lures the wretched one, and having led him up to his own height of pride, casts him down into the like pit of his fall.

On the divine economy, and on His care for us, and on our salvation. When man, then, had been thus lured by the assault of the arch-evil demon and had not kept the Creator's commandment, and had been stripped of grace and had put off his boldness toward God, and had covered himself with the roughness of a wretched life (for this is the fig-leaves), and had been clothed with deadness—that is, the mortality and grossness of the flesh (for this is the garment of dead skins)—and, by the righteous judgment of God, had become an exile from paradise, condemned to death and subject to corruption: the compassionate One who had given him being and bestowed well-being did not overlook him, but, having first trained him in many ways and called him to conversion by groaning and trembling, by the flood of water and the near-total destruction of the whole race, by the confusion and division of tongues, by the watch of angels, by the burning of cities, by typical theophanies, by wars, victories, defeats, by signs and wonders and various mighty works, by the law, by the prophets—through all of which the aim was the abolition of sin, which had been poured out in manifold ways and had enslaved man and heaped up every kind of wickedness upon his life, and the restoration of man to well-being.

Since through sin death had entered into the world like some wild and savage beast, ravaging human life, and since it was needful that He who was to redeem should be sinless and not, through sin, liable to death, and moreover that nature should be strengthened and renewed, and by deed be trained and taught the way of virtue, which leads away from corruption and guides toward eternal life:

He shows forth the great ocean of His love for mankind concerning him;

for the very Creator and Lord undertakes the struggle on behalf of His own creature, and by deed becomes a teacher;

and since the enemy lured man by the hope of godhead, he himself is lured by the screen of flesh, and at once are shown the goodness and the wisdom, the justice and the power of God:

the goodness, in that He did not overlook the weakness of His own creature, but had compassion on him when he had fallen, and stretched out His hand;

the justice, in that, when man had been overcome, He does not cause another to conquer the tyrant, nor does He snatch man from death by force, but the one whom death had of old enslaved through sin—him the good and just One has again made conqueror, and by the like recovered the like, which was impossible;

and the wisdom, in that He found a most fitting solution to the impossible;

for by the good pleasure of God the Father, the only-begotten Son and Word of God, and God, who is in the bosom of the Father, consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, before the ages, without beginning, who was in the beginning and was with God the Father and was God, who being in the form of God bowed the heavens and came down—that is, having without abasement abased His unabasable height, He condescends to His own servants with a condescension ineffable and incomprehensible (for this is what 'descent' means)—and being perfect God becomes perfect man, and there is accomplished the newest of all new things, the only new thing under the sun, through which the infinite power of God is made manifest.

For what is greater than God becoming man? And the Word without change became flesh of the Holy Spirit and of Mary the holy ever-virgin and Theotokos, and the only Lover of mankind is constituted mediator between God and men, conceived not of the will or desire or union of a man, nor of pleasurable generation, but of the Holy Spirit in the undefiled womb of the Virgin, and after the manner of Adam's first coming-into-being;

and He becomes obedient to the Father by the assumption taken from us and after our likeness, healing our disobedience and becoming for us a pattern of obedience, apart from which it is not possible to obtain salvation.

On the manner of the conception of God the Word and of His divine incarnation. For an angel of the Lord was sent to the holy Virgin, who was descended from the tribe of David;

for it is plain that our Lord sprang out of Judah, of which tribe no one has had to do with the altar, as the divine Apostle said;

concerning which we shall speak more precisely later.

Bringing her good tidings, he said:

Hail, you who are highly favored; the Lord is with you.

But she was troubled at the word, and the angel said to her:

for you have found favor with the Lord, and you shall bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus.

For He shall save His people from their sins. Whence 'Jesus' is interpreted 'Savior.'

How shall this be to me, since I know not a man? Again the angel said to her:

The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you.

Wherefore also the holy thing that shall be born shall be called the Son of God.

Be it to me according to your word.

After the consent of the holy Virgin, then, the Holy Spirit came upon her, according to the word of the Lord which the angel spoke, cleansing her and giving her power both to receive the divinity of the Word and to bring forth.

And then the enhypostatic Wisdom and Power of God the Most High overshadowed her, the Son of God who is consubstantial with the Father, like a divine seed, and from her pure and most undefiled blood compacted unto Himself flesh animated by a rational and intellectual soul, the first-fruits of our lump—not by way of seed, but creatively, through the Holy Spirit; the form not being completed by small additions, but perfected at once.

The very Word of God became the hypostasis (subsistence) of the flesh;

for God the Word was not united to flesh that pre-existed in itself, but, dwelling in the womb of the holy Virgin, in His own hypostasis and without circumscription, He caused to subsist, from the pure blood of the Virgin, flesh animated by a rational and intellectual soul, taking the first-fruits of human lump—the Word Himself becoming hypostasis to the flesh.

So that at once there was flesh, at once flesh of God the Word, at once flesh ensouled, rational and intellectual, at once flesh of God the Word ensouled, rational and intellectual.

Wherefore we do not speak of a man deified, but of God made man;

for being by nature perfect God, the same became by nature perfect man, not changing His nature, nor making the economy a mere appearance, but being united, according to hypostasis, without confusion, without alteration, and without division, to the flesh taken from the holy

Virgin, rationally and intellectually ensouled and having its being in Him, neither changing the nature of His divinity into the essence of the flesh, nor changing the essence of His flesh into the nature of His divinity, nor making out of His divine nature and the human nature which He assumed one composite nature.

On the two natures. For without change and without alteration the natures were united to each other, neither the divine nature departing from its own simplicity, nor the human nature either being changed into the nature of divinity or passing into non-existence, nor out of the two being made one composite nature;

for the composite nature cannot be consubstantial with either of the natures out of which it is composed, since it is made into something other out of others.

For instance, the body composed of the four elements is neither said to be consubstantial with fire, nor is it called fire, nor air, nor water, nor earth, nor is it consubstantial with any of these.

If, then, according to the heretics, Christ after the union was of one composite nature, He would have changed from a simple nature into a composite one, and would be neither consubstantial with the Father, who is of simple nature, nor with the mother (for she is not composed of divinity and humanity), nor would He be in divinity and humanity, nor would He be called either God or man, but Christ only;

and 'Christ' would be the name not of His hypostasis, but, according to them, of the one nature.

But we do not teach that Christ is of one composite nature, nor that He is something other out of others, as man is out of soul and body, or as a body is out of the four elements, but out of others the same things;

for we confess that out of divinity and humanity the same one both is and is called perfect God and perfect man, out of two and in two natures.

And the name 'Christ' we say is of the hypostasis, said not in one mode only, but as signifying the two natures;

for He Himself anointed Himself, anointing as God the body with His own divinity, and being anointed as man;

for He Himself is both this and that.

And the anointing is the divinity of the humanity.

For if Christ, being of one composite nature, is consubstantial with the Father, then the Father too will be composite and consubstantial with the flesh, which is absurd and full of all blasphemy.

And how shall one nature be receptive of contrary essential differences? For how is it possible for the same nature to be at the same time created and uncreated, mortal and immortal, circumscribed and uncircumscribed? And if, calling Christ of one nature, they should call this nature simple, either they will confess Him bare God and introduce the incarnation as a mere appearance, or a mere man, according to Nestorius.

And where is the perfection in divinity and the perfection in humanity? And when will they call Christ of two natures, while saying He is of one composite nature after the union? For that Christ was of one nature before the union is plain to everyone.

But this is what causes the error of the heretics—the saying that nature and hypostasis are the same.

And since we say that the nature of men is one, one must know that we say this not having regard to the principle of soul and body;

for it is impossible to say that the soul and the body, compared with each other, are of one nature.

But since there are very many hypostases of men, and all admit the same principle of nature (for all are composed of soul and body, and all have partaken of the nature of soul and possess the essence of body), we call the common species of the very many and different hypostases one nature—each hypostasis, of course, having two natures and existing in two natures, I mean soul and body.

But in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ there is no common species to be taken;

for there neither came to be, nor is, nor ever shall be another Christ out of divinity and humanity, the same one perfect God and perfect man in divinity and humanity.

Hence one cannot speak of one nature in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Wherefore indeed we say that the union came to be out of two perfect natures, divine and human, not by mingling or confusion or commixture, as the God-driven Dioscorus said, and Severus and their accursed band; nor in a prosopic or relational manner, or by dignity, or identity of will, or equality of honor, or unity of name, or good pleasure, as the God-hated Nestorius said, and Diodore, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, and their demoniacal assembly; but by composition—that is, according to hypostasis—without change, without confusion, without alteration, without division, without separation; and in two perfect natures we confess one hypostasis of the Son of God incarnate, saying that the hypostasis of His divinity and of His humanity is the same, and confessing that the two natures are preserved in Him after the union, not placing each separately and apart, but united to each other in the one composite hypostasis.

For we say the union is essential—that is, true and not according to appearance;

essential, not in the sense that the two natures formed one composite nature, but in that they were united to each other in truth into one composite hypostasis of the Son of God.

And we define that their essential difference is preserved;

for the created has remained created and the uncreated uncreated, and the mortal has remained mortal and the immortal immortal, and the circumscribed circumscribed and the uncircumscribed uncircumscribed, the visible visible and the invisible invisible;

the one shines forth in the miracles, the other has been subjected to the injuries.

And the Word appropriates the things of the manhood (for the things of His holy flesh are His own), and imparts to the flesh His own things, by way of the communication of properties (communicatio idiomatum), on account of the mutual interpenetration of the parts and the hypostatic union, and because it was one and the same who wrought both the divine and the human things in each form, with the participation of the other.

Wherefore indeed the Lord of glory is said to have been crucified, although His divine nature did not suffer; and the Son of Man, before the passion, was confessed to be in heaven, as the Lord Himself said.

For one and the same was the Lord of glory, who by nature and in truth became the Son of Man—that is, man—and we acknowledge both His miracles and His sufferings as His own, even though He worked miracles in one respect and endured the sufferings in another, the same one.

For we know that, just as His hypostasis is one, so also the essential difference of the natures is preserved.

But how could a difference be preserved if those that have the difference toward each other are not preserved? For difference is the difference of things that differ.

By the principle, then, by which the natures of Christ differ from each other—that is, by the principle of essence—we say that He is conjoined to the extremes: according to His divinity, to the Father and the Spirit; and according to His humanity, to His mother and to us;

for the same one is consubstantial, according to His divinity, with the Father and the Spirit, and according to His humanity, with His mother and with all men.

But by the principle by which His natures are conjoined, we say He differs from the Father and the Spirit, and from His mother and the rest of men;

for His natures are conjoined in the hypostasis, having one composite hypostasis, by which He differs from the Father and the Spirit, and from His mother and us.

But moreover, the parts of every composite nature have at one and the same time their production from non-being into being, for the completion of the whole.

And it is possible for things contemporaneous to form one composite nature, receiving such a definition and natural law from the Creator, so that by the law of nature, by succession, like is generated from like.

But in the case of the Lord, of the natures that were united, the one is without beginning and timeless, while the other had a beginning and is subject to time;

and it did not come to be as a species for the completion of the whole (since God did not cease from His works on the seventh day), nor were the two united naturally, but in a paradoxical and supernatural manner.

But things paradoxical and supernatural do not form a nature;

for we do not speak of a nature of the bush that consorted with fire and was not burned, nor of a nature of a man raised on high as if into heaven, nor of a nature

of a human body bedewed in the fire; but we say that these are paradoxical things concerning one hypostasis.

Thus also we say that the incarnation of the Lord, in one hypostasis of the hypostases of the Godhead, came to be as a union of the natures not by the law of nature, but by a supernatural economy; and neither by the limit of nature—so that from a Christ a Christ should be generated, and a species of Christs comprising many hypostases be formed—but one composite hypostasis out of two natures and in two natures and two natures, each nature, even after the union, preserving its own limit and law and its difference from the other.

For in the case of man, inasmuch as there is observed a difference of soul and body toward each other, we speak of two natures;

but inasmuch as there is not observed a natural difference of hypostases out of one hypostasis, and the things differing according to hypostasis but of the same species are said to be of one nature, while the things differing according to essence and united according to hypostasis are said to be of one hypostasis.

Hypostases, then, of different species are not compared or distinguished hypostatically, but naturally;

and hypostases of the same species are not compared or distinguished naturally.

And just as it is impossible for things differing by hypostatic difference to be of one hypostasis, so it is impossible for things differing by natural difference to be of one nature.

On the manner of the communication of properties. That essence is one thing and hypostasis another, we have said many times, and that essence signifies the common and comprehensive species of hypostases of the same kind—for example, God, man—while hypostasis denotes an individual, that is, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Peter, Paul.

One must know, then, that the name of divinity and of humanity is indicative of the essences or natures, while the words 'God' and 'man' are also applied to the nature, as when we say:

God is an incomprehensible essence, and that there is one God;

but it is taken also in the case of the hypostases, as when the more particular receives the name of the more universal, as when the Scripture says:

Therefore God, your God, has anointed you (for behold, it indicated the Father and the Son), and as when it says:

There was a man in the land of Uz (for it indicated Job alone).