Letter to George, Prefect of Africa 1 part 9/14

so that by means of these very expressions he might at once drive away from the divine court both the confusion of Apollinarius and the division of Nestorius, evils diametrically opposed to each other;

and become a pure worshipper of the mystery;

confessing the same one as having been begotten from above, from the Father, before all the ages;

and the same one from below, namely, by the assumption of flesh animated rationally and intellectually, having been born of the Mother for our sake in the last times.

And on this account believing the holy Virgin to be, properly and in truth, the Theotokos, because, having conceived the Word himself instead of by seed, she has borne in her womb and given birth to him made flesh from herself;

the same one working the miracles;

the same one, by his own will, enduring the experience of human sufferings, the same one crucified, buried, and risen on the third day according to the Scriptures;

taken up, incarnate, into the heavens, from which he had come down to us without flesh, as he himself knows;

he who, as God, has by nature no transition from place to place;

For he is by nature infinite, and therefore in no way contained by the things that exist, as being free from all circumscription; and by nature loving toward mankind, and therefore, by his own will, enduring our fleshly birth, and becoming containable by what is ours;

the same one who is to come with the distribution, prepared to give to each according to his worth.

The aforementioned most God-beloved lord Cosmas, who gladly welcomed this confession—him I too received rejoicing, and, having come to know his simple disposition according to Christ, I preferred it above my own soul;

and concerning the dogmatic chapters about which he inquired, I gave him a written, concise reply;

and it is fitting that you also, guarded by God, receive this and exercise yourselves in it.

For you will benefit him through your excellent exposition upon the text, filling in the sense of what has been omitted on account of its brevity;

and so much, then, concerning this matter.

But I remind you, guarded by God, to watch and to pray according to the command of the Lord, lest we be caught in the snares of the temptations that beset us from every side;

For if we watch and are sober, I know that we are guarded against the wiles of the demons;

and if we pray, we draw to our aid the divine grace, fighting alongside us, and rendering us victors over every opposing power, and delivering us from all error and ignorance;

and especially now we ought to do this;

because even apart from the commandment, nature itself becomes a teacher of taking refuge in God, taking circumstance as its counselor.

For what is more critical than the evils that now encompass the inhabited world?

and what is more terrible for those who perceive the things that are happening?

and what is more pitiable or more fearful for those who suffer these things?

To see a nomadic and barbarous nation running through a foreign land as though it were its own;

and to see the civilized way of life being consumed by wild and untamed beasts, who possess only the bare outward shape of humans;

and a Jewish people, who from of old delight in human blood, and who know the murder of God's creature as the only thing well-pleasing to the divine;

and, on this account, raging all the more, so as to become more conspicuous, in the abundance of its wickedness, than all those notorious for evil;

and supposing that they serve God by the very things at which God is offended;

the most faithless of all the peoples upon the earth;

and therefore most apt for the reception of the opposing power;

heralding, in every manner and disposition, the advent of the evil one;

and, through the things it does, signaling the coming of the Antichrist, since it did not recognize him who is truly the Savior;

a nation hostile and lawless, both man-hating and God-hating, and on this account man-hating all the more because it is God-hating, and permitted to indulge in outrages against the saints;

since vengeance is near, so that it may be punished all the more justly, its tyranny and rebellion against God having been fully manifested through its deeds.

...the people who are champions of falsehood, artificers of bloodshed, and enemies of truth;

the bitter persecutor of my faith, through which the error of polytheism was overthrown and the phalanxes of demons were driven away;

For the Lord Most High is terrible, a great King over all the earth.

The only-begotten Son was made known to them mystically, having sojourned among them through flesh;

Lord indeed, as one enjoining virtue upon servants who submit through the practice of the commandments;

Most High, as the giver of true knowledge to those who, through desire for wisdom by means of contemplation, press on toward the comprehension of the mysteries stripped bare of symbols;

Terrible, as judge, and avenger of transgressions;

King, as the distributor to each of what has been prepared according to merit;

and great, as one who, beyond nature, works contraries by means of contraries;

and creating impassibility through suffering, and life through death, and by a paradoxical power, through his own privations according to the flesh, bestowing upon nature the immutable dispositions of good things;

And not even thus is the deranged people ashamed, nor does it cease persecuting faith and virtue,

which things it clearly persecutes on account of malice;

as one who has fallen away from both, and does not know that he has fallen, limping upon both knees, and being wholly unable to rise up from the fall of impiety—or rather unwilling, to speak more properly;

as one who always betrays faith and virtue for the sake of pride and pleasure—an apostate and foolish people, an untaught nation.

Having apportioned his life between these two, the apostate, full of iniquities, makes the one his mother of apostasy from God, and the other the artificer of hatred of mankind;

so that both God and creation are outraged by him;

the one being despised, the other being corrupted by the pollutions of his practices.

What, as I have said, is more terrible than these things to the eyes or ears of Christians?

A harsh and monstrous nation, permitted to be seen lifting up hands against the divine inheritance!

But it is the multitude of our sins that has caused these things to come to pass.

For we have not conducted our lives worthily of the Gospel of Christ.

We have all sinned, we have all transgressed the law, we have all forsaken the way of the commandments—the way that said, 'I am the way'—and we have turned savage against one another, ignoring the grace of his love for mankind, and the mystery of the sufferings of God incarnate for us;

and we have traveled impassable paths, having ratified by the disposition of our mind, that is to say, our attachments to the passions of dishonor;

But let us watch and pray, lest our hearts be further weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness,

For dissipation is the wavering concerning the doctrine of faith in times of persecution;

and drunkenness is the casting off of the thoughts according to nature, through which the true discernment of beings naturally comes about, whenever the soul, through weakness, yields to the assaults of temptations;

and, having been darkened, it suffers agitation concerning, as I have said, the doctrine of faith.

For if we pray and watch, we hold the faith in our Lord and God Jesus Christ all the more firmly, beholding and receiving by experience the fulfillment of what he foretold;

and we are not at all bewildered, nor do we endure any turmoil of soul, as though suffering contrary to the promise, but we hold the faith more firmly, beholding through the events the fulfillment of the Lord's prediction—

for the fulfillment of what was foretold has the power to produce [confirmation of] faith, all the more through the things that come to pass; and we shall confirm our faith, finding him who spoke to be true;

and let us confess him as God before men, dreading no death whatsoever;

so that he too may confess us before the Father;

and may present us, saved, through the good confession, of which he himself made the beginning as the pattern for our own good [confession];

having testified before Pontius Pilate, and having confessed the good confession;

which may we be deemed worthy, by his grace, to imitate, whenever the occasion should call;

not rashly rushing upon the dangers incurred for the doctrine of piety, but fleeing the temptations as far as possible, both out of consideration for our persecutors, and out of a discerning assessment of the natural weakness inherent in us;

instructing those who are as infants, and awaiting the Word who summons;

who, invisibly present in the contests of those who lawfully contend on behalf of piety, runs through the course of martyrdom;

as being alone able to conquer sense-perception and nature;

since martyrdom is clearly a victory over sense-perception and over nature, through which the uprising of mind and reason against the passions naturally comes about, in accordance with which the desire for God is confirmed, paradoxically persuading, through death, those who love him to pass over to the one desired;

He who employs, he says, the term of the two natures solely to indicate the difference in Christ, contends against Apollinarius;

and he who, in turn, uses the term of the one incarnate nature of God the Word casts out the division of Nestorius.

For he who equally flees the impiety of each of these employs both terms.

By the same [author], concerning the common and the particular, that is, concerning essence and hypostasis, to Cosmas, the most God-beloved deacon of Alexandria.

To the most God-beloved lord Cosmas the deacon, Maximus the humble sends greeting.

Since much discourse has arisen among us concerning the divine incarnation, you having touched upon the very subtle dogmas of piety, and having taken occasion from these, you demanded of my humble self, O man of God, to state what the common and the universal is;

and what the particular and the proper is;

so that from this the whole doctrine of the union might become clear to us;

I shall say nothing at all of my own;

but I shall state what I was taught by the Fathers, departing in nothing from their teaching on these matters.

The common, then, and the universal—that is, the generic—according to the Fathers, is essence and nature;

for they say that these are identical with one another.

The particular and the individual, on the other hand, are hypostasis and person;

for these too, according to them, are the same as one another.

And the great Basil makes this clear, writing thus to Terentius: 'But if we too must state briefly what we think, we shall say this: that essence stands to hypostasis in the same relation as the common stands to the particular.'

'Essence and hypostasis have the same difference between them as the common has in relation to the particular,'

'for instance, as "animal" relates to "a certain man."' And after other matters he says:

'Those who say that essence and hypostasis are the same are compelled to confess only different persons.' And again, teaching a certain rule, he wrote, interpreting the meaning of homoousios:

'And this term also corrects the error of Sabellius.'

'For it does away with the identity of hypostasis, and introduces the perfect notion of the persons;'

'for a thing is not consubstantial with itself, but one thing with another.'

'So that it is fitting and pious, both marking out the distinct property of the hypostases and setting forth the invariability of the nature.' And again, in his second letter to the Neocaesareans, he teaches, saying:

'For one must know that, just as he who does not confess the community of essence falls into polytheism,'

'so he who does not grant the properties of the hypostases is swept away into Judaism.' And again, in the document which he caused Eustathius the Armenian to sign, he is seen writing explicitly:

'It is fitting, therefore, to confess clearly that they believe according to the words set forth by our Fathers at Nicaea, and according to the sound sense conveyed by those words,'

'for there are some who, even within this creed, corrupt the word of truth, and twist the sense of its words to suit their own will,'

'inasmuch as even Marcellus dared, impiously, [to sin] against the hypostasis of our Lord Jesus Christ, and, interpreting him as a mere word (reason), pretended to have derived his starting points from there, wickedly misinterpreting the meaning of homoousios.'

'And some, following the impiety of the Libyan Sabellius, supposing hypostasis and essence to be identical, draw from this the grounds for constructing their own blasphemy, from the fact that it is written in the creed: "But if anyone says the Son of God is of a different essence or hypostasis, the holy and catholic Church anathematizes him."'

For those [Fathers] did not say that essence and hypostasis are the same;

for if the terms signified one and the same concept, what need would there be of both?

But it is clear that, while some deny [the phrase] “from the essence,” others assert [it as being] “from some other hypostasis”:

thus they forbade both as alien to the ecclesiastical mind

Since indeed, wherever they made their own view clear, they said the Son is from the essence of the Father, no longer adding “from the hypostasis”:

So that the former [expression] is set forth for the refutation of the evil opinion:

while the latter contains the manifestation of the salvific doctrine. In agreement with this, Gregory also, surnamed “the Theologian,” in his first theological oration, appears to say the following:

“When I speak of the mean, I mean the truth:”

“toward which alone it is well to look, both rejecting the base contraction and the more absurd division:”

“lest, out of fear of polytheism, the account be contracted into one hypostasis, and we be left with mere names, supposing that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same one.” And again, a little further on:

“Since it is necessary both to preserve the one God, and to confess the three hypostases:”

“that is, three persons, each with its own particular property”

“It would thus be preserved, as my argument holds, as one God, since the Son and the Spirit are referred to one cause, without being compounded or conflated:”

“while the three hypostases [are preserved], with no conflation, dissolution, or confusion whatsoever being conceived:”

“lest the whole be dissolved through the very means by which the One is exalted more than is fitting”

“and according to the one and the same movement and will—if I may so name it—of the Godhead, and the identity of essence.” And again in the Farewell Oration:

“We believe in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit:”

“consubstantial and of equal glory, in whom also baptism has its consummation:”

“you know, you who have been initiated, that it is a renunciation of godlessness and a confession of divinity:”

“and thus we are made complete, recognizing on the one hand the one in essence, and in the undivided nature of worship:”

“and when I speak of [the three], you are illumined round about by one light, and by three:”

“by three, according to the properties, that is, the hypostases, if it is agreeable to anyone to call them so, or else persons:”

“for we shall in no way quarrel over names, so long as the syllables lead to the same concept:”

“and by one, according to the account of the essence, that is, of the Godhead.” Such was the harmony of the divine dogmas which our God-proclaiming Fathers Gregory and Basil set forth as existing, expressly stating the same thing:

[calling] by essence the nature, as common and universal:

and by hypostasis the person, as particular and individual:

in no way confusing the meaning of what is said, through a mutual interchange and conflation of these terms

For, being energized by one and the same Spirit, they have handed down to the peoples the correct confession of the faith

And you will find, in agreement with these, that all who by the grace of the Spirit were entrusted with the helm of the Church have also championed the correct account of the pious faith, and have not deviated from this understanding in any way whatsoever

A more physical demonstration, showing that none of the things that exist

is the same as another both in essence and in hypostasis:

but the things that are the same in essence are different in their hypostases:

while the things that are the same in hypostasis are altogether different in essence

If, then, essence and nature are the same:

and person and hypostasis are the same, it is clear that things which are of one nature and consubstantial with one another are, without exception, of different hypostases from one another

For, in respect of both—I mean nature and hypostasis—nothing among existing things is the same as another

that is, [things of one nature] cannot also possess one person and one hypostasis:

and the things united according to one and the same hypostasis, that is, person, could never be joined together according to one and the same essence, that is, nature:

that is, being of one and the same essence and nature, they could never be found to have come to be [one, in that respect]

But the things united according to one and the same nature, that is, essence:

that is, things being of one and the same essence and nature, are distinguished from one another by their hypostases, that is, persons, as is the case with angels and with men, and with all creatures considered in species and genus

For angel is distinguished from angel, man from man, ox from ox, and dog from dog according to hypostasis, but not according to nature and essence

And the argument will venture to say the greater thing: that not even in the case of that first, beginningless, and creative cause of beings do we observe nature and hypostasis to be the same as one another:

since indeed we know one essence and nature of the Godhead, existing in three hypostases differing from one another in their properties:

and three hypostases in one and the same essence and nature of the Godhead

For it is Unity in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, that is worshipped by us:

Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, one God:

the Son not being the Father, but being what the Father is:

nor the Spirit being the Son, but being what the Son is:

for all that the Father is, except unbegottenness, the Son also is (for he is begotten); and all that the Son is, except begottenness, the Holy Spirit also is (for it proceeds)

Unbegottenness, begottenness, and procession do not cut the one nature and power of the ineffable Godhead into three unequal or equal essences and natures:

but rather characterize as persons those [realities] in which, or which, the one Godhead—that is, essence and nature—is

being constitutive of the person, they differ in respect of the account of the essence, that is, the nature:

as is the case with the human soul and body, and with as many things as have their union with one another according to hypostasis

For these do not happen to be consubstantial with one another

Therefore, the things united according to one and the same essence, that is, nature—that is, being of one and the same essence and nature—are altogether consubstantial with one another, and yet of different hypostases:

consubstantial, on account of the essential commonality contemplated in them, unvaryingly, in natural identity:

according to which no one is, more than another, that which it both is and is called:

but all admit one and the same definition and account of the essence

And [they are] of different hypostases, on account of the personal otherness that distinguishes them, according to which one is distinguished from another, not coinciding with one another in the characteristic properties according to hypostasis:

but each, by the aggregate of properties belonging to it, bears the most particular account of its own [existence] according to hypostasis:

according to which it does not admit communion with things of the same nature and consubstantial with it

But the things united according to one and the same hypostasis, that is, person—that is, being constitutive parts, by union, of one and the same hypostasis—are of the same hypostasis as one another, and yet of different essences

Of the same hypostasis, on account of the undivided personal unity completed from them through union:

according to which the properties that divide each one in respect of its own essential distinctiveness, by virtue of their concurrence with one another in coexisting together, become characteristic marks of the one hypostasis completed from them:

according to which the identity with one another is observed, admitting no difference whatsoever:

as is the case with the human soul and body

For the properties that mark off someone's body from the rest of bodies, and someone's soul from the rest of souls, having come together in union, at one and the same time both characterize and mark off from the rest of men the hypostasis completed from them—of Peter, let us say, or of Paul:

but not [do they mark off] the soul of Peter or Paul from its own body

For both soul and body are the same as one another, on account of the one hypostasis completed from them through union:

because neither of these two subsisted by itself, separated from the other, prior to their composition into the coming-to-be of the species

For simultaneous is the generation, simultaneous the composition, and simultaneous also the completion of the species from them according to composition

But heteroousia is according to the principle of their natural otherness in relation to one another;

according to which they in no way admit, in respect of essence, one another's definitions and principles;

but each renders itself, in respect of its own essence, ever different, incongruent with the principle of the other;

according to which, while preserving the essential difference between soul and body, we do not confound the hypostasis completed from them by the mutual conversion and change of the parts — that is, the natures — of which it was composed, a confusion that would result in its annihilation.

But if, according to the concurrence of soul and body together for the generation of a species, a certain man is by nature constituted;

on the one hand, by reason of the natural commonality of his own parts, preserving consubstantiality with other men;

and on the other hand, by reason of the particularity of the same parts, preserving toward other men his distinctness of hypostasis;

being united, on the one hand, to other men by the natural commonality of his own parts, in relation to whom he bears one and the same nature according to species;

but being divided from the rest of men, on the other hand, by the hypostatic particularity of his parts, in relation to whom he bears a person other and different according to hypostasis;

by which principle he is distinguished from other men, preserving wholly undivided the unity of his own indivisible personal monad;

and by which principle he is by nature united to other men, preserving unconfused the difference between his parts arising from the essential otherness of his own parts.

such has become the principle of the incarnation of the One, God the Word, of the Holy and Consubstantial and Worshipful Trinity.

That Christ, being united by the essential commonalities of his own parts to the extremes, preserved the difference of the parts in relation to one another;

but by the particularities of the parts, he demonstrated himself to be, according to hypostasis, the same as a whole, common to both.

that is, he became perfect man, evidently by the assumption of flesh possessing a mind-endowed and rational soul, flesh which received in him both its nature and its hypostasis;

that is, both its being and its subsisting, at the very moment of the Logos's conception;

since the Logos himself, instead of seed;

or rather, was found willingly to be the seed of his own incarnation, and he who was simple and uncomposite according to nature became composite according to hypostasis;

one and the same, remaining unchangeable, undivided, and unconfused in the permanence of the parts of which he was constituted;

so that he might be, according to hypostasis, a mediator for the parts of which he was composed;

joining in himself the distance of the extremes;

making peace, and reconciling to God and the Father, through the Spirit, human nature;

as being truly God according to essence, and having truly become man by nature according to the economy;

neither divided by the natural difference of his own parts, nor confused by the hypostatic unity of the same;

but, on the one hand, by reason of the essential commonality of the parts of which he was composed, being united by nature to the Father and to the Mother, he showed himself preserving the difference of the parts of which he was composed in relation to one another;

but, on the other hand, by reason of the hypostatic particularity of his own parts, being distinguished from the extremes — I mean from the Father and the Mother — he was shown to possess the singularity of his own hypostasis wholly undivided, being ever united in the utmost personal identity of his own parts with one another.

For the essential commonality of one of the parts in relation to the extremes, preserving unconfused, within the unity of the one hypostasis, the difference of the other nature, did not permit the pious to recognize one nature of both arising from the union — lest there occur an utter cessation, according to essence, of the parts, namely the generation, by composition, of one nature of the whole out of them, a generation which would have no way to preserve the natural kinship with the parts of the extremes, not preserving after the union the essential difference of the parts, of which it was composed, in relation to one another.

but rather it presented one hypostasis to be seen, composite from the union, preserved by the natural existence of the parts of which it was composed.

But the hypostatic particularity of one of the parts entering into the composition of Christ as a certain whole, being conceived together with the essential commonality, constituted a common mark of the parts, characterizing the one hypostasis completed from them.

For we say that, according to the ineffable union, there has come to be a hypostasis common to flesh and divinity — the one hypostasis of Christ, completed by their concurrence in a union that is natural, that is, true and real.

I say 'common' in the sense of one and the same hypostasis, most particular to the parts, declared to exist from the union;

but formerly, without cause, simple and uncomposite;

but afterward, on account of a cause, having become, through the assumption of flesh endowed with a mind-possessing soul, immutably composite in truth;

according to which, being distinguished from the extremes — I mean from the Father and the Mother — he is united to himself, having no difference whatsoever within himself;

lest there occur a complete cessation of the hypostatic identity of the parts — namely the generation of a difference of the parts according to it, i.e. hypostasis — dissolving the hypostatic union into a duality of persons;

having no way to show the personal identity of the parts in relation to one another as preserved, that identity being divided by the hypostatic difference into a duality of persons.

That, on the one hand, the things common to the parts according to hypostasis distinguished the whole, that is, Christ, from the extremes;

but, on the other hand, the things common to the parts, according to essence, in relation to the extremes, joined Christ, as a whole, essentially to the extremes.

For it was not by those properties by which the flesh was distinguished from the rest of men that it maintained its difference from the Logos;

nor again was it by those properties by which it differed from the Logos that it was distinguished also from us.

But it was by those properties by which it was distinguished from us that it preserved its hypostatic union with the Logos, that is, its identity;

and it was by those properties by which it was naturally united to us that it evidently had its essential difference from the Logos preserved.

Just as the Logos also, by those properties by which he was distinguished, as Son and Logos, from the commonality of the divinity, by these same properties preserved toward the flesh his hypostatic union, that is, identity;

and by those properties by which, as God, he maintained the natural difference toward the flesh — by these same properties, being united in essence to the Father and the Spirit, he interchanged the difference and identity in relation to himself and to the extremes: being united to the extremes, on the one hand, by the natural commonalities of the parts, and being distinguished, on the other hand, from the extremes according to hypostasis by the particularities of the same parts;

on the one hand, in the hypostatic identity of his own parts, showing the difference of the extremes preserved in relation to himself;

but, on the other hand, in the essential otherness of the parts, bearing the natural identity in relation to the parts of the extremes.

But if, on the one hand, he was united to the extremes by the commonalities of the parts, and, on the other hand, was distinguished from the extremes by the particularities of the parts;

it is clear that by those properties by which he was united to the extremes, he had the natural difference of the parts in relation to one another preserved.

But by those properties by which he was distinguished from the extremes, he had the hypostatic identity of the parts manifested.

Therefore Christ had, in respect of each of the parts of which he was composed, both the common and the particular;