Letter to George, Prefect of Africa 1 part 7/14

But knowing that, even in the union according to hypostasis, the natural property of each remains unchangeable, we equally turn away from both confusion and division;

neither do we understand the union as confusion, as though we were ignorant of the things that have been united;

nor making the difference into a division, as though knowing the things that differ to subsist divisibly, each according to itself,

This, then, as I think, the great Theologian Gregory also appears to teach in the Great Apologetic Oration, saying, "One from both, and through one, both"; as if he were saying: For just as [there is] one from both — that is, the one from two natures, as a whole from parts — according to the principle of the hypostasis;

so also, through the one according to hypostasis, as a whole, both [natures are] the parts according to the principle of nature, that is, the two.

Which, expounding more clearly in the second Oration On the Son, he says: "For even if the combination of both is one, it is not by nature, but by conjunction." And this same thing the blessed Cyril is also shown to hold in his letters to Succensus, in which, concerning the example of man, he says:

"So that the two are no longer two, but through both the one living being is completed" — almost crying out expressly in these words, that the constituents of the composition, both in the case of man according to us, [composed] of soul and body,

and also in the case of the mystery according to Christ, [composed] of divinity and humanity — the fact that they are two according to the essential principle is not abolished;

for otherwise, they would not even remain any longer of different essence.

But that they are two, [as] unit and unit, each independently self-subsisting, the principle of piety does not admit at all;

lest we divide the one man, that is, living being, into two men or two living beings;

and the one Christ into two Christs, or two Sons.

For if the blessed Cyril had not known well how everywhere to think, hold, and teach this, he would not have said that the difference of the natures is not abolished on account of the union;

he would not have taught that [Christ is] "one thing and another," "one and another," both "this" and "that," and both together the one Christ, and that the natures have remained unconfused;

he would not have held that the Word has not passed over into the nature of the flesh, nor that the flesh has not been changed into the very nature of the Word;

he would not have known the God-speaking men [to use] the evangelical and apostolic expressions concerning the Lord, some making them common, as [applying] to one person;

and others dividing them, as [applying] to two natures.

He would not have refused to say that the whole, that is, Christ, is one nature, if he had known this to be pious.

He would not have defined the human nature to be nothing other than flesh intellectively ensouled;

asserting through this that the nature of humanity in Christ is also complete.

He would not have said that by adding the [word] "incarnate," the indication of the essence according to us is introduced;

he would not have determined that it is indicative of right belief to say "two natures united indivisibly," [only] when the expression is not maliciously put forth in the manner that seemed [fit] to Nestorius.

He would not have appeared to say such things — indeed countless such things, as is clear to the diligent from his own writings.

From where then, and from which of the teachers, will they establish that the two natures in Christ, from which He also is, preserved after the union even according to them, as they say, need not be piously confessed by the faithful?

For none at all of the approved teachers is found to have decreed this;

on the contrary, all of them both said [it] and taught the faithful to say [it], through their own words;

unless, indeed, having fashioned from their own heart, as is their custom, what seems [good to them], they should put forward the fabrication as belonging to one of the Fathers, for the sake of deceiving the more guileless.

But these men, as it seems — accounting it a disgrace to be persuaded [otherwise], and preferring their attachment to the men who deceived them from the beginning over divine love, and preferring contentiousness to piety, and preferring to be honored as priests by the people to whom, by lying against us about things that are not so, they bring deceit —

and [preferring] to receive evil for evil — I mean the perishable things, the wages of deceit — making the acceptance and honor from God that comes through concord of the faith of lesser account, they do not cease warring against the truth and attempting to alienate from it as many as they can.

I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who create dissensions and stumbling-blocks contrary to the teaching that you have learned, and turn away from them.

For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own belly;

and through smooth talk and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the guileless.

And again, concerning these same men, who are accustomed to stir up disturbances in the Church of God, [the Apostle], writing to the Corinthians, [says] the following:

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

For Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light.

So it is no great thing if his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness;

whose end will be according to their deeds.

For the Lord, alluding [to this] in the Gospels, proclaimed it beforehand, as it were safeguarding the faithful, saying:

Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing;

but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

By their fruits you will know them.

Concerning these same men the holy Evangelist John also, in his first catholic [epistle], making the pious more sober-minded, says: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are from God;"

because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

By this you know the Spirit of God:

every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ having come in the flesh is from God;

and every spirit that does not confess [the] Lord Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh, is not from God;

and this is it, and it is now already in the world.

Always remembering these words, I entreat you, O blessed ones, that all of you hold fast, with all attention and diligence, to piety — than which nothing is more proper for men toward being befriended to God — turning away with all your power from those who do not accept the pious and salvific dogmas of the Church;

and especially having learned that it belongs to the teaching of Antichrist not to confess our Lord and God Jesus Christ [as having come] in the flesh, as the great Evangelist John expressly cries out;

which those who now war against the Church of God openly proclaim, denying the nature of the flesh, by not enduring to confess that it is saved and exists in Christ;

and they do not even shudder — to speak more gently, or rather, to speak more fittingly, more boldly — at setting themselves forth as heralds of an opinion opposed to God.

But these men, having chosen to be so precariously disposed with regard to the faith, reap the fruit worthy of their folly:

namely, to have acquired, easily detectable by all, the proof of [their] impiety.

A brief exposition of the understanding of the expressions of the faith rightly confessed concerning Christ according to the Catholic Church.

But we — to speak with [the help of] God — who feed upon the divine and pure pasture of ecclesiastical teaching, possessing the unassailable glory of piety, boldly profess to confess piously, before God and men, all the pious expressions of the Fathers concerning Christ, understanding each with pious intent and fitting reasoning;

as from above, from the beginning, through those who became ministers of grace, we were catechized in the saving word of the faith.

We confess, then, our Lord Jesus Christ to be, on the one hand, composed of two natures, as of divinity and humanity;

and, on the other hand, knowing him to exist in two natures, as in divinity and humanity.

For just as, saying [he is] of two natures, we glorify him to be of divinity and humanity;

so also, saying [he exists] in two natures, we fittingly signify him to exist in divinity and humanity;

as being separated from none of the natures from which he is constituted after the union, but always existing and being known in them, from which he also is.

For as we believe him to be, and to be called, Son of God and God, by nature and in truth, on account of the identity of essence with God the Father;

we say [it] by nature and in truth, on account of [his] natural kinship according to the flesh with her who bore him.

For if we do not confess him to be two natures, [namely] both God and man together, we shall be convicted of saying that he is composed of bare names, and not of realities;

and that he is not, in truth, that which is signified by the names to be.

So that, according to that very [logic] which the one who chooses to blaspheme would suppose to say, the one worshiped and served by us could then be nothing at all — a thing which has surpassed the very excess of all impiety.

and in two natures, as in divinity and humanity;

and believing [him to be] two natures, as the same one being, together, both God and man;

because [he exists] not only in these, but is also these [very things];

nor these only, but also in these, knowing [him] as a whole from parts, and a whole in parts, and a whole through the parts.

For if He, having given being to the things that are, also granted [them] the power for permanence, so that the forms should not be confused with one another nor change into one another, but each should remain according to the principle by which it came to be from Him;

so that, from the stability that exists according to the natural property of each thing, those who diligently love the contemplation of divine things might, as far as attainable, conceive of the all-wise and all-knowing Author of the coming-to-be and Marshal of the universe;

much more might he confirm within himself his own infinitely potent power,

remaining what he was, and becoming what he was not;

and not denying what he became, while remaining what he was, by existing both without deficiency and without change as both;

And we also piously say that there is "one incarnate nature of God the Word," with flesh possessing an intellective and rational soul, by adding the term "incarnate" introducing the indication of the essence that is according to us.

For it is a periphrasis, [signifying] in the same [subject] according to the union, showing forth the two natures by means of a name and a definition;

by the name, [it signifies] the one nature of the Word, which signifies what is common of the essence together with the particular element of the hypostasis;

and by the definition, [it signifies] the human [nature], as the Teacher himself says: "For what is the nature of humanity, except that it is flesh ensouled intellectively?"

So that he who says "one incarnate nature of God the Word" declares that God the Word exists together with ensouled flesh, understanding the flesh as being altogether something else according to essence, distinct from God the Word — as does the true and unadulterated disciple of piety.

And also, in speaking of the union according to hypostasis, we understand and confess that the union has come to be resulting in one [reality] out of the natures;

so that neither [nature] exists at all by itself, nor is conceived [as existing] by itself, but together with the [nature] that is composed and grown together with it;

nor again is it confounded with the other according to the essential principle, nor does it suffer, in any way whatsoever, diminution of its natural perfection from the union.

And again we confess the "natural union" [as said] instead of saying "true" [union], just as the holy Cyril himself both spoke and expounded these expressions;

and not for the abolition of the two natures out of which Christ is, after the union, or of one of them, as Apollinarius, Eutyches, and Severus — following Simon Magus, Valentinus, and Mani — have set forth; as it is easy for those who wish, from the very writings of Severus himself to the aforementioned impious men, to observe, according to the agreement of the words, the identity of the doctrines.

Likewise we affirm the two births of the same and one Christ: the one from God the Father before the ages, and the one that took place for our sake in the last times from the holy Virgin;

we glorify both the miracles and the sufferings as belonging to the same [one].

We also confess the holy, all-glorious Virgin to be, properly and in truth, Theotokos;

as being the mother not of some mere man — even one formed beforehand, as it were in the twinkling of an eye, apart from union with the Word, and afterward deified from the progress of works and from the summit attained unto virtue —

but as the mother of him who is truly God the Word himself, the One of the Holy Trinity, who was made flesh from her according to an ineffable conception, and became man completely.

Having thus taught her own [children] to speak and to understand piously these her expressions, the holy Church of God has committed [them] to be guarded by the divine and radiant light of knowledge;

exhorting, through the Prophets and Apostles, and through Christ himself who by his own sufferings constructed and fitted her together, [us] to take up a life fitting and befitting the great profession of the faith;

discerning what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God;

and keeping watch unto it.

For we have been taught that we need, no less than pious faith, an excellent manner of life in order to attain eternal life;

lest, having built upon the foundation of faith things that do not befit [it], through wicked practices, thereby insulting the calling and the grace of adoption, we render ourselves liable, instead of unending joy and glory, to eternal fire.

Therefore, seeing the many paths of virtue, O blessed ones, and sober lovers of Christ's blessed beauty, [paths] given by the Lord of all to mankind, having one aim, and all converging toward one goal, namely salvation — let us not neglect our own salvation, nor let us give up beforehand the time given to us for repentance, which it is impossible to obtain again.

But before we go, as the great Job somewhere says, whence we shall not return, into a dark and gloomy land, into a land of eternal darkness, where there is no light, nor is the life of mortals seen, let us be zealous, each according to his own power, to propitiate God.

For, in accordance with the varied and diverse states of our souls, [God], being good, has fittingly made the paths many, leading blamelessly those who journey through them to the eternal dwellings, so that each one, having chosen for himself the one suited to him, and having made the course of his life by means of it, might attain the all-glorious place set before [us] in the heavens according to [our] hopes.

Therefore, as we have power, let us, with the cooperation and grace of Christ, lay hold of what is fitting;

Let us compassionately lighten the misfortune of the poor man, and let us not neglect to make his want more bearable;

Let us not put off, in reverence for the garment of incorruption given to us, covering the nakedness of the naked;

Let us suffer together with those worn out by the affliction of imprisonment, and with those oppressed by bodily weakness and the burden of exile, and let us be zealous to make our own the hardships of others;

so that, imitating toward our kinsmen him who took up our weaknesses and bore our sicknesses, and honoring by [our] deeds his loving self-emptying for our sake, we too might be able to become worthy to be beholders and partakers of his glory;

not practicing these things for the sake of the glory that is from men, of which, after the present life, there subsists nothing at all with a view to a reckoning of acceptance;

but becoming wholly God's in truth, and, through love toward one another, serving him who both is and becomes all things to all, let us both say and do all things by which we shall be well-pleasing to him.

For thus, by the piecemeal advances in virtue, we shall, with God, be able to affirm that we have duly at last attained the divine philosophy;

and to be transformed toward the life above, having despised all things upon the earth;

considering it better and more honorable rather to hold the last rank with God, than to bear the first [rank] of earthly things with the king below;

beginning, according to this [disposition], to acquire for ourselves, and having accustomed the perceptive faculties of the soul to behold creation quietly, calmly, and prudently, let us carry off the greatest gain: to be well guided, through the turbulence and instability of visible things, toward the things that stand fast and are not moved;

but not to remain in them, nor to endure being held fast by them;

from which, on the one hand, having hated the disorder of these [visible things];

and, through the great works among visible things, apprehending, insofar as attainable for men, the principles that are among intelligible things;

and thus, truly, through speechlessness having peered into the innermost shrine of shrines, we shall recognize our own lowliness, being taught mystically through the oracles of the Spirit how, though being earth and ashes, we come to share in divine glory, by the grace of him who was well-pleased [to grant it];

and to what kind of blessedness that which is by nature lowly and contemptible is transformed;

and thus, being struck with awe at the spectacles of the Infinite, we shall gather the strong safeguard of the virtues — I mean humility, God's greatest and first gift, being the fruit of true philosophy — through which, putting to death the causes of the passions, I mean the senses, together with the kindred affinity of sensible things toward them, we cut ourselves off entirely from the world;

so as to be able, with the unclouded eye of the soul, to fix [our gaze] upon intelligible things;

from which, or after which, the soul, now truly having been qualified by humility, and thereby having become capable of receiving the image of the divine manifestation, divine love, having taken it up, makes us friends instead of slaves;

granting [us] the chief point of the Law, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul," and so on, in that it permits none of the intellective powers within us to be stretched out virilely toward anything else at all, except toward God alone.

Let us therefore strive, while we have the time set before us by God, to bring into deed the aim of the pious and Christian profession.

But since our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, the unseen tyrants and enemies, who wage their battles not openly, but who weave their wars in the hidden part of the heart, let us take up the whole armor of God, as the divine Apostle exhorts us, so that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having accomplished all things, to stand;

and having girded our loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, in which all the fiery darts of the evil one shall be quenched;

Let us persevere in all prayer and supplication, and let us receive the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, dividing — to put it concisely — the worse from the better, and teaching the pious the conduct befitting Christians, which is the work of perfect discernment;

exactness of the eyes, restraint of the tongue;

a humble mindset, purity of thought;

the eradication of anger, as the great Basil somewhere says;

the kindling of the mind toward God; and to contend against temptations for the sake of guarding what is precious; and, being pressed into compulsory service, to add [yet more of our own accord];

not to go to law when being defrauded;

to repay hatred with love in equal measure;

[to repay] blasphemies with consolation;

to transfer the whole of [our] love unreservedly toward God.

but wishing you to know what kind and how great a struggle I have concerning you, [a struggle] that continually inflames my heart with anxious care;

and I exhort [you] to watch more soberly against the champions of the heresies;

lest any of them, having deceived you by persuasive speech of falsehood, be able to muddy the clear and living stream of the faith within you with the filth of their own impious doctrines — which may it never happen.

For they possess a tongue [that is] a two-edged sword and a sharpened razor, slaying souls, and sending [them] off to the pit of Hades and the abyss of darkness, and depriving [them] of life in Christ through their deceiving fair speech.

[May] the Maker of all visible and invisible creation, who, on account of his ineffable love for mankind, just as he himself was well-pleased [to do], accepted death on our behalf, and delivered us by his own blood from the dominion of darkness —

may he himself take hold of your right hand, and guide you into the fear of him, and fill [you] with the knowledge of his will, in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, and may he persuade [you] to walk worthily of himself, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of his truth, and may he strengthen [you] with all power according to the might of his glory unto all edification and long-suffering.

By the same [author], to Peter the illustris: a concise discourse against the doctrines of Severus.

My blessed lord has truly shown that bodily absence from one another can do nothing to diminish spiritual love;

for those who, according to God, are joined to one another intellectively through love;

not having deemed it unworthy [of himself], through his precious letters, to visit me, the humble and sinful one, who has nothing worthy of his love;

Having received these, as though he himself were present, I embraced [them] joyfully in spirit and kissed [them], and, as is my custom, I gave thanks to Christ, the only God and Savior of all, having learned that he had safely completed the watery voyage.

For truly my blessed lord is sweet both when present and when absent — no less lovable to all than when present — on account of the grace of the poverty of the Holy Spirit shining upon him;

on account of which every one who genuinely partakes of this virtue as belonging to God — of him who humbled himself even unto the form of a servant, and displayed it to men in himself both in deed and in word — becomes a holy temple, a dwelling-place of God in the Spirit;

imitating whom, my blessed lord has himself also inwardly acquired both meekness and humility,

meekness, on the one hand, so that, having quenched the passionate movements of anger and of desire, he might become pleasing to God and to men;

for meekness, being nothing other than this, is established as the complete immobility of anger and desire toward what is contrary to nature;

according to which the divine will becomes manifest to those who possess it:

"He will teach the meek his ways."

and humility also, so that, having cut away the callosities of pride, he might become both well-pleasing to God and approachable to all men;

for humility is each one's recognition, in relation to God, arrived at by a juxtaposed comparison with the transcendent and creative cause;

according to which the mutual fellow-feeling of men toward one another naturally comes to be, and the forgiveness of trespasses is granted to those who are debtors.

My blessed lord, then, standing thus with regard to his manner of life, I pray that he be preserved unshaken — true to his name — in the firmament of faith in Christ, and superior to every heretical tempest, as a genuine child of the holy catholic and apostolic Church of God,

founded upon the pious confession,

against which the wicked mouths of the heretics, opening as it were like the gates of Hades, have absolutely no power whatsoever.

that you, the blessed, might write, in accordance with the prophetic word:

"As a dog to its own vomit" — I mean the malodorousness of the foulness of their faith — they are going to return;

and, as they suppose, doing no wrong by their apostasy to the heralds of piety, but rather being justly harmed themselves by the deprivation of grace;

and not even being able to enjoy to their heart's content the present age, for the sake of which they departed from the truth — [an age] by nature unstable and easily changeable, and always running past those who suppose they hold it fast.

For truly disgusting, and full of foul stench, and destitute of all grace is every teaching which proclaims that, in the one Christ, the [natures] out of which Christ [consists] are not preserved according to nature after the ineffable union;

but as it were denies the whole economy of God concerning man, and circumcises that which was assumed by God the Word — from the immaculate and holy, all-glorious Virgin, and truly Theotokos — the rational, ensouled body.

For he who, after the union, does not say that the nature of the flesh exists, and is preserved, and is [still] spoken of — [the flesh] united to God the Word unconfusedly and indivisibly according to hypostasis — under the pretext, forsooth, of piety, so as not to seem to divide the union by means of number, thereby clearly denying, to speak properly, the whole existence, after the union, of the natures out of which Christ is — truly circumcises the reality in fact, even though he may seem somehow to make a bare confession with his mouth, as a deception of his hearers, and altogether denies the incarnation.

And this they suffer, as it seems, because they are ignorant that every number neither divides, according to its own principle, nor is itself divided;

nor is it in any way productive of division, nor indeed of union.

For it is not by nature such as to act or to be acted upon, since it is not a substance or an accident —

[substance and accident being] the things to which acting and being acted upon pertain —

but is only indicative of the quantity of the underlying realities, however they may happen to stand with regard to their relation,

whether united or distinguished.

For example — if I may venture to say something — [number is] a term signifying quantity, apart from the relation attached to it.

For number does not of necessity produce the natural distinction of beings, or their quantity;

nor does it of itself effect the continuity of things joined together under the same species;

nor indeed is it in any way characteristic of the property of individuals which are distinguished from one another by their accidents under the same species.

For to do these things is the proper work of the divine wisdom and power, which constituted the universe, and preserves each thing unconfused by the distinctions concerning the universe made according to the nature of beings;

but [number], as I have said, only makes a declaration of the simple quantity of things, not of their manner, just like some term proper to quantity.

If, then, according to the Fathers, number is indicative of the quantity of things, but not of their relation;

and every quantity, considered in terms of natural otherness, necessarily admits of difference;

and even those who fight against the truth speak of a natural difference in Christ after the union;

it being impossible for there to be difference without the number that signifies it —

apart from which it is impossible for quantity to be known at all — then they must of necessity say [that there is number] after the union,

if indeed, in accordance with a well-ordered sequence, they wish to demonstrate that the argument of their own doctrine is well-connected.

But if they deny the quantity, after the union, of the natures preserved in Christ, let them not dare to speak, either, of the difference of the natures out of which Christ is, after the union;

knowing that whatever has difference in any respect whatsoever cannot be one according to every principle and mode.

And that which cannot be one according to every principle and mode is evidently, according to some principle and mode, at least two, or more.

Therefore those who say that there is difference in Christ after the union cannot say that Christ is one according to every principle and mode after the union;

and if Christ, after the union, is not one according to every principle and mode,

then evidently, according to some principle and mode, Christ is certainly two after the union.

And if, according to some principle and mode, Christ is two after the union — on account of the difference within him of the natures out of which, and in which, he is, as the argument has shown — then it is clear that those are vainly impious who, while speaking of the difference of the natures out of which Christ is after the union, manifestly annul by their silence, after the union, the very natures of which there is the difference;